#i got pissed at the quality in other sites so came to post this here aggaafjv

[basofy]

more mysims the characters in this game are very drawable

[behindheremeraldeyes]

title: his wife

summary: After finding out Sakura is also at the Astronomy Research Facility, they’ve been meeting every night to investigate the place. One night, though, he sees something that leaves him worried about his wife. Could she even be called that anymore, though? — Canon Universe,  Based on Sasuke Retsuden.

a/n: So… it took me a while to post this because of my tests and because of, well, life itself, but… It’s finally here! This story came to my mind as soon as I finished reading Sasuke Retsuden, and I still can’t believe such beautiful book actually exists! Here it is, @corazonmazapan ! I really hope you enjoy this one, and please, leave me your comments! 

.

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The bell rang like every other evening, and almost immediately, hundreds of shelves were dropped to the floor. The clinking sound of metal reverberated across the construction site, blending with a wave of relieved sighs just to compose a raw and tired symphony. The loud, crackling spines indicated that another day of hard work had finally come to an end to all of the prisoners around the institute, and if anything, that was a reason for them to celebrate.

Every day, hundreds of men worked under terrible conditions for over 12 hours just to hear the deafening sound of their temporary freedom. Normally, after the bell, It didn’t take long before heavy steps marched in unison across the dry and frozen courtyard, staining the common ground that separated the east and the west buildings with a mix of dirt and sweat. They walked close to each other in order to preserve the heat from their aching bodies, and amongst the many voices chattering in that horde of prisoners, the only wish that could be heard was to return to those dark and freezing cells so they could say goodbye to another day of their eternal sentences.

For all of those men, that was a moment of pure joy and relief, as if they had just finished another normal day of work, and even if they knew that was not really the case, perhaps, it was better to think like that instead of facing the harsh reality of the incarceration. They wanted to return to the closest thing of a home they had, where they could eat something, chat about useless things and gamble until the lights were turned off and exhaustion eventually lulled them to a dreamless sleep.

That was the best part of their days, for sure. A part filled with darkness and silence, where all of them could finally slip away into oblivion and enjoy their well-deserved rest.

Well, at least most of them would. For one of them, the real job was about to begin.

Amongst all of those prisoners who were trying to renegade their past and who wanted nothing more than to survive another night, a man walked around those dark corridors with extreme precision and dexterity. He moved around that rocky dungeon like a dancer moving across the surface of a lake, not letting anything escape his sights, and taking note of every new detail that had been modified since the previous night. For darkness itself was a familiar path to his skilful eyes, Uchiha Sasuke had no trouble in finding his way towards the infirmary, especially since he already knew the directions by heart. After finding out exactly what could be found in that place, it didn’t take long for him to draw a map in his head.

During the previous week he had spent alone in that place, not even once had Sasuke considered getting some medical help from the current doctor of the institute. His cellmates would always return from the infirmary saying the old man was no warmer than the walls that surrounded them, and that he never really cared to help anyone. They called him a sadist, who was always trying to test some new medicine on the prisoners, and most of the men suspected he was the cause of so many deaths that had been occurring lately.

He was a monster a lot worse than Menou. And needless to say, it was a relief when he suddenly disappeared and a new doctor came in his place.

Unlike the previous one— unlike that entire place and everything that had once stained the hearts of those men— the new doctor was kind and gentle, treating every one of them as humans and not just diseases. She was always worried about her patients, never judging them for their actions in the past, and always making sure to give them her best. In other words, she was a gift from heaven to those poor souls. They didn’t deserve her, but they were really glad to have her— someone— taking care of them.

As soon as the rumours were proven right, it didn’t take long before the prisoners started to like her, and of course, it didn’t take long before they spread the word of how pretty that woman was. They talked about how smooth her hair looked, her shiny eyes and her delicate curves; and at first, none of that talk actually mattered to the Uchiha. He figured that most of that men hadn’t been with a woman in so long that it was very likely that those words were actually filled with lust and yearning instead of logic and discernment. Their manly needs were certainly speaking for them, and he could only hope that doctor knew how to take care of herself around those potential beasts.

Still, he had nothing to do with that. Until, well, he had everything.

It was right after he was poisoned by Menou that the Uchiha realized that all of those words that had been used to describe that doctor were actually being used to describe his beloved wife. Sakura had infiltrated the Astronomy Institute in order to aid him in his mission, and even if he was extremely glad to have her by his side once more, it was safe to say he grew more and more conscious of the men who decided to visit the infirmary. A sense of protection started to take over his thoughts, and whenever he heard someone talking about the new doctor and her physical traits, it wasn’t easy for him to just sit and ignore, especially when it was Jiji who started the whole thing just to piss him off.

It was his wife they were talking about, after all.

Still, Sasuke knew better than to let his emotions get the best of him. Their mission and their secret identities depended on his composure, and he was not a child to jeopardize everything over nothing. He simply remained calm, told her to be aware and even gave her a ring to keep track on her if things eventually went south. It was a ring made with his chakra and his birth stone, and as soon as the men started to see it decorating her finger, they would realize that she was not a single woman.

Or, at least, that was what he was hoping for. It was not like he had actually heard any word about the doctor wearing anything new around her slender fingers. Later, though, he found out the ring really was a bit inconvenient to wear while examining the patients, so his wife chose to keep it safe in her pocket.

Not that he cared, though. He certainly didn’t.

It didn’t take him more than 6 minutes to reach the infirmary, and as soon as he got there, the door opened to reveal a happy prisoner leaving with his arm bandaged. The red cloth tied to his neck matched the soft color that tinged his cheeks, and Sasuke told himself that that blush was just a mixture of relief and the low temperature. Another man would sleep a little better because of his wife’s healing hands, and that was the only thing he should care about.

Even though his hand was clenched, the Uchiha managed to brush those unnecessary feelings away as he finally entered the infirmary. “ Sakura.” He said, softly, as her name rolled out of his tongue. He used his knuckles to gently knock on the aluminium door, making his presence known as he walked inside, careful enough not to catch her by surprise. “Are you ready?” His dark eyes searched the room, stopping only when they met her emerald ones beaming at him.

“Eh, Sasuke-kun?!” She smiled, her cheeks gaining color almost as immediately as her eyes widened in a joyful surprise. “ You’re quite early tonight.” She simply spoke, and it was possible to tell her eyes were examining him, looking for any trace that indicated that there was something wrong with him. "Did something happen? You’re not hurt or anything like that, are you?”

“Tch. You worry too much. I’m fine.” He stated, calmly, and he watched as her shoulders relaxed a bit. As always, his wife’s overprotective side was showing, and even if he didn’t want her to worry about him, it was impossible not to feel the slightest joy at the thought of having someone caring about his wellbeing like that. “I just came straight from the construction site, that’s all.”

“Oh, okay then…” Sakura smiled, then, clearly convinced by his words. “If you want some water or something to eat, there are some supplies inside that cabin.” She gestured to the cabin on the west side of the room, the pen in her hand leading the direction. “Eat as much as you want.”

“And how about you?”

“Don’t worry about me!” She motioned with her hand, shaking it from left to right in front of her face. “There’s enough for both of us this time. I went to the kitchen today and gently asked the boys if I could cook something on my own. They took the ingredients from a secret compartment, so I bet the quality is better than the stuff they serve for you guys at the cafeteria.”

“Hn.” He nodded, then, moving towards the cabin so he could take a look at what she had got them. As expected from his wife, she always managed to find ways to get what she wanted without too much effort. Her kindness and her gentle words were perfect for undercover missions, helping her through people’s tough facades and discovering their hidden secrets. They would give her all the information she needed, and more than that, they would give her things normal people would never even dream about.

Sakura is a sly and smart kunoichi. And because of that, he was going to eat something that didn’t taste like crap for the first time in weeks.

When he opened the cabinet, not only he found a couple of bottles of clean water, but also some energy bars and her famous soldier pills. She took them anywhere she went, and even if they don’t really taste that well, they make him feel a lot better after a day of hard work.

Next to the pills, there were also 3 bento boxes and a couple of oniguiris, and he couldn't find the right words to express his gratitude as soon as he tasted the tomato inside of one of them. She had prepared them just the way he liked them back when they were genin, and the innocent surge of nostalgia warmed his chest at the memory of his younger-self tasting those rice balls with her during their travels.

“Thank you for the food, Sakura.” He thanked her just as he swallowed the second tomato oniguiri. Truth was, he had been starving since earlier that day, and it was quite refreshing to taste something that was made especially for him after so long.

“You’re welcome, anata.” She smiled, happily, sparing him a quick glance before returning to her paperwork. “Shall we start then?"

“Don’t you wanna rest a bit before, Sasuke-kun?”

“It’s fine. I don’t need to rest.”

“Okay, then…” She shrugged in acceptance, her lips curling up at her husband’s dry sense of duty.  "I just need to write down some details of the last patient’s physical examination first, then we can focus on the investigation. Shouldn’t take me more than 5 minutes. Is it okay? You can just sit on one of the beds if you want…”

“Hn, you’re taking this fake job too seriously.” He spoke, a sly smirk decorating his face. “Just tell me when you’re done.”

“Hai!”

Her soft voice filled his ears as he slowly walked towards one of the many empty beds of her infirmary. More than anyone, he has always known how diligent his wife is towards anything that involves her medical duty, and just because they were undercover, it didn’t mean she would ignore her patients when they needed her most.

She was too responsible for that, he knew.

And all of that responsibility within her made him proud of the woman she has become.

After hours of hard labour, Sasuke discovered that waiting without doing anything was quite relaxing. As he sat on one of the beds across the room, his wife stood near her desk, scribbling something on her clipboard and completely unaware of the world around her. Sakura was completely focused on her notes, and for he knew it was important for her, Sasuke just stood there in silence, waiting until she was done with whatever it was that needed her full concentration. His trained eyes were observing his wife as she was doing her job, and before he knew it, he started paying attention to her body’s secret language. 

She looked serious like that, wearing her pristine-white lab coat. Pink lips pressed in a thin line, eyes half-closed while observing her notes and a single, rebel lock of hair falling forward to brush her left cheek. Even if he hated to admit it, he understood why all of those prisoners immediately became infatuated with her. Not only she’s a kind and gentle doctor, Sakura is also the prettiest woman he has ever seen, and not even once in all of these years has he doubted that statement. Having her so close to him after so long only served to reassure him of the things he already knew by heart, and at times like that— times where they could simply rest and enjoy each other’s company— that he reminded himself of how strong their connection is.

It goes beyond their bond as teammates and as fellow war heroes; and their beloved daughter exists to prove his point. Together, they’re a very powerful duo, and no distance in the world can ever break them apart. 

No distance and certainly no insect— as Jiji claimed the other night when they were walking back to their cell.

Her presence around those men was probably just leaving him a bit uneasy, and he was certainly worrying over nothing, for sure. After all, she will always be Uchiha Sakura.

Right?

“And it’s finished!” She exclaimed, her voice bringing him back to reality. A relieved sigh escaped her lips as she stretched her tired torso, and a childish smile crept onto her lips as she unceremoniously let the patient’s file fall on her messy desk. “And the most frustrating part is that I know all of my work is for nothing since the director will probably throw my report away.”

“Well, at least try to think the prisoners are thankful.”

“Are they?” She asked, truthfully, looking at him with a soft expression. “I mean, you must hear them saying something about me, right?”

“Aah. I do” He said, closing his eyes and trying to ignore most of the things the prisoners actually said about his wife.

“… And?”

“And what?”

“Well… What do they say about me, Sasuke-kun?”

“Tch. They like you, I guess. They say you’re kind and that they’re feeling better after you came to the institute.”

“Really?!” She smiled, her eyes beaming in excitement. “It’s really nice to hear that! Some of these guys have never even seen a doctor in their entire lives. It’s hard not to sympathize with their life stories.”

“Hn, I bet it is.” He scoffed, bringing his leg up to the bed and looking away. Even if he knew his wife was truly concerned about those men’s health, there were certainly other things more urgent crossing their minds whenever they talked about her. Those imprisoned men have long forgotten what it meant to be civilized, and not being able to reveal his identity drove him insane sometimes. 

Everything would be easier if he could only warn the others that she was his wife. Perhaps, he thought, they would back off or at least stop saying those indecencies around him. She was a married woman, after all. That much they knew. 

Or so, he thought. 

“Sakura, I think we should get started.”

“Oh, yes, you’re right, sorry.”

She chuckled, finally taking off her lab coat and hanging it on the back of her chair. She fixed her shirt, and when she turned around to get her black gloves from a box behind her desk, something unusual caught his eyes. It was as round and white as he remembered from their younger days, and it was simple enough to pass unnoticed by the people from the forgotten country that was Redaku. Sakura was wearing her clan’s round crest instead of the Uchiha fan, and he was sure his expression mirrored his inner astonishment.

His eyes were glued to the old-new crest on her back and slowly, he stood up and started walking towards her. His eyebrows were arched, his lips were slightly parted and for a moment, it was as if he didn’t recognize his own wife with that circle on her back.

What was going on there?

Could it be that she packed her old clothes instead of her regular ones? He knew her body hadn’t changed much since she was a single woman, but still, what the he—

“I'm ready!” She spoke cheerfully, as she was definitely glad to have finished all that mandatory paperwork, and it was easy to say excitement was starting to grow on her at the idea of resuming their investigation. “Shall we?”

“Sakura…” His voice was low and alarmed, and her soft expression suddenly changed into a curious one.

“Eh? What’s wrong, Sasuke-kun? Are you not feeling—“

“What is this?” He said, looking forward and straight at her.

“What is what?” She turned around, as if looking for something unusual around the room.

“This.” He pointed at her, and instinctively, she started touching her cheeks with her hands and looking down at herself as if in search of any stain or rip. Her head moved around, swaying her pink hair, until she lifted her head once more to look at him, a blank expression taking over her face.

“Is there something wrong with me?”

“Yes.” He answered dryly, scaring her. “I mean, no, not really, but… Why are you wearing this shirt?”

“Is there anything wrong with it? It’s such a comfortable shirt.” She adjusted the hem of the shirt, playing with the frontal zipper as to make sure everything was okay. "I don’t think I understand your point.”

“You’re not wearing your clothes, Sakura.”

“Oh…” Her eyes widened and her lips formed a pout at his words. She blinked once, twice; and slowly, she opened her mouth. “What?”

“Tch, you’re not wearing the Uchiha crest. Why not?”

“Oh!” She smiled, finally understanding her husband’s point. "Well…” She started, leaning back against her desk. She crossed her hands across her chest, carefully looking at him as if to try to understand his words. “It's not like I can wear the Uchiha crest here, right, Sasuke-kun.”

“Why not?”

“What do you mean by why not? It’s because it would blow up my cover, of course.”

“They know my name here.” He said, flatly, his arm simply resting next to his body.

“They know your name is Sasuke. They don’t know you’re the Uchiha Sasuke.” She stood up straight, her green eyes locking with his. “The director doesn’t really care about who the prisoners are. They don’t need your files, let alone your last names… But I’m a part of the staff here. I had to give them my documents, sign papers… They had to know who I am.”

“And that would be…?”

“Haruno Sakura.”

“Tch. Great.” He scoffed, an annoyed expression taking over his face.

“What's the matter, Sasuke-kun? Why are you so upset?”

“Hn, I’m not. I just didn’t know you would actually change your married name for this mission.”

“Actually, it’s not my married name. I’ve told them I’m a single woman so they wouldn’t ask more questions about family and other relationships.”

“What?!” His voice escaped his lips louder than he had initially planned, surprising her a bit. Sasuke was clearly annoyed at her statement, and if he were to be honest, he didn’t really know why.

Logically thinking, his wife was only doing what was best for the mission. She was hiding both of their identities and their village’s location; and she was keeping them all safe. More than just the two of them, Sakura was also thinking about Naruto, Sarada and all of those patients that were relying on her. All she had to do was tell those people her maiden name and pretend she was a single woman again.

It was really no big deal.

Still, just imagining his wife— who was now just his single comrade and not his wife anymore— amongst those thirsty men infuriated him. It drove him mad with a feeling he couldn’t quite name, and it made him worried about what could happen to her. It was not like he believed that any of those men would actually respect a married woman if they lost control over their hormones, but still…

Whenever he was away in his missions, knowing his wife was proudly wearing the Uchiha crest made him feel less lonely in that big world. Even if it was just a symbol, it was important for him to know he was not the only one wearing it anymore, and he knew from the bottom of his heart that his wife respected and cherished his clan’s history as much as he did. Though if the blood of his family doesn’t run in her veins, she displays the crest proudly on her clothes, and that alone made him feel safe for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. Knowing it was not there anymore — knowing they were not really married in that fake adventure—made him feel distant. Insecure, even. It was stupid of him, he knew, but it was not like he could force himself not to feel any of those things.

“Tell them you’re married.”

“…What? Why would I do that now?”

“It’s for you own safety.”He said simply, not wanting to dwell into more details of his emotional reasons. "You don’t know these men. You don’t know what they could do to you if they had the chance.”

“Oh, and do you really think that me being actually married will change anything if my fake husband is miles away from here? Come on, Sasuke-kun.” She giggled, clearly thinking her husband was delusional. If not for their mission, she would probably be laughing at her husband’s sudden jealousy attack.

“You can say I’m here.”

“And risk compromising our mission? Definitely not.” She shook her head, hiding her hands inside her pockets. “Why does it matter to you, anyway? I actually thought you would find it exciting to fool around a little just like when we were single.”

“I am not single anymore.” He said, simply, as if it wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world. "And neither are you.”

“Well, I know, but…” She sighed. "Why do you care so much about it, Sasuke-kun?”

“Hn, can’t I just worry about you?”

“Not like this.” She said, lifting a challenging eyebrow at her husband. “Don't tell me you’re actually jealous, Sasuke-kun.” She teased, earning nothing but the judgmental stare of his stoic face.

Her accusing words hit him deeper than he had expected, and it took him quite a lot of effort not to break his perfect poker face. Uchihas don’t get jealous. They’re above such illogical emotion, especially when they’re already married to the said object of jealousy. It was silly to even consider something like that. Sure, he’s also a man made of flesh and seeing all of those men trying to approach his wife made him a bit mad and overprotective, but he didn’t consider it to be jealousy.

“…This is ridiculous. I’m not jealous.”

“Then why do you want those men to know I’m married?”

“I've already told you, Sakura. It’s for your own safety!”

“And I’ve told you I don’t believe you.” She stated, her eyes still connected to his. There was a childish tone to her voice, and if anything, that only served to annoy him even more.

“If I tell you I’m jealous, will you say you’re married?”

“It depends. Are you?”

“Definitely no.”

“Then I won’t say anything.”

“Tch, you’re annoying, Sakura.”

She giggled once more after his words, taking a step back and carefully pushing some papers away from her desk so she could sit there. Her legs dangled over the metallic edge, and if anything, Sasuke was confused regarding her true intentions. Knowing his wife, there was just no way she would just let go off that matter so simply, and he couldn’t help but observe her with his skilled eyes.

“You know…” She started, a soft blush tinging her cheeks. “This certainly brings back some memories, don’t you think?”

“How so?”

“Oh, come on… Uchiha Sasuke calling Haruno Sakura annoying.” She smiled. “We just can’t seem to leave some old habits behind, right?”

His eyes widened for a millisecond, and he realized that, indeed, it felt like they were once more their younger versions. She was the annoying Haruno Sakura, the only girl he has ever loved and he was once more the stoic Uchiha Sasuke that was searching for redemption. They weren’t quite traveling like back then, but they were together outside their village, and they could only rely on each other to get back home safely.

Side by side, they were fighting enemies and infiltrating places for the sake of their village, and while they did so, their feelings for one another only got stronger. Haruno or Uchiha, he has always harboured a great affection towards the pinkette, and with the passing years, that affection has naturally turned into love. He already loved Haruno Sakura back then, and fate made sure to create a bond between them that not even he could destroy. She’s always been a part of his family, and when she started to use his last name, well, that was just a mere formality for him.

Her last name didn’t really matter, he realized. It never truly did. Their bond was greater than that, and it was not like he couldn’t keep them at bay for a couple more days until they could both head back home.

It was not like the strongest kunoichi in the world wouldn’t be able to take down whoever pissed her off. His wife has proven him many times that she can protect herself, and if anything, he would once again have to find it in himself to trust those polished skills of her.

“Hn, it’s different now.”

“How so?”

“We're adults now. We’ve changed, don’t you think? Sarada exists to prove my point.”

“…Indeed, you’re right.” She chuckled, crossing her ankles. “We did it all together. Just you and me. Sasuke-kun and Sakura. Isn’t it enough?”

A pang of guilt made his heart skip a beat, and soon, Sasuke realized his emotions had taken him too far. He was behaving like a teenager all over again, and as always, she was the one to bring him back to reality. Once again, he had lost an argument against his wife’s logical words. He really should start practicing more.

“Aah. It is.” More than enough. He nodded, closing his eyes for an instance as he organized his thoughts. He heard his wife’s feet touching the ground once more, and soon, she was standing close to him. 

“Finally you agree with me!” She said, dramatically throwing her arms up in defeat. “Shannarou, we don’t have time for this. We’re here to help Naruto. I can take care of myself if any of those guys come after me. I’m a shinobi, too, remember?!”

“You’re right, Sakura.” He said, nodding in acceptance. “I’m counting on you to take care of those insects, then.”

“Insects?”

“Never mind.”

“Well, I’ll take care of them, too.” She said, cheerfully and absentmindedly, as she walked past him, softly patting his left cheek with her gloved hand. “Now let’s just go, Sasuke-kun.”

“Hai!”

And so, after leaving it all behind, the power couple left the infirmary and went out in order to find out more about what was hidden in the darkness of the Institute. They worked together, completely trusting each other, as their actions were in perfect synchrony only years together could grant them.

It would be a long and busy night for the couple, for sure.

And if anything, Uchiha Sasuke could use that chance to spend more time with Haruno Sakura— that annoying girl who would, one day, become his wife. 

——————————

The commotion began during their short lunch break. He was sitting at the cafeteria alone near the rocky window, eating whatever it was that looked decent from his plate, when one of the prisoners gathered a bunch of his friends and started talking a little too loud for his own liking. Normally, the Uchiha would ignore those silly and stupid conversations, but as soon as the pink haired doctor’s name was mentioned, his ears perked up as he focused on every word shared amongst those men.

He knew he should just let it go, but it was stronger than him. As a ninja, he had to know. 

“You won’t believe in what I’ve found out! It’s a tragedy!” One of them said, drama tinging every syllabi of his sentence.

“What’s wrong, man!? What happened?”

“It's Sakura-sensei…”

“What about her?”

“I went there to pay her a visit, and then, I swear it felt like a good time to make a move.” He started, Sasuke’s hand clenching in a tight fist.

“And then what?! Did you do it?! Did you go for it!?” The other man asked, his eyes shining in curiosity.

“And then… She told me she has a fiancee waiting for her at home! She’s a compromised woman, gentlemen! With a ring and all!”

“What!? You can’t be serious!”

“Sakura-sensei has someone she loves already?! No! It can’t be!”

“Unfortunately, it’s true…She said they’ll get married as soon as she returns home.”

“Crap, of course a woman so beautiful like her wouldn’t be single.”

“Yeah…Her fiancee must be a lucky man.”

“Lucky and stupid, for sure. How could he let his beautiful wife come to an all-men prison so far from their home? He must be an idiot, for sure.”

A sly smirk took overs lips, and as he took a sip of what he believed to be a soup, Uchiha Sasuke decided to simply accept those words. Of course his stubborn wife wouldn’t just accept his suggestion and say she’s already married, he thought. Still, it was already enough. He accepted his new title as the lucky and stupid fiancee for the moment, until the day when they could both go home, and once more, be husband and wife.

fin.

[prorevenge]

A potential client tried to take advantage of me and I got her fired from her 'big-shot' marketing job.

Hey guys, first time posting here, bit of a long story. TL;DR at the bottom.

A little bit of backstory, I'm running a painting business over the summer as a Junior in college to pay for school. My prices are pretty fair as I hire college students and have a deal with Sherwin Williams as a contractor to get cheaper paint and materials.

Anyways, a potential client, we'll call her PC for pretentious cunt, scheduled an estimate with me about a month and a half ago for an interior bathroom job and a deck stain. I tell her the times I'm available, but she absolutely pushes for a time where I would have to rush over from a job site, do a hurried estimate, then run home to grab a bite of dinner before going to previously scheduled estimates. I'm a bit miffed but I said fuck it. Sales is hard, I should learn how to bend over backwards for clients. So I show up to do the estimate, and the whole time I'm getting my numbers together, she is talking me down, telling me how if she ran a business like I did, she would be fired from her big-shot marketing job immediately, and how I should be dressed better to respect the client. What I did to offend Her Majesty was I moved her plants to the side to be able the measure the deck better, and I came to the estimate in paint stained clothes since I had run over directly from the job site.

So I present the price of about $800 with a 10% day of estimate discount to book up the season and she says she needs a few days to consider it. Okay, fair enough right? I'll extend the discount a few days for her. So I come back a few days later expecting a yes or no answer and she sits me down and starts to haggle with me. At this point, I'm tired enough already from working in the sun all day and just want some food to stop the rumblies. After I give her another 5% discount just to close the job, she continues to haggle with me saying "The highest we can go is $600." When I finally tell her I can't go any lower on the job or I would actually lose money on it, she tells me that she got an estimate from another local company for $500 and that she wouldn't want me to match it because she wants to support the local community.

At this point, I'm exhausted and my brain is barely keeping me breathing but that price point doesn't sound right to me. I calculated my price based of a small profit, labor, and materials. Now I pay my painters $13 an hour and I hire college students. So if the other company is charging waaay less, they either pay their career painters even less (minimum wage where I am is $11) or the quality of paint is much lower. So I ask PC if they remember what paint the other company said they would use and she says she doesn't recall Fair enough, paint names are hard to remember if you don't see them that often. Then I ask if I could see their estimate contract to try to figure out why they were so much cheaper than I was. PC says that they didn't have an estimate sheet. Now this is a big no-no in any contracting business because you have to keep track of numbers, budgeted hours, etc. Now alarm bells are ringing in my head so I set a firm amount on the price of the previous estimate with the additional 5% discount which means that I make a measly $5 per hour I personally work on the job. PC finally agrees on the price saying "It's just $50 dollars, I can't see why you can't just give us more discount. At [my big-shot marketing job] I would give the customer a discount without hesitation" forgetting that A. The discount would be coming out of my broke college student pockets, not a big corporation and B. I already told her that I would only be getting about $5 per hour on the job even though she wants to "support the local community"

She asks if we take credit, but there is a 5% credit card fee that would come out of my already tiny slice of profit so I ask for check (which I told her we prefer during the original estimate). She tells me that she uses Chase which doesn't have a branch near us and that the nearest one is in New York (we are about half an hour from Boston). What?? Therefore, she cannot use check because she would have to order the checkbook from New York. I think, alright fine. I guess some people these days don't have checkbook. I reiterate that I will lose money on the job at that price point with the 5% fee tacked on and that I can wait until the checkbook arrives.

So I tell her that she can message or call me when the checkbook arrives and I can drive back to collect the deposit and have her sign the contract. On the way out, she tells me that the job needs to be finished before a certain date because she was having guests over. I explain to her that when I receive the deposit, I'll lock her in for a power wash of the deck which will need about a week to dry the we can stain it in one day. She mutters "... [something something] I can find the check book by tomorrow.." Come on now.. she just admitted to lying to me about having to order a check book from NY. So I say that's fine, let me know tomorrow afternoon so I can come by and finalize the contract.

When I get home, I decide to search up 'Chase branches near me' on Google because I found it really strange that there wasn't one closer that New York especially since we were pretty close to Boston. I kid you not, there was a Chase branch 14 minutes from her house. Now I'm pissed. I don't know what else she lied to me about so I call up my friend whose dad owns the company she talked about. He calls me later that day and says that he never did an estimate with her name or address.

I send her a message over Facebook Messenger (I do a lot of posts in local yard sale groups for exposure for my company so I set up estimates though Messenger) and called her out about the Chase branch, the check, and the "estimate" from the other painting company. She. Goes. Off. Here are a few memorable quotes from her rant - "You don't have the right to insult me like that, this is just your first year running a business and I've been working at [big-shot marketing job] for years now","it doesn't matter what I pay you because you're a young and money doesn't matter to you right now" (my facebook post literally says that I am running this business to pay for college) and my personal favorite "you people should be grateful that I even pay you $5 an hour for your work" (I'm Chinese).

At this point I'm ready to just block her and go to bed angry but I have an epiphany and just hear "[big-shot marketing job]" echo through my head. I take screenshots of the messages she sent me and slapped them along with a lengthy description of what happened in an email and sent copies to whatever email addresses I could find associated with the "big shot marketing company". I get an email back a couple days later from a different address than the ones I wrote to previously basically saying thank you for reaching out to us, this type of behavior is unacceptable and we will be conducting an internal investigation into PC. My Justice Boner is about half-mast but I think to myself, that'll be the last of it I guess.

Just today, I was messaging another old client and came across PC's conversation with me. I go to her profile and in the intro for her profile it now says "Works at Self-Employed." Instant full mast.

TL;DR A pompous, self righteous woman lies to me repeatedly to try to get a better deal on a paint job and when I call her out on her lies goes on a racist rant against me which I email to her company who fired her.

(source) (story by RicePaddyFarmer69)

[lumikinetic]

*flops down on sofa*

*exhales*

Tumblr gives me a lot of wild shit every now and again. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's disheartening. And then yesterday came along and gave me the one-two punch of:

Captain Marvel being dolled up by the Russos instead of a jacket, S.H.I.E.L.D baseball cap and a Nine Inch Nails shirt, which is how she should be (not gonna talk about this, just want it out there that I'm pissed about it)

One Day At A Time being cancelled

ODAAT I'm gonna kind of touch on because it's not really what I want to talk about, but it did help me finalize the words for what I do, and that's capitalism in entertainment.

The most annoying goddamn trend in filmmaking (and of course in TV and Netflix/Prime originals) is companies caring more about their bottom line and less about making good content, and yeah I know this dead horse isn't just beaten, it's thrown into an active supervolcano but it really pisses me off and it's why I hate the new Star Wars stuff (well OK hate is a bit strong but they're uh Not Good) but I'll get to that. What corpos can't seem to get into their bloated skulls is that one cannot exist without the other. You need to put out good, quality content with value so that fans like it so they give you money so they increase your profits so you can make more content and so on. But somewhere down the line some fuckhead went "what if we just pushed out what we have?" and just kinda expected us to not take notice.

Now before the comments section gets all hot and bothered because I know some people on this site don't have the gift of reading comprehension, I know profits are important, I'm saying when companies shun good filmmaking for more money, they get lazy and all they can think about is profit and not how they make that profit, they don't care at all about using that money to make more good, valuable content.

One Day At A Time

I've never watched One Day At A Time but the fact Netflix just outright cancelled it knowing damn well what it meant to the people the characters are representing is just disgusting. And they have the fucking audacity to blame it on the viewership? I've seen hundreds of artworks, gifs and a video clip here and there of this show. I've seen precisely one (1) meme of 13 Reasons Why and that is literally it. I'm not following the tags for either. Plus, #saveODAAT has, last I checked, 350k tweets on trending or thereabouts?

So obviously the viewership isn't the problem, it's the racism and homophobia of cancelling a Spanish (? - again, never seen it), LGBT+ focused show that a lot of people quite happily and positively connect with when a crap show about suicide and Friends gets to stay on. It's just ugh. Cancelling a show like this then paying something like $100mil to keep Friends. I was going to expand on the shitty capitalism here but tbh that's it, Netflix are making bad decisions and like I say, I'm only going to touch on it because it's not the main part.

Star Wars

Go watch the original trilogy and it's clear George Lucas was trying to create and do. He was trying to make art. The key difference between that and modern SW to me is BB8. Look at C3PO and R2D2 and already you can see they belong. C3PO is a translator droid and I'm not sure what exactly R2's job description is but it's obvious he does some kind of pilot assistance for X-Wing fighters. I never understood people who said R2 never did anything, because they obviously haven't seen Star Wars. You get that this is an R2 unit, right? Like, there's more than one out there and they have a job they were specifically built to do, it's just this one particular R2 unit who had to carry the message? Anyway, I'm derailing. R2 and C3PO have functions and they're clearly not new, they've been used for a long time. Then you look at BB8 and instantly it's like "this is a toy. This so called character was designed to sell toys". And then he was. He's a toy, he's on bags, notebooks, pens, clothes, everywhere. Disney is less concerned about making a Star Wars movie and more about making money off of the Star Wars name.

Into The Spider-Verse VS YA Movies

YA movies tend to suck because they were adapted from books and we all know how that pans out but the reason I'm using YA books specifically is because my mind jumped to The Hunger Games. I couldn't tell you a single fucking thing that happens in those movies. They're so dull and dead and forgettable and the characters are borderline unlikeable but you know which one I do like? Catching Fire, for one reason and one reason only: Jena Malone as Joanna Mason. Save for Haymitch, she's the only character I liked because those two are the only characters with any kind of charisma or life to them. They made an at most halfway decent attempt overall at recreating some otherwise really great books and they made a big show out of it, hiring some pretty well known names. And I'm not disparaging their performances, it was just what I call, ever since Suicide Squad came out, the Harley Quinn effect, in which good actors get given a good character and perform them really well and, through no fault of their own, fuck it up because the character was written poorly and no matter how well they act, if the script doesn't change, the performance will always be shit. The same for Divergent. And Percy Jackson. And Fault In Our Stars.

Then outside all of that you have Perks Of Being A Wallflower which is just a great, heartwarming movie because the characters feel like people and the brightness isn't turned way the fuck down in post and you actually want to be invested, and they're not afraid to have a colour palette beyond a splash of pink here and blue there and red there. Plus, Ant-Man as an English teacher. THEN you go watch Spider-Verse and oh hey. I can actually see the movie now. And I mean see it. They do not slack off when it comes to visuals. Even by animation's standards, everyone is so expressive and alive and... animated. Sorry, I couldn't get a better word but they are! When you look at Miles in comparison to Katniss in terms of writing and performance, the difference is just startling. The only times I can think of where Katniss shows any kind of emotion in the first movie is when she slams the knife in the table and Rue's funeral and I had to think about that. Without thinking for Miles, already I've got "who's Morales?", the scene where Uncle Aaron teaches him the shoulder touch, the scene where Miles spray paints in the subway, that scene in the alley, the moment in Olivia's office when he just freezes after she says she can't wait to watch Peter in immense pain Like That and made all the wlws melt in their seats. You get the idea. So what's the point for this section? Well, as simply as I can put it, Hunger Games was made with money, for money. Spiderverse was made with love, for love. Spiderverse cared about people who read comic books and paid more than enough tribute to the art forms people think of as lesser for no goddamn reason other than elitism and proved for the thousandth time that it is something that can be used in filmmaking. They were trying to make art. Hunger Games and most other YA novel movie adaptations saw a preestablished fan base they could exploit for money. They were trying to make money.

Rambo

This was a weird one, yeah. Don't worry I was confused too when it popped into my head. I saw the original Rambo a while back and what I liked about it (and Apocalypse Now) is it wasn't a war film where the USA charge in and hooray everything's all right, this movie grabs your shirt and says "hey. Vietnam did something to these guys and they're not OK. Probably they'll never be OK". Then I watched the Rambo reboot that came out in like 2011 or something and I remember thinking "OK so now he's just this dude? Who lives in Thailand... And what, that's it?" There was no scene to show his psychological state today. Nothing to acknowledge his PTSD. They just thought "hey! Let's make Rambo but this time, just give him guns and and yelling and spray some blood!" The reason I kind of ended this train of thought quickly is because I realised that, let's be real, the main body of Rambo's audience just want to see Sly Stallone kill some fools. But yeah, the fact that they just ignored John's mental state in place of mega violence is such a glaringly obvious move to just appeal to violent teenage boys.

The Auteur

My favourite director is Wes Anderson and my favourite movie is The Grand Budapest Hotel (though Panos Cosmatos seems to be eyeing these titles with Beyond The Black Rainbow and Mandy, I haven't watched them yet). Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, auteurs always stand out even though their movies are all the same, and I think the reason they're so successful is because that specific style is so much better than most other mainstream cinema. I'm not saying that those other movies are bad, I love them and will watch them again and again but I'm saying Wes Anderson could make a short movie and it would be better than most Marvel movies put together (don't talk to me about Captain Marvel, I haven't seen it yet. Gonna see it this Sunday). No matter what you think of these directors, you can instantly tell the difference between these movies that they care about and the passion and hard work they put in and Disney pumping out their 400th reboot.

It Keeps Working

You guys wanna know the thought that keeps me up at night? Someday they're going to make a Fortnite movie. You guys wanna know why it keeps me up at night? Because it's going to be popular. Yeah, obviously not at the box office, because it'll be a videogame movie and those are worse than book movies, but it will be popular for no apparent reason. And what pisses me off is that Fortnite's popularity is only because of the battle royale mode, which has now essentially become synonymous with dying franchises and it just adds another layer to the lack of creative effort and the movie will just be Hunger Games with guns. Exactly the same as what I said at the start of this rant, there's a really noticeable shift from making content to jumping on whatever bandwagon is passing by because you know it'll make you money. Yeah, you have to spend money to make money but that doesn't mean you get complacent in what you spend your money on or if you spend money at all because when you cut corners, consumers can see that shit.

Anyway I'm done complaining thanks for having the willpower to pay attention to my dumb opinions.

[thats-the-tea]

I’m sure this is probably going to get lost amongst all the other posts but I want to give a shout out to (almost) all GOT fans out there. And trust me, not in a good way. I want to thank each and every single one of you out there for ruining this fandom for me. For the past 2 years, and recently these past 4 weeks since the premiere of season 8, I waited with all of you until the new season came along. While waiting, I watched all previous seasons on repeat, anxiously wondering what would or could happen to our favourite characters. I read the fan theories with curiosity, I watched the first teasers in squealing delight. In short, season 8 couldn’t come soon enough. And I’m sure many of you felt the exact same way. But then the new season finally premiered, and I was . . . surprised to say the least at most of you. The reviews for the first episode were mixed. Complaints were in no short supply and praises were mediocre at best. I agreed with some complaints about the rushed pace but overall I thought it was just the fans having the standard disappointment of finally watching something new and it failing their expectations. After all, we had 2 years of fantasizing about it, why wouldn’t we have high expectations of what could happen? Then episode 2 came around, and finally, I thought the tide was turning. The majority of fans seemed to love it, or at least like it. I, personally, adored episode 2 and it made me remember why I fell in love with this show in the first place. It was beautifully done and I’ve been humming Jenny of Oldstones for days afterwards. But then came episode 3, The Long Night. Man, oh, man, do I regret going online after that one. Okay, I will admit, it was damn dark (and the director saying it’s the fault of poor streaming quality is bs because I watched it in the middle of the night with all the lights off and still couldn’t see anything until Melisandre lit up the Dothraki’s arakhs), and the characters having so much plot armour was indeed disappointing. Realistically, Grey Worm, Sam, Jaime, Brienne, Pod, and Jon should’ve all been dead. But come on, the way most of you complain, it’s like the writers have done you personal insult. They don’t sit at their desks and think, “What would piss them off the most?”. But fine, I understood the complaints, just not the way everyone blew them up. Let’s skip to episode 4 that came out a few days ago. And to put it simply, I feel like I’m the only person on this site and any other social media platform that remotely liked it. Am I seriously the only one that hasn’t destroyed my caps button yet with complaining about Rhaegal and Missandei’s death? Or with saying how disgusting it was for Sandor to say what he did to Sansa about her wedding night? Like, I’ve been reading about everyone complaining about getting no SanSan reunion for weeks. Now you’ve finally got it, and you’re still not happy? Or the Starbucks cup being left on the table next to Daenerys. Seriously, people, “the biggest mistake in tv history!”? It’s like none of you has ever watched a movie or tv show at all! Mistakes happen. It happens. But most of all, lazy writing seems to be the primary point of concern for everyone. Why? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blind. I do see the difference in writing and this season is indeed weaker than previous ones, but why make such a fuss? Why blow up every social media platform with snide remarks, and memes that I know are supposed to be funny but look more like whiny. Why is it that this show went from being an international phenomenon to a visual flop in mere weeks for all of you? I want to share my joy and love for these characters and their storylines with you guys but every time I get shot down. I get drowned by haters telling me I’m dumb for liking the new episode, that I’m not a real fan because I’m defending them. I’m scared of watching the behind the scenes videos on Youtube because the comments are just sad to look at. Even here on Tumblr it’s rapidly going downhill. I’m genuinely curious, what happened?

[aroclan]

“if your intuition screams at you, listen to it”: the backstories

an extension of this post i reblogged.  basically, ‘things i now recognize as abusive/predatory’, so cut warning for that.

one:

to put this in its proper context, i got a call from Chris, the big boss of the camp, the highest of on-site authority. he is also literally big.

also, i hate him. he thinks of leadership as dictating “WE are going to bust our asses and GET that quality pennant and it’s gonna be FUN!” and he wants everyone to fall in line behind him, and i really didn’t care? about a pennant??? and i didn’t think running to exhaustion for a fake goal is going to be fun.

(i learned really late through the season that he swears a bunch, but Does Not Like the F Word. meanwhile, i came from a world where the mildest of swear words were completely forbidden, and so we had all-swearing or no-swearing, depending on whether my parents were in earshot. there was no arbitrary distinction that we swore except for the really bad words. Meaning, i’d been inadvertently pissing him off more than i meant to.)

so.

i was busy trying to, y’know, actually do my job, which i had never been thanked for btw, and i got a call on the intercom from the big boss for the most inane garbage.

it really clashed hard with my intuition about how i didn’t want to talk to him?

but then the conversation comes down to:

“I love you, AC.”

I didn’t answer. I was thinking about how much I hated him and wondering what his game was.

“SAY IT!” He interrupted my thoughts, literally shouting.

I stayed silent, wondering if this was an invitation to be a massive jerkass and tell him how awful he was.  It didn’t seem like it, though.  Despite the apparent opportunity, I held my tongue.

“SAY IT!”

Whatever. “I love you, Chris.”

The call seemed to end normally from there.

Five minutes later, another staffer walked in, and said in what was probably supposed to sound like a neutral imitation and not outright mockery, “I love you, Chris.”

found out Chris had been taking it off speaker to talk and putting it back on so, like, almost all of the camp staff in the room with him could listen, so the timbre wouldn’t give him away.

i didn’t know how to handle this shit. i just ran off. (it was staff week, so at least there were no campers.) disappeared into the woods for a couple of hours.

they were just getting around to setting up a search party when i got back, and i was sent to talk to chris alone with no witnesses and no recording gear. (it was the turn of the millennium. we didn’t have phones.)

he then proceeded to try and blame me for everything (”Did we talk about anything private?”), interrupting any of my defenses, sometimes with complete fabrications (”You knew it was on speakerphone. It’s always on speakerphone.” No, I had been specifically instructed to not have it on speaker. I think it’s fair to call that gaslighting.)

i don’t remember if there was one more thing, or what, but i distinctly remember everything going FULL RED ALERT inside my head, as I suddenly recognized:

this is exactly the set of warning signs that our mandatory training had warned us about.

i ran back through the building and got back to a safer place. it was suddenly exceedingly important to be around others, even though i didn’t want to talk to anybody.

i ended up reporting this whole incident to the bigger brass at the head office. but, since i was over 18, they were not required to do anything, and predictably, Nothing Ever Happened.™

chris was their golden boy, see. doesn’t matter if he’s politically backstabbing everyone he comes in contact with and trying to molest the staff and smoking in view of the campers, he’s just such a great guy.

i don’t know if it’s ever going to be possible to forgive him and upwards.

two:

i was in the college LGBTA office (the A stands for Alliance because it’s a club name; they’d just added the T… so you know… fuck off diss/cursers) and the phone rang.

oh fuck, I don’t want to answer this. … i have to, i’m the only one here.

“X University LGBTA, how may I help you?”

*probably meant to be a seductive voice* “Hi, this is Paul, is the office going to be open late tonight?”

I literally don’t know. I’ve been here a week? “That depends on what the members decide, but not usually, I don’t think?”

[I can’t remember how exactly it proceeded, but he asked me real quick about my major, and maybe another couple of innocent-seeming questions, and then:]

*probably meant to be even more seductive* “Tell me… do you ever feel ~lonely~?”

OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT “Sometimes? But that’s why I’m glad I have friends here. —! Hey, our president just walked in, would you like to speak with him?”

“Ohno i’mattheoffice I’vegottago bye.”*click*

(”Who was that?” “Some Paul guy?” “DAMMIT I wish I could have talked to him and told him to never call here again. Fuck. Asked a bunch of personal questions, right?” “…Yes.” My major and shit are personal.  Possibly even my name in this place.  Noted.)

three:

my cell phone rang at 11 PM, shortly after the house phone rang and ruined foreplay. my wife was still on the line with her mother, because you don’t… not answer your own mother calling at extremely unusual hours.

those were the days before the robocall scourge really got ramped up, so it was unusual to get a call on my flippy phone at all, let alone a “PRIVATE CALLER” late at night. and besides, it had Danger written all over it, and I wasn’t about to do that again. so i let it go.

someone actually left a voicemail.

“hi. why would you do that? do not fuck with my life. that is my life, not yours. fuck you.”

like, how do people get through a voice message that says ‘You’ve reached [my number], I can’t answer the phone right now, please leave a message’ and not recognize that this is the wrong voice and/or number??

i didn’t even talk to this person and it was still stressful.

[naernon]

How about 4-9 for the salty asks?

thank you! these were fun, as with all the other ones ^ ^. sorry if my responses are a bit clumsy or anything, today’s an off-day for me and so i’ve been SO slow to answer these

____

4.) Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

i dont know if this counts as popular but i HATE when people (even in jest) ship vivec/molag bal. have never read the sermons or anything nor do i plan to but from the snippets i HAVE read, i just dont know how you read it and… think to ship it? more than a little messed up.

i wont get into it further but even outside of typical shipping spaces, it’s just. fucked. i normally don’t insult people’s interpretation of lore and things as a whole but when you get to shit like the sermons and the tribunal lore (particularly anything kirkbride had a say in or wrote himself) i really feel like… people have a shortage of common sense and reading comprehension and interpretation– although it gets to a point where you can blame not only the reader but the quality of the writing in itself. which… isn’t great, so it’s just a mess all around (as my lethargic middle-of-the-night brain aptly says as an example, you can’t write a quality thesis out of shit sources)

____

5.) Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

not particularly, no! except, maybe….

the weirdness around cicero’s uhh… fandom put me off of his character (plus i just grew to like… hm. different types of characters) and therefore put me off of LDB/cicero in any sort of way, which is something i unfortunately used to ship.

there’s also the fact that i read this one fanfiction of the LDB/cicero that i did kind of enjoy until i reached this crossdressing fetish part and…. boy, was my view changed that day. pretty sure there were weirder parts of it that i have forgotten. maybe for the best

____

6.) Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

i dont think so! none that come to mind at the moment. when i hate pairings, i tend to hate them for like– moral reasons, you know, in that it’d be abusive or otherwise toxic/unhealthy in some way; i guess i’m stubborn like that. any other pairings that im not into tend to just be that i never got into them but i still am tolerant of them. that being said, again, none really come to mind esp. for TES which is series where i don’t have a lot of ships gufdhguhgf.

____

7.) Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?

answered here!

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8.) Have you received anon hate? What about?

as i said in one of my other answers, every time i used to joke about darren guitar/whatever his name is (the DC razum-dar/naryu equivalent) i would get like.. a defensive ask– not too rude yet, just “why do you not like darren guitar”, and then later a “if you read more about him he does have a backstory and development”, that sort of stuff.

i dont think i was too rude in response, but i was kind of sharp, i guess; in a “i know you’re trying to change my viewpoint on this character and opinions are opinions, you can like the characters you like (and besides, most of my posts are purely jokes, im not trying to insult anyone who does like him), but im really set in how i feel about him and i hope to give the implication that nothing you’re sending forth to defend his character is working on me” sort of way

im really bloating this story to the point where the resolution isn’t exciting to hear at all but anyways eventually they send “hot-take: darren guitar has more personality than prince naemon in-game” and i got pissed and told them to fuck off; rightfully so, if you ask me. i said repeatedly i had no problem with this rando liking darrien goddamn guitar and then they came in with that rude shit about a character that’s clearly grown to be very important to me like… please. man. why. if it upsets you unfollowing is fine. or maybe closing the tab? or even asking me, “hey, i know this may sound silly but can you tag your darrien guitar hate? i really like him and his character’s important to me” in which i would oblige!!!

and i know exactly who they are, too, lmao. this is going to sound petty in how i found out but basically, on this site, when someone has blocked you, they will not appear in the notes of a post, no matter if they liked, reblogged, replied, etc. BUT, the number of notes still say the same. so if a post has one note due to someone liking it, and that someone has you blocked, if you were to look in the notes themselves to see who it is, their name will not pop up. does that make sense?

im rambling again but through that and switching to my main (where they didn’t bother to block me) i found out who it is because they’re someone i had never heard of before and they actively liked darren guitar. put two and two together, you know? but it’s just baffling. because they had the nerve to block ME for telling them to fuck off for THEM saying that rude shit????? maybe i sound delusional but…. ridiculous.

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9.) Most disliked character(s)? Why?

answered here!

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salty fandom (elder scrolls) opinions

[secretradiobrooklyn]

May Day Edition | 5.1.21

Secret Radio | 5.1.21 | Hear it here.

1. Zia - “Helel Yos”

This song has been in our heads in a big way the last few weeks. Zia was my first exposure to pre-revolutionary Iranian rock  — sometimes called “psych rock,” though I can’t tell if that’s a designation he would make himself. But to be fair, I have no idea what he’s going for. Nonetheless, those little whistles he does get under my skin and into my brain. I wake up in the morning singing “helel yoza, hella hella helel yoza”… This is from the late ‘60s, I believe. The whole album (also called “Helel Yos”) is pretty excellent, and includes the song “Khofrium” from our last broadcast. A recent favorite and highly recommended.

2. Shin Joong Hyun - “Pushing through the Fog” 

Somehow stumbled on this collection of South Korean music, and it has been mesmerizing. Shin Joong Hyun is a great example of something I love discovering over and over again: someone working within a language and a genre, but also expressing a completely unique personal style that extends beyond those general qualities and into startling specifics. This song is from “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun 1958-74,” which blows my mind, because the tones, and especially the bass and drums, sound so completely of the moment. It’s sold out at Light In The Attic’s store, so we’ll be keeping our eyes out for it in the wild, because these are going to be some crucial liner notes. The brief version on their site describes him as a guitarist, songwriter, producer, arranger, and talent developer. He began by performing for US troops in Korea post active war time, became a bewitching guitarist and songwriter, then started producing other bands in the region, and a string of hits developed. It sounds like his story includes a really harsh period of intrusion and disruption by the government… but as far as I can tell he survived to the current day, and even helped oversee this collection.

3. The Traces - “Je t’aime moi non plus” - “Thai Beat A Go Go Vol 2”

Ummm… I would LOVE to know what words they’re singing. This chummy Thai version of Gainsbourg’s super sensual “Je t’aime, moi non plus” is such a weird listening experience. I think one of the singers is either drunk or hearing the song for a first or second pass. What are they saying?!

4. Annie Philippe - “On m’a toujours dit”

I really love the energy and style of this track and many of the Annie Philippe songs I’ve heard, which makes it aggravating that the first thing one finds online in English about Philippe is a condescending, limp writeup on her by Richie Unterberger that tries its best to ignore how delightful her voice is and how pleasurable the arrangements are — luckily the dude mentions that Paul Mariat worked on her albums, who also arranged Charles Aznavour. I love the florid colors of French pop from the ‘60s with hothouse arrangements and wide-flung voices. The ebullient drums and electric guitar, the confident harmonies and tucked in little organ and horn licks are all pure joy.

5. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - “Houton Kan Do Go Me” 

While we were in the Illinois woods we received some very welcome records from Germany’s Analog Africa label which included “The Skeletal Essences of Afro-Funk,” a collection of songs by pretty much our favorite band in the world, T.P. Orchestre. These songs that explore some of the facets of the band that “Echoes Hypnotique” and “The Vodoun Effect” — both gorgeous, keystone records — hadn’t gotten to yet. The language is Fon, the style is Jerk, and the composer (though not the singer, I think) is Bentho Gustave, T.P.’s bassist. pretty sure the singer is Lohento Eskill.

- Hailu Mergia & The Walias - “Musicawi Silt”

The Walias is the band that Hailu Mergia was in when he first came to America. I seem to remember a story that they were disappointed with the trip, went home to Ethiopia and broke up, but Mergia stayed and kept developing his keyboard style, which did a few decades later (!) actually win him wide recognition and acclaim. This is some of his earlier work, not in the director’s seat, and you can hear so much of Mergia’s style woven into the band’s arrangements. I love how it sounds like he’s just playing pure electric current — it barely sounds like an organ to me, more like uncut groove tone.

6. “Newsies” clip

In celebration of May Day, we present this inspiring tale of unions forming in the streets of New York. 

7. Sexe a Pile - “Pas Méchant”

Another recent record score, this one from our other most favorite label, Born Bad Records in France: “Paink: French Punk Anthems 1977-1982.” One thing I love about this song is that the chorus always makes me think of “High Class” by the Buzzards, a song that never got nearly enough love as far as I’m concerned.

8. The Replacements - “Customer”

Dave got me thinking about the Replacements and before I knew it we were deep into “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash.” So wild and loose and pissed off and sincere the whole time. You can really hear Westerberg yearn to be great but also sneer at himself for taking something seriously. It used to sound so unhinged to me but now it has become an album about being young and scared of yourself 

9. Plearn Promdan - “Ruk Kum Samong”

Well, this was something we didn’t see coming — the Thai music we’ve heard up to now has been more ’50s influenced. It sounds like a four-piece rock band surrounded by a drum circle. This is part of what’s apparently known as Luk Thung underground. There’s been some very good stuff so far, I look forward to finding out more. 

10. T.P. Orchestre - “Azanlokpe”

I got a little obsessed with T.P. Orchestre for a while there, and was trying to listen to every single recording that Discogs offered — which is a LOT, because they were super prolific. This is one of my favorite finds so far. I wish I could say which singer this is; it was noted as Melome Clément but I don’t think that’s him. So many talented people in this band!

11. Francis Bebey - “Super Jingle”

Francis Bebey contains multitudes. I’m pretty sure he records all of these parts himself. I think he’s just a master of rhythm — all of the instruments weave a tapestry that he can then cavort upon. The body of the song is so hypnotizing, the lead so akimbo. 

12. Dalida - “J’ai revé”

One of the highlights of the 2017 St. Louis International Film Fest was the biopic of her life. This is early Dalida. As far as Paige understands, she’s the French Lady Gaga for people who were clubbing in the ’70s and ’80s. The story of her life has some really sad shit, but this take on Bobby Darin’s “Dream Lover” is full of life.

- “Newsies” reprise

Radical sincerity sometimes requires references to musicals.

- Petch Pintong - “Soul Lum Piern”

I love this track and know nothing about it except that it was collected on “Thai Beat A Go Go Vol 4.” Those collections have turned out to be full of riches!

13. Atomic Forest - “Obsession ’77 (Fast)”

OK, these guys seem really interesting. They’re an Indian psych-funk band, which was apparently totally unheard of there, and they only released a single album — and that one only after they broke up. Because that album is full of great stuff, most notably (at least to me) this track, their story is almost too perfectly suited to the obsessions of vinyl collectors worldwide. Now-Again Records re-released the album in 2011, and we ran across it just a couple months ago. I really enjoy the sense of narrative in the song — what’s happening in the foreground keeps evolving and remaining legitimately interesting.

14. Metak - “Da Mi Je Biti Morski Pas”

I’m proud to say that these dedicated rockers are Croatian, and this track from 1980 rocks like a seafoam T-top Stingray. This is from a 7” with “Rock’n’Roller” on the flip.

15. Mai Lan - “Les Huîtres”

Paige found this amazing playlist on Spotify years ago, and this is finally the way she started getting into more contemporary French music. It sounds like she’s from a musical and artistic French-Vietnamese family. “Les Huîtres” is from around 2008. Kind of feels like 

16. VIS Idoli - “Maljciki”

We found a video of this Yugoslavian ska while looking for something else entirely. I did learn that this is political ska, and that they were frowned upon by the government. One account has them being indulged by the government; another has them under threat of punishment. I do love knowing that ska is a political form and not just a genre. I have no idea how they would feel about the Croatian rockers a few tracks back, and I hope none of them did any harm to one another other during the terrible ‘90s. 

17. Para One, Arthur Simonini - “La Jeune Fille en Feu” - “Portrait of a Woman on Fire” score

Did you see “Portrait of a Woman on Fire”? We highly recommend it, for a lot of reasons but definitely for the passage of this song. It sounds great here, but at night, by firelight, with all the nuns and farmwomen on the island? 

18. The Space Lady - “Ghost Riders in the Sky”

- Sleepy Kitty - “Western Antagonist Reflection”

19. Mikyas Chernet - “Ziyoze”

Marc, this is the song I was talking about stepping into the Teddy Afro position. It’s definitely not the same, but you can hear the modern Ethiopian pop feel running through it. It helps that I first heard it while picking up an order from our favorite Ethiopian in STL, which is also where we first heard Teddy Afro. The dancers are on POINT in the video, and they’re rockin a couple of new styles that I hadn’t seen yet.

20. Nazir Ali - “Lad Pyar Aur Beti”

Listen to the giant smiles in their voices! This is from a very recent compilation. That female voice has to be Nahid Aktar, or at least it sounds just like her; I think the protagonist-sounding male voice is Ali’s. There is a brief appearance from that Oscar the Grouch-sounding guy from last episode’s Aktar song. It’s so cool how the song shifts into new mode after new mode as it goes. 

21. Nathalie - “L’Amour Nous Repond”

22. The Fall - “L.A.”

This period of The Fall is surely our favorite — wherever Brix E. went, the songs were great. And now, with vaccines coursing through our systems, we can feel our thoughts casting their way to LA and San Francisco…

23. Akaba Man & The Nigie Rokets - “Ta Gha Hunsimwen” 

Analog Africa’s most recent release is “Edo Funk Explosion Vol. 1,” with tracks from the late ‘70s and ‘80s in Nigeria’s Benin City. Akaba Man is described as “the philosopher king of Edo funk.” The whole album is full of good tracks that only get better with repeated listens. This one has a bed of sounds that could happily go on for hours or days.

24. Gérard Manset - “Entrez dans le rêve”

Paige: “If you ever want to hear Lou Reed sing in French, this is the best we’re gonna get.” 

- Johnny Guitar - “Bangkok by Night”

We heard the “Shadow Music of Thailand” album a while back but haven’t dipped into it for too long. This Santo & Johnny style reverbed-out dream of the ‘50s lives eternally in Thai psych guitar.

25. David Bowie - “When I Live My Dream”

We do not condone the killing of any species of dragon, and I can only trust that neither dragon nor giant was harmed in the making of this fantasy.

[busyfish]

Tagged to do this by @punkahontus thank you.

Gender: Human girl

Birthday: October 7

Last movie seen: Guardians of the Galaxy 2

What do you post/reblog: Mostly art. Lots of special interest stuff actually. Just a lot of it usually comes in some sort of art form.

Last thing you googled: Buddy Armstrong. I also googled Bojack Horseman as well. 

Favourite blog: Honestly, my mutuals. Though like some people on here i know better than others and have been super cool to me or i just like seeing them post stuff or liking my posts. it’s nice to see they’re alive and well

@sarcasm-the-toad @rust-dust-and-guts @tragedyfound--us @lampshroomomg @scarsoftheshatteredsky are just some of the people who i’ve like either had good times playing games with or just had really nice interactions as whole. 

oh and @periberrytea and @serenityinsunrises and @breetheraven are all super sweet for leaving me kind messages and stuff and checking up on me and all that.

Also i feel it is truly criminal that @fragmentalize doesn’t have more notes on their art bc O M F G SERIOUSLY SO GOOD.

ps @symmetralove special mention bc i love all the symm stuff all the time. it’s great

pss i forgot to put how cool i think @drama-bomb is too.

(i am so sorry for swooning over everyone xD)

I love everyone though. You all have swell blogs and i’m actually a goon and try to go through and see everything i’ve missed because everyone’s got awesome stuff i want to see.

Dream job: honestly, i want to be a creative writer for professional wrestling. seems fun. or make games.

Dream trip: i am a stay at home gal.

What would be your first entry in a new diary? probably a lot of gibberish. I can't journal. i just spout out words

3 things you love about yourself: i do neat things, i like neat things, i am at times a neat thing

3 things you wish you knew how to do: be a person, fly a plane, communicate more fluidly with animals

Something you wish you had discovered/invented first: truly, i don't know. i don't really care about being first

3 qualities you like in a person: creativity, paitience, i like people who can be still and quiet without fuss.

3 qualities you dislike in a person: honestly, i just dislike people who make excuses for why they continually feel the urge to hurt other people.

Favourite planet: PLANET PISS

A resolution you make every year: i don't honestly. i don't like changes

Something you’re better at than most people: being a big old dumb.

Something you’re worse at than most people: preventing myself from continually being a big old dumb.

Favourite thing about Tumblr: cool dudes and LOTS OF AMAZING ART o m g Least favourite thing about Tumblr: honestly, i've seen Orisa porn because of tumblr. i will never forgive this site for that.

Weapon of choice: i dunno, is it neckbeard to be like "i kind of katanas my dudes" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ actually, moonlight greatsword. no one said this was based on reality.

Something not many people know about you: i'm pretty open honestly. Like truthfully tumblr's been like sort of an outlet for me to be like sort of way more open about myself than i normally am in real life or even like in game spaces and stuff mostly because like people are really brutal or shitty and forget that people are actual human beings with like real things affecting them. Like, i'm not a meme guys.

Favourite means of transport: i'm a stay at home gal

Favourite story: at the mountains of madness or i dunno, Post Office is a REALLY strong contender too.

Chicken or egg: I mean, it's far mor likely that what ever organism the chicken came from was laying eggs before it was properly a chicken yeah? I mean it's pretty clear that the chicken is a micro dino so yeah, egg?

Something that always makes you laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Oco4WYRdaU ALWAYS THIS.

I tag: @sarcasm-the-toad @draculateethtlsp @rileywasyes @scarsoftheshatteredsky @lampshroomomg @digital--liberator @serenityinsunrises

[straykatfish]

‘Podcast’ tour via collage.

The internal geography of the Grand Parade campus has changed since I was last there (1967-68) and so, inevitably, has the premise upon which art is made. At that time we were being psychedelic, free spirited, and often quite intensively introspective but to little purpose. Politics didn’t enter into our thinking.  But in this show, politics permeated everything that made its purpose clear; some of that personal, some social, and some encompassing global issues. Some gave us clues as to the raison d’etre of the work, the artist’s motivation or inspiration, their process and how it got there in the way that it did. But many didn’t; I’m a psychologist and that intrigues me. Communication feels central and while the art may be a communicatory channel in itself, if the message isn’t received by the viewer, or fails to spark something in the viewer, then I wonder if it can be said to have succeeded. I was there with a friend; we talked about finding ourselves looking at the last frame in the film, the last paragraph of the story, but with no idea of what led up to it.

The show covered three floors; the gallery area at ground level housing the Fine Art exhibits, a room behind this and part of the first floor was occupied by the Inclusive Arts students, and then on the second floor were the Digital Arts installations. In between, on the walls around a landing, were images from photography and fashion. They seemed displaced, temporarily put up in bed and breakfast rather than being allocated hotel rooms.

Fine Art

I think it’s an unavoidable fact that positioning a piece in elegant and purpose-built surroundings adds a kind of value and confers a dignity and gravitas it would find harder to accrue in less accommodating circumstances. Separating this out from the work itself is quite demanding – does this piece have an impact because of its inherent quality or simply because of where it is? Some pieces were certainly impactful: ‘The Tables are Turning’ for instance showed us paintings on the undersides of small tables that point to emerging restoration of political balance – what was beneath is finally coming to the top, a commentary on the people’s response to oppression. More bafflingly impactful – in terms of the space it took up and the voices played on loop – was a long row of cones wrapped in tights, each with a lipstick on top. This was designated a performance piece but as the artist was not there at the time of our visit, there was no dialogue to provide context. Two artists were on site and one of them came over to see what we had made of this piece. She tried to describe its origins and message but neither of us really understood. She herself was showing a very large abstract painting which occupied both physical and mental space in that its title did not give much clue as to its derivation. When I asked, the artist talked about being in the moment rather than having an end in mind.

The other artist on site was exhibiting a radiator piece which, when we found it, similarly gave away little as to its reason for being there. When we asked him though, he spoke fluently and eloquently about the how, why, and what of his exhibit and set it in a wholly understandable context. The radiator’s back story is one reflecting the horrors of war and represents a documented political assassination in Nazi Germany[1]. Knowing this immediately added the story to this final paragraph and I wondered why something of it did not accompany the piece since it made such a difference to our experience of it.

Some of the pieces were cheeky – ‘People Who Piss Me off’ for instance, an installation comprising a filing cabinet with ticker tape printed with the names, presumably, of those people, spilling out. I can sympathise, many of them piss me off too, and I had a quiet chuckle. Other pieces managed to distance themselves from us by being dull-coloured, abstract, and untitled which made us question ‘what it was for’ – what were we supposed to take away from this artist’s work? In the end, we took very little beyond wondering how long these pieces had taken to make and what had driven the artist to reach these solutions.

Another piece – small wedges of dark wood with collaged images on them attached to a large piece of wood and rising from the floor – was so well executed and had an aesthetic appeal with its colours and surfaces that there was an inherent impact. What it was saying was not so clear – were the two wedges on the floor lost or left behind, or were they are the first of a tumbling avalanche with the rest poised to follow? The label gave no clue and I would have liked a clue.

The overriding impression of this part of the exhibition was that, where context was provided – even just an idea of the developmental process – works became immediately more interesting and held value as a communication. We wondered, along with the artists themselves, what the people who visited made of the work when there was no one to ask; how the thousands of people who had not chosen to visit saw art when they were challenged to ‘experience it’ in a vacuum and whether this was why so many were not there. Are people afraid of looking foolish for not ‘getting it’, or do they see the whole business as an exclusive (and excluding) side show that isn’t for the likes of them?

Inclusive Arts

The next floor – fronted by a display in the area beneath the stairs that introduced the focus – was given over to the Inclusive Arts programme. This course is the only one in the UK offering artists the opportunity to express their work in collaboration with disadvantaged or ‘othered’ groups, and so works with people on the autistic spectrum, with women isolated by fear, with parents similarly isolated by the weight of caring for a disabled child, with voiceless people lacking connection with art and its positive effects. A sculpture constantly being remade illustrated the ways in which people, as I interpreted it, remake themselves in order to meet expectations; a closed hut with spy holes in it told us how much is hidden from us by so many; knots in fishermen’s rope was the entanglement many people experience in trying to escape or belong. The art on this floor was keen to talk and tell us about itself with postcards, printed sheets, labels and conversation. It wanted us to know and to understand.

  *************************************************************

Somewhere between this and the second floor was a small photography and fashion display. It felt like an afterthought, sitting there on the walls in a corridor between spaces.

        **************************************************************

Digital Arts

Finally, we found Digital Arts where not only did the artists want us to see and know but also participate and make the art, albeit temporarily. That we missed the literature was due not to their negligence but to the darkness of the rooms and our own inattention on entering. There was information on the doors; we slipped past it into the fascinating areas beyond and I had to chase people down later to find out who they were and the titles of their work.

Alberto Sande was unfortunately absent when we visited but very quickly came back with the thinking behind his stunning piece involving deep rhythms, and coloured images given a 3D effect by projecting them through a gauze curtain. A sofa gave us a front row seat and a keyboard – the musical sort – as a way to affect the visual display. Seeded by thinking around a number of ideas drawn from Alice in Wonderland, Deprez’s Drolatic Dreams of Pantaguel, and a Chinese essay on the Thirty Six Stratagems, this installation would have been a challenge to interpret right off the bat. The artist kindly sent me his abstract by email but I would have loved a conversation with him to explore the roads he took in making this piece. It was interactive and projected some deep dark sounds alongside the images and low frequency notes always speak to me of something profound.

Moshref’s Phoenix showed us the cyclical rise and fall of ideas and philosophies, emphasising the place of the phoenix as a positive influence. Using a range of equipment, this installation permitted participants to become the phoenix itself and change digital representations on a number of screens. Its particular focus though was resistance to the oppressive regimes that are systematically brutalising women, and we talked about the wings representing expansiveness; women taking up their space in the world by right and not by permission, and our world seeking collaboration as the antithesis to nationalistic insularity. As a visiting maker of the art in this context I could not help expressing my own views but as it was visually but not auditorily reactive, neither ‘Fuck Trump’ nor ‘and while we’re here, fuck Boris’ had any effect on the display.

Summary

Fine Art had a catalogue containing some but not all of the works, and works from a previous show which were not on display. It did not seem to see in its mission any reason to assist visitors in understanding the work but when we asked, those present gave eloquent and valuable responses. Fine Art occupies the best position in the show. Quite often I hear that art is something to appreciate without explanation, and this seemed to be the position taken here too. Sean Scully, in his recent documentary, appears not to be a subscriber to this view saying that there is an inherent arrogance in expecting people to do this, with the implied assumption that, if they fail, then they must be stupid [link to my blog post on art and meaning]. This goes back to the question I started to address with the two artists on site – that of their audience. Visitors were most likely self-selecting art aficionados and there is nothing wrong with that, but what of all those others who were not there, self-excluded because art is ‘not for them’ or they fear not understanding it? At the very least, this misses a marketing trick and one assumes these graduates are hoping to make a living from their work. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Fine Art occupies the main space and has the catalogue.

In contrast, Inclusive Art had all manner of explanatory leaflets, printouts on the walls, and postcards but no catalogue. Nor was their work in the first catalogue. These artists appeared very keen to talk about their motivations, the media they used, the collaborations with disadvantaged groups and individuals, and had produced work that spoke directly to those issues by involving the people affected in producing that work. I wondered later if any of them had been present at the show in the role of artist as they seemed not to have a presence when we visited.

Digital Art was a little harder to find and had only two exhibitors, but they made up for this with sheer enthusiasm and technical and artistic skill. Their ideas were expansive and the means of expression wide ranging. While one artist, Sande, was not present when we visited, his subsequent response to an email suggests he would have been as keen to involve us as participants in his interactive installation as was Moshref. The Digital Arts show was not just collaborative but also allowed us as visitors to influence the art itself.

[1] I lost the actual reference but a search using keywords Nazi Car Assassination brings up the heroic act of Jan Kubis who ran out in front of the open top car of high ranking SS officer Reinhardt Heydrich with the intention of shooting him. The gun jammed but he was able to throw a bomb which eventually killed Heydrich, probably saving hundreds if not thousands of lives. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18183099

Images from the day

        Slideshow

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Collage with pastels

University of Brighton MA Show 'Podcast' tour via collage. The internal geography of the Grand Parade campus has changed since I was last there (1967-68) and so, inevitably, has the premise upon which art is made.

[fapangel]

Egypt closes the Suez to American flagged ships. What happens?

A lot of political squawking and not much else, because even most American-owned ships are flagged out of a port of convenience. Practically speaking, the Egyptians would never piss off one of their longest-trusted and most supportive global allies by directly attacking their financial well-being in such a way. 

Theoretically speaking, the Egyptians have one of the best trained armies of the Arab states, and one of the best equipped, with a variety of upgraded Soviet-era stuff and more modern Western stuff. For SHORAD They have the Aspide 2000, Crotales, and our own Chaparral SAMs (basically a Sidewinder on a truck,) as well as Avengers/Stingers. They’ve also got Tor systems (SA-15,) and SA-6s (Buk missiles; these are listed as “modernized,” no idea if that means upgrade to the SA-11 iteration of the Buk system or what.) In the way of more immobile, fixed SAM sites, they operate upgraded SA-3s and MIM-23 I-HAWK systems, the Western equivalent of the SA-3. 

It’s hard to say how good a lot of this stuff will be without more information - Ausairpower has an entire page devoted to the issue of old Soviet equipment being upgraded by its users that know that shit’s dated as hell, and frankly, more info on just who has upgraded what and how, and what the consequences are for performance, is intel hard enough to get that even if civvies have it, you’ll have to shell out big bucks to Janes for it. We do have one good example that was found in the 2003 invasion of Iraq; the clever bastards had modified some SA-6 missiles with AA-8 Aphid IR seekers to make a hybrid heat-seeking SA-6. The SA-6, like the SA-2 and SA-3 before it, came equipped with (primitive) electro-optical systems to allow for “ballistic” launches; firing the missile unguided at an incoming aircraft on a calculated intercept trajectory - basically firing the missile like a very big AA gun with a director. This worked about as well as you might imagine, as they learned in Desert Storm, but they only did it because they’d learned that if anything with a HARM was airborne, turning on radars was suicide. An IR-guided SA-6 was an ingenious solution - the electro-optical systems were good enough to get the weapon into the ballpark (or “killbox,” at least,) in ballistic flight, upon which point the AA-8 all-aspect seeker had a decent chance of acquiring and tracking the target. 

All this is in addition to actual factory upgrades the manufacturers of the original Soviet systems are offering as part of the Russian’s ever-expanding arms export market. We do know what those can do, but who has bought them...? Who knows. Issues like this are why even the North Korean’s painfully dated SAM system isn’t taken for granted; in any serious war they’d be engaged and destroyed as quickly as opportunity and tasking permitted, rather than ignored as a non-threat that jammers alone could suppress. 

The Egyptian SAM network lacks any longer-ranged, theater-defense SAMs like Patriots or S-300s (medium-range,) or S-400s (long-range.) But they do have a very credible mix of short-to-medium range stuff, most of it road-mobile or at least semi-mobile, which is probably the best mix you could hope to have against NATO or America, which is extremely good at taking apart IADS systems at the seams, as we’ve been practicing it since Vietnam. It changes any prospective air campaign to “pressure” Egypt into opening the Suez into a battle of attrition, which is the best strategy against America. We currently have the problem England had at her peak - a massive military, but one that must be spread out over global commitments. 

On the other hand we also have something England did not; a very broad coalition of allies. Fucking with the Suez canal would rattle everyone, because if the Egyptians start with the Big Dog, they’ll be liable to close the canal to anyone in NATO next, and they’d be emboldened by any failure of America to immediately react. Mind you, America - and NATO - have massive economic and political power, so-called “soft power,” that can make life quite hard for Egypt in retaliation for such actions, so military force would be a very distant option... but for that same reason, any theoretical regime willing to break with America with such a hostile act as closing the canal to US-flagged ships might be one that doesn’t care about such things, and is seeking more to make a statement than anything else, in which case a counter-statement equally dramatic might be the only effective course of action. Sadly for Egypt, that kind of conflict favors the defender having a strong IADS more, (in my uneducated view, at least,) because the aggressor (America/NATO) would be looking for quick strikes delivering a very, very carefully calibrated amount of damage; enough to send a message but not enough to trigger an escalation. Plus, they wouldn’t have the time or luxury (or willingness to commit forces needed to keep Russia or China at bay elsewhere) for an extended reduction campaign of an IADS. Stealth assets are the go-to here, but they’ve logistical issues of their own - it’s one of the main reasons that our B-2 Spirits fly so many sorties straight from Missouri and back again, making 20-hour flights to bomb targets on other continents. Guam, for instance, only has one hangar that can cater to the delicate needs of B-2 bombers, which limits their forward stationing to two - maybe three - airframes. And even stealth aircraft aren’t invisible; some reduction of enemy radars is usually needed to guarantee non-detection, either via jamming or direct destruction. 

Without a proper IADS Egypt could still ring their plethora of short-range systems around important targets as densely as possible, and just focus on redeploying their (primarily mobile) radars so that they can flip new ones on as the US destroys them. This catches out the intruders - who’d oriented themselves to reduce their signature against the detected, emitting radars - by having them “pop up” on their flanks; at a good angle for detection and too close for the stealth to be effective. Then it’s a mad scramble missile duel; outgoing SAMs and incoming HARMs. Also, once an aircraft is detected, it tends to stay detected; once a radar knows where to look it can focus all its energy on that patch of sky, instead of constantly scanning the entire airspace. 

Unfortunately for Egypt (again,) there’s a counter to this that blends very well with stealth aircraft - cruise missiles. And we have the JASSM, which combines a stealthed weapon with the standoff advantage of cruise missiles - and it can be launched from a low-signature aircraft itself. Not that we’d necessarily need to go that far - again, I’m not sure how good Egypt’s upgraded equipment is, but outside of their Tor, Aspide and Crotale systems (which aren’t the bulk of their forces by far,) their weapons are of the generation that had inherent difficulties targeting low-flying weapons. The SA-3 and HAWK systems were designed to engage low-flying aircraft, mind you - but not terrain-following or sea-skimming ones hugging the deck at high subsonic, only 100-300 feet up. They can engage them, but they’ll have some significant performance degradation that more modern systems won’t. This is an inherent seeker limitation as far as I understand; whereas you can harden a system against ECM and such by “going digital” with upgraded, reprogrammed microcontrollers that are better at filtering out jamming interference, there’s not much to be done against reflections from the terrain; that’s a garbage-in/garbage out issue, as dictated by the seeker quality. Or maybe they can; I’m no expert on this techie shit. 

But with all that said, the fact remains that the Tomahawk - also extensively upgraded - is still the Tomahawk, a child of the 80s like many of the systems it’d face in Egypt. It’s rather vulnerable to modern air defenses (if it can’t fly around them for whatever reason) because it dates from the era where just being smaller than a plane, flying fast, right off the deck made something pretty hard to shoot down inherently. With modern GPS guidance (which frees up route planning; no need to avoid trackless desert for the sake of the TERCOM guidance system,) the datalink (allowing its waypoints to be reassigned on the fly,) and modern American C3 fusion (allowing operators to quickly steer missiles around or away from newly-detected “pop-up” threats like SAMs or radars,) there’s every possibility that a single sizeable Tomahawk attack could deliver the desired message without issue. Air-launched JASSM-ERs have enough range to damn near cross Egypt if launched from the coast; with their reduced signatures they’d be excellent for knocking gaps in the network at crucial spots, and offshore jamming support could play merry hell with fighter intercept attempts. 

Last thought - the Suez canal has actually been closed before, for years, which trapped fifteen merchant ships in the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of it. They were stranded for so ling (eight years) that the crews ended up setting up their own post office. (The crews themselves weren’t held hostage - the ship’s owners rotated out maintenance crews in three month shifts, and they eventually hired a Norwegian contractor to look after them.) What’s interesting is WHY the Egyptians closed the canal to all shipping - they couldn’t allow the Israelis to use the canal (fallout from the Six Day War,) but closing the canal to just their ships would’ve been so politically unacceptable that it was preferable to shut the entire thing down, blocking everyone, than to single out a single nation - even one they were fighting a war with, even one that held the opposite bank of the canal! It’s a good illustration of how serious freedom of navigation is in international politics, and why the US Navy regularly swaggers through excessive territorial water claims every year in FONOPS - not just in areas we have serious interests in, either. International law is a fragile gentleman’s agreement, and nobody rocks that boat lightly, if they can help it. 

[prorevenge]

A potential client tried to take advantage of me and I got her fired from her 'big-shot' marketing job.

Story Data: long story. 6517 votes. %96 upvote. highly popular. TL:DR at the end.

A little bit of backstory, I'm running a painting business over the summer as a Junior in college to pay for school. My prices are pretty fair as I hire college students and have a deal with Sherwin Williams as a contractor to get cheaper paint and materials.

Anyways, a potential client, we'll call her PC for pretentious cunt, scheduled an estimate with me about a month and a half ago for an interior bathroom job and a deck stain. I tell her the times I'm available, but she absolutely pushes for a time where I would have to rush over from a job site, do a hurried estimate, then run home to grab a bite of dinner before going to previously scheduled estimates. I'm a bit miffed but I said fuck it. Sales is hard, I should learn how to bend over backwards for clients. So I show up to do the estimate, and the whole time I'm getting my numbers together, she is talking me down, telling me how if she ran a business like I did, she would be fired from her big-shot marketing job immediately, and how I should be dressed better to respect the client. What I did to offend Her Majesty was I moved her plants to the side to be able the measure the deck better, and I came to the estimate in paint stained clothes since I had run over directly from the job site.

So I present the price of about $800 with a 10% day of estimate discount to book up the season and she says she needs a few days to consider it. Okay, fair enough right? I'll extend the discount a few days for her. So I come back a few days later expecting a yes or no answer and she sits me down and starts to haggle with me. At this point, I'm tired enough already from working in the sun all day and just want some food to stop the rumbles. After I give her another 5% discount just to close the job, she continues to haggle with me saying "The highest we can go is $600." When I finally tell her I can't go any lower on the job or I would actually lose money on it, she tells me that she got an estimate from another local company for $500 and that she wouldn't want me to match it because she wants to support the local community.

At this point, I'm exhausted and my brain is barely keeping me breathing but that price point doesn't sound right to me. I calculated my price based of a small profit, labor, and materials. Now I pay my painters $13 an hour and I hire college students. So if the other company is charging waaay less, they either pay their career painters even less (minimum wage where I am is $11) or the quality of paint is much lower. So I ask PC if they remember what paint the other company said they would use and she says she doesn't recall Fair enough, paint names are hard to remember if you don't see them that often. Then I ask if I could see their estimate contract to try to figure out why they were so much cheaper than I was. PC says that they didn't have an estimate sheet. Now this is a big no-no in any contracting business because you have to keep track of numbers, budgeted hours, etc. Now alarm bells are ringing in my head so I set a firm amount on the price of the previous estimate with the additional 5% discount which means that I make a measly $5 per hour I personally work on the job. PC finally agrees on the price saying "It's just $50 dollars, I can't see why you can't just give us more discount. At [my big-shot marketing job] I would give the customer a discount without hesitation" forgetting that A. The discount would be coming out of my broke college student pockets, not a big corporation and B. I already told her that I would only be getting about $5 per hour on the job even though she wants to "support the local community"

She asks if we take credit, but there is a 5% credit card fee that would come out of my already tiny slice of profit so I ask for check (which I told her we prefer during the original estimate). She tells me that she uses Chase which doesn't have a branch near us and that the nearest one is in New York (we are about half an hour from Boston). What?? Therefore, she cannot use check because she would have to order the checkbook from New York. I think, alright fine. I guess some people these days don't have checkbook. I reiterate that I will lose money on the job at that price point with the 5% fee tacked on and that I can wait until the checkbook arrives.

So I tell her that she can message or call me when the checkbook arrives and I can drive back to collect the deposit and have her sign the contract. On the way out, she tells me that the job needs to be finished before a certain date because she was having guests over. I explain to her that when I receive the deposit, I'll lock her in for a power wash of the deck which will need about a week to dry the we can stain it in one day. She mutters "... [something something] I can find the check book by tomorrow.." Come on now.. she just admitted to lying to me about having to order a check book from NY. So I say that's fine, let me know tomorrow afternoon so I can come by and finalize the contract.

When I get home, I decide to search up 'Chase branches near me' on Google because I found it really strange that there wasn't one closer that New York especially since we were pretty close to Boston. I kid you not, there was a Chase branch 14 minutes from her house. Now I'm pissed. I don't know what else she lied to me about so I call up my friend whose dad owns the company she talked about. He calls me later that day and says that he never did an estimate with her name or address.

I send her a message over Facebook Messenger (I do a lot of posts in local yard sale groups for exposure for my company so I set up estimates though Messenger) and called her out about the Chase branch, the check, and the "estimate" from the other painting company. She. Goes. Off. Here are a few memorable quotes from her rant - "You don't have the right to insult me like that, this is just your first year running a business and I've been working at [big-shot marketing job] for years now","it doesn't matter what I pay you because you're a young and money doesn't matter to you right now" (my facebook post literally says that I am running this business to pay for college) and my personal favorite "you people should be grateful that I even pay you $5 an hour for your work" (I'm Chinese).

At this point I'm ready to just block her and go to bed angry but I have an epiphany and just hear "[big-shot marketing job]" echo through my head. I take screenshots of the messages she sent me and slapped them along with a lengthy description of what happened in an email and sent copies to whatever email addresses I could find associated with the "big shot marketing company". I get an email back a couple days later from a different address than the ones I wrote to previously basically saying thank you for reaching out to us, this type of behavior is unacceptable and we will be conducting an internal investigation into PC. My Justice Boner is about half-mast but I think to myself, that'll be the last of it I guess.

Just today, I was messaging another old client and came across PC's conversation with me. I go to her profile and in the intro for her profile it now says "Works at Self-Employed." Instant full mast.

TL;DR A pompous, self righteous woman lies to me repeatedly to try to get a better deal on a paint job and when I call her out on her lies goes on a racist rant against me which I email to her company who fired her.

(source) (story by RicePaddyFarmer69)

[dapokemonmadster]

all primary numbers for the fic ask meme!!

Wow okay it’s really summer break I had to look up prime numbers to remember what they were HHHHHHH

2, 3 and 5 have been done!

7. What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?:Mmmm that’s a hard one, because the answer is, A FEW. The two at the top of that list are My safe Haven is With You and Avatar Special. Like I’ve said in the earlier asks, I love AS and really want to continue it, the problem is that, going back, I really don’t like what I’ve written for it so far. To fix it, I’d have to go back and rewrite a lot of it, which I don’t have the energy for right now. And MSHWY? Well... I just need to make myself do that, haha! I’ve got no good reason for postponing that one! I also hope to make a sequel for Enter the Fans some day. And make it much better than its predecessor. 

11. Have you ever written a fic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting?: YES, TOTALLY. Fresh and original concepts are very hard to come up with. Like our writing teachers always like to say, there are only a limited number of plotlines in the world. To be honest, I like to disagree with that, but the fact remains that even if you come up with something that you’ve never heard of, odds are somebody has already written something with an extremely similar plot or concept. However, a problem that many writers face (or really, I wouldn’t call it a problem but more of a challenge), is accidentally (or purposefully) including elements of some of your favorite pieces. I find that happens more often in fanfics, since you’re all working with the same characters. I ran into this problem most often with my (never posted) Overwatch fics. I’d read so many Pharmercy fics that they’d kind of gotten all jumbled together in my brain, and I couldn’t really recall which ideas were from which fic! And when I started writing my own, I was heavily influenced by this jumble of ideas to the point where I felt that I was just rewriting, in some ways, scenes that had happened in other people’s fics. 

13 has been done!

17. In your opinion, what’s your most overrated fic?:FFFFFF ENTER THE FANS. Yeah sure, it was decently written and funny, but like, it totally catered to fanon expectations and I could’ve written it so much better honestly. I mean, I had a lot of fun writing it, and I’ll be keeping it up forever so more people can enjoy it if it’s up their alley, and I can see how far I’ve come, but it was so... bleh. I dunno. And I think in some ways, my younger self was kind of offensive and uneducated about a few things which makes me a little less proud of it nowadays. 

19 has been done!

23. What’s the nicest review you’ve ever gotten?:OH MAN, THAT’S HARD SINCE I’VE GOTTEN A LOT OF REALLY NICE AND SWEET ONES (I love my followers, thank you so much!!), BUT LEMME TRY AND FIND A GOOD ONE!! (Also please note that a lot of my really nice ones were sent in by @beanmaster-pika, @vradmic, and @viktvr-nikiforov) Okay, but one that’s still pretty fresh on my mind and made me smile like crazy was from Wolvesrock14 on Fanfiction.net! “Dude. Dude! You see what you've written here? Well guess what, it's freaking amazing! Like, just, wow! You've written literally everything so–... Perfectly! And I mean everything. From the way the story's written to the way the characters think and interact– Just awesome. I teared up while reading this chapter. It was that freaking heartfelt and emotional. So yeah, GREAT job on that, and I can't wait to see what other heart wrenching things you've got in store. Until then, keep up the awesome work 'cause you're doing great!” THAT MADE ME SO HAPPY!!!

29. Does the division of your writing across fandoms line up with your reading? What’s the biggest discrepancy?:HONESTLY, NO. The most fics I read are for RWBY nowadays, and I’ve got what, 4 fics? (That’s actually more than I thought but whatever) I’ve published 10 fics, and 6 of those are for pokespe. So yeah, I’m slacking on those RWBY fics!! Also I’m going to publish a new story soon for a fandom I’ve never written for before (side eyes Fire Emblem), and I’ve only read like 2 fics for it, haha. But those two fics were both REALLY GOOD. Very high quality. 

31. Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right?:Hmmmm. HMMMM. That’s a tough one. I’ve never felt like I’ve had a hard time with any pokespe characters (reader, am I right? Or have I gotten some of them wrong?), but I also haven’t written for every spe character. Concerning RWBY... I feel like I haven’t written enough for it yet to give an honest opinion, but I feel like I’ve hit the mark on our four girls, at least, for how I interpret them. But you know what, I’m having a difficult time with Owain for my Fire Emblem fic. I think I’m getting his relationships and banter right, I just... I DON’T THINK I’M WRITING HIM ‘DRAMATIC’ ENOUGH. IT’S HARD TO FOLLOW HIS SPEECH PATTERNS, OKAY. 

37. Have you ever purposefully bashed a character/ship in a fic?:I can’t remember too well, but I think I did actually bash like, Tenthshipping (not purposefully, just the way it was written) and Morganiteshipping (in the AN) in Enter the Fans and Avatar Special. I really regret doing that, and hate how my narrow-mindedness when it came to ships affected me like that when I first began to write. Also I’ve probably bashed Sird but I DON’T REGRET THAT AT ALL LMAO. As a RWBY and Bu//mbl//eby fan/writer, I’m making sure to never bash Sun or Bl//ac//ksun because the fans and character really don’t deserve that and I like Sun plenty as a character, and some BB shippers can be really rude. 

41. If you cross-post your fics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site?:I post all my fics on FFN, Ao3, and Wattpad. Though Wattpad’s fallen off the map a little. I like Ao3 the best, in terms of it being easy to manage and nice to look at, though I always seem to get more attention on FFN!!

43. Your least popular?:Uuuh am I allowed to look this one up it’s A Night of Diamonds. (I’m still pissed at myself for not coming up with a better name, ugh) Ambershipping isn’t too popular in the spe fandom, so I’m not surprised, and RWBY fics tend to get more attention that spe fics (though my two most popular fics are pokespe hahaha). 

47. If someone you know in real life who isn’t involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?:

DEPENDS ON WHO THEY ARE. MY MOM’S ACTUALLY ASKED TO READ MY SAFE HAVEN IS WITH YOU AND I’M GONNA LET HER I JUST NEED TO POST THE BEES REUNION HAHAHAI had my mom watch all of RWBY with me, so I’m actually fine with her reading my stuff. And I’d let a few other friends read my fics, though it depends on how close to me they are. Also, for the record, if any of my irl friends WANTED to find me, I’m pretty sure they could. My username for everything is... very consistent so I’m not hard to find. Also I’d probably recommend Flirting 101 because it’s not essential to have context to enjoy. 

[thewritingbranch]

Kinda Complicated | M.C.

Guess who’s back, back again? Noelle’s back, tell a friend.

Okay yeah, I’m sorry for that. But I’m back! I have like 7 drafts just waiting to be posted. By the way, I’m still looking for a co-writer, so if you’re interested, message this blog. Also, send in your requests! I’ll go now and let you guys read this.

Requested: nope. I just liked this concept

Summary: based off of the song by Scott Helman. If you haven’t heard it, you can listen to it here. This also may or may not be based on an adventure I had with my best friend.

Warnings: some swearing and mentions of drinking

By the way, for any of you who aren’t Canadian, American or Puerto Rican, Pet Smart is a pet supply store. I believe it is called Pet Supermarket in Europe.

Also, there is mention of drinking at the end. Drink responsibly kiddos and please don’t drink if you’re underage.

Last little announcement, I promise. I’m Canadian. I spell certain words with a ‘u’ (p.ex.: favourite). Please don’t get mad in my inbox if you spell it differently. 

“You are crazy! You can’t climb that, you’ll get us kicked out!” y/n said

“I am not crazy! Also, challenge accepted” Michael answered

“Michael I don’t care how hard you try, you are not Barney Stinson or Neil Patrick Harris.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I am! I am Barney Stinson IN THE FLESH y/n. And just because you said that I will climb this Pet Smart aisle and get us kicked out. And just to make matters worse for you I will do it all while singing Fergalicious by Fergie.”

“Okay firstly, you aren’t Barney Stinson, you can't get laid for shit and you sure as hell can’t pull off a perfect week. Secondly, do I get to sing Fergalicious with you?”

“How dare you! I was gonna let you be my backup singer but then you said that. You only get to sing Fergalicious if you climb this shelf with me.”

“Oh fine. I will use my non-existent upper body strength to climb this shelf with you. But only because I want to sing Fergalicious.”

“Fergalicious is the best bait. We begin the climb on three, okay?”

“Okay.”

“One-.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

“On three or after three?”

“On three! I just said that!”

“Fuck off.”

“Aww, I love you too.”

“Onetwothreego”

Y/n started climbing before she even hit two, leaving a pissed off Michael on the ground of the Pet Smart.Y/n began to sing Fergalicious right after the word ‘go’ was uttered, forcing Michael to be her backup singer rather than Fergie herself (bless her soul).

“Fergalicious definition make them boys go loco. They want my treasure so they get their pleasure from my photo. You could see me, you can’t squeeze me. I ain’t easy, I ain’t sleazy.” y/n, who was already half way up the shelf, sung.

On the ground, Michael just rolled his eyes. Y/n got to the top of the shelf and threw down a dog bed to hit Michael in the face while yelling:

“Suck my dick, bitch”

“Rotostatic” He yelled back. It was their warning word.

The word they yelled to warn the other of nearby authority figures. They had used it since freshman year of high school. It was the name of the local carpet cleaner’s shop. His truck had passed them while they were climbing their school roof in the 9th grade. That word had helped them avoid expulsion so many times. That word was engraved on the inside of the gold heart shaped necklace Michael had gotten y/n the year they both turned 16. Many people would argue that engraving ‘rotostatic’ on a necklace ruins it but y/n loved it. The necklace is still being worn daily a year later.

As soon as the word left Michael’s mouth, y/n climbed down two shelves and jumped the remaining 4. Michael began pretending to look interested in the dog bed that had been thrown at him and y/n was doing the same, but with that bed's competitor. 

Whenever this type of thing happened, they pretended to be a couple debating two competing products. They had done this with creams, ribbon, protein powders, eggs (that was their favourite story to tell. How they got away with smashing eggs on each other's heads in public), condoms, tampons, and now dog beds. They both thought it was pretty amazing.  

An employee came to the aisle they were in and asked if everything was okay.

“Everything is perfect. The only problem is my wife and I seem to be disagreeing on which dog bed is better. What’s your opinion?” Michael answered. The employee let out a sigh and explained that the dog bed y/n was holding was of a better quality. 

They thanked her and she walked away. She mumbled to her co-worker:

“I think they got a disease or something.” Her co-worker nodded along. Neither of them tried to make it subtle.

“Disease huh? Last time I checked, I only had you and you only had me.” Michael whispered to y/n

“Fuck ‘em. Also since when did we agree to bump me up from girlfriend to wife?” y/n answered as they made their way out of the store, both of them subtly flipping off the employees and hoping they would notice.

“Why are you complaining?” he shot back. He wrapped his hand around her shoulders and they made their way to their ride.

“Hey, Mike you remember that one time we went to PetSmart?” 

“How could I forget? After all, we are banned now” He answered y/n’s question with a chuckle 

That was nearly a year ago. Nowadays, Michael and y/n rarely ever have time to have crazy adventures like that one, but when they do, you sure as hell can bet they’ll do the stupidest thing you can imagine. 

The only downside to that is that Michael is now famous, so everyone is on the lookout for his face. It makes doing borderline illegal things way more difficult.

“I miss that,” they both said at the same time. Once they realized what had happened, they were both laughing their asses off. They always thought they had some kind of telepathy and moments like those just confirmed their theory.

“Anyways, I got this tweet and it’s a link to the urban dictionary. Someone put our friendship on the site.” y/n said after they had both calmed down

“Damn that’s amazing! What does it say?” he answered

“A friendship where some days you shine and some days you rust. Reminiscent of y/n y/l/n and Michael Clifford’s friendship” y/n read off of her phone 

“Is it just me or do I feel like they left out a meaning?” 

“See I asked the person who tweeted this out that and they said they ‘couldn't find a word for our kind of insane’ I find that to be quite stupid, to be honest” 

“I agree.”

“With me or with the tweet”

“That’s up to you to figure out”

“Goddamit Michael”

“Aw I love you”

“I love you too you sick asshole. Wanna go do something borderline illegal?”

“Y/n you know I can’t do that. There’s gonna be paparazzi, we’ll get caught,” he said sympathetically 

“Fine. Wanna get drunk while listening to Green Day?” she sighed

“Sure. What song do we begin with?” he answered

“The usual,” she winked 

Part 2?

Masterlist

[thing1ewot-blog]

Moonrider – Forum Troll / Fail Spy

Well, folks, here we go with our first troll of the new year. And the winner is:

MOONRIDER!

Congratulations, Moonrider. Now take a bow…and while you’re down there, kiss our ass you ugly, bearded, fat fuck. (No, the shave didn’t help you man. You looked better with that ugly-assed mug covered up…but we’ll get to that in just a few moments.

Now, our history with Moonrider goes back to when this site was first getting set up. I was, at the time, only a passive part of what was going on. Gomez was trying like hell to set up a forum for the site at the time and was just getting his ass handed to him by a bunch of fucking Wotlabs trolls that were spamming it non-fucking-stop.

And it was Moonrider who kept saying over and over again that he was blocked and couldn’t register his name and that Gomez had banned his ass.

Of course, none of that shit was true.

They even set up an account in his name FOR him and he made some other stupid shit accusations against them and I think at that point they just said, “fuck it” and moved on.

Moonrider has always been an asshole. He never has anything good to say about anybody or anything other than himself, which is funny since the ugly fuck doesn’t have a whole shitload going for him. But I digress…

Here’s the type of asshole Moonrider is – he’ll post this in a response to somebody:

But when somebody else does essentially the same exact thing, he posts this:

In other words, Moonrider is allowed to use images in response because he has no fucking brains or vocabulary, but if anybody else does it then they’re a fucking idiot that needs to go back to school.

That’s Moodrider. That’s how he rolls.

So here’s the next question, who is this prick?

Well, you guessed it, we’re going to tell you. Moonrider’s name is Jesse Woodson. Ahhh fuck it…here you go:

Jesse H. Woodson 22109 Countryside Ln Lignum, VA 22726 Facebook MySpace (YES!!! He has a fucking MySpace Page!!!)

We’ll pause for you long enough to stop laughing and clean up the shit you just spewed out of your mouth all over the fucking monitor.

So here he is in all his glory, folks:

Yep.

Ugly.

And fat.

Just like almost all of them. It’s so fucking predictable it’s almost disappointing, isn’t it?

So, that’s it then. That’s him. Typical fucking World of Tanks, ugly, fatass troll.

UPDATE 1/6/18:

So Leftist brought to our attention the fact that Jesse made a bit of an ass of himself over at the Wotlabs forum when they changed the colors of the WN8 scale back in 2014. Apparently, he cried like a little bitch over it, then got essentially neg repped / shamed off the board completely.

That lasted about two weeks before he crept back saying his wife had died of cancer and he was burying her that Wednesday.

WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK?!?!

His wife has cancer and is dying so he’s worried about and bitching about colors on stats in a free-to-play pixel tank game?

HO LEE SHIT!!!

How do we know this? Well, let’s look at a few things:

Here’s his Facebook page where he announced he was engaged to a lady named Erin Beach. That’s in 2013 as stated.

So a year later, he’s crying like a bitch over stats, gets neg repped and shamed to death, vanishes, then comes back announcing she’s dead of cancer:

You know, that would be very sad but for one small little detail.

Here she is just this past October:

Pretty damn nice looking…especially for an alleged corpse.

And we have her Facebook page which we’re not going to post, but it’s also alive and well. She’s a girl after God’s own heart. She’s going back to school to get her degree and working her ass off at two jobs to take care of her family while shit-for-brains Jesse plays fucking eye-spy and pixel tank games.

Nice going, dipshit. You pissed away a woman most guys dream of finding over a fucking free-to-play pixel tank game.

So where does the “spy” thing come in? Well, this is where it gets dicey. This is either a complete, total, epic fail on his part or the most staggering set of circumstances to occur since John Wilkes Booth leaped down to the stage with a smoking gun in hand after he didn’t shoot President Lincoln.

Oh wait…

Anywho, so I get this mysterious email. Here it is in it’s entirely:

Guys,

I often disagree with your approach. And I think your political commentary is shoddy and takes away from your purpose. But with those digs I just wanted to tell you:

Rita published this crap about a skin in the console game and didn’t contact anyone for statements, didn’t realize that WG can take anything they want that users post to the forums etc. My point is, it was shoddy journalism.

While I don’t agree with your editorial slant, you guys do great investigative work. Undeniable. And the quality of your work is a sharp contrast in comparison to the gossip column Status Report has become.

I check the site out. I have a different view. In the end you have a right to your approach and you do some great work.

I do PR work in DC. You fact check better than a lot of major networks and papers. In a time where journalism has really devolved to printing gossip, you guys have some respectable principles. Diversity of opinion is great when the opposing side has command of the facts. It’s why I keep reading your stuff.

You can print this if you want. I sent this privately simply because it is partially critical. Please don’t use my name or phone if you do.

I am a crappy 50% player in the game who struggles passed tier 8, by the way.

Christopher Alexander 202.779.8387

I responded back cordially:

We never expected for everybody to agree with us. Hell, that’s not even REMOTLEY possible.

We were just sick to death of never having a voice. Of the Wargaming power clans who are also the moderators deleting anything and everything that shows who they really are and what they’re really all about while putting their own bullshit narrative into place by nothing but pure censorship.

If we get it wrong, it’s not because we just fucking made it up. We’re simply telling it how we see it with the information we actually hunt down and find.

Thanks for the letter. No offense is taken. We’re not above criticism (god knows we’ve gone ’round and ’round with Scorpiany on more than one occasion), but criticize us. Don’t come on our site trying to troll us with your bullshit like they do on the official forum. You’ll notice that Scorpiany still hangs around.

Thanks for the letter. Believe it or not, we’re getting more and more just like it almost daily now.

Regards,

Thing 1

So then, VERY quickly, he comes back with this:

Well… The fact that a dude named Thing 1 could bets his beat better than half the DC press corps (on either side of political spectrum) pretty awesome.

You guys have your thing, and I get it. But I’d love to see you guys sit down with Wargaming and do an interview. You’d need to be softer in your tone and that may not work with your intent, but that would be something.

While I am not as negative about them in general, there media relations are poor, and I doubt they would do it.

Funny, Chieftan and I were in adjacent units in Iraq (I was a Scout) and a few years ago I was in a match and chatted with him. When I explained what I do now he encouraged me to apply for as their PR head.

That would have been a tough job.

So they invest in the new tech. Does this mean they stop being accountants now and spend money to enhance the game? Or will they be more arrogant and double down with the attitude that the graphics fixes everything so stop complaining about your tier 8 you bought perpetually being feasted on by tier 10s.

Guess we’ll know soon.

So, instantly, I’m like:

So what WAS an apparently innocent email now turns into “I know the Chieftain” and “you should sit down with Wargaming”.

SAY FUCKING WHAT?

So, I make a couple of calls and go into investigation mode.

The guys email address is: christopher.alexander.dk@gmail.com

Why would DK, a multinational fucking publishing/media company, use fucking Gmail? Well, folks, they wouldn’t. I made a phone call and it turns out not only does DK NOT use Gmail, they have never heard of anybody named Christopher Alexander and are sure that he and his message are a complete fraud as far as they are concerned.

OK. Cool. So who is he then?

Probably best to run the phone number he provided. So I make another call and get that done. I also open the source on the email itself and find the final IP address of the original sender:

That, folks, is the IP of the cell phone that sent the email.

It’s an unregistered, pre-paid cell phone. Oh how convenient, eh? But we do know where it was used last. It was last registered bouncing off a tower in close proximity to Jesse’s house.

Well, let’s look at a few pictures to help you all visualize this better. Here is Jesse’s house:

Now, if you zoom out from that, you’ll see where the cell phone last registered:

Folks, that is one hell of a coincidence, is it not?

But then the question arises, why would he go to all the trouble? Well, we have a theory on that. You see, we think he thinks that he’s smart. He wanted to see what we would do, and if one of us would call the unlisted, pre-paid cell so they could fuck with us or something.

I don’t really know.

But I do know this: Moonrider came to this site earlier to see if we had published anything. First time he’s ever been here, folks. Today. Right after all this shit went down, he shows up.

Now folks, any ONE of these things in and of itself means nothing.

But ALL OF IT?! What the fuck are the odds?

Less than zero, folks.

[odilekuronuma]

Magi: What went wrong?

This is in the same vein as the Berserk post, but you’ll find that  it differs wildly from it, since 

A- the problems that Magi is facing are totally different from Berserk’s. 

and spoiler alert 

B- Berserk is still good. Whereas Magi isn’t.

No use beating around the bush. The quality of storytelling in the main manga at least has declined dramatically, to the point that i really don’t see the point in reading it anymore, not even for closure. It really feels like Ohtaka doesn’t try anymore, that she completely dropped the ball.

And I will try to give a justification to this claim. And as usual I’ll try to be as unbiased as possible.Also this might very well be my last Magi related post, because as I just said I don’t plan on catching up anymore, I really don’t care about the ending, which saddens me of course since I devoted a large amount of my time discussing it on various sites ad nauseum.

So if you came here because of Magi then I really am sorry, but I’ll try to make this one worthwhile. 

In order to figure out what went wrong, we have to ask ourselves what are the strengths of Magi. Magi’s strengths as a somewhat unconventional shounen were: the sense of adventure, the comedy, the politics, the plot which mostly made sense and of course the characterization.So let’s go over each one.

I- The adventure

The first 100 chapters of Magi were filled with adventure, which in Magi comes mainly in the form of dungeon diving. Even if the action scenes themselves aren’t perfect, and in general they’re not Ohtaka’s forte, it still is that the adventure was one of the main components of what made Magi so appealing. But quickly we saw Ohtaka moving away from that, and even the World exploration arc couldn’t save the sense of adventure, since dungeon diving was no longer a thing. Furthermore it managed to divide the main cast, and as such a good chunck of the interactions between them were lost, and back then a lot of focus was devoted to Magnostadt, so it doesn’t feel like the attention was divided equally between Aladdin, Alibaba and Mor.

Why is adventure so important? Well it is after all a shounen manga, many of them feature some sense of adventure, with series like OP being the prime example of that. And it’s not like Ohtaka simply ran out of ideas for adventure, she could have had any other real dungeon (Belial isn’t the norm for dungeons) or she could have explored some of the nations that were only mentioned briefly in the manga or the artbook, but nope. And I can attribute it partially to the fact that she got too focused on the politics.

II- The comedy

Not every shounen has to feature comedy, but most if not all of them do. Magi’s comedy was one of my favourites, but I do realize that it can be rather personal, and not two people will find the same joke funny. Nevertheless the comedy serves mostly to lighten the mood, which is very important when you’re having arcs after arcs of very dramatic stuff. 

Sadly while the first 100 chapters featured a good deal of it, the tone got much more serious, and a lot of the comedy was lost through the arcs starting from Magnostadt. And in recent years, at least in the main manga,the jokes all came at Alibaba’s expenses, and the running joke about him not having a girlfriend became old quickly.

But some might not find it necessary to have comedy at all in their manga, especially Japanese humour which isn’t always appreciated by everyone, to which I say it really is missing the point. The point is not to just feature random jokes, it’s more about finding the right tempo and the balance between serious and non serious moments. Once you do that you’ll find it’s easier to keep the readers interested.

III- The politics

Ah the meat of this whole post. The politics. Usually I see them as Magi’s forte, Magi is unconventional because of it, because you’ll find that everywhere else Ohtaka does follow the shounen tropes, sometimes to the letter. 

Magi is always regarded as different because of it, which sure is refreshing, because as it stands Magi isn’t so much about the fights, and more about the politics. And while Ohtaka has always had some degree of it ever since the beginning, there used to be more balance between the politics and the adventure and shouneny(is that even a word?) aspects.

But around halfway through the manga, the politics has started to overshadow everything else. The problem is not just the fact that the balance between action and politics was lost, but the fact that the politics themselves aren’t that good. A prime example of that is the Kou civil war and everything that lead to it. 

More than just the politics not being good, it even doesn’t pay off. Case in point with the latest arc in Magi. Alibaba and co going to the Sacred Palace and trying to argue with Sinbad, only for the latter to be fucked over by David. And we go from a situation where politics seem to get somewhere, to straight shounen mindless fighting,wtf.Can’t get someone to agree with you? Fight them.It happened in the Kou Civil war,  And that is literally what happened with Sinbad, but also now with David.

 So the politics don’t seem to pay off, because of that it doesn’t seem to me it warrants having so much focus given to it.All of that discussion and bringing arguments and trying to convince someone, usually the villain, don’t seem to work. So why devote so much time to it, when apparently you can just beat someone senseless?

I’m fine with having some degree of politics, but it shouldn’t overshadow the rest, and considering it’s not even some clever politics, but sometimes it literally feels like someone just talking out of their ass (literally each time with Aladdin) then you’re simply alienating it.

IV- The plot

With each manga or any work really, the plot needs to be somewhat consistent. Meaning that each plot twist would have to be somewhat logical, but with Ohtaka it has been rather nonsensical especially as of late.

The plot seems to be all over the place, and that Ohtaka changes her mind all the time, as much as she’s changing underwear maybe. There are various instances of the plot having twists just for the sake of having them, and I think it all started with Alma Torran and the Arba twist. Even if we argue that it was ambiguous, the fact that David was never so much as hinted at, and yet have this much importance, pretty much came out of nowhere.Now an author can always create a character if he wants to, but the mere fact that David has pretty much manipulated everyone, and for the longest time Al Thamen were thought to be the villains yet turned out to be pawns, is nothing short of being mindboggling.

And his prophetic writing doesn’t help, it gave some exposition about certain plot points that weren’t even hinted at at that moment. Basically it feels like Ohtaka decided to make a new villain out of scratch, perhaps because Al Thamen’s motivation just doesn’t seem to have been that strong. Because even if we argue that they had some legitimate reason to be pissed at Solomon, it certainly doesn’t explain why they were dead set on destroying the new world. So their position there is less legitimate, and as such they come off as weak, cliche villains. And David is also as cliche as they can get.

And the last arc features a good amount of plot twists just for the kicks of it. Oh Sinbad is dead, nope he’s not. David became Sinbad’s bitch, nope it isn’t and David has been manipulating him all the time. See what I mean?

V- The characterization

While Magi offers a good deal of characters you can sympathize with, and they all have some colourful personalities, it really is that the characterization isn’t always top notch, especially in the last arc. I always had reservations about characters like Alibaba or Kouen, because for the former he seemed for the longest time to not have grown as much, and basically he did nothing. And the for the latter, just all around being a hypocrite who denied Hakuryuu, even though he himself didn’t want to be a king.The Alma Torran folks especially were pretty immature, so someone like Solomon really came off as a brat who thought he could fix things, but just made them worse. And while he realized his mistake, it was too late and we haven’t seen or heard of him much since, to really understand where he came from and what he learned from that experience.

And the prime example of the poor handling of the characterization is Sinbad himself. Yes, while it was predictable he’d want to make himself God at one point (and it’s not sure he succeeded) it still is that his visit to the Sacred Palace, and even before that saw his character being handled in the most horrible way. Instead of giving him more reasons to become God, and his experiences as a human having a bearing on the situation, Ohtaka simply chalked it up to him just being “greedy”. Even afterwards when he seems to have finally come to an understanding with Alibaba and co, he seems to side with David instead, out of the blue, just because they share the same fate? It looks like Sinbad can’t make up his mind, or even that he’s a jerk.

And let’s not even talk about the fact that he legitimately wanted to orchestrate a genocide, which if you read SnB would be very difficult to swallow, considering how Sinbad reacted to the villagers getting slaughtered on Barbarossa’s orders, and also how deeply he was touched by the destruction of Sindria 1.0 which is nothing short of being a genocide.

So yes the characterization has been especially disappointing.

Conclusion

So Magi’s main issues have to do with the story itself, the nonsensical characterization, and the fact that Ohtaka uses plot twists as often as possible to try to garner some interest, but it just feels like she’s going  with whatever she likes atm, and changing her mind all the time.

Other issues pertain to the lack of balance  between various aspects of the manga that made its appeal, or even scrapping them off completely. And I’m sure there’s other issues I haven’t talked about.

There is also too much focus on the pairings and the romance, which not only is divisive, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening at the right time-coughAlimorcough.While shounens aren’t exactly known for featuring romance, sometimes it just doesn’t seem warranted, and it is downright happening at the wrong time, which as I previously pointed out greatly divided the fandom. And trust me the last thing you’d want to see if a forum blowing up due to Alibaba and Mor getting together too early, or even hinting at the possibility of Aladdin and Kougyoku having something going on, which it did.

So based on all these facts, I’m tempted to say that Magi is NOT what it used to be, it is NOT in any way shape or form good, that Magi greatness we experienced in the first half of the manga is mostly gone. I can chalk it up to a few things, including the fact that Ohtaka could be pressured by her editor to change plot points which she has done in the past and is prolly still doing. But mainly I think Ohtaka simply gave up, and can’t wait to finish her story, which as you know might end prematurely, since I think she could have explored way more things since she hasn’t shown all of the countries in the NW or most of them. And with the possibility of parallel universes she could still have the story go on for longer than that, but instead the manga is ending. 

And it sure feels like she has stopped trying overall. Of course this is my opinion and you might not agree with it, but that doesn’t invalidate it.

Thanks for taking the time to read my Magi posts so far, and I hope you can continue to read some of my posts even if they’re not Magi related.