#having an entire unit on the crucible was a mistake | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dalekofchaos · 3 years ago

Text

Harbinger and The Illusive Man

Something I think would’ve fixed Mass Effect 3 while also keeping the plot and the dynamic of The Reapers and Cerberus as the main threat is making Harbinger the big bad and The Illusive Man as his puppet or as The Illusive Man could’ve put it his “partner”

My other ME3 metas

ME3 mistakes

ME3 ending fix

I cannot state how much I hate that Harbinger is almost nonexistent in this game.

The thing that annoyed me most about ME3 is the fact that Harbinger is not the main threat. The Illusive Man is. Harbinger has been built up as the big bad since ME2. "YOU HAVE FAILED. WE WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY." He says as he discards the Collectors. Then his speech to Shepard as the base blows up. "Human, you've changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction. You will surrender your potential against the growing void. We return, and you will rise. We are the harbinger of your perfection. We will bring your species into harmony with our own. Your species will be raised to a new existence. We are the beginning, you will be the end. Prepare for our domination. Prepare for our coming." Then in Arrival, he came pretty damn close to unleashing quick subjugation and harvest upon an unprepared galaxy. Upon Shepard foiling his plans. "Shepard. You have become an annoyance. You fight against inevitability. Dust struggling against cosmic winds. This seems a victory to you. A star system sacrificed. But even now, your greatest civilizations are doomed to fall. Your leaders will beg to serve us. Know this as you die in vain: Your time will come. Your species will fall. Prepare yourselves for the Arrival." The perfect final villain right? Unfortunately, Cerberus was more focused on than The Reapers. My problem with Cerberus and no Harbinger is Too many Cerberus, too few Reaper forces in plot. We fight Cerberus more often than the reapers. Hardly any boss fight and the one with Reaper Destroyer on Rannoch was more an interactive movie than fight. During the Horizon mission in Mass Effect 2, Harbinger was solidified as the Big Bad. It was menacing and ominous, with just the right amount of annoying. It taunted us throughout the game, telling us how insignificant we were, and how our actions were pointless. It was willing to posses drones through the Collector General to fight us personally, and when we killed the host, it tossed them aside. Harbinger even gave the typical “You haven’t seen the last of me!” villain rant. It made any fire fight frustrating, and that made me want to kill it even more; I hated Harbinger. Many games fail to do that. Harbinger was an enemy which I looked forward to defeating. I had the desire to annihilate. In Mass Effect 3, I got a codex entry and a cameo. Harbinger just swoops in at the last second and blows my friends and I to hell(and lets the Normandy save them), then flies off. Personally, I would have loved to hear Harbinger’s menacing monologue, it drove me on. I would have felt a deeper motivation to take the fight back to Earth if it told me how much destruction the Reapers were causing, how many lives were lost. I felt cheated when I got to the final mission, only to suddenly realize it was largely absent from the game. Harbinger has been replaced. Replaced by the Illusive Man and Kai Leng. The former is an old acquaintance, albeit one now controlled by the Reapers. The latter is a space ninja from a terrible book.

I will admit. The Illusive Man is a worthy foe and someone worthy enough to be Harbinger’s Saren. Kai Leng however is a terrible counterpart for Shepard.

Kai Leng. Sucks. Period. Here is a long in depth version on why he sucks. Even in the novels Leng is a terrible character. He’s a edgelord racist. He couldn’t even kill Anderson, he almost got taken out by an aging Drell with stage 7 Drell cancer. Oh but he has snarky one liners and he sent that stupid fucking email after Thesia. KAI LENG SUCKS! He is not even interesting. I genuinely fucking sighed when he was introduced. When he killed Thane, all I could think of was “really?”. When he sent that little email I just rolled my eyes. When I saw him at the temple all I could think of was “not you again”. When he “beat” me on Thessia(I would have unloaded my N7 Typhoon and sent his whiny ass into oblivion, but game mechanics said I couldn’t) I just felt angry that such a stupid character ever made it past the writing board. Oh and BULLSHIT. Thane and Kirrahe would have killed Kai Leng. Even near his death bed, Thane could still kill Kai Leng. Kirrahe is a hardened veteran, he is AN STG MAJOR! Kirrahe would have killed Kai Leng in a blink of a fucking eye. Here is my take on Kai Leng. He should have been killed on Priority:Citadel. If you do not save Kirrahe or don’t talk to Thane. Shepard should kill Kai Leng. If you saved Kirrahe but don’t talk to Thane. Kirrahe comes out of cloak and bombards Leng with Scorpion rounds and Leng blows up. If you talked to Thane, Thane would blow Kai Leng’s head off. The only reason why Leng is presented as a threat is cutscene logic and bad one liners.

But back to The Illusive Man and Harbinger

To make Harbinger work as the big bad, we need to have Harbinger constantly “ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL”

Near the end of the first mission, before Shepard contacts the Normandy, we would see Harbinger’s hologram appear like it did in Arrival. Harbinger taunting Shepard. that the harvest begins.

Instead of suggesting Control, The Illusive Man is basically saying The Reapers can uplift Humanity and ascend them and dominate the other races. With Harbinger’s help, Humanity will be the ultimate force in the galaxy

Everytime we fight Reaper forces, Harbinger is there to “ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL”

Kai Leng dies on The failed coup on the Citadel. The Illusive Man does not care as he is close to finding The Catalyst

On Rannoch, instead of a Destroyer Reaper talking to Shepard, Harbinger’s hologram will appear. Harbinger will continue to taunt Shepard, but Shepard shows that everyone is coming together to end the Reapers once and for all. Harbinger would not say that the Reapers are needed to keep synthetics from killing organics. He would say The Reapers are there to ascend and are your salvation through destruction. Harbinger’s end quotes from ME2 is basically the premise of The Reapers end goals. That's all it needed to be.

On Thesia, The Illusive Man will explain to Shepard that Harbinger chose him. After The First Contact War, TIM found a Reaper artifact. In that artifact, he was contacted by Harbinger. He lost his human vision, but awakened to the truth and because of Harbinger’s guidance, he founded Cerberus. Strength for Cerberus is strength for humanity. TIM believes he and Harbinger together they could uplift and empower humanity over the lesser races. The Illusive Man is to Harbinger, as what Saren was for Soverign. He will then tell Shepard, he plans on using the Crucible to finish what the Collectors started. Completing the Human Reaper. Then TIM sends a group of Phantoms, Nemesis and Cerberus Dragons to face Shepard in place of Leng. Thesia falls.

Sanctuary is used to create Husks and harvest humans to help create the Human Reaper

At Cerberus Headquarters, TIM says Harbinger knew more about the Citadel than Soverign. There is more than one Conduit and he found it. Vendetta will reveal that the Citadel was moved by Harbinger and taken it to Earth to complete the harvest

The confrontation between Shepard, Anderson and TIM happens but we know how TIM is on the Citadel and if you read my ending fix, you will know that Anderson would’ve went to the beam with Shepard and they are transported to the same place

Shepard will ask “Why didn’t Harbinger kill me?” “Because, we need you to understand and we need you to believe”

Same confrontation ends with either Shepard shooting TIM dead or TIM killing himself after Shepard uses paragon or renegade to reveal that Harbinger used him all his life

After Anderson passes. Harbinger “Assumes Control” over TIM’s dead body. Harbinger will explain the purpose of the Harvests. The explanation is the original ending of Dark energy. The Reapers as a whole were ‘nations’ of people who had fused together in the most horrific way possible to help find a way to stop the spread of the Dark Energy. The real reason for the Human Reaper was supposed to be the Reapers saving throw because they had run out of time. Humanity in Mass Effect is supposedly unique because of its genetic diversity and represented the universe’s best chance at stopping Dark Energy’s spread. We have a choice either Sacrifice humanity, allowing them to be horrifically processed in hopes that the end result will justify the means or use The Crucible to destroy The Reapers and find a way to stop the dark energy from spreading and it shows it is hopeful with a united galaxy. However, if we choose destroy, Harbinger will attempt to stop Shepard. A Reaperfied TIM appears and Shepard fights him, while The Normandy fights Harbinger. If we choose sacrifice humanity, Shepard will be the final catalyst to completing the Human Reaper. But obviously no one will choose that choice as the entire point of the trilogy is to destroy The Reapers. So we get a hopeful ending. The united galaxy will work together to stop the spread of dark energy, as Hackett said “If we can put aside our grievances long enough to stop The Reapers, imagine what we can do together”

There, I came up with a way to have the best of both worlds. Harbinger and The Illusive Man as the big bads.

I also made The Reapers motivation to actually work. They are there to control the chaos. The harvests end with a creation of The Reaper and The Reapers are the pinnacle of evolution Harbinger’s speech at the end of ME2 was enough for a motivation. The Reapers are our salvation from the coming void. They want to ascend humanity to perfection. That makes complete sense and makes more sense than destroying everyone to save everyone????? WHo fucking wrote this Starchild garbage???

The point is, The Reapers and The Illusive Man could’ve worked as the big bads collectively together.

#Mass Effect #Mass Effect Legendary Edition #Mass Effect 3 #Commander Shepard #Femshep #The Illusive Man #Harbinger #Cerberus #The Reapers

24 notes · View notes

ragnarssons · 5 years ago

Note

Thoughts on the way they'll end t100? It's not like I trust him but he's got 2 huge examples (thanks to D&D and Rob Thomas) of what fans DO NOT want. Fans don't want despair or plot twits for shock value that ignore the narrative. Plot twists are supposed to be shocking but believable, not a way to feel superior. Always thought C or BC'd die saving their ppl but now it's like what people? sakjdha so idk. It'd be nice if he let the heroes overcome their trauma. It'd give meaning to the story....

I have never, not once, thought the story would end with Clarke or Bellarke dying. Let’s go back to what the show means, shall we? It’s about the surviving of the human race, through a “future generation”, on which lies every desperate hope possible: one, they’re delinquants/criminals, ��lost cause” in the eyes of their governement. Two, they’re sent to die (hence, why they survive). Three, they’re sent on a “dead” planet, by a dying civilization. What we discover in the spam of very few episodes after this beginning is that: our “delinquants” aren’t so bad. They all have a history and a capacity to do better, and they even have excuses and/or explanations for what they did. Clarke ended up in a cell to die just because her father wanted to save the Ark. Bellamy ended up “shooting the chancellor” (*gasp* a killer!) to save his sister and because he was manipulated by someone else. And of all the mass of delinquants we’ve had, Monty, Jasper, Harper, Octavia, Finn, Murphy, all these people have shown an ability to love, to be compassionate, to think about what they were doing, to be brave and be afraid, to make mistakes and attone for said mistakes, etc. I have NEVER felt as if one of the plot twists of The 100 came out of nowhere. I have seen Finn’s death, and Lxa’s death come from miles away. And even tho there are storylines that I didn’t like (them going back on the ring at the end of s4 for example), the hints were there. It “made sense” in an idea of survival, even tho one could argue that it was far fetched and that a bunch of teenagers managing to pull that out is “CW material”. Yeah, it kinda is, but it never shocked me as in “OMG I WOULDA NEVER SEEN IT COMING FROM THIS TV SHOW”. And I will have to say that Clarke being left behind was also heavily “teased”/foreshadowed during this season. There was a reason as to why she became a nightblood, ya kno. Clarke was always the self-sacrificing character who always put others’ lives above her own. It was classic Clarke, like easily. But I mean, how many times Clarke has proven that? Has shown how much she’s willing to give for the others? Is that really the message the show wants to send with Clarke Griffin? “Keep sacrificing, it ends at one point”? No. Clarke’s story is all about redemption and hope and humanity. Humanity doesn’t end with death- especially not on this show as we see the idea of PROSPERITY being a big thing, especially through Becca. Clarke is basically our Becca. She has been hated for some of her decisions and actions and yes, somehow, she is responsible for a great deal of pain for a lot of people (MW especially, for example). But she’s a savior too. She’s someone who is always willing to put herself on the line, to inject herself with radioactive blood and to take chips and Flames in order to save humanity. She’s also someone who hasn’t allowed herself to be happy for a very long time. Thing is, while Becca had to sacrifice a lot - even herself at the end - for her cause, Clarke has to learn and to teach us better lessons. Clarke has to resurface. Clarke pointing a gun at her face in tonight’s episode is NOT the end of her story. It’s the crucible of her life, the pain, the guilt, the struggle. And as far as what Jroth said, the idea is not to condemn humanity through this show. For the characters, it seems that it’s been a long desperate walk among the worst kind of humans possible. But at the same time, they met people they learnt to love, people with whom they’ve mend their differences. Niylah, Lxa, Indra, E/cho, Emori, Maya, Gabriel. Even Clarke and Jospehine have learn to kinda live and work together at the end of this particular journey. What we saw from Clarke, contrary to Josephine, was her ability to SYMPATHIZE with Josephine and her struggles and her sadness (ie, the scene with Gabriel having a cancer and all, Clarke DOES feel for Josephine and Gabriel in this situation). To me, there are several quotes scattered through the entire show that do imply a happy ending. A HOPEFUL ending. “See? There’s hope for us yet” that’s one thing. “Do you still have hope?” “Are we still breathing?” as long as you’re alive, you can turn the page. I know we keep referring to that regarding Bellarke, but it’s much bigger than Bellarke. It’s an idea for the entire show. And you know what? Turning the page is ALSO another quote that has come back through the show. Do better. Be better. And you can’t do that if you’re dead. You can’t even do that, even if you sacrifice yourself for the noblest cause possible. What I’d love as an end for the show, is if Clarke was willing to sacrifice herself, minutes, seconds away from doing it, and that people would NOT give up on her. That her friends would come and save her and help her, and be a unit working to keep living- all of them. No sacrifice, no loss accepted, always the hope to do better. It’s like I said, like Arrow, like Supernatural- after so much struggle, you can’t, you CANNOT end these kind of storylines with the message being “and then you die lol”. I said it, if Oliver Queen dies by the end of Arrow, the show would have been worth NOTHING because there is the “purpose” of your show, and there’s the SOUL of your show. And the soul of Arrow is Oliver Queen, a damaged, depressed, PTSD-ridden character who deserves to see that he has a better chance in life. Who deserves to see that after everything he’s been through, he can TURN THE PAGE and let his weapons down and have a chance at being a better person, living a better life. Now adressing VM and GoT. So coming from Rob Thomas we have confirmation that VM is NOT over. At least, it’s not what he intends, we’ll see if the audience follows. VM losing Logan is not the end of her journey, and even tho yes, it’s shitty what he did, it’s not the “final message” he wants to send with this character (to me… too many “reboots” are too many reboots. He shoulda left the show where it ended with the movie, end of story). We don’t know what will be VM’s final “journey” or the key ending of the character. On the other hand… well GoT. Objectively. GoT has a VERY good ending. “Good” as in very cheesy, very fairytale-like, very lovey dovey boo-boo. Did you really imagine that many characters surviving? That many characters “reaching their dream jobs” like Podrick and Brienne, or Tyrion, the Starks or Samwell, etc? I think that’s one element that has disappointed me with GoT too. That was one show where hope was a tiny tiny thread of light and where I was ready to get WRECKED and lose a lot of the characters I loved, and see from the ashes of it, the survivors rebuild everything. (I had watched videos speculating that EVERYONE would die!) What we got? That’s a freaking miracle, I mean, I hate a lot of things, but hello ma boi Podrick is alive! Davos is alive! No more Starks died! Heck, even Winterfell was still standing after everything! It was even TOO good/too cheesy considering what we got before and that was one of my problems. To be honest, I could not tell what was the message D&D intended with this ending, because I really CANNOT read what they did with it. From ep 8x03 to ep 8x04 it seems like two different shows, where characters have different goals all the sudden, and they have different mindsets, and they just don’t communicate anymore. I swear, words can’t describe how much I hate it. Thing is, GoT is an anomaly. And seeing the way the audience reacted to it, it’s proof of that. GoT’s ending was half-assed, and that’s no secret. D&D were tired of it, end of story. It was obvious that they needed more, if not WAY MORE than 8 seasons to build all of this, they refused it and just did THAT instead. I’m pretty sure D&D had nothing but GRRM’s final “goals” for the characters (Dany dead, Jon NoTW, Sansa Queen etc) and just rushed to these in a hot second without really weighing these “destinies”. For example, I think in the books if Bran becomes King, it will be of a VERY different system than the one Westeros has right now. And I don’t mean “oh the chair is destroyed and now three idiots elect the King instead of it being given by blood”, I mean, no council, nothing of this old, twisted and rotten system that has proven to be wrong from the beginning of the story. Thing is, seeing GoT’s, GRRM’s story is pretty clear and straight-forward and no death and no “plot twist” is shocking. You can see it all coming from miles away (the Red Wedding, Ned’s death, Robert’s death, etc) because it’s so well crafted. And it was so well done during these years of the show as well. But D&D never had the talent GRRM has, and it showed for the rest of the show. I mean, hello, it’s so well done in the books that ever since 1996 people have been speculating that L+R = J. Imagine that if D&D had to do it themselves? I’m just laughing imagining the lack of build-up and then them blurting it out at some point just to “shock the audience”. I don’t think Jroth, despite his flaws, would EVER do that. He won’t turn Clarke into a villain last minute. He won’t have Bellamy kill Clarke after everything they’ve been through. And I don’t think either that was what GoT was supposed to be, because at the end, the story is still GRRM’s, and I don’t think AT ALL that this is what he has in mind (to make it simple: it couldn’t even work considering ALL the storylines there are in the books that aren’t on the show). Going back to The 100, I think the show has always been very consistent, and I think that despite there being things I don’t like (for example, bleggo), the characters aren’t heavily changed to justify these kinds of storyline (Bellamy is not a completely different character, he’s still Bellamy at his core, the problem is that the writers never cared to SHOW us the process of him accepting E/cho and building a relationship with her- which is… at least more acceptable than him becoming a totally different character to justify it). I don’t think Jroth’s goal has ever been to “subvert expectations”, he’s NEVER expressed himself like that, except maybe when he focused too much on his AI plot twist instead of seeing the consequences of his queerbaiting and how the fans would react to Lxa dying (even tho I will ALWAYS say it, her death was HEAVILY FORESHADOWED, but it’s easy for fans to ignore what they want to ignore). And I think he’s learnt his lesson, from that moment. And I do believe him when he says he’s had the blue prints of the show in his mind from the start and that he’s going to committ to it because it’s something he cares about that much. And again, I don’t think the message of this whole story could be “don’t worry at the end you’ll die and that’s it”. It’s not the kind of message this network would send anyway (CW). And I don’t think that’s what Jroth intended and it was kinda implied in this interview he did with Kshum. He does say “WELL KIM WANTED THIS-” as if it was HER desire and not his. His intention is not to destroy everything and kill everyone just to be edgy. He has a desire to express something with this show. Destruction is not a way of expressing anything. So even if he expresses it as “we wanted another Apocalypse at the end of s5″ he still intended SOMETHING (characters) to survive from it. When I worry about these kinds of things, I always think about what JKR said. Dying in a war is probably the easiest thing, surviving it and rebuilding from it and learning from it, is the hardest thing to do. That’s why, to me, as bittersweet of an ending THG’s ending is, it’s THE BEST ending to a modern dystopian series to date. It is as cruel as it is important. It is a redemption for Katniss and for Panem just as much. It is embracing the future and acknowledging the scars of the past too. And I think The 100 is about that too. I 100% think that the moral of this story - The 100 - is hope against all odds. Humanity over inhumanity. Living over dying. It’s always about bringing back life and hope in the most desperate and dark situations. I think the moral of the show can be summed up in the Culling scene from 1x05. You think humanity will fail, but at the end of the day, it’ll prevail, it’ll prove better. No matter what we think after 6 seasons, the heart of the show is still Clarke Griffin, a girl living by the model of her father who died, thinking humanity would do better. Hoping against all odds is kind of a burden, it’s a struggle, but it has to pay off for the story to have meaning. I know Jroth already called this show a tragedy, but I think he meant as this show having “dark” characters, dealing with internal struggles and very humanly basic questions. What is bad, what is good. Who is the good guy, HOW are we the good guys, HOW do we do better, etc. Again it can be confirmed with how his vision with Kshum’s vision of a tragedy that is “everyone dies and the ending sucks”. The story can’t have meaning if you don’t answer these questions by the end of your story. I think this story has more of an Odysseus vibes. The characters are seeking home and are struggling through false hopes and they’re losing their ways. But at the end, Ulysse found his way back home and got his “happy ending”, no matter how dark it got along the way, or how many times he (almost) lost hope.

#answered #anonymous

5 notes · View notes

official-alan-dabiri · 6 years ago

Text

Official-Alan-Dabiri and the 5 Stages of Grief

Okay, I’ve been doing some grieving for the esports side of Heroes of the Storm, and I’d like to kind of put my thoughts out here for my three human and three-hundred pornbot followers. I’m just going to step outside of what has been mockingly referred to as my “blizzard fursuit” and be real for a minute here. Hi, I’m Rob. I am a Heroes of the Storm player since alpha, and a Heroes of the Storm esports fan since before the custom game mode had been added, when maps were random and they had to be cast afterwards off of replays. The recent announcement of the cancellation of HGC and Heroes of the Dorm hit me - and the rest of the community - very hard. So I’m just going to touch on the stages of grief as they pertain to this event, and my feelings on the whole matter.

For those of you here for silly patch note commentary, fanart, and moba memes, I’ll put this behind a read more out of respect for your dashes.

Denial

I think Denial is the shortest stage we’re facing here. Denial came when there was no announcement of 2019 HGC for two months, and some of us shrugged it off. At Blizzcon, outward-facing Blizzard employees assured the fans, the casters, the players, and other esports-attached people that HGC would be back in 2019, and be as big or bigger. I’m not going to say that they lied, but their statements fed into the idea that this would be fine, and some people latched onto that in the wake of the expanding silence before it was finally broken.

To be in denial is a defense mechanism. It is denying that this is happening in order to numb our emotions and make it through the first wave of pain. Here, denial is the shortest stage because this is so believable. In the wake of so many questionable moves Activision-Blizzard has made lately, the severity and suddenness is a shock, not the event itself. This is really happening. Professional-level Heroes of the Storm is dead. And of course it is. After all, these are the numbskulls who made a mobile game the centerpiece of Blizzcon 2018, right?

Anger

I just want to preface this by noting that I, personally, never move past anger. I may struggle through it, but that anger never goes away. After the loss of my maternal grandfather to COPD over twenty years ago, the smell of cigarettes still enrages me. So please understand that when I say that I will never forgive Blizzard for this, I am not being melodramatic. I will be angry about this for a very long time.

Anger, however, needs to be appropriately directed and channeled. I’m upset at losing my weekend HGC fix. I’m upset that my amateur team no longer has a pro scene to watch together and work to emulate. And I’m very upset that Heroes of the Dorm is gone, since it was the catalyst that drew many of my friends into the game in the first place. This loss is the end of an era of entertainment. But that’s not the real crime here.

Hundreds of people - some of whom I admire and idolize - across the world are now unemployed. Very abruptly. Right before Christmas. Forty players, per region, are now out in the cold, along with any coaches and managers the team might employ. Add to that the casters, production staff, and analysts? Those people just got hosed. Some of those players dropped out of college to be here. Some of those players dropped out of college literally this fall in preparation for the 2019 season, after being picked up after the region’s playoffs, or fighting their way up in the Open Division and through the Crucible. There are people who have leases they’ve signed based on income that just got ripped away from them. Blizzard just brutally smacked down every one of them, tore away their jobs, and smashed their dreams.

And they did it in a blog post. That was how most of the players and casters learned about this. This wasn’t an event that was common knowledge, and the announcement just broke the NDA for them all. They have been living their lives up until literally the blog post, making plans dependent on HGC 2019. They found out they got fired by reading the news. And Blizzard selfishly kept this under their hats for this long to make sure that no players, sponsors, or other organizations got spooked before they were already locked in to Blizzard’s other esports. This was the worst way to do it. It’s unforgivable.

Bargaining

The bargaining stage is about seeking control over a terrible situation. It’s looking for how things should be when how they are is unacceptable. And for this announcement, there are a thousand different ways that would be preferable to this.

For one thing, I would love if this just weren’t happening. If only the HGC were just on a limited budget. If only the HGC was following a different, cheaper format. If only either HGC or Heroes of the Dorm were gone, and not both. For another, I would love if the call had been made six months ago. Cancel the crucible, make sure everyone has months of notice before the doors close to seek other work, or go back to school, or whatever. Literally any notice whatsoever would be preferable to this. Even if it’s just all in NDAs and the public doesn’t know, half of my anger is mitigated just because I know those folks aren’t entirely hosed.

Of course, the greatest bargain at all is to go all the way back. What if they’d designed the HGC better? The HGC was set up to ensure its own demise. The pros being paid salaries by Blizzard was great for their financial security, but those salaries elevated them above everyone else. The rest of the scene withered. Was Tempo Storm ever going to play against an open division team? No. Never. Maybe a scrim if they had connections, but nothing serious. In the days before HGC, those players had a really high chance of getting matched into the best pro team in round 1 just because of the seeding. Amateur tournaments are few and far between right now, and most of them go without casters, or have inexperienced casters who don’t have the platform to bring these games to a sizable audience. The part of the scene that still exists is now tiny to the point of invisibility. If HGC had been designed on a points system like it was for the first blizzcon, though? Those structures would still exist, instead of having been steamrolled over to build the now-derelict HGC parking lot. Scaling back Blizzard’s involvement with that system would have been a minimal change.

Depression

A lot of the community seems to be in this stage. A lot of people think this was a deathblow to the game itself, and, to be honest, it might be. The announcement was accompanied by the news that the development team is shrinking, and that content will be coming out slower, but with no indication of how slow. There is no shortage of doom and gloom, with people predicting no new hero for months - or even years - and balance patches being made by devs with no resources to test or monitor the results.

Ultimately, this is a downer. I’m not going to tell you it’s not bad. The lack of a pro scene to aspire to immediately kills the interest of a nontrivial number of players, who thought they could one day break into that world, whether as a player or as a caster. And the lack of those players kills the motivation of content creators, who are making build guides, tier lists, and learning-related content for those players. Make no mistake, this scene will shrink because of this. Your favorite pro players, streamers, youtubers, and other content creators might just move on, looking for other games to excel in, and take some amount of their audience with them.

Even if you weren’t part of this community, (why are you reading this, then?) Heroes of the Storm ranked 12th on the most influential esports of 2018. The loss of this is going to spook literally every sponsor across all esports, planting the seed of doubt that this is a worthwhile use of funds when it could all vanish overnight at the whim of the game’s publisher.

And even if you don’t care about esports, the professional level of the game had an effect that rippled down through all levels of play. Do you remember suddenly seeing Xul in your games a whole lot earlier this year? Do you remember Alarak suddenly being a contested pick in the last two months? Surely you noticed that the “solo lane” role suddenly became a thing last year when Blaze and Yrel were added, couldn’t main tank, but still had high win rates. All of that was the pro scene trickling down.

What happens now? What’s going to take the place of that influence? I don’t know. All I know is that when the playerbase looks up to see the highest level of play now, there’s just a void where HGC was.

Acceptance

Regardless of your feelings on the matter, though, Heroes of the Storm existed before HGC, and will continue to exist afterwards. It might end up being a much sparser community, with the pros moving on and the content creators in exodus, but we’ll still be here. I mean, I will, at least. They aren’t pulling the plug on the game, no matter what some angry nerd says about false hope. We’ve got years of gameplay and years of snarky patch notes ahead of us. Not to mention that all Blizzard content is HotS content. I’ve got Overwatch heroes to steal from Jeff, and Starcraft units to turn into poc, and lore-defying skins to slap on everyone in between. Heroes of the Storm is here to stay, and anyone who says otherwise is planning for a future calamity that’s still decades away.

That said, there are still high-level Heroes of the Storm tournaments happening. As I believe I mentioned previously, I have a team in Heroes Lounge, and that league has confirmed that they’re not stopping anytime soon. Similarly, the Nexus Gaming Series is gearing up, with sign-ups in January. In fact, there’s a number of options for community tournaments, both to participate in and to watch, with more undoubtedly coming, once the pros and casters finish their grieving and come together, looking to make it clear that they care about the game more than Blizzard does, and they’re willing to show it.

We all care more than blizzard does, or we wouldn’t be this upset. So let’s keep our eyes to the skies and give our support to whatever comes out of this. Because if the death of the pro scene would kill this game, it’s up to us to support a semi-pro scene ourselves to keep HotS alive.

#Heroes of the Storm #HGC #Esports #Heroes of the Dorm

28 notes · View notes

carina-xvx-hellebore · 6 years ago

Text

}Just putting together a small glossary for the majority of my following that have never even touched Destiny, because I can already tell my RotS posts are confusing a few people.

Guardians: Once-dead humans risen and given powers by the Traveler. Though they mainly use a wide variety of firearms, they have been known to weave this power, known as "Light", to do countless different things. Said things do however usually involve combat, such as forming a gun made of flaming crystals, or a double-tipped spear wreathed in lightning, or a bow that draws energy from the vacuum between all that is. I'll probably write an extended post on this.

Ghosts: A multi-purpose tool and a trusty partner of each Guardian. Capable of hacking things, opening doors, scanning things for information, opening doors, allowing Guardians to communicate over long distances, opening doors, and did I mention opening doors?

Traveler: A benevolent god that now hangs dead above the Last City. It was once a living star, radiant beyond anything else, and helped shape a Golden Age for humanity before the Darkness attacked.

Darkness: An omnipotent and vicious group of elder gods, believing that if any one thing in the universe can be killed, it deserves to die. It has spent nearly 14 billion years chasing after the Traveler, who flees from death and helps other beings cheat it.

Fallen: Intergalactic scavengers that were once blessed with the Light long ago. Twisted somewhat by the Darkness, they now wage war on humanity, merely hoping to take back the Traveler, which they call "the Great Machine".

Hive: Direct servants of the Darkness, once noble like the Fallen, but corrupted in much more hideous ways. They serve their own small pantheon of gods and kings beneath the Darkness, many of which now set their three eyes each on the planet Earth.

Vex: Microscopic radiolarian entities, millions of them in each unit. To the uninformed, they appear to be an army of robots, but make no mistake; the brass exoskeleton is merely a suit. They are also capable of simulating entire universes, and rewriting time itself.

Cabal: Honor-bound space rhinos with zero words for "retreat". Easily the most militarized species in the galaxy, they are taught and bred to either come home victorious or just die trying.

Crucible: Guardian PvP. It's fucking glorious, just trust me on this.

Supers: The ultimate abilities of the Guardians. While they come in countless forms, such as the Siege Hammer, Chaos Reach, or Spectral Blades, there are a handful that are more commonly known, such as the Fist of Havoc, Nova Bomb, and Golden Gun.

Light: The force that drives and empowers the Guardians, as well as others. It can be used to strengthen weapons, power up machinery, and even bake cupcakes. It is said to be everything the Darkness despises, and coincidentally it is the one thing that can hope to put a stop to it.

̶अ̶ह̶ं̸क̵ा̸र̵: L̴i̶s̷t̸e̵n̷ ̵c̶l̷o̸s̷e̸l̸y̵,̵ ̶O̶ ̸r̴e̵a̸d̶e̴r̶ ̴m̸i̸n̷e̷.̷ ̸D̵r̵a̵w̶ ̵c̸l̶o̸s̶e̷r̸ ̶n̴o̶w̸.̸ ̶L̷e̵t̶ ̷m̵e̴ ̴t̴e̵l̸l̴ ̴y̷o̵u̷ ̴w̵h̷y̴ ̷t̷h̴e̶ ̶अ̶ह̶ं̸क̵ा̸र̵ ̶a̵r̷e̷ ̸t̵o̶ ̷b̵e̷ ̸f̶e̷a̷r̴e̵d̸.̴ ̸F̷i̸r̶s̴t̷l̸y̷,̷ ̶w̸e̵ ̶a̷r̶e̸ ̴n̵o̵t̶ ̴o̵f̵ ̴t̵h̶e̵ ̷S̴k̸y̸.̶ ̵W̸e̴ ̵a̷r̵e̷ ̷n̵o̵t̴ ̵o̴f̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̶D̶e̸e̶p̸.̶ ̵W̶e̷ ̶a̴r̵e̷ ̷o̷f̶ ̸o̸u̵r̸ ̴o̵w̸n̵ ̵g̷r̴a̶n̵d̴ ̶d̶e̷s̴i̷g̷n̸,̴ ̷a̴n̶d̸ ̴w̷e̵ ̶w̷i̸l̸l̶ ̷n̴o̴t̵ ̴b̸o̵w̷ ̸t̴o̶ ̶e̶i̶t̴h̶e̷r̸ ̷o̶f̵ ̶y̵o̵u̵r̵ ̴d̷u̸l̷l̴,̵ ̴c̸a̶r̷d̴b̷o̷a̸r̴d̵-̶c̸u̶t̷o̷u̷t̸ ̴p̴h̸i̷l̷o̸s̸o̷p̴h̷i̴e̵s̷.̴ ̸N̸e̶x̶t̶l̸y̵,̸ ̵w̶e̷ ̷a̵r̴e̸ ̸V̸i̴r̴t̶u̸o̷u̸s̸.̸ ̴Y̵e̵s̴,̶ ̷V̶i̷r̴t̷u̴o̷u̶s̶.̸ ̷W̶e̴ ̷a̸r̷e̶ ̷a̵b̷o̸v̵e̶ ̵a̴l̴l̵ ̴i̶n̵ ̶p̴o̶w̷e̴r̴,̷ ̴w̷i̸s̴d̵o̵m̷,̴ ̵a̷n̶d̷ ̶c̵o̸u̵r̸a̷g̵e̸,̵ ̶a̶n̴d̷ ̴t̸h̵e̴ ̴u̴n̶i̸v̴e̵r̵s̶e̴ ̶k̷n̴o̴w̸s̶ ̸t̷h̷i̶s̷.̸ ̷W̵e̸ ̴s̶e̵e̴ ̴t̴h̶r̸o̶u̶g̴h̴ ̸t̴h̷e̶s̵e̸ ̶p̸u̶p̷p̴e̶t̶s̵ ̵y̵o̶u̶ ̴c̸o̷m̸m̶a̷n̷d̵.̸ ̶T̸h̶e̴s̶e̶ ̴n̶a̴m̵e̷l̷e̵s̴s̴,̷ ̷n̴e̴a̸r̸-̸f̵a̸c̸e̸l̴e̷s̷s̵ ̵c̴r̵e̴a̴t̷u̶r̵e̷s̵ ̴t̷h̷a̵t̶ ̶y̶o̵u̵ ̷p̸u̶s̷h̵ ̷a̴r̵o̴u̵n̸d̸ ̷w̸i̸t̴h̶ ̴t̸h̶e̴ ̷p̴u̵s̷h̴ ̵o̶f̶ ̷y̷o̸u̸r̶ ̸m̶a̶n̷y̵ ̷b̸u̵t̸t̴o̷n̴s̶.̴ ̵W̵e̵ ̵s̶e̶e̴ ̸i̴t̴ ̵a̸l̵l̴,̷ ̸a̶n̶d̸ ̶s̸o̶o̴n̶,̴ ̷w̶e̶ ̶w̷i̸l̴l̵ ̵b̴e̵ ̶w̴i̸t̵h̵ ̸i̷t̴.̴ ̸N̸o̵t̴ ̷e̵v̷e̴n̷ ̶y̶o̵u̴r̶ ̵A̸r̵c̵h̶i̵t̶e̴c̸t̵s̷ ̸a̷r̵e̴ ̴s̵a̴f̴e̶.̸ ̵L̴a̵s̸t̷l̴y̷,̸ ̶a̷n̵d̵ ̴t̶h̵i̶s̶ ̸i̸s̵ ̴c̶r̸i̵t̵i̴c̵a̷l̵,̴ ̸w̵e̵ ̴h̶a̶v̸e̸ ̶n̶o̵ ̶b̴e̸g̸i̴n̵n̵i̴n̴g̶,̶ ̵a̷n̴d̷ ̸w̸e̶ ̶h̴a̶v̷e̶ ̵n̸o̴ ̸e̸n̴d̴.̵ ̶W̷e̷ ̸a̴r̵e̵ ̵i̸n̴f̴i̴n̶i̸t̵e̶.̴ ̶M̷o̷r̶t̵a̵l̶ ̷l̷i̶f̴e̸ ̷i̵s̶ ̶n̸o̸t̵h̴i̷n̶g̴ ̷b̸u̵t̸ ̶a̶ ̶g̴e̸n̴e̵t̸i̴c̸ ̷m̷u̶t̷a̵t̷i̶o̶n̷;̵ ̶a̶n̸ ̸a̴c̷c̸i̸d̶e̷n̴t̷.̷ ̵Y̶o̷u̵r̴ ̸l̶i̷v̵e̷s̵ ̴a̸r̶e̶ ̷m̸e̴a̴s̴u̸r̸e̷d̴ ̴i̶n̷ ̵y̶e̶a̴r̴s̷,̸ ̷a̴n̶d̵ ̴i̷n̸ ̵d̸e̷c̸a̶d̵e̵s̸,̴ ̶a̸n̴d̵ ̸y̸o̷u̶ ̷w̵i̸t̵h̷e̵r̵,̷ ̴a̴n̵d̷ ̸y̷o̷u̷ ̴d̴i̵e̴.̵ ̶B̴e̷f̸o̴r̷e̷ ̵u̷s̵,̷ ̷y̷o̸u̴ ̷a̵r̵e̵ ̸n̷o̷t̸h̷i̴n̵g̶.̵ ̵Y̶o̴u̵r̷ ̸e̷x̶t̸i̵n̷c̴t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̵i̶s̶ ̵i̷n̷e̵v̵i̸t̶a̵b̷l̷e̷,̵ ̵a̴n̵d̵ ̸w̶e̸ ̸a̷r̵e̶ ̸t̵h̵e̷ ̴e̸n̵d̵ ̵o̴f̵ ̶e̸v̷e̵r̴y̷t̵h̸i̴n̶g̵.̶ ̷N̶o̵w̷ ̷d̴o̵ ̸y̷o̷u̸ ̶s̶e̷e̷,̸ ̵O̴ ̶r̷e̷a̵d̴e̵r̶ ̵m̴i̵n̸e̵?̴ ̸N̴o̸w̴ ̸d̷o̴ ̵y̷o̵u̷ ̵s̸e̸e̵ ̸w̷h̶y̷ ̵y̸o̵u̸ ̵s̷h̶o̸u̸l̴d̵ ̸b̸e̴ ̵a̶f̸r̷a̴i̵d̸?̶

...Sorry, blacked out there for a second. Anyway, this is just a short summary of what you guys will need to know going into the fic once I actually get around to writing the rest of it. Destiny veterans will realize I'm taking some creative liberties, and I assure them that it's for storytelling purposes and I am aiming to remain as faithful to the canon as possible while doing so. To the uninformed, feel free to shoot any questions my way, because this project is going to be huge. We're talking ponderous strength. Great and coiling length. Folded jaws and curled wings. Anyway, I gotta get some fuckin' sleep. Hope everyone has a good night!{

#for soon it will all burn away #o reader mine #reality of the spheres

2 notes · View notes

96thdayofrage · 3 years ago

Text

Isn’t NBC Forgetting Something About Simone Biles’ Exit?

The network seems oblivious to its own role in the ramping up the pressure.

On Tuesday night, NBC began its primetime Olympics broadcast with a not-so-breaking news update. “The focus here is what happened in gymnastics,” said NBC host Mike Tirico. “Simone Biles, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, who came back for these games at age 24, bowing out of the team event just after it started. As of now we don’t know any more on her status for the rest of the Olympic individual competition.”

Tirico was describing something that had happened several hours earlier—because of the time difference between the United States and Japan, many of the Olympic events are being broadcast on a tape delay—which meant that lots of viewers already knew the story. During the women’s team gymnastics finals that day, Biles had abruptly withdrawn from the event after landing a subpar vault, citing diminished trust in her own abilities and a desire to avoid potential injury.

It was a shocking moment, and not just because it is rare to see a professional athlete step away in the middle of a competition. Biles isn’t just another gymnast. She’s Simone Biles, the consensus best gymnast on the planet, and the American face of the Tokyo Games. Her withdrawal at once became the defining moment of these still-young Summer Olympics—and put NBC in the strange position of having to report on the news while studiously ignoring the role it may have played in creating the conditions for Biles’ sudden exit.

As per its cyclical mandate to give casual American sports fans one or two big-name U.S. Olympians for whom to root, NBC has effectively turned the Tokyo Games into the Simone Biles Games. In the run-up to the Olympics and during the first few days of competition, you could hardly visit any NBC-branded property without encountering some sort of coverage of Biles, her chances for matching or exceeding her memorable Rio performance, and her uncharacteristic stumbles in the Olympic trials and in the qualifying rounds. The American gymnastics squad is filled with immensely talented and likable athletes. As far as NBC is concerned, though, there’s Simone Biles, and then there’s all these other people who just happen to be on her team.

The network had good reason to make Biles the face of the Tokyo Games. Telegenic and technically impeccable, Biles is a once-in-a-lifetime gymnast, an unquestioned star in a marquee Olympic sport. Her four gold medals at the 2016 Rio Games made her famous—and effectively sealed her fate for Tokyo. In 2021, with Sha’Carri Richardson disqualified, Michael Phelps retired, and Ryan Lochte no longer around to engage in his lovably oafish antics, Biles naturally became the transcendent American Olympian by whose light NBC would navigate.

The network’s choice to emphasize Biles above all others has put more attention—and more pressure—on her than on any other American Olympian in Tokyo, and possibly more than any other American Olympian before her. To be fair, NBC tried its best to make its coverage of her exit Tuesday as sympathetic and thoughtful as possible. Tirico spoke compassionately and nonjudgmentally about Biles’ choice. Former Olympians Michael Phelps and Nastia Liukin offered honest insight into the anxieties that can accompany the quest for gold and the burden of a nation’s expectations. But there were nevertheless two important themes that NBC omitted on Tuesday: self-awareness and contrition.

As the leading promoter of the Olympics in the U.S., it is a bit rich for NBC to report on the psychological pressures faced by Biles without also reflecting on the ways in which its choice to make Tokyo the Simone Games surely intensified those pressures. It’d be sort of like if your boss announced to an auditorium filled with your co-workers that the fate of the company was riding on your work output, and then took you aside to sympathetically observe that you looked stressed, and that the key to happiness was a healthy work-life balance. While I cannot blame NBC for featuring Biles as its star attraction, the network ought to be able to candidly assess and admit the ramifications of its own wall-to-wall coverage. Simone Biles made herself a champion. NBC tried to make her into a superhero. The fact that she chose to reject the cape should prompt a reevaluation of the process by which it was sewn for her in the first place.

The job of creating quadrennial TV sports heroes isn’t an easy one. The discontinuous nature of the Olympics means that casual fans don’t have many opportunities to develop deep rooting interests in most of the sports therein. As such, most people really do rely on NBC and its affiliates to curate a roster of superstars to cheer for and complain about. This is the reason why NBC focuses so intensely and unflinchingly on five or six people each games. With only two-and-a-half weeks to work with, the network needs to go overboard drumming it into your head that these are the people to watch.

For the people being watched, though, this sudden, inescapable pressure and attention can be an incredibly alienating experience. Unlike basketball, football, and baseball players in the United States, elite Olympic athletes like Biles do not exist under a continuous microscope. Outside of their sports’ superfans, most Americans watch them intensely for a couple of weeks every four years, and then basically don’t think about them unless they appear in a Subway commercial or their sport makes the news for its abusive practices. We put all this pressure on them to perform, and then feign confusion when they cite all that pressure as the reason why they didn’t perform.

During the Tuesday night primetime broadcast of the team gymnastics final, you could literally see the pressure messing with Biles’ head. “We’ll come back for the vault of the gymnast universally recognized as the greatest ever,” said NBC gymnastics anchor Terry Gannon as the cameras showed a closeup of Biles. The gymnast looked exhausted, and sad.

When NBC returned, they showed two clips of Biles making some uncharacteristic mistakes in the run-up to the competition. “Simone doing a lot of un-Simone-like things: falling off balance beams, missing parts on the uneven bars,” said commentator Tim Daggett. Later, Liukin mentioned “the amount of pressure that she has on her shoulders, not just her teammates, but the entire nation; and not just the nation, the entire world is expecting for her to be the best just like she always is, and that’s a lot.”

“It’s the rarest air. There’s nobody else occupying it right now,” said Gannon. “And it’s gotta be a lonely place at times.”

The troika seemed willfully oblivious to its own network’s role in putting Biles on that pedestal and creating the pressure to which she would very soon succumb. When Biles botched her vault soon thereafter, the commentators seemed shocked—not just that the gymnast had made an uncharacteristic mistake, but that this media-created model of sporting perfection had revealed her to be human, and had betrayed the story that television had chosen to tell about her. “That was bizarre. Right there we just saw Simone kinda almost look like she got a little bit lost in the air. Which I’ve, frankly, never seen her do,” said Daggett. “Gymnasts have to know where they are in the air. It’s called air sense. But sometimes you can get lost. She got lost in the air.”

You can get lost in the air, and you can get lost on the air, and sometimes both things happen at once. In those cases, it’s probably wise to take some time to try and reorient yourself, which is just what Biles did. After the team event concluded—the Americans took the silver medal despite Biles’ withdrawal—the gymnast offered additional context for her decision to bow out. “It does suck when you do feel the weight of the world, and you feel like there are no outlets for the amount of training that we do. We were totally prepared, but it just sucks when you’re fighting with your own head,” Biles told the media. “Like, you want to do it for yourself, but you’re still too worried about what everybody else is going to say, on the internet and stuff sometimes.”

I admire Biles for her honesty here, even as I suspect she surely knows that there is very little she can do at this point to stop the internet, the world, and NBC from talking about her anyway. The Olympics are a television show first and foremost, and its producers strive to create drama in order to compete for ratings. Despite what you might think, the primary drama is not found in the athletic events themselves, but in the stories that NBC and the other covering networks choose to tell about the competitors. The internet and the wider world would not be obsessed with Simone Biles were it not for NBC choosing to turn her into a hero while she was still too young to rent a car in most states without a deposit. And the only thing television loves more than a hero is a hero in distress.

Later on during Tuesday’s primetime broadcast, Mike Tirico spoke with Phelps, Biles’ immediate predecessor as America’s foremost Olympian, and a man who has been public about his own struggles to shoulder the weight of the world’s expectations. “The Olympics is overwhelming. There’s a lot of emotions that go into it,” said Phelps. “I mean, I could talk to you about this for an hour.” Phelps went on to talk with Tirico about it for roughly five minutes, and while he was very sincere and articulate, I couldn’t help but find the conversation a little bit depressing. The reward for surviving a stint at the center of NBC’s Olympic crucible is to become the person who goes on TV to talk about your successors.

On Wednesday morning, Biles revealed that she would also withdraw from the upcoming individual all-around competition. She has also qualified for every individual apparatus final: in vault, floor exercise, balance beam, and uneven bars. And she has not withdrawn from those—yet. The specter of total withdrawal is the last weapon that Biles has left in her efforts to reclaim the Simone Games for herself. She recently told the media, among other things, that “there’s more to life than just gymnastics.” That’s an undeniably true and mature statement, and yet it is also the one thing that fans and television never, ever want to hear from a marquee athlete. NBC turns great athletes into Olympic heroes, and in exchange, the athletes are expected to conform to the narratives created for them: to always go for the gold, because that’s what Olympic heroes do. By rejecting the network’s laurels and proceeding on her own terms, Biles is finally writing her own story.

0 notes

profbruce · 5 years ago

Text

What is the real value of a CEO? And how a bad one can kill you

By Bruce Firestone | Business Coaching

Jun 19, 2020

[This is an excerpt from Don’t Back Down, the real story of the founding of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators and why big leagues count written by Sens founder Bruce M Firestone, PhD, available from, https://brucemfirestone.com/product/dont-back-down/]

You have to laugh at the expectations of leadership in the US where they expect their leaders to have a solid roadmap of the way the world works, but no real experience in it because they are looking for perfection in their leaders. People like former president Bill Clinton had to resort to prevarications like, “Yes I did (smoke marijuana) but I did not inhale,” or “I did not, never sleep with that woman (about Monica Lewinsky).”

You cannot have it both ways—an authentic leader, but one with no real-world experience, no testing of their mettle, no mistakes made on the way.

If you want to do great things like bring back a NHL team for your hometown that hadn’t played a game in nearly 60 years, it’s going to require a total commitment of mind and body and soul. And it’s going to require leadership.

I am not recommending a reckless, fearless approach to life, but maybe that’s what it takes to be a leader, formed by the crucible of life’s pressures and crises.

Scott Adams, Dilbert creator, says leadership is about getting people to do things they know are not in their best interests. WRONG. This is absolutely not what leaders do, at least, not successful ones in RL (real life).

Here is my definition of what a leader is:

“A leader is a person who chooses from among many alternatives, some of which s/he has generated and some of which came from inside or perhaps from outside their organization, the right path for his or her tribe[1] getting buy-in from the whole organization as well as its entire stakeholder group and making sure that all its resources are deployed optimally to achieve their common objectives that are serving not only to further the interests of individual tribal members and the organization, but also a broader purpose for humankind.”

…

The idea that every founder of an enterprise or incoming CEO of an organization should actually know something about his or her chosen industry is not accepted everywhere. There is one school of thought that one business or organization is pretty much like every other so that a competent executive in one can be successfully transplanted to a completely different type of industry.

However, for every Tony Hsieh, who knew nothing about selling shoes but made Zappos.com a huge success, or every Lou Gerstner, who went from soup to tech (Campbell’s to IBM) and did well at both, you have hundreds of Mike Zafirovskis who went from cell phones to switches (Motorola to Nortel) and flopped horribly.

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled,” said Mark Twain

It is my view that you do, in fact, have to know something about making films before you can make a great one, and this is just as true in the grocery business, the transport sector or any part of the tech industry. It’s no fluke that Facebook is humongous, and Harvard Connect is just a lawsuit. Mark Zuckerberg knew something about coding while the Winklevoss twins knew very little.

Closer to home, Tobi Lutke is a top Ruby on Rails developer, and it is no fluke that he is co-founder of the fastest growing e-commerce platform anywhere on the web (Shopify.com).

Michael E Gerber in his classic book, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (HarperCollins, NY, 1995) argues that you should work on your business not in your business. He puts it this way: “… small businesses in the United States simply do not work; the people who own them do.”

But I have found that when a founder stops getting in the trenches with his or her team, the enterprise inevitably hits some rough weather. Gerber says that every business needs some combination of entrepreneur (providing vision and being an agent for change), manager (bringing order to the business and cleaning up messes made by entrepreneurs) and technician (the one who actually performs the work).

Gerber is right about this, but where I find fault is with the idea that the founder or CEO can delegate any two of these. If the CEO is an entrepreneur at heart, he or she must have some technical expertise and some management chops as well. That doesn’t mean that they can’t hire up—bring in people who are better managers or better technically than they are. It just means they can never absent themselves from any of these crucial components because, when well executed, these together create an opportunity for any organization to have success.

Lou Gerstner at IBM immersed himself in their technology and understood it well enough to: a) approve innovative projects and stop bad ones, and b) come up with his own thoughts on new directions including new technological directions and service offerings for the company.

Mike Zafirovski came to the University of Ottawa during Nortel’s heyday to give the worst speech I have ever heard a CEO of a major company give. For 50 minutes, Mike talked about getting (Motorola’s) six sigma processes embedded into Nortel’s DNA while improving their financial ratios. If this had been a speech by a CFO, well, bravo. But this is the CEO, the person who is the leader, who sets the pace, who describes a bold new vision for the organization and then gets tens of thousands of stakeholders to follow him/her, come hell or high water.

Think about Apple when Steve Jobs was induced to return as interim CEO. If Mr Jobs had come to our university, he would have spent his 50 minutes talking about insanely great new Apple products and services—how he was going to change the world. Even on his deathbed, Steve was focused on the future—he had a eureka moment concerning the evolution of television.

Leadership makes a big difference. When Steve returned to Apple, they had about six weeks of cash left. First, he got a lifeline from Microsoft (a co-opetitor) in the form of a $150 million line of credit and cut Apple products down from dozens and dozens to just a handful.

The introduction of the iPhone by Steve and his team propelled Apple into becoming the most valuable tech company on the planet with a profit per employee greater than most company’s revenue per employee. It’s unimaginable.

We estimated the iPhone had a 288% pa internal rate of return to Apple, a phenomenal performance.

Here’re those numbers[2]:

IRR, Internal Rate of Return Apple’s iPhone

IRR Cash Out Cash In Cashflow

2006 $ (1,150,000,000.00) $ (1,150,000,000.00)

2007 $ (1,150,000,000.00) $ 1,521,123,592.60 $ 371,123,592.6

2008 $ (1,150,000,000.00) $ 8,997,392,414.17 $ 7,847,392,414.17

2009 $ (1,150,000,000.00) $ 22,939,590,529.53 $21,789,590,529.53

2010 $ 22,939,590,529.53 $22,939,590,529.53

2011 $ 37,576,890,222.28 $37,576,890,222.28

2012 $ 44,748,034,503.51 $44,748,034,503.51

IRR 288% pa

Apple’s market capitalization on March 21st 2014 was $475.31 billion (Yahoo! Finance). One could argue that a visionary CEO like Steve Jobs who could also execute is worth nearly half a trillion USD since it is all too likely that Apple would not exist today but for Steve Jobs’ return to the corner office.

The introduction of the iPhone and its paradigm shattering business model[3] by Steve and his team propelled Apple into an unsurpassed future. Note also that Mr Jobs did not convene an ideation meeting of executives or use any focus groups before introducing his revolutionary smart phone.

What would be the point?

Group-think and focus groups, in Steve’s view of the way the world works, could only project the future from its past, which cannot produce the kind of innovation he was looking for and, frankly, the world needs.

…

David E Perry and Mark J Haluska released in 2015 their new book, HIRING GREATNESS, How to Recruit Your Dream Team to Accomplish Your Objectives and Crush Your Competition. It’s about how a star executive can bring almost inconceivable value to your enterprise. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true.

Most Canadians don’t use language like how to “crush” your competition, but they are kidding themselves if they think that tough executives in the US, China and elsewhere aren’t thinking of doing that each and every day.

In their book, David and Mark point out that there is no substitute for hiring the best—it’s people after all who produce income not assets.

Again, that’s the difference between having a CEO like Steve Jobs at Apple or a Mike Zafirovski at Nortel. Some difference.

David and Mark disclose secrets to great recruiting—things like never hire a liar, people don’t quit companies, they quit bosses and compensation is far more than just money.

David told me, “In the six months after Marissa Mayer was hired as Yahoo!’s CEO, market value increased $17 billion. Imagine making one decision that created $3.8 million dollars in market value an hour! At nearly the same time Yahoo! began its rapid ascent, Ron Johnson the new JC Penney CEO, caused sales to plummet by $4.3 billion. A single decision of his brought losses of $500,000 dollars an hour!”

Ron knew something about technology retailing having been SVP of Apple Retail Stores (introducing, for example, brilliant concepts like their GENIUS BAR), but very little about general merchandising and department store operations. Ron was unceremoniously fired in 2013 after his makeover at JC Penney utterly failed.

On the other hand, I would argue that Ms Mayer was prepared to take on the revival of a former iconic tech brand like Yahoo! having been a long tenured executive at Google beforehand. It still remains to be seen if Marissa’s early success at Yahoo! can be sustained, but time will tell.

In my career, I have almost always made money in real estate, something I know a bit about. I have a PhD in Urban Economics and 30 years of on-the-job experience. In everything else (hockey, newspaper publishing, finance company, sign company, toy and game firm, tech and more), I’ve lost money. You have to wonder why it took me so long, but now my wife insists that I carry a piece of paper in my briefcase that says:

“It’s Real Estate, Stupid.”

Three times.

Really.

…

Prof Bruce

[1] I am using “tribe” here in the same sense as Dave Logan et al use in their 2008 book, Tribal Leadership. They separate corporate cultures into five stages; from stage 1 “life sucks”, stage 2, “my life sucks”, stage 3 “I’m great, and you’re not”, stage 4 “We’re great, and they’re not” to stage 5 “life is great”.

[2] Based on Apple’s publicly available financial filings.

[3] Steve Jobs saw the iPhone as a platform to build monthly recurring revenues through an app store (before practically anyone had heard of applications in this sense), for iTunes downloads, for IOS ad sales and for subscription revenues. It was the iPhone’s business model, not the product per se that created unimaginable wealth for the company.

Image source: By James38 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3454789

FOR REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT AND BUSINESS COACHING THAT’LL HELP YOU PROVIDE FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY FOR 3-GENERATIONS, PLEASE CONTACT:

Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD Real Estate Investment and Business coach Century 21 Explorer Realty Inc broker Ottawa Senators founder 613-762-8884 [email protected] brucemfirestone.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/profbruce https://brucemfirestone.com/blog/ profbruce.tumblr.com/archive https://www.youtube.com/user/ProfBruce/ https://twitter.com/ProfBruce https://www.facebook.com/groups/reiroi https://www.facebook.com/ProfBruce https://bruce-firestone.c21.ca/

BOOK YOUR FREE CLARITY CALL WITH PROF BRUCE NOW, https://brucemfirestone.com/coaching/prof-bruce-real-estate-investment-and-business-coaching/talk/

• MAKING IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE • FREEDOM VIA REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT AND PB4L, PERSONAL BUSINESS FOR LIFE • FEHAJ, FOR EVERY HOME A JOB, FEJAH, FOR EVERY JOB A HOME • MAKE YOUR HOME WORK FOR YOU, INSTEAD OF YOU WORKING FOR IT • HIGHER ROI NOT JUST FOR OWNERS AND INVESTORS, BUT FOR TENANTS, GUESTS, VISITORS, NEIGHBORHOODS, COMMUNITIES, TOWNS, VILLAGES, CITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT TOO

#value of a ceo

0 notes

networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

Text

America Quotes

Official Website: America Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); • A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election. – Bill Vaughan • A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader. – Samuel Adams • A lawyer’s either a social engineer or … a parasite on society … A social engineer [is] a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who [understands] the Constitution of the United States and [knows] how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens. – Charles Hamilton Houston • A man of abilities and character, of any sect whatever, may be admitted to any office of public trust under the United States. – Edmund Randolph • After the period of sex-attraction has passed, women have no power in America. – Elizabeth Bisland • Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, brain and spinal cord disorders, diabetes, cancer, at least 58 diseases could potentially be cured through stem cell research, diseases that touch every family in America and in the world. – Rosa DeLauro • Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC [Project for the New American Century] Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by George [W.] Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. – Cindy Sheehan • America – it is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time. – Thomas Wolfe • America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. – Barack Obama • America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. – John Quincy Adams • America does to me what I knew it would do: it just bumps me. The people charge at you like trucks coming down on you — no awareness. But one tries to dodge aside in time. Bump! bump! go the trucks. And that is human contact. – D. H. Lawrence • America doesn’t reward people of my age, either in day-to-day life or for their performances. – Meryl Streep • America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. – Oscar Wilde • America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused – preferring greatness to power and justice to glory. – George W. Bush • America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. – George W. Bush • America is a great country, but you can’t live in it for nothing. – Will Rogers • America is a large country and its people have so far not shown much interest in great international problems, among which the problem of disarmament occupies first place today. This must be changed, if only in America’s own interest. The last war has shown that there are no longer any barriers between the continents and that the destinies of all countries are closely interwoven. The people of this country must realize that they have a great responsibility in the sphere of international politics. The part of passive spectator is unworthy of this country and is bound in the end to lead to disaster all round. – Albert Einstein • America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair. – Arnold J. Toynbee • America is a mistake, a giant mistake. – Sigmund Freud • America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. – George W. Bush • America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them. – James A. Michener • America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos. – Max Lerner • America is a tune. It must be sung together. – Gerald Stanley Lee • America is a young country with an old mentality. – George Santayana • America is another name for opportunity. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to a select few. – Will Rogers • America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. – Frederick Douglass • America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! – Israel Zangwill • America is great, because America is free. – Dan Quayle • America is just downright mean. – Michelle Obama • America is my country and Paris is my hometown. – Gertrude Stein • America is the country where you can buy a lifetime supply of aspirin For one dollar and use it up in two weeks. – John Barrymore • America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. – Sigmund Freud • America is the only country ever founded on the printed word. – Marshall McLuhan • America is the only idealistic nation in the world. – Woodrow Wilson • America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. – Georges Clemenceau • America is the sum of all our journeys as we search for our national community and our national culture. – Paul Tsongas • America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s History shall reveal itself. – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel • America is too great for small dreams. – Ronald Reagan • America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still. – e. e. cummings • America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. – George W. Bush • America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. – Harry S. Truman • America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. – Abraham Lincoln • America will never run… And we will always be grateful that liberty has found such brave defenders. – George W. Bush • America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people. – George W. Bush • America would be a better place if leaders would do more long-term thinking. – Wilma Mankiller • America! America! God shed His grace on thee. – Katharine Lee Bates • America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? – Allen Ginsberg • America, I don’t think you can change history.” All the same, his expression looked hopeful. “Sure we can. Besides, who’d ever know about it but you and me? – Kiera Cass • America, thou half-brother of the world; with something good and bad of every land. – Philip James Bailey • America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this. – Barack Obama • America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. – Hunter S. Thompson • America’s one of the finest countries anyone ever stole. – Bobcat Goldthwait • American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it. – Dave Barry • American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so? – Diane Ravitch • American soldiers in battle don’t fight for what some president says on T.V., they don’t fight for mom, apple pie, the American flag…they fight for one another. – Hal Moore • American style is about confidence, independence, diversity and free expression. – Tommy Hilfiger • Americans need to understand that they have lost their country. The rest of the world needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the most complete police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with Washington’s huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet. Washington is the enemy of all humanity. – Paul Craig Roberts • Americans never quit. – Douglas MacArthur • Americans usually believe that nothing is impossible. – Lawrence Eagleburger • Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn’t block traffic. – Dan Rather • Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle. – James A. Baldwin • America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way. – Ayn Rand • An asylum for the sane would be empty in America. – George Bernard Shaw • Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. – Dinesh D’Souza • Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected. – Thomas Sowell • Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it’s off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves. – Huey Newton • As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. – George Washington

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'America', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '20', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_america').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_america img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'USA', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '20', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_usa').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_usa img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'United+States', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '20', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_united-states').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_united-states img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be proud to be a decent American rather than a wanker whipping up fear. – Michael D. Higgins • By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand. – George W. Bush • Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America. – James Joyce • Democracy — rule by the people — sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America. – Edward Abbey • England and America are two countries separated by the same language. – George Bernard Shaw • Everyday, day & night, we hear the lies that September 11th is the worst tragedy, worst accident, and worst crime to ever been committed on American soil. We bear witness that the worst crime, the worst tragedy, that has ever taken place on American soil is not September 11th. It’s not the twin towers. It’s the holocaust that black folks been dealing with for 400 years. – Malik Zulu Shabazz • Everyone should be proud of who they are and where they come from because America is a big melting pot of diverse ethnicities. It’s great to be part of this wonderful country. – Rima Fakih • Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag. – Sinclair Lewis • From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn’t see things in this horribly oversimplified way. – N. T. Wright • God created war so that Americans would learn geography. – Mark Twain • Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. – James Madison • I always like to go to Washington D.C. It gives me a chance to visit my money. – Bob Hope • I believe in America. I’m one of those silly flag wavers. – Paul Prudhomme • I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch. – George W. Bush • I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen. – Henry Miller • I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President. – Charlie Chaplin • I know my own deficiencies, one of which is that I had lived away from America for such a long time. It’s called expatriate – James Hillman • I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged. – Bob Dylan • I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. – James A. Baldwin • I never thought I’d live to see the day that an American administration would denounce the state of Israel for rebuilding Jerusalem. – Mike Pence • I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30. – Groucho Marx • I really want Congress to do its job, the constitutional power that they have, to halt an imperial presidency, to halt this fundamental transformation of America that is making us an unrecognizable mess of a nation at this time. – Sarah Palin • I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots. – Henry Miller • I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision. – Carl Sandburg • I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people. – William S. Burroughs • I will make such a wonderful India that all Americans will stand in line to get a visa for India – Narendra Modi • I will never relent in defending America – whatever it takes. – George W. Bush • I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court. – Rand Paul • I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff- box from an emperor. – Lord Byron • If America ever passes out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: America died from a delusion she had Moral Leadership. – Will Rogers • If America is to be run by the people, it is the people who must think. And we do not need to put on sackcloth and ashes to think. Nor should our minds work like a sundial which records only sunshine. Our thinking must square against some lessons of history, some principles of government and morals, if we would preserve the rights and dignity of men to which this nation is dedicated. – Herbert Hoover • If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under. – Ronald Reagan • If you say ‘Good Morning’ in America and it’s five past twelve you end up with a lawsuit. – Bernie Ecclestone • If you take advantage of everything that America has to offer, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. – Geraldine Ferraro • I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. – Ronald Reagan • Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don’t need to imagine it. It’s called the United States of America. – Thomas Sowell • In all their wars against the French they [the Americans] never showed such conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now. – Thomas Gage • In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell. – Norman Mailer • In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever. – Oscar Wilde • In America, sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it’s a fact. – Marlene Dietrich • In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from. – Peter Ustinov • In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final healthcare bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care. – Dennis Kucinich • In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America’s is. – Ronald Reagan • Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom, have been deemed by Americans not only as their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive possessions. – James Bryce • Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country. – Sinclair Lewis • It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can. – Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe • It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America – a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance’s link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety – one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars. – Siddhartha Mukherjee • It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it. – Mark Twain • It’s just the way it is. The sky is blue, the sun is bright, and Aspen endlessly loves America. It’s how the world was designed to be. – Kiera Cass • It’s like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s– is that, but white people’s s–? – Miles Davis • It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. – Andy Warhol • Let’s withdraw from Afghanistan and have the army invade America – that’s the only way we’ll get new schools and roads. – Andy Borowitz • Likewise, I see no shame in writing Captain America or Wolverine. – Mark Millar • Make no mistake about it. These are not ‘kookie’ birds. Right now the greatest player, the big tent on the political scene in America, is called the Tea Party movement. – Dick Armey • May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right. – Peter Marshall • My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth. – Abraham Lincoln • My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. – John F. Kennedy • My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy. – Ron Paul • No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion. – Booker T. Washington • Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn’t matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women. – Ann Richards • October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful. – Thomas Merton • Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain’s majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea. – George Carlin • On that terrible day, a nation became a neighborhood. All Americans became New Yorkers. – George Pataki • Only Americans can hurt America. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • Our country, the United States of America, may be the worlds largest economy and the worlds only superpower, but we stretch ourselves dangerously thin by taking on commitments like Iraq with only a motley band of allies to share the burden. – John Spratt • Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly. – Matthew Arnold • Sad will be the day when the American people forget their traditions and their history, and so longer remember that the country they love, the institutions they cherish, and the freedom they hope to preserve, were born from the throes of armed resistance to tyranny, and nursed in the rugged arms of fearless men. – Roger Sherman • She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm. – Oscar Wilde • Since the conception of our country, America has held that parents, not schools, teachers, and certainly not courts, hold the primary responsibility of educating their children. – John Doolittle • Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American. – Malcolm X • Social media has taken over in America to such an extreme that to get my own kids to look back a week in their history is a miracle, let alone 100 years. – Steven Spielberg • Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name. – Woodrow Wilson • Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world. – Woodrow Wilson • Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. – George W. Bush • That is the American story. People, just like you, following their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms. They weren’t doing it for the money. Their titles weren’t fancy. But they changed the course of history and so can you. – Barack Obama • The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. – Henry A. Wallace • The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. – Alexis de Tocqueville • The Americans are violently oral. That’s why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all — isn’t respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth. – W. H. Auden • The average American may not know who his grandfather was. But the American was, however, one degree better off than the average Frenchman who, as a rule, was in considerable doubt as to who his father was. – Mark Twain • The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion. – John W. Gardner • The best way to improve the American workforce in the 21st century is to invest in early childhood education, to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children have the opportunity to succeed along side their more advantaged peers – James Heckman • The business of America is business. – Calvin Coolidge • The chief contribution made by white men of the Americas to the folk songs of the world ——- the cowboy songs of Texas and the West ——- are rhythmed to the walk, the trot, and the gallop of horses. – J. Frank Dobie • The Civil War was fought in 10,000 places, from Valverde, New Mexico, and Tullahoma, Tennessee, to St. Albans, Vermont, and Fernandina on the Florida coast. More than 3 million Americans fought in it, and over 600,000 men, 2 percent of the population, died in it. – Bruce Catton • The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. – Elbridge Gerry • The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples. – Walter Lippmann • The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults. – Alexis de Tocqueville • The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself. – Woodrow Wilson • The Jews might have had Uganda, Madagascar, and other places for the establishment of a Jewish Fatherland, but they wanted absolutely nothing except Palestine, not because the Dead Sea water by evaporation can produce five trillion dollars of metaloids and powdered metals; not because the sub-soil of Palestine contains twenty times more petroleum than all the combined reserves of the two Americas; but because Palestine is the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, because Palestine constitutes the veritable center of world political power, the strategic center for world control. – Nahum Goldmann • The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America. – Lyndon B. Johnson • The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence. – Elbert Hubbard • The rivalry is huge between South Carolina and Clemson. It’s major bragging rights; one of the most intense things I’ve been a part of. – William Perry • The things that have made America great are being subverted for the things that make Americans rich. – Louise Erickson • The United States of America does not have friends; it has interests. – John Foster Dulles • The voice of America has no undertones or overtones in it. It repeats its optimistic catchwords in a tireless monologue that has the slightly metallic sound of a gramophone. – Vance Palmer • The war is coming to the streets of America and if you are not keeping and bearing and practicing with your arms then you will be helpless and you will be the victim of evil. – Ted Nugent • Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. – John Dickinson • There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. – Otto von Bismarck • There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America. – Barack Obama • There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America. – William J. Clinton • There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • There will be over 3,500 killed in USA today from abortion. No flags lowered, no presidents crying. No media hyperventilating. Normal day. – Matt Drudge • Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too frequently those who . . . ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought. – Margaret Chase Smith • To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws . . . – John C. Calhoun • Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved. – Alexis de Tocqueville • Unemployment is down, confidence is up, DOW 5,000 above Bush – or as Republicans put it, let’s talk about gay people and abortion! – Bill Maher • We can dream of an America, and a world, in which love and not money are civilization’s bottom line. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • We don’t want an America that is closed to the world. What we want is a world that is open to America. – George H. W. Bush • We have no desire to be the world’s policeman. But America does want to be the world’s peacemaker. – Jimmy Carter • We need an America with the wisdom of experience. But we must not let America grow old in spirit. – Hubert H. Humphrey • We will send ships and Marines as soon as possible for the protection of American life and property. – Theodore Roosevelt • Well, the way things are going, aside from wheat and auto parts, America’s biggest export is now the Oscar. – Billy Crystal • Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy. – George F. Kennan • What is the essence of America? The essence of America is finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from.” – Marilyn vos Savant • What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise. – Barbara Jordan • What we need are critical lovers of America – patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it. – Hubert H. Humphrey • What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world. – Jean Baudrillard • What, then, is this new man, the American? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race, now called Americans, have arisen. – J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur • Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. – Andy Warhol • What’s right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity – intellect and resources – to do some thing about them. – Henry Ford • When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism – Sinclair Lewis • When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as ‘enemies,’ it’s time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country. – Molly Ivins • When did it become something of shame or ridicule to be a self-made man in America? – Glenn Beck • With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries. What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient. – Lee Kuan Yew • Workers come to America to fill jobs unwanted by Americans, but they are staying and they are not going home. – Christopher Bond • Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan… We will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • You know there are very few Marxists left in the world… they’re all in American universities. – Milton Friedman • You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination. – Charles de Gaulle • You, the Spirit of the Settlement! … Not understand that America is God’s crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. – Israel Zangwill

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

0 notes

equitiesstocks · 5 years ago

Text

America Quotes

Official Website: America Quotes

0 notes

malalawnews · 6 years ago

Text

With Rahul as Congress President, let my country awake

Rahul Gandhi, the newly elected president of Congress, at The Doon School

Modi may well realize that his biggest mistake was to sadistically keep kicking a young man (Rahul) who was already down after the 2014 elections

Rahul Gandhi’s acceptance speech on taking over as the new Congress president has shattered some myths and misconceptions about his leadership qualities. It was unconventional, hard-hitting and a direct call to action from a new-generation politician taking on the reins of the grand old party that is badly in need of new ideas, new energy, new workers and a new style of politics.

During his high-voltage Gujarat election campaign, Rahul Gandhi had already proved his critics wrong on several counts. They had been misled by his quiet demeanour and in-born civility into assuming that he would be a political pushover who could be mocked, bullied and ridiculed. They had mistaken his lack of bluster and braggadocio for lack of self-confidence, disinclination for the hurly-burly of public life and even cowardice.

Over the past four years, the BJP, its army of paid social media attackers and a willful media had relentlessly and mercilessly portrayed him as an ignorant and incompetent tongue-tied novice.

The newly-installed chief of the country’s oldest political party has broken free from that false image relentlessly built by his adversities. It could have been permanently crippling if he had succumbed to the vicious attacks. Instead he has, with his fighting spirit and vigorous statement of intent, showed how wrong they were, are and will be in the coming months and years.

Narendra Modi wanted an India devoid of Congress, a national arena for himself without strong opposition and with unfettered power to decimate all criticism of his dangerous and delirious concept of “democratic despotism”.

Instead, he finds himself confronted by a resurrected Congress party led by a rejuvenated young political aristocrat challenging his much-trumpeted dominance, in his own backyard in Gujarat. In retrospect, Modi may well realize that his biggest mistake was to sadistically keep kicking a young man who was already down after the 2014 elections.

It is valid to wonder whether Rahul Gandhi would have, on the very day of his elevation as party chief, made mention of Modi in the clinical manner he did, had it not been for the soul-crushing taunts and jibes he was subjected to without respite by the Prime Minister personally on a day-to-day basis.

One has only to take note of some of Rahul’s stark statements - “Today politics is being used to crush the people.… They attack the Congress and try to weaken us… Their power is manipulative and distortive …We are made to believe that only one man is strong …. Everything is subservient to one leader, his personal image”.

Seen in the context of the outgoing Congress president’s pointed remarks in her farewell address, these assume greater significance -- “Rahul is my son. I don’t find it appropriate to praise him. But I can tell you this. From childhood, he adopted ahimsa. The most horrific attacks on him and the violence he has experienced have made him more fearless”.

The truth is that the country needs a fearless leader. India under Modi is being torn apart. Re-uniting people is the main mission facing Rahul Gandhi. He has to do so along secular lines, ignoring the venomous distortion of history and the vile distinction being drawn between those of supposedly of pre-Aryan invasion descent and the progeny of the Mughal and British eras.

Patriotism is not the birthright of descendants of only one set of invaders and migrants. India is a cradle of civilization, a crucible of cultures. Her citizens hail from many far-off lands and share a cherished belief that the whole world is one family, Vishwa Kutumbakam. No one has a right to claim the ownership of India.

Rahul Gandhi is himself a living embodiment of this reality. His forebears have been Pandits, Catholics, Parsis, et al. To heal the deep wounds already inflicted by the pernicious Hinduvta philosophy in the short span of Modi rule, India is in dire need for a leader who represents all faiths and who genuinely believes that all citizens have a right to live without fear and greed, regardless of race and religion.

His historic mission is to lay down the ground stone or Aadharshila of a strong and united India that provides social as well as psychological security to all its citizens and thereby earns the admiration and respect of the international community.

His primary task is to reverse the process of the disintegration of the country that is being engineered by the convoluted thinking of the present government with maniacal and menacing resolve. The social policies of RSS are tearing the country apart. The desh-drohi mindset within the BJP is ripping India apart like no other invaders had succeeded in doing.

It is a Himalayan challenge. But now that he has risen like a Phoenix after 13 years of political apprenticeship, overcoming soul crushing family tragedies and personal vilification, he needs to live up to the expectations of the people who are looking at his youthful face to get the feel of real freedom, which has somehow been lost along the way.

But to succeed, Rahul Gandhi will have to take certain hard decisions. And face some hard truths. If the Congress party is today at rock bottom in terms of mass support, it is primarily because of the lofty assumption that makeshift alliances with regional parties and marriages of convenience with other opposition groups is good for the Congress. It is not.

There is no short-cut to revival of the party. There is no easy route back to power. Formation of motley, multiparty coalition governments have invariably proved to be historic blunders – they culminate only in ineffectual policy compromises and shifting of the support base in favour of regional players and splinter groups.

It will be a controversial path to choose and make the climb back to power for the Congress more difficult than it already is. Even If the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are too close at hand to take a firm decision to go it alone, sooner or later Ekla Chalo has to be Rahul Gandhi’s theme song.

It is not as if the Congress party is bereft of leaders, young and old. There are brilliant young people, with the background, the education, the experience and the will to lift the party and the country out of the present rot. They belong to different states and represent different communities and faiths and they are eagerly straining at the leash to prove their mettle to broaden the base of the party.

But that can happen only if the new Congress President decides to contest the majority of seats in all corners of the country, instead of provisional seat-sharing arrangements, short-duration gatbandhans and grudging giveaways. Playing second fiddle to regional parties will be tantamount to losing the race before crossing the start line.

Rahul Gandhi has inherited a wealth of good programmes and polices. They encompass virtually the entire gamut of people-centric and development-oriented model of governance – from food security, farmers’ welfare, social security for minorities, rural employment, healthcare and education to infrastructure projects, region-specific schemes, digitalization and scientific advance.

Rahul Gandhi has the agenda and the vision to build a strong India. Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high. As Rabindranath Tagore said - “Into that heaven of freedom, let my country awake!”

Article first published in the National Herald, a newspaper founded by the first prime minister to the Republic of India:

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/with-rahul-as-congress-president-let-my-country-awake

#rahul gandhi #congress #indian elections #2019 general elections #world news #india

0 notes

namgwen · 7 years ago

Text

Some Ideas

The new crossover that I’ve been thinking of is, as you probably have figured out, Destiny and Touhou. While I wouldn’t claim to be an expert in the lore of either setting, I am drastically more familiar with Destiny’s setting. So, should I make a mistake feel free to correct me.

It does get a bit long and doesn’t go into as much detail as I wanted.

Part 1: Set Up

The first and biggest obstacle for combining these settings is getting them to interact. For reference, Touhou takes place in a pocket reality in Japan during modern times and Destiny takes place across the solar system in the distant future.

The first question to consider is whether or not the Earth for Touhou is the same as the one in Destiny. Depending on the answer the setting would change and how the crossover is explained will change, for the sake of future details it will be assumed that Destiny would be Touhou’s future.

Next, you have to consider what event would cause the crossover to occur. I personally would go with someone messing with Vex or Golden Age tech (explanations on what they are later).

Then you have to consider when and where Gensokyo would appear. There’s no shortage of potentially interesting times, but I’d go for shortly before the events of the base game. As for where, Gensokyo staying in Japan wouldn’t actually do much to isolate them but would make them less immediately interesting to The Last City. Conversely, if Gensokyo was suddenly in Russia then it would be quickly noticed that something is wrong and they’d have the attention of The Last City and The House of Devils.

Lastly, the Hakurei Barrier. For those unfamiliar with Touhou, the Hakurei barrier separates Gensokyo from the outside world. While the location would make little difference for the ability for the major players to find them, the barrier would make it more difficult for interaction to occur. Keeping it around would probably help with focusing on singular characters. Conversely, if you wanted the Touhou characters to interact with Destiny’s characters sooner/on a larger scale you’ll have to get rid of it.

Part 2: Magic

This would probably be where the combination of the settings would start to have major effects. Magic within Touhou is, to my understanding, flexible in its origins and how it functions. For example, enough belief and worship can turn anything into a deity or how fairies are personifications of aspects of nature. There’s also how the study of magic is relatively uncommon.

Comparatively, magic for Destiny tends to originate directly or indirectly from either the Light or the Darkness. Additionally, the Darkness is fully sapient and actively malicious making use of it potentially dangerous. The most alarming aspect of both is the fact that with enough strength (intensity? quantity?) individuals and objects can start being outright paracausal. For example, the Traveler managed to turn Mercury into a garden world (yes, really). It stayed like that until the Vex showed up.

Light also has three forms; Solar, Arc, and Void. Solar is exactly what it sounds like. Arc is lightning. Void is... hard to describe, it’s more dangerous than other forms of light.

As the scenario would inherently mean that considering how these systems would interact is vital. In Touhou scientific development drove magic into obscurity necessitating the creation of Gensokyo to survive. Conversely, Light and Darkness aid scientific development.

Part 3: The Last City

The most immediate group to deal with is the Last City. They, as the name implies, the last city left. They are comprised of three species in the games however, due to the nature of the crossover introducing a fourth species would be necessary. These species would be:

Humans: I’ll take the liberty of assuming that the readers of this are human and do not require an explanation about the nature of humanity.

Awoken: easily differentiated from humans by their blue skin. Their origin is unclear beyond that involves colonists attempting to flee the solar system during the Collapse.

Exo: humanoid and sapient robots, at least some of these (potentially all) are human minds uploaded into machines. They have numbers in their name that demonstrates how many times they’ve been rebooted, they typically lose all memories when this happens.

Lunarians: in Touhou Lunarians are (if I recall correctly) a race of moon rabbits that are immortal because of the absence of life and thus “pure” (no I don’t understand how this works). In terms of appearance, they look like humans and some have rabbit ears. Their presence would definitely raise a few eyebrows among Gensokyo’s inhabitants.

The City’s reaction to the sudden appearance of Gensokyo would undoubtedly be to investigate it. However, the subject of Yokai and some of the groups present would be a significantly more divisive subject. They would certainly be opposed to any yokai eating any humans, however some individuals are somewhat xenophobic. For example, the Guardian Saint-14 believed that the Darkness was actually a collection of alien species rejected by the Traveler. Rumia alone would probably cause some worry, being the yokai of darkness in a universe where the Darkness is a sapient and hostile force.

Part 4: The Fallen/Eliksni

What makes the Fallen so dangerous isn’t the unending numbers and dark magic like the Hive, sheer size or military might like the Cabal, or incomprehensibly advanced technology of the Vex. What makes them dangerous is savagery, fanaticism, and sheer desperation. They were the previous species that benefited from the Traveler’s presence. They had a peaceful, prosperous, and advanced civilization. At the height of their power, they were beyond even Golden Age humanity, and that was when they were snuffed out.

An event known as the Whirlwind occurred that destroyed many noble houses and scarred the rest. Sheer desperation forced them to perform increasingly ruthless actions and fall further from grace. The houses left becoming little more than pirates. As a whole, they wouldn’t care about the presence of Gensokyo, with the potential exception of the aforementioned House of Devils.

The House of Devils would probably investigate and raid Gensokyo (probably to little success) but wouldn’t care unless Gensokyo/it’s inhabitants encroached on their territory or gained advanced technology.

Part 5: The Hive

At one point the Hive was a small short-lived species known as the Krill living as the weakest species on the gas giant Fundament. When they encountered the Darkness they went from such a frail species into one of the most powerful species in the setting.

Their ultimate goal is simply to kill everything until only one thing is left.

While they probably wouldn’t have any particular interest in Gensokyo they would undoubtedly be interesting to Gensokyo. Why? Their main base in the solar system is Earth’s moon. Which they hollowed out.

Part 6: The Cabal

Short story: giant, highly advanced, militaristic space turtles.

Long story: as a society, they’re split between following Emporer Calus or Dominus Ghaul. Calus’ followers desire to conquer to ensure that their people have a safe place to live, while Ghaul’s forces want to conquer so that they can conquer more.

While they demonstrate less supernatural (less not none) than the other factions they should not be underestimated. Their main strength is the sheer brute force that they can bring to bear.

Until the events of Destiny 2, they mostly were located on and around Mars and thus have little interaction with Gensokyo.

Part 7: The Vex

The Vex are, paradoxically, both the most dangerous and least dangerous faction present. They managed to turn Mercury into a machine world in a matter of days and almost rewrote the fabric of reality to ensure their dominance. At the same time, they typically stick to their own territory.

Even before they worshiped the darkness they had access to complex simulations, teleportation, and interdimensional travel. They’ve only grown more powerful since then. The kicker? All of their units have combat as a secondary role. Goblins are meant to build, Hobgoblins communicate, and Minotaurs plan.

They probably would figure out Gensokyo’s presence whether or not the Hakurei Barrier is up. Admittedly there’s little chance of them actually charging off to Earth because of Gensokyo. Still, the mental image of Patchouli complaining about Marisa stealing some of her books only for the Vex to steal the entire library is amusing.

Part 8: Guardians

Guardians are people chosen by Ghosts. Typically this means reviving them (usually they’re skeletons at this point) but living individuals can be recruited. Their use of Light tends to cause them to act oddly (dancing in odd places or being obsessed with loot for example). There are three classes and each has four subclasses.

Titan: focused on sheer strength and combat capability. They tend to focus on either defending the city or destroying its enemies

-subclasses: Sunbreaker (solar), Striker (arc), Defender (void), and Sentinel (void)

Hunter: more eccentric than the other classes. They typically are loners and somewhat obsess over capes.

-subclasses: Gunslinger (solar), Bladedancer (arc), Arcstrider (arc), and Nightstalker (void).

Warlock: the mage of the three classes. They usually obsess over knowledge and ways to obtain it.

-subclasses: Sunsinger (solar), Dawnbringer (solar), Stormcaller (arc) and Voidwalker (Void)

Additionally, Guardians revived from the dead tend to be missing most of their memories.

Part 9: Story Ideas

Honestly, any ideas I come up with would probably pale in comparison to what others would come up with. Still...

-a slice of life of the Touhou cast trying to deal with Destiny’s weirdness (ex: Reimu finding a crucible match going on outside of the shrine)

-A tragedy/horror where Marisa goes to the moon to try to get her hands on Hive magic and ends up corrupted like Dredgen Yor.

-A story based on Osana Reimu where a ghost revives Reimu’s mother

#Destiny the game #destiny (game)#Touhou #touhou project #crossover #Destiny 2

0 notes