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gillianthecat · 2 years

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we finally get to see where this image from the opening credits comes from!

My Only 12% — episode 14 the final episode

The first half of this episode is probably very moving, but I planted my feet and refused to be moved. The mother's death is just to raw and real for me to want to feel right now, and swerves too close to real world worries, so I put up the gates to my emotions and watched it in a detached sort of way. It didn't work entirely; I almost broke down a few times, especially when Pao was talking to Cake about his father, but if I'd let myself really take it in and feel it I would be too devastated to function.

What I did notice through these fortress walls is how much Eiw is able to take Cake's love and support for granted, and how much I live that for them. Pretty much as soon as they finally started dating the world handed them this enormous crisis and they said we will be solid. We will face this together. And I love that Eiw has enough faith in Cake's support that he's able to just accept it. There was a moment at the funeral where Cake came up to Eiw and was touching his shoulder (because of course Cake comforts with touch) and Eiw didn't acknowledge him, didn't even turn to look. They are like an old married couple already, where Eiw isn't even questioning whether Cake will be there for him. It's as if Cake is already part of his own root structure.

And god. I have so many feelings about Pao (and Hom) asking Cake to take care of Eiw. One of the is that it is so wonderful that their love and relationship isn't even questioned. Cake is already part of the family. Another emotion is, my god they are all so young! This is too much for them. This is too much for me. Cake's serious devoted expression as he agrees to take care of Eiw. Of course he would be doing that anyway, but he is like a young acolyte taking orders before god. And. And of course is grieving for Eiw's loss, but also his own! Nate was a huge part of his own life I'm sure, even if she wasn't his mother.

I'm not sure I understand this rush to have Eiw forgive his father. It's literally the same day as the funeral. But they are all grieving children, all still so heartbreakingly young trying to take on grown up responsibilities, so I will chalk it up to that.

This all really does feel like an intentional anti-smoking campaign. Not just that the mother died of lung cancer, but that so much time has been devoted to first the doctor and then Eiw taking about the dangers of smoking.

I'm not sure yet what I think and feel about most of the final moments of this show being spent on this tragedy. I suspect that I will have to watch Love of Siam to better understand their choice to end this way. One thing this tragedy is doing is complete wiping any question of homophobia off the board. My vague impression (and I could be totally wrong, I've read very little about it) is that Love of Siam ends with homophobic tragedy and the young lovers separated, or perhaps a young crush that can't get off the ground. This feels like perhaps a response and a corrective to that — they are giving us tragedy, yes, but in a way that has nothing to do with queerness and that only serves to strengthen the queer characters' relationship.

I'm not sure what I think about all this focus on Eiw's relationship with his father. It feels a bit out of left field. Not Eiw's feelings; those make sense. Just narratively speaking—that so much of the last hour of the show is spent on this character we'd barely heard of before. The show of course has always been meandering in its story, but I guess I just wanted more of a focus on the existing relationships rather than introducing someone new, and dumping a whole lot of emotions on it.

This stuff with the dad is going on for so fucking long. I do not care about this shit dad. I do care about Eiw's feelings about him, in theory, but in practices... I think this scene is just going on way too long and I'm emotionally drained from feeling/refusing to feel about Nate's death and everyone's loss. So all this stuff with the dad is leaving me cold and annoyed.

Oh great, only 15 minutes left and now we have more of Peak trying to hit on Hom. I'm already grumpy about the dad stuff, so I know this is just going to piss me off. And I guess everything with Cake and Eiw was considered wrapped up in episode 12 basically, because it's looking like there will be at most 12 minutes for them to focus on each other.

Ok, Peak didn't irritate me as much as I feared. But that was mostly because I didn't care at all about them, and nothing really happened or was discussed. Hom just changed her mind.

Oh. Time skip. Hmm.

Yep, definitely an intentional anti smoking campaign, with Peak throwing out the cigarette pack at the end, and that lingering shot of it in the trash.

---

Ok. It's been a day since I watched it and I'm going to try and process my thoughts about this ending. I think I was... disappointed? I think I didn't love it, though I'm not sure that it's objectively bad. Perhaps if I'd let myself really feel the grief of Nate (the mother)'s death, my experience would have been different, and the happy normalcy after the time skip would have felt more joyous to me. It was sweet, there was nothing wrong with it, I guess I just wanted... more with Cake and Eiw maybe? It wasn't that I thought the show needed it - everything felt sufficiently resolved with them, I'm just greedy for more of them being cute together. And, although I don't know if it's a good idea to actually include this in the show, I'm curious about how they managed the transition from pining best friends to boyfriends.

But very little in this show feels accidental to me; despite the somewhat meandering storytelling the structure of it all feels deliberate and thought out. So I don't think the reason that the majority of time (at least 75%) in the last episode was spent on Eiw's family - grieving their mother and the relationship with the father - is just because they ran out of time for the story they wanted to tell (as is my suspicion with The Eclipse). The whole series has been about more than Cake and Eiw's relationship - it's been about their families and friends. And, I'm just articulating this for myself now, what it's really been about is watching Eiw grow up. His love for Cake has been a part of that, but not the only part. And so if I look at the last episode through that lens, it makes a little more sense to me.

I still wonder if this ending was in deliberate conversation with the ending of Love of Siam. Since I still haven't watched it, I don't know what that conversation is about, but it did feel like I was missing something, and since it would make sense for that to be the case. I do want to watch it, once my attention span improves to focus for more than five minutes at a time and I can resume watching more media.

I still think the emphasis on the father felt a bit like it came out of left field though. Because although Eiw's feelings about him made perfect sense, I don't remember them ever coming up in previous episodes, and I think that final confrontation and forgiveness would have been more resonant if the seeds of it had been scattered earlier. And, not knowing the father at all, I found it difficult to care about either his guilt or his "redemption." I also was very annoyed at Pao and Cake for pushing so hard and so quickly on the idea that Eiw needed to let go of his anger. Let the boy grieve! His mother just died. Not that I think it's unrealistic they would have done that, but it annoyed me and the show never questioned if they were right.

I did notice that in the first or second episode Eiw was upset with Cake for smelling like cigarette smoke, so that was one seed that was planted early. And honestly, I think I don't mind that parts of the last two episodes were so blatantly an anti-smoking PSA. I think these sort of Messages annoy me much less when they're in shows not from my country, because I can let them go as not aimed at me and so don't feel lectured at in the same way. And I agree! smoking is bad for everyone's health. Plus, it feels heartwarming in some way that BL shows are considered popular and impactful enough to be useful in transmitting a public health message to people.

The time skip. Another thing where I didn't love it, but I'm not actually sure it was a bad idea. I guess it's often frustrating to miss the characters growing and changing. The reason I don't necessarily think it was a bad choice though is, again, because Eiw didn't really need to do more growing. He just needed time to grieve and heal, and since the show was about growing up, we didn't need to see the time spent healing. And it was really good to see him happy and thriving with Cake and his friends at the end. And I did like that they showed the friendship groups and the family together and still close.

I was confused about the passage of time though. It made it seem like Cake had returned at the beginning of Eiw's second year of university, and the mother died around the end of his third year/beginning of the fourth? (Eiw's voice over at the end said it had been one year since his mom had died, and that he was about to graduate while Cake was entering his fourth year.) Which was right after they got together. So Cake and Eiw were jealous codependent besties for two years before they finally became boyfriends? It did not seem that long, it felt like a matter of months. Perhaps I misunderstood something, or perhaps they just kind of fucked up the timeline. It doesn't really matter, anyway.

Peak and his pursuit of Hom. Whatever. Still don't really like it, still don't even want to examine it enough to figure out exactly why.

So. In conclusion, I overall really loved this show. I love Cake and Eiw, I thought the actors were fabulous, especially Santa. I loved the meandering, relatively naturalistic style of storytelling and cinematography. I would definitely re-watch it. Even though I'm not currently thrilled with this final episode, it doesn't take away from my love for the story. And it's the kind of episode I could see myself having very different feelings on if I watched it in a different, more open, mood.

i choose only happy moments for my screenshots today

#my only 12 percent ep 14 #my only 12 percent #my only 12%#gillianthecat reacts to bl #my confused feelings about this episode #my ramblings #kind of like liveblogging #bl drama final episodes #i think that's going to become a tag because i seem to have Thoughts and Feelings about how many shows are ending #no [editing] we die like men

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dankusner · 7 months

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LEE HARVEY — As in OSWALD...

A quick shot of Lee Harvey's appeared in LERMA’s Super Bowl ad — about Jesus.

As for its current stance, He Gets Us explains on its website:

"So let us be clear in our opinion. Jesus loves gay people and Jesus loves trans people. The LGBTQ+ community, like all people, is invited to explore the story of Jesus and consider his example of unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness of others."

Jenn Mundia — sings INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart.” https://lermaagency.com

youtube

Dallas bar Lee Harvey’s taking heat for appearing in ‘He Gets Us’ Super Bowl ad

A photo taken inside the neighborhood dive bar was featured in the ad with a Jesus-centered message.

During the 2024 Super Bowl, the most watched televised event since the Apollo 11 moon landing, Dallas dive bar Lee Harvey’s made a brief and barely perceptible appearance. For less than two seconds, a photo of a gruff, bearded man sitting in the bar’s wood-paneled front room flashed across screens around the world. If you blinked, you missed it.

The bar’s owner, Seth Smith, almost missed it himself.

All he knew was an ad agency came by Lee Harvey’s on a Wednesday in early January and asked to shoot photos — a regular occurrence at the funky, photogenic dive bar. He heard the photos might be used in a Super Bowl ad, but he didn’t know by whom or for what purpose.

The ad, it turned out, was one of two Super Bowl ads from Dallas advertising firm Lerma as part of the “He Gets Us” campaign, which shares Jesus-centered messages of loving one’s neighbors.

The campaign has been called out for being backed by funders who have supported anti-LGBTQ causes.

Regarding its stance on the LGBTQ community, the campaign notes on its website that “Jesus loves gay people and Jesus loves trans people.

The LGBTQ+ community, like all people, is invited to explore the story of Jesus and consider his example of unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness of others.”

Lee Harvey’s is now under fire in online comments for being associated with the campaign.

“Well I guess you won’t get any more of my business for helping to support a hate group!” said one of many recent comments on the bar’s Facebook page.

Smith told The Dallas Morning News that he’s horrified that people think he and his bar, which he opened in the Cedars two decades ago, are in any way anti-LGBTQ or aligned with people who are. He said he and his staff rarely know what people plan to do with the photos they take at Lee Harvey’s, and this situation was no different.

“There was a single picture of a gentleman drinking beer and smoking a cigarette in the front room of our bar and that’s pretty much the whole thing,” Smith said. “We’re in no way in association or affiliation with them. We love everyone. We are very inclusive and that’s the way we’ve always been.”

The dive bar and Lee Harvey’s Dive In, its sister swim club across the street, host drag shows and LGBTQ happy hours from time to time. Being inclusive has always been a priority, Smith said.

“I am a Christian and I believe in Jesus, but Jesus didn’t cut people out,” he said. “We love everyone and we’re open to anyone.”

Smith said he hopes people don’t write off Lee Harvey’s because of this.

“I hope we’ll be OK. We’re a little dive bar that tries to make sure our beer is ice cold and that everyone has a good time,” he said. “We love you now matter which shape, size or package you come in, and that’s the way we’ve always run it.”

#youtube

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magicinaframe-part2 · 1 year

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"Let us stroll down memory lane... Shall we?"

I had to turn off my CD copy of the song "Me And My Shadow" to sit down and write these words, today.

On a Sunday in July of 2018, the New York Post published an Op/Ed piece whose headline immediately interested me. The headline said, in no uncertain terms, that the writer would focus on the year 1968.

The writer, Kevin D. Williamson, was new to me, but I felt that I had to read the piece, as 1968 was the year that I graduated high school and it was a year that many people in the public eye have spoken about and written about, ever since then.

Even at that time, people in the public eye were talking about what was going on -- in the country and around the world.

If you go to the New York Post website, you -- you who are reading my words -- will find that the Op/Ed piece's headline reads as follows: '1968 marked Americans' retreat from civic life.'

Everyone, here, at Tumblr, seems to have an opinion about what's going on, now, in the year 2023, and the question that I ask myself is whether anyone, today, tries to think about what happened in 1968. If few people are interested about that year, then I wonder if anyone learned one or more lessons from the changes that took place in politics and in the society in general.

I'm being logical. If few people, today, are interested in reading an Op/Ed piece written about the year 1968, does that mean that they already know about what happened and understand what happened?

Is this a guess on my part? I'm suggesting that there's little interest in the past and a great deal of interest in the present and in the future -- so much interest that the present and the future are combined into one subject.

So... my writing, here, becomes a soliloquy. I need to think about and respond to what Mr. Williamson says in his Op/Ed piece...

Mr. Williams contends that for this society -- the U.S. -- to function, from one generation to the next, then, from each successive generation, there has to be an adequate per centage of young adults who make the effort to be active citizens, and when that per centage decreases from generation to generation, then the society starts to fall apart.

This Op/Ed piece should be part of a larger work that presents a thorough description and analysis of what Mr. Williamson means by the term 'active citizenship.'

I read the Op/Ed piece easily ten times that first week in July and I've kept it since then. What interested me the most was his passing description of the way that too mny Americans -- starting with baby boomers in 1968 -- have disconnected from society.

I witnessed and participated in that: disconnecting from society. That did happen. I'm thinking of my peers.

It's far easier to follow multiple rock groups and do drugs than to -- say -- work on the election campaign of a political candidate, or, for that matter, to think about how not voting in an election is not a good idea.

In my case, the two rock groups I followed were my brother's. And from time to time, I smoked marijuana.

The thought of working on an election campaign was something I would not consider, since I was convinced that neither the Republicans or Democrats wanted to end the war in Southeast Asia.

The first Presidential election that I remember voting in was in November of 1976. Jimmy Carter won, Gerald Ford lost. I have voted in every Presidential election since then, to date.

At the very end of the Op/Ed piece, Mr. Williamson quotes an expression that I occasionally heard in the late 1960s and into the 1970s: "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Occasionally, I did hear those words spoken. Those words were spoken by people who were criticizing baby boomers in the anti-war movement. I heard the words spoken in episodes of prime time network television series. And, once or twice, I heard someone who identified themself as a member of the anti-war movement say the words on a radio station that I listened to at the time, WBAI-FM. They were criticizing the people who were criticizing the baby boomers.

Looking back to that time, on an unconscious level, those words could serve as a justification for drug use. There was a song from that era (late 1960s -eaarly 1970s) with the lyrics "Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around." And enjoying the feeling of being high on marijuana was a perfect way to ignore any responsibility -- such as being part of a society that the smoker did not want to be part of.

So... Mr. Williamson's analysis is based in reality. I recommend the Op/Ed piece to anyone, here, at Tumblr.

-- Drew Simels

#Reminiscence

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usnatarchives · 3 years

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Ad for penicillin, Life Magazine, 8/14/1944.

MIXED MESSAGE: SMOKE AND RECOVER? WW2 poster, NARA ID 515170.

#OTD 1928 "WONDER DRUG" Penicillin Discovered Modern medicine saves lives - antibiotics & vaccines By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs

Stay tuned: Anti-Vaxxer Ben Franklin's Biggest Regret

During WWI, tens of thousands of service personnel died not from their actual wounds but from sepsis, a massive body-wide infection. At the time, very little could be done to prevent these deaths. However, one of the many who sought to help was bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, who as a captain in WWI saw many wounded men die from such infections.

#OTD 1928, Fleming's accidental discovery transformed modern medicine. He'd left a plate of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered, and saw that a mold (similar to the kind found on moldy bread) that had fallen on the culture had killed many of the bacteria. He called the mold by-product penicillin.

“When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did." ---Dr. Alexander Fleming

Commercial production of penicillin began after the start of WWII. In advance of D-Day, scientists prepared more than two million doses. Government communicators worked with the pharmaceutical industry to produce a robust ad campaign - including posters below from our holdings - to establish penicillin as "the wonder drug." The posters - a snapshot of the time - include a happy soldier smoking while recovering in bed, anti-Japanese propaganda, and concerns about STDs. See Powers of Persuasion online exhibit.

NARA ID 183507561.

NARA ID 183507560.

NARA ID 515171.

#savelives #vaccines #pandemic #medical history #wwii #penicillin #archaeology #antibiotic #military medicine #world war 2 posters #vaccineswork #vaccines save lives #getvaccinated #vaxxie #medicine #science

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morgulscribe · 2 years

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Rings of Power Episode 3

Episode 3 thoughts... Spoilers abound.

A man and an elf, chance companions... let's bring in a halfling and a dwarf, and go on a dungeon crawl through the ruins of Angband!

I'm not sure if it is because I have played LOTRO for over ten years, but I can't help comparing Rings of Power to LOTRO and other games. Watching this show feels like I'm a fly on the wall on someone's RPG campaign.

Although I will say that LOTRO's worldbuilding is WAY more vast and detailed than Rings of Power. However, no one has anything on MERP.

Numenor is very impressive looking. I did not imagine Armenelos as being so populated.

Why are the people of Numenor upset at the thoughts of sending Galadriel back to Middle-earth? I would think they would try to deport her as quickly as possible, given the anti-eldar sentiment at this time.

Miriel's headdress reminds me of a simplified version of Queen Puabi's headdress. She was an ancient Mesopotamian queen who was buried with an ornate golden headdress featuring metal rings, willow leaves, and flowers.

I felt that Galadriel behaved in a disgraceful way in the Numenorean court. Tolkien's good-aligned characters tend to be very polite. Even Luthien bowed before Morgoth.

I was thinking that, since Galadriel is very hot-headed in this series, that Halbrand would be the voice of reason. Then he goes and randomly starts up trouble with the Numenoreans. So I guess they are both hot-headed now.

Does Halbrand think that he can simply steal a badge and get into a smith's guild hall? It would be logical to assume that all the smiths know each other, unless it is a nation-wide guild hall instead of one specific to the city. I guess if it was a national guild, he could claim, "I'm so and so from the backwoods of Forostar." But he stated before that he knows little about Numenor, so there's that.

In Gondor, murder was punishable by death, and I would imagine that Numenor would have the same laws. Let's hope that Halbrand didn't actually kill someone in that fight.

I felt that the scenes with Galadriel and Halbrand in Numenor were troubled by the writers' desire to move the plot forward and the necessity to explain things to the viewers. It seemed that what the characters know/should know/don't know varied from scene to scene.

Numenor doesn't seem dangerous enough upon first glance. Even before Sauron took over, Numenor had become an oppressive place. The writers DID hint at this when Elendil was talking about how fortunate his family was that their library was not destroyed.

Does Elendil's armor have Varda and Manwe on it?

The captives sad in Proto-Mordor mourn.

I'm glad this series is showing the orcs' sensitivity to sunlight. I feel that this is something which gets left out of LOTR-themed games.

However, I don't like the orcs literally burning and smoking in the sun like some depictions of vampires! The sunlight made them dizzy and sick at their stomach, not at risk for turning into dust. Third degree sunburns, maybe, but not up in smoke.

The warg looks really fake, like a mutant pug/chihuahua mix. I imagine wargs as giant pony-sized wolves, not these ugly mutants/zombie creatures that people want to depict them as!

Actually, now that I think about it, the werewolves in the Twilight movies are pretty much how I see wargs. But evil = ugly in many filmmaker’s minds.

Every time they show a tall statue or a sweeping vista, I feel the call of the void... I WANT TO TAKE A FLYING LEAP OFF THAT GIANT STATUE'S HAND SO BADLY..... Seriously, that is the first thing I did when I came to the uppermost tier of Minas Tirith in LOTRO... launch myself off the prow. I actually survived the fall!

You might say that I am "well-traveled."

#amazon rings of power #lotr amazon #lotr on prime #rings of power

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mitigatedchaos · 3 years

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On Having “Whiteness”

(~2,200 words, 11 minutes)

Summary: A metaphysics of “Whiteness” has overtaken actual sociology in the Democrats’ popular consciousness - blinding them to racial interventions that might actually work and taking them off the table of political discussion.

-★★★-

Donald Moss - On Having Whiteness, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (emphasis mine)

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

So both @arcticdementor [here] and @samueldays have linked me to this allegedly “peer-reviewed” article. The Federalist has a bit more context, but it doesn’t really make the situation better.

Race Theory Problems

Obviously, this is a work of sloppy thinking. The categorization of “white supremacy culture” or “whiteness” used by people like this is vague handwaving that describes being bad at management as “white supremacy culture,” and which in general labels universal human problems, like organizations being resource-constrained, or people being impatient, as somehow uniquely “white.”

But this sort of article is really what I mean when I say that social justice’s approach to “whiteness” is about “spiritual contamination.”

Samueldays called it “the ‘I’m not touching you’ of inciting race war,” and I may cover more of his response to it later. Suffice it to say, it has the same general kind of problems as “stolen land” arguments (where an entire present population’s living area becomes undefined), unbounded “reparations” arguments where no amount of transfers by the designated oppressor are considered to clear the debt, and so on.

This is exactly the sort of material that conservatives are seeking to remove government funding for and prohibit from use in employment training. This is the kind of material that the Trump Anti-CRT executive order prohibiting racial scapegoating was meant to cover.

Race Theory Definitions

This kind of stuff is, of course, not really defensible, so usually at this point people will argue that 1), “that’s not real critical race theory,” and then 2), “it’s just a few weirdos.” For those, I would say...

1) If it’s not real “Critical Race Theory,” then what is it?

We can’t measure or disprove Moss’s proposed “Whiteness,” and this malevolent psychic entity said to “deform” white people obviously isn’t based on a comparison with other human populations or historical periods. When it comes to “insatiable” appetites, one study argued that the Mongol invasions killed so many people that it showed up in the carbon record.

At best, it’s sloppy race science as practiced by an amateur, like twitter users idly speculating whether whites have ‘oppressor epigenetics’ - but with the veneer of official status. And it has similar risks to proposing that there is such a thing as biologically-inherited class enemy status, and other collective intergenerational justice logic.

Presumably, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association is intended as a journal of science, or at least serious scholarship, and not of bad racist poetry with no rhyme or meter.

Moss provides a relatively pure example of whatever-this-is. I need to know what it’s called, so we can get rid of it.

Race Theory Prohibitions

2) If it’s just the product of a few race-obssessed weirdos, then it won’t hurt to get rid of it. So get rid of it.

The actual text [PDF] of the Trump Anti-CRT order does not ban teaching about the Trail of Tears, or Jim Crow, and so on, and both of those topics were taught in school before this recent wave of whatever-this-is was popularized.

Trump’s order banned teaching that any race is inherently guilty or evil due to the actions of their ancestors, and the level of resistance to this has been bizarre.

These teachings don’t seem to provide gains in relatively objective metrics like underrepresented minority test scores (or at least that’s not something I’ve seen - and the continued opposition to standardized tests suggests proponents do not expect it to), so it’s unclear just what of value is going to be lost here.

Collateral Damage

Samueldays wrote,

Because right now the conservatives talking about "critical race theory" as they fire in the direction of Moss et al. are very important in preventing another race war and you have a moral duty to help them aim, not throw smoke for Moss.

Right now Conservatives are assessing just how much stuff they’re going to have to rip out to make “standardized tests are racist” and “it’s impossible to be racist to white people” stop. While this may not be the message that Liberals are intending to send, it is the message that many people are receiving. (I discuss problems with both, and some alternatives to handle them better, in another post.)

Liberals need to get out in front of this. Sooner is better.

If Conservatives think that they have to gut hostile work environment law in order to avoid their children being taught that they’re permanently morally contaminated by their race, and Liberals have no means to actually close race gaps within a 4-8 year period (and right now it’s slim pickings on that front), Conservatives are just going to gut hostile work environment law.

Aether

From their perspective, why not?

Everything in the world is only six degrees of separation from something racist. Anything in the world can be tied to something racist. (So can anyone.)

But nowhere in this pervasive atmosphere of tying things to racism are there solutions. There are guesses based on correlations. Proposals. But usually when you reach out to grab them, to really get a grip on whether it’s correlation or causation, they dissolve in your hands. The few that do have any solidity to them are moderate in their success (such as Heckman’s involvement in the Reach Up & Learn study in Jamaica) - and don’t appear to be based on the same style of thinking as shown by Moss and others.

It isn’t just that trying to turn combating an invisible, non-measurable, unfalsifiable, parasitic psychic force into an actual political program would inevitably be oppressive and totalitarian. It isn’t just that articles like Moss’s are an in-kind donation to the 2024 DeSantis Presidential campaign for that very reason.

It isn’t just that unfalsifiable Metaphysics of Whiteness content like White Privilege Theory has been found to lower sympathy for the poor, and that present diversity training doesn’t work...

Race Content Crowding

This stuff is crowding out legitimate scholarship. I don’t just mean in terms of funding, tenure track positions, or high-flying magazine coverage - all limited by their nature. I mean among the base. I have been interrogating Democrats on Twitter for months, and not a single one has been able to cite a strongly-demonstrated intervention that’s being held back, or even a past one that was conclusively demonstrated to be effective. They can often recite a list of racial grievances on cue.

Tucker Carlson could run boomer_update.exe on a list of every educational failure since the 1970s, and they would be reduced to sputtering accusations of racism against people who increasingly don’t care. He could do this tomorrow. The only thing that prevents this is Tucker Carlson’s conscience.

I discovered the Reach Up & Learn program through Glenn Loury - described as a ‘conservative.’ Scott Alexander, attacked by the New York Times crew, brought some success with multivitamins to my attention. When I first heard about the Perry Preschool program, I believe it was from someone well to the right of him.

About the only one brought to my attention by the Democratic establishment constellation proper was lead removal, and the gains on that are probably getting tapped out. The frame it was proposed in was not Critical Race Theorist, as this was likely in 2012.

As it stands, I’m more likely to find something that works from someone the New York Times would disapprove of than someone they wouldn’t. Or, as Wesley Yang wrote,

Reality has been contrarian for a while.

Succeed Early

Even if we suppose that Conservatives are inherently racist, Liberals have a duty to support interventions that work. In fact, the more that Conservatives are a seething, undifferentiated mass of uniform racial hatred, the more important it is that Liberals stick to racial interventions that work, because nobody else is going to fix the problem if Liberals get it wrong.

It isn’t just a matter of resources per year. It’s also a matter of time.

From Heckman’s website,

Although Perry did not produce long-run gains in IQ, it did create lasting improvements in character skills [...] which consequently improved a number of labor market outcomes and health behaviors as well as reduced criminal activity.

Even if we propose an unlimited amount of funding (which is not the case), people and politicians only have a limited amount of time and attention each year. Newspapers only publish so many issues with so many pages each week. Television programs only cover so many hours for so many viewers each day. Even the dedicated can only read so many books in a year.

Even though the Perry intervention was imperfect, and the sample size was not as large as desirable, every second Democrat I talked to should have been able to answer the question “can you name an effective intervention?” with “what about Perry Preschool?”

Every year that we have entire cottage industries working on and popularizing contentious, ineffective, and backlash-provoking Metaphysics of Whiteness content, based on oversimplified oppressor/oppressed binaries, or theories in which power is held collectively by races as monolithic blobs (rather than modelling power as a network of relations between individuals, in which an individual of any background might be destroyed by the racialized relations in their environment), is another year we haven’t spent that energy on finding or implementing something that actually works.

This isn’t just an individual failure by Democrat voters, who typically have day jobs to focus on - it is a failure by the institutions who are supposed to inform and guide them. This institutional failure likely contributed to the popularization of Metaphysics of Whiteness content in the first place.

Okay, now what?

Donald Moss is a crackpot. Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable. The idea that there is a psychic parasite of “Whiteness” is not a legitimate field of study; it’s parasociology. The idea that “a sense of urgency” is “white supremacy culture” isn’t much better. [1]

We already tried isolating this content to obscure corners of academia, where individuals with high racial attachment could write about it. It leaked out.

We need to get this stuff out of the popular consciousness to make room for stuff that might actually work. The best way to do that may be to cut off the source. Since Donald Moss is a crackpot, perhaps it’s time we started treating him, and everyone else like him, as what they are.

People involved in Metaphysics of Whiteness content, like Donald Moss, need to be (figuratively) grabbed by the shoulder, and firmly, but politely, told to stop. Society has been recklessly handing out race-colored glasses to the general population since around 2014, resulting in a rise in amateur race science, of which both right-wing Twitter users memeing about Italians and Metaphysics of Whiteness participants like Moss are examples. If they do not stop, they must be stripped of institutional authority. Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable and we should not be certifying it.

If institutions refuse to reduce the authority of Metaphysics of Whiteness practitioners, those institutions must have their accreditation penalized, and their government funding reduced or eliminated, just as if they insisted on producing study after study on magic or ESP which failed to yield results. If they do not comply, they must be replaced.

It’s possible that Metaphysics of Whiteness content might have had some obscure, niche function in terms of the exploration of the idea space.

However, as it has displaced popular knowledge of interventions that might work, and the attention given to them in the political system, Liberals should seek to surgically remove it, at the very least until some more effective interventions see the political light of day.

If not, Conservatives will attempt to remove it with a bludgeon. "They described an entire race as ‘voracious, insatiable, and perverse,’ and here’s the citation for the exact page where they did that,” is perfect material with which to abolish entire departments.

-★★★-

[1] If we go a bit farther out, scholars of “Decolonization” argue that the field is wholly unconcerned with “settler futurity,” a phrase not much less ominous than describing “whiteness” as “incurable.” It seems that their entire job should be to answer the very difficult questions they have decided not to.

#racepol #american racepol #critical race theory #social justice #racial justice #longpost #flagpost #black lives matter

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onisiondrama · 4 years

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(Note: I’m not repeating stories he’s told before and just putting them in parenthesis. I have a lot more videos to go until I’m caught up so that would save me a lot of time. If he gives details I never heard from him before, I will type those.)

“You Got Played and That's Dangerous” September 20, 2020, Speaks

- He asks where is your money? Hansen took thousands of dollars in donations. He was getting hundred dollar donations at a time. Hansen said he was going to throw James in prison, he’s under investigation by the police and FBI. You guys bought it. - Says someone wrote him saying they donated to Sarah’s Venmo and were later disgusted to find out she was full of it. - He asks where the money for Shiloh’s tattoo cover up went? He says he was told it was already covered up years ago. - Says Shiloh got pregnant while she cheated on him and took his money. Says Shiloh said he would pay James back. She gave him a fake wiring number. When he went to the money mart to collect it, the guy said that wasn’t a valid number. It didn’t have enough characters in it. - He asks what happened to Sarah’s laptop. Says the police would have raided him the day of or the day after if there was legitimate proof someone was like that. Says that was a year ago. - Repzion raised $23,000 for legal expenses, then he decided to spend it on repairing his car. He didn’t need the funds because he (James) dismissed the case. Says it cost him (James) $350 - $400 total. - Says you guys paid them to make him suffer or because you thought they were legitimate victims. He’s the most honest person he’s ever met. He never met anyone whos honesty is as non-self serving as his. Says for example, the first time he tried to sleep with a girl he couldn’t get it up. Says he once kissed his cousin when he was 13. Says he doesn’t need to say these things, but he doesn’t care. That’s why he started adult sites. - (Stripped in the military story.) - Says you recklessly gave your money to people who want to use you. They delivered you no results. The police say it appears there are no actual victims. The police officer agrees with the former air force cop. Says he strictly abides by the law outside beating his dad and speeding on the highway sometimes. - He says you call him a predator because he says things you don’t like, like you’re fat. You can’t handle criticism. If you say he’s done something evil, you think it invalidates everything he ever did. - Hansen has a problem with honesty and integrity. He doesn’t get the full story before talking about someone. - If you consume what you hate, you not only come closer to that in which you hate, you become like a hero that becomes the villain because he doesn’t die soon enough. - Asks what happened to the women that wanted “justice”? Asks if the police looked at what these women were saying and told them they were stupid. The former air force cop actually knows and respects the law. - Says the internet is mentally disabled. You can’t get through to them. - These people conned you out of thousands of your dollars and you cheer for them. They sold you a story that Onision is going to prison and you wished he would get violated in prison like a bunch of sociopath sickos. He wouldn’t wish that one anyone. He just jokes about it. - He says a couple days ago someone’s Youtube channel got terminated recently because they tried to commit a crime against him. Says it was the same person who went after snoopy [he doesn’t remember the person’s name] They’re part of the goon squad. Someone committed perjury by filing a claim against that person and he let Youtube know. The person went to do more things, lying on legal documents. - People said on a police report, James said Hansen was yelling into his house. Says Hansen was so loud, he could hear him through a door from his downstairs. Says what you guys see if not the full footage. He has the Ring footage. Says yelling is an accurate description. What kind of creepy nasty old man Youtuber shows up to another Youtuber’s house? The police told him he needed to leave. Hansen worked with a guy who was in the news for allegedly groping woman. That guy came to his house. - Last time Hansen showed up at someone’s house, that person committed suicide. Says you’ll probably say that guy deserved to die because he’s a preparator. Says you sound like you are sick and disgusting. - Says former mods of his who he kicked out hang out with anti-o’s. He says it’s not healthy. Says 4 months before he booted a mod from his server, she sent him an email with heart emojis. After he booted her, she said she hated him for a year and a half. Says she’s 36 and she’s now running a campaign against people on his server who don’t hate him. - Someone went on Hansen and said he told her to dye her hair and get a tattoo. He said he told her to dye her hair green and get a spray on tan so she’d look like an Ooma Loompa so he’d take her back because she lied to him. He says people paint that like it’s some kind of psychoses, like the chained to the wall thing. Says she was already voluntary waned a collar on her neck during intercourse. - A lot of women like to be in a Dom / Sub scenario. You guys live in a delusion where you would have to have sex with a women with your hands up so they can’t freak out later on on the internet. People lie all the time. - Says the lies about him aren’t even criminal. Says as far as he knows, there are three women just complaining because he broke up with them and hurt their feelings. - The law took his side. He never heard from the FBI. He only heard from the police when you guys falsely report him. No raids. Says you guys told the cops he murdered Sarah, but she answered the door. It’s a crime to give false reports to the police. - Says the women are all homewreckers. Shiloh broke up his first marriage. He says it was partially his fault because he fell for her. Says she initiated it as a business arrangement. Introduced herself as a Canadian pop star and they talked over Skype. She started putting things in there like she was into him. He was married to a friend who he wasn’t passionately into. They made videos together. Says his ex wife would get upset and quit halfway though. Says Shiloh once quit halfway through, then demanded he finish the video with her. He says he guesses that’s good. - Shiloh inserted herself into a married man’s life and he split. Says he doesn’t regret that decision. - (Skye alimony story, prenup story) - Says Billie tried to break up his marriage. One time she said if Kai and James broke up, she’d stay with Kai. (Billie and Greg slept together story) He says he lived 2 miles from a shopping mall, but Billie and Ayalla told you guys he lived in the middle of nowhere to make it seem like they needed help. He said after he caught Billie and Ayalla sneaking into an uber after he broke up with Billie, she cried and hugged Kai. Says Kai was pissed off because Billie cheated on him. He tells Billie to not abandon himself and Kai and if she wants the relationship to work, but she wanted to leave. He says he thinks she just really wanted to smoke weed. She tried to hug him and he rejected her hug and ran back to his house. - He says after cuddlegate, she went on a livestream and said she wasn’t a homewrecker, she just bruised their relationship. He says she laughed about that. (Cuddlegate story) - (Sarah sexually extorted him story) Says before he realized he was sexually extorted, he was trying to make things better. He tried to mend things and she asked him to fly to her state. He says he realized she was only trying to be with him, not Kai. (Aladdin story) - He says when she threatened her life, she said she loved Greg, not Kai. He says she was staying in a cabin near their house. Not with them. She was working at target. (Dat booty doe, kick out story) - Says he’s so honest that if everyone who was a Youtuber was sentenced to die, and someone asked who in the room was a Youtuber, he’d raise his hand. Says he’s not happy to be alive because he has adjustment disorder and depression. - Says a woman from animal control came out because someone reported he fated on his dog and fed them a muffin. He says he didn’t fart on his dog, but even if he did they eat their own shit so she shouldn’t have come out. She came with another officer and she wrote there’s an active investigation. He says there is no active investigation, but people saw that and believed it. - You’re an idiot if you believed their story because you didn’t ask what his side was. - Says you guys accuse him of being 5′ 6″. He touches the ceiling to prove he’s not 5′ 6″. He says you accused him of having a baby carrot. He says Only Fans proved that one wrong. You’re the dumbest community of people he ever encountered. - Victims don’t want money. Greedy people pretend to be victims for money. - He says Billie charged $50 on Only Fans. He says that’s greedy. He asks if she thinks she’s god’s gift to humanity.

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sparkles-rainbows-severed-heads · 4 years

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Nazi-Hating, Bisexual King, and German actor, Conrad Veidt (1893-1943) whose performances inspired the creation of Edward Scissorhands, Jafar from Aladdin, and The Joker, was a gem in real life. Be like Connie. Do it for him.

Here’s some information on how great he was:

https://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/41163268378/ten-reasons-why-you-should-love-conrad-veidt

“In honour of Conrad Veidt’s 120th birthday, let us present you with a list of reasons why you should love him. Because, let’s face it, he kicked more arse than you ever will. While wearing your great-grandmother’s dress.

1. He was an awesome actor who could hypnotise the screen in both the silents and the sounds. He could do amazing things with his body language, his eyes and his voice and move like an actual cat. Oh, and he was Method before it became popular. To the point where his friends and colleagues would get worried because his entire body language and way of speaking would change. He genuinely believed he was possessed by some greater spirit when he was acting. And it shows. 2. He was an amazing human being—everybody loved working with him because he was incredibly polite and jovial and charming, but he was even more amazing off the screen. Let us tell you why.

3. This guy starred in the first gay rights movie ever and played the first explicitly-referred-to-as-gay character on screen, and the first sympathetic gay character on screen. In a movie that said it was okay to be gay and that some people were just born that way. In 1919. The makers of the film and Connie himself were flooded with death threats from the far right. They would arrange riots in theatres and release gas and rabid rodents into the aisles. But the makers of the film stood their ground. Later, the Nazis tried to burn all copies of the film but over half of it still survives and a reconstruction can be seen here.

4. Oh yeah, and this guy also starred in an early pro-choice film, had a high opinion on women (with some progressive views for his time, when the right to vote and to wear trousers were still seen as new and scandalous things) and was a fierce campaigner for human rights and a vehement anti-Nazi for his entire life. Speaking of which…

5. In the Thirties, he starred in two British movies sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. While still a German citizen. Hitler sent him personal hate mail, Goebbels tried to persuade him into doing propaganda films for the Nazis instead and he told them to go stuff themselves. This was after some of his Jewish and gay friends had already been killed by the Nazis, too, so he knew exactly the sort of danger he was in. Oh, and they imprisoned him and tortured him with sleep deprivation and put him on the Gestapo hitlist. Guess what? He didn’t budge. He never raised his hand in the Heil Hitler salute, once. And when, finally, the British authorities helped him escape to England, he never went back to Germany again. Also? Despite being Protestant, he identified himself as Jewish on official forms as a form of protest. In. Nazi. Germany. I’m sorry, but Conrad Veidt’s balls»»»>yours.

6. He spent a huge amount of money supporting the British war effort and personally smuggled people out of the hands of the Nazis. Including driving his third wife’s Jewish parents out to Switzerland in his car under the cover of night after much bribery and passport shenanigans. In the Forties, he participated in a fund helping fellow Europeans escape Nazis and settle in the UK and the US. One of the people he helped was his Casablanca co-star, Paul Henreid. By the time Henreid had reached the UK, the war was in full swing and he was treated as an enemy alien. Connie (who had managed to acquire British citizenship just before war broke out) personally rang the British authorities and vouched for him until Henreid could finally cross the Atlantic to safety (with some monetary assistance from Connie himself). So, kids, when you watch Major Strasser menacing Laszlo in Casablanca, remember this guy actually helped him escape the Nazis in real life.

7. While living in London in the late Thirties, he and his wife would regularly shelter war children at their house. When the air raid sirens came on, he’d rather run back home to be with the kids rather than stay safe at the studio’s bomb shelter. No, really. And even when he’d left for Hollywood in the 40s, he would do stuff like this for the poor kids of London huddled in bomb shelters. You might need tissues.

8. He was made of actual sex on and off the screen. He possessed an amazing, androgynous sexual aura that would take no prisoners. He could be feminine without being effeminate, seductive and possessing and powerful without being gruff or macho, incredibly catlike and soft without being weak. Despite being skinny as hell and 6’3” tall, he was as graceful as a dancer, gliding around so smoothly it was uncanny, slightly unnatural (when Disney were making Aladdin, they deliberately based the cartoon Jafar on his performance in The Thief of Bagdad and told the animators to make him glide like Connie did. Yeah, that’s right, Disney villains were based on him. No wonder. No, really, look at that). From the Thirties onwards, he was repeatedly described as pantherlike. He had a sensuous, cruel mouth (always a little more red and open and wet than it should have been in order to be decent), large, pale blue piercing eyes (oh yeah, he was well-read in hypnotism and occultism, so he is actually hypnotising and possessing you for real), finely manicured fingernails (sometimes filed into sharp points) and a voice to melt knickers off anyone within a five-mile radius. When he smoked, it looked like he was giving oral sex to a woman and a man at the same time. Watch A Woman’s Face, The Thief of Bagdad and Dark Journey for good examples of this amazing man’s slinking, slithering, purring charm.

9. Oh yeah, speaking of the off-screen sex… Merle Oberon said “he would have sex with a butterfly”, Anita Loos quipped “the prettiest girl on the [Berlin] street was Conrad Veidt” and he was a major gay icon in 1920s Germany thanks to the aforementioned gay rights movie and his androgynous looks and style. Let us remember this guy spent his youth in Weimar Berlin and its cabarets, a modern Babylon where “anything goes” was an understatement. Drugs, wild parties and sexual diversions of every sort imaginable were the done thing in those days. You were considered unfashionable if you didn’t dress in drag and experiment with bisexuality. In that, he was hardly different from his peers (like, for example, his good friend Marlene Dietrich). But then again… there were people who experimented and there were people for whom it was all a phase, but according to numerous sources, he was a natural, voracious bisexual and so in love with everything feminine he genuinely loved to dress as a lady. And apparently he would fall in love all the time, so the Twenties were… busy years for him, especially when his second marriage had started to fall apart. Just don’t ask what he did to Olivier. And according to a couple of sources, Gary Cooper. Oh, and his first wife left him after she found him wearing her dress (her loss). Most of the time, his friends would describe him as a ladies’ man during the day, and going after the men as well after he’d had a few drinks in the evening. He seems to have calmed down a lot in the Thirties after he found genuine happiness with his third wife and escaped the Nazis to the UK, but apparently he was still an incorrigible flirt with both sexes until the end of his life. If you think he looks seductive and deliciously perverse on screen, that’s all real and then some. So, yep, this was a guy who was a genuine saint and an amazing human being and a naughty, naughty man at the same time. How often do you hear of both sides coexisting in the same person?

10. He was, basically, the last lingering sigh of Romanticism as a genuine cultural movement. On screen, he played the Gothic, Byronic hero to the hilt (The Student of Prague being one of the greatest examples of the type). In the silents, he played degenerate dandies, tortured painters and pianists and violinists, cruel yet seductive tyrants, men haunted by their doppelgängers, possessed creatures wanting to crawl out of their own bodies, sleepwalking and twitching and writhing on the screen, turning everything into a dark, exquisite ballet. In the sound films, he turned that demonic energy outwards and would pin people down with his gaze as he cursed them, would undress women with a flick of his pitch-black lashes, would curl his long fingers around their arms in a sadomasochistic, erotic stranglehold. He never completely lost his accent, but he compensated for it with pitch-perfect softness and tone, speaking very slowly and quietly when everybody else would speak loud and fast. His voice in The Thief of Bagdad was compared to poisoned honey. The MGM bosses were surprised at the mountains of fanmail he received from women in the Forties, even if they had never given him a starring role, only supporting, villainous ones. And the ladies wanted this villain, oh yes. A woman moviegoer (presumably after seeing his performance in A Woman’s Face) described him thus: “Conrad Veidt has wicked eyes, a sinister mouth, strange hands and a half-man/half- woman quality about him. His walk is frightening. There is something not quite normal about him. And yet, he was totally fascinating, charming and appealing to me at the same time!”

So, there you have it. There are many more reasons to love him, but it would take forever to try and list all of them. I suggest you watch his movies and read up on him yourself, because he deserves to live forever.”

#conrad veidt #do it for him #do it for her #the cabinet of doctor caligari #the cabinet of dr. caligari #the man who laughs #gwynplaine #casablanca #the hands of orlac

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sciencenewsforstudents · 5 years

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It all started at the mall when a friend offered Beth a puff from a Juul e-cigarette. At the time, the Denver, Colo.-area student was in middle school.

“It was kind of peer pressure,” the now 15-year-old recalls. “I started inhaling it,” she says. “I suddenly was, like, wow, I really think that I need this — even though I don’t.” (The teen has asked that her last name not be used because she has not yet told her parents that she vapes.)

Soon, Beth had a Juul of her own. She was vaping half a pod of e-liquid a day. That much provides the nicotine equal to half a pack of conventional cigarettes. The girl used other brands, too — a Suorin, a Smok Novo and a modified device, which gives users custom vaping options.

“When you wake up in the morning, you’re just like, ‘Oh, I need to hit my thing. Where is it?’” Beth says. “’You can’t really get it off your mind unless you distract yourself.’”

Eventually, the teen tried to quit so that her mom wouldn’t find out. But it’s been hard, she says. Her school doesn’t have the resources to help her.

Of 37 states surveyed in 2017, Colorado had the highest rate of teen vaping. That’s according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. This U.S. health agency is based in Atlanta, Ga. One in four of the Colorado students who were surveyed said they currently use an electronic vapor product — double the national average. Beth guesses that half of her classmates vape regularly. Her school does offer some tobacco-prevention education. Still, she says, teens could use a lot more support to help them to quit.

It may not seem obvious, but e-cigarettes are considered a “tobacco product.” That’s because most e-cigs vaporize a liquid that contains nicotine, a natural drug. That nicotine, an addictive stimulant, comes from tobacco leaves.

Beth says she managed to stop vaping a few weeks ago. She was motivated by news stories of young people falling ill. When one of her own friends got sick, that was a turning point.

Before, “I didn’t really take it super seriously,” she says. “I was like, oh, what are the chances that that’s going to happen to me? And then my friend actually almost had his lung collapse.” She says he was coughing up blood and mucus. “I just couldn’t do it anymore,” Beth decided. “It’s not worth it.”

On Nov. 7, the CDC reported it was investigating 2,051 lung injuries associated with vaping across 49 states (all but Alaska), including 39 deaths.

A new government survey shows more than one in four U.S. high school students have used an e-cigarette in the past 30 days. Among middle-school students, the rate was 10.5 percent. People who work to keep the public healthy say that funding for anti-tobacco efforts is inadequate.

States receive yearly payments from tobacco companies as part of a 1998 lawsuit settlement. But those states are not following CDC guidance on setting aside large chunks of that money to help tobacco users or to prevent others from starting. States can spend that money on whatever they want.

Little money to help teens stop vaping

Cigarette taxes have been one traditional source of funding for anti-smoking programs. But with fewer people smoking cigarettes, that source of money has been shrinking. Colorado’s health department says cigarette sales in its state have declined by 41 percent (two-fifths) since 1990. And in more than half of U.S. states, including Colorado, vapes aren’t taxed — at least not yet.

“It is daunting,” says Alison Reidmohr. She is a tobacco-communications specialist for Colorado’s Department of Health and Public Environment in Denver. “We’ve got more problems than we’ve seen before and fewer resources [money] with which to deal with them.”

Some 27,000 Colorado high schoolers report vaping more than 10 days a month, Reidmohr says. “More people are using more nicotine products. Our young people are facing an epidemic of vaping. We’re not funded to deal with vaping products.”

Colorado spends nearly $24 million a year on tobacco prevention. Still, a recent report from the Campaign for Tobacco Free-Kids finds that this is less than half of what the CDC recommends, and one-fifth of what the tobacco industry spends on marketing in the state.

“Really, we have almost nothing in terms of treatment for these kids,” says Christian Thurstone. He’s a physician who runs drug-abuse prevention programs for teens in Denver. Teens have gotten addicted to nicotine so fast, he says, that it’s uncharted territory.

There are websites, hotlines, therapists and coaches to help kids manage nicotine cravings. However, those efforts were all designed to manage cigarettes, Thurstone says. He has turned up no studies aimed at helping adolescents quit vaping.

“We need some research, fast,” he says.

A spokesman for the popular Juul brand says no young person or non-nicotine user should ever try Juul. But he didn’t say how minors who’ve started to use the product might quit.

Most teens just need to decide they’re not going to use anymore, says Gregory Conley. This New Jersey attorney also serves as president of the American Vaping Association, which is based in Stamford, Conn. “It’s only a small sliver that may actually need some assistance to get off the products,” he says.

Colorado’s health department disputes that. It estimates that one in 10 of the state’s high schoolers vape nicotine more than 10 days a month.

#science #scied #sciblr #health #behavior #vaping #teens #teenagers #e-cigarettes

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fernwehbookworm · 5 years

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Woke The F*ck Up- Chapter 1

August 24th, 2009

Kara walked into the high school for the first time. Alex made her go in alone, no way was she going to be associated with a freshman especially not during her Senior year. She looked at the paper in her hand, her class schedule with her locker and combination on it. The hallways were so much bigger than that of the middle school. In this main hall, you could see the balcony of the second floor clinging to the side as the roof soared high above with skylights. Kara gulped and took a deep breath.

“You can do this. It's just another school. A bigger school but school none the less, you like school.” Kara mumbles to herself. She is relieved when she turns a corner and is a normal hallway lined with lockers.

“See you can do this.”

Kara hears a commotion around the next corner. When she turns, right outside her first class, two large guys are shoving a much smaller one back and forth. Another looks to be opening a locker from the paper in his hand.

“Come on Schott. Agree to do our homework this year and this would be so much easier. We won't even tell people here about your dad.” One sneers.

“Guys I can't. I almost failed last year because if you.” The little one cries out.

“Hey!” Kara yells. That gets the bullies attention.

“Got it! Alright, let's see if he fits.” Says the third as he opens the locker, turning to notice the slightly lanky girl now starring them down.

“Get lost. This has got nothing to do with you.”

“I think it does.” Kara steps closer.

That's when one of the guys makes the mistake of grabbing her shoulder. Jeremiah had been taking her to various fighting classes since she was adopted. The therapist had recommended it to help her cope with the loss of her parents and Kara loved it. Loved the control it gave her over her own body when everything else felt like chaos. Her test for her black belt in Karate was next month even.

On instinct, Kara grabbed the wrist and twisted, turning the much larger boy around and forcing him to the ground. He cries out makes a pained expression. The other boys are shocked and then mad.

“Well, now you made me mad.” Said the kid who opened the locker.

Kara twists the arm in her grasp harder, just right before it dislocates she releases and shoves him forward with a foot. He rolls on the ground, clutching at his shoulder. Kara looks up just in time to see the locker kid take a swing, she ducks and shoves the heel of her hand into his exposed nose. Instantly, blood gushes out. The last kid runs at seeing how quickly his friends were dispatched. Kara finally turns to the bullied boy, plastered against the lockers in fear.

“Are you okay?” She asks.

“Y-y-yes. I’m-I’m better than those guys. Who are you?” He asks over the moans of the two remaining bullies.

“Kara Danvers.” She sticks out her hand. He takes it tentatively.

“Winslow Schott. But everyone just calls me Winn.”

“It's nice to meet you.”

“What is going on here!” Roars a tall teacher as he rounds the corner.

He towers over the four students. Kara and Winn are both too shocked to respond.

“All of you, to the principal's office.” The man lifts the boys by their shirts and heards them back the direction Kara came from.

The two boys only get two days of suspension and a week of after school detention because they didn't actually hit anyone, though the cameras caught then shoving Winn around. Kara got a week suspension starting tomorrow. The principal was letting her stay for her first day.

“Thank you for saving me. Those guys have been bullying me for two years. I thought when we got here it would be better.”

“What are friends for?”

“Are we friends then?” Kara laughs.

“Well, I don't get suspended for just anyone. We better be friends. Plus if I'm around those guys probably won't bother you.” Winn grins.

“I just have to make it through a week.”

“I'll have my sister keep an eye on you. She's a senior. She probably won't acknowledge your existence unless you're in trouble though.”

“Thanks, Kara. I'm glad we are friends.”

The new friends walk down the hall for their first day of high school and it feels just a little bit smaller.

***

November 6th, 2013

“Breaking News: Lionel Luthor arrested for using his company Luthor Corp to fund an anti-government campaign and also has financial ties to a massive assassination plot. Evidence of Luthor Corp funds traced to the massive explosion in Washington D.C. that killed over 300 people and led to the hospitalization of 200 more…”

Lena turns off the television in the now basically trashed hotel suite. She didn't care, the label paid for it. Lex had tried to call her. Get her to come home. Trying to say that Dad didn't do it, then saying he was just trying to save the world or some other bull shit. The only thing her already drunk mind could understand was that her family was now fucked beyond repair. Someone passed her a blunt and she took it, inhaling deeply to forget. Forget the fake family of her childhood. That she was the bastard daughter of a madman. That her adoptive mother was cruel. Her brother had loved her in his own way, but he had been much older and didn't understand. She found an out and took it.

Once Lena passes the smoking comfort on to someone else she takes a drink from the Vodka bottle on the table and buries her nose in the neck of the woman next to her. The woman would help her forget too, if only for a few hours. Lena pulls her into the bedroom of the suite and closes the door, ignoring the twenty other nameless people left on the other side.

***

June 20th, 2014

Kara paces the locker room. It's the final match. To win it all. Her nerves felt frayed and she was too anxious to sit and wait. Winn appears with tape to wrap her hands.

“Why?” She asks, trying to distract herself.

“To help keep you from breaking every bone in your hand on her jaw.” Comes Winn's smart-assed comment with a little laugh.

“No, Winn. Why did you follow me? You could have gone to MIT or something but you followed me. Became my assistant trainer. I mean I know you developed all those simulators and different equipment to help me train but you could have done so much with a brain like yours.”

“You might as well ask yourself why you saved me in the hallway then. It's what friends do. Especially best friends. I'm behind you all the way Kara. Win or lose. If you lose we will keep training and try again. If you win, well we will keep training anyway. But I'm behind you one hundred percent. So is your family.” An announcement calling Kara to the ring.

“Are you ready?”

Kara nods. She is. Somehow Winn's little speech was enough. He always had her back and Kara was so glad for that.

***

August 4th, 2017

“Ahh... Hi.”

Lena looks up at the blonde woman now standing over her, coffee cup in hand. Lena closes her notebook and raises an eyebrow to the woman who continues to stand awkwardly next to her table.

“Umm... all the tables are taken up and umm… well… the inside is full too. So do you mind if I sit with you? I mean I guess I could just go home but I was kind of looking forward to reading at my favorite Cafe on a beautiful day like today. But I can just go. I should go. Never mind.” Lena laughs and pushes her glasses back up her nose where they started to slip. She glances around the little patio, separated from the sidewalk by a little black gate. Through the large windows, Lena can see the long line of people and crowded tables because of the peak Saturday morning hours.

“You can sit, as long as you stop talking.”

The woman blushes but sits anyway. Lena opens her notebook and continues writing. The blonde opens her own book and leans back in the chair. Lena tries glancing at this very forward stranger, very aware of how easy it would be for someone to recognize her. The blonde is wearing a pastel peach cardigan over a simple white shirt. Behind the glasses are eyes as blue as the sky on this very morning. A crinkle appears between her eyes as she becomes engrossed in the well-read book. Wizard's First Rule the cover reads. After a few minutes, the other woman pulls out headphones and begins to listen to music. It only takes four seconds for Lena to recognize the song that drifts over to her. She glances back up and taps her pen in front of the blonde. She pulls out one earbud and cocks her head to the side, very much like a puppy.

“Lena Luthor?”

“Yeah. My sister got us tickets to the concert tonight.” The blonde blushes slightly.

“You don’t look like a typical fan.”

“Oh, and what do I look like then?” the blonde challenges.

“Like a ray of sunshine gave birth to a golden retriever puppy.” The women stammers, trying to think of a response.

“Well, I am not a fan. My sister is though and she has wanted to go to a concert for a while. I am just listening so I don’t completely make a fool of myself.” That peaks Lena’s interest.

“And what do you think?” Somehow she feels drawn to knowing what this woman’s opinion is.

“Well, I think she’s talented. Definitely has a varying sound to each song so that they don’t all sound the same.”

“But?” Lena hears it in the sound of her voice.

“But, it's kind of depressing. I mean, when I really start listening to the lyrics I just really want to give her a hug and tell her… well, I don’t know really but she sounds like she needs someone who will be there for her.”

That catches Lena very off guard. This woman in front of her wants to comfort a complete stranger because of a few songs. Lena makes the mistake of looking into her eyes and letting the raw emotion in those blue pools wash over her. Something was tugging at her, something she hadn’t felt in years. That scares Lena. She quickly closes her notebook and clears her throat.

“Well, I am sure she just uses her music to work through things. I am sure she has people…” Lena trails off, feeling the hollowness of her own words. The women across from her nods.

“Yeah of course.”

“What do you listen to then? Probably some top one hundred pop star, maybe a boy band?” Lena says, needing to change the touchy subject.

“Well depends on the playlist. Definitely much happier music and NSYNC will always be my go to.” The blonde says, unashamed.

“Oh no. Now you have to leave my table. This is a Backstreet Boys table.”

That starts a whole argument on which nineties boy band was better. The debate expanded into a top ten. Lena actually lost track of time and couldn’t believe that this rather beautiful woman just sat in front of her and actually made her forget her numbness for a while. Then Lena’s phone starts ringing, shaking them out of the little bubble that had formed around their table in the heart of National City. Lena holds up a finger with an apologetic look.

“Hey, Jess… No, I just lost track of time...No, I can get there...Yes, see you in about half an hour… Bye Jess.”

“You have to go?” The woman looks disappointed.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay.” The woman sips at her forgotten coffee, making a face at the surely cold liquid.

“Thank you,” Lena says, knowing this woman wouldn’t know how good this conversation was for her.

“For what?”

“I am not sure. Have fun at your concert tonight.” Lena starts to turn to go.

“Wait!” Lena turns back to the woman suddenly standing. Lena raises an eyebrow.

“Can I umm… see you again?” Lena is caught off guard again by this woman who continues to surprise her.

“I-I won’t be here long. I… travel a lot.” The blonde looks disappointed again.

“Well can I have your name at least?” She tries again. Lena pauses to think then stretches out her hand.

“Elena Colby.” the woman takes it.

“Well, Elena. I’m Kara Danvers. Just so you know, if I see you again, I will take it as fate or destiny or something and I will ask for your number again.” That makes Lena smile.

“Consider me warned.” Lena hails a taxi to take her away before she decides to change her mind.

***

“Ugh Alex, you should have seen her. Even in that sweatshirt and her hair up in a messy bun, she was beautiful. She kept fiddling with her glasses and I swear that laugh should be illegal. And those eyes...” Kara flops on the couch in her sister’s apartment. Alex was changing from her pantsuit in the other room, having had to go to the Bureau to fill out some paperwork this morning. Alex laughs and walks out of her room to sit next to her swooning sister. She is wearing her official black Lena Luthor tour t-shirt. Half of the women’s pale face stares out with a piercing green eye next to bold lettering of her own name.

“Her eyes?” Alex pokes at Kara’s shoulder.

“They were this captivating brown. But…”

“But what?”

“There was something off. I don’t know. But they were sad too. Like I just wanted to hug her.”

“Kara, you want to hug everyone you meet.” Alex teases.

“True, but I wanted to.”

“Yes, you wanted to hug the pretty girl.”

“How’s Detective Sawyer?” Kara flips it back around on Alex.

“Annoying,” Alex grumbles.

“Just because you don’t share cases well. She practically solved the murder that led to the dogfighting ring bust herself.” Kara points out. Alex grumbles a protest.

“And you like her.” Kara continues to push.

“She has a girlfriend.” That takes the fun out of the tease.

“You asked her out?”

“Yup. And she shot me down in one of the most embarrassing ways. So I need tonight.” Kara grins and throws her arms around her sister.

“I love our Sister Nights. Even if the music is slightly depressing.”

“But the expensively cheap beer will be great.” Kara laughs and turns on the TV to kill the few hours before they were going to head to dinner.

***

Lena carefully removes the colored contacts from her eyes and places them in the case that she keeps in her dressing room table. She puts in her real contacts and begins to carefully put together Lena Luthor, the cold, badass, rising star. The person adopted and raised by one of the richest madmen in the world. Who disappointed her adoptive mother by pursuing music instead of using her MIT degree. Music was one of the few things that made her feel anything. Now performing was mostly going through the motions, like everything else.

A knock at the door. Jessica is calling for her to report for sound check and a quick run through of the set. Gone is the simple disguise that Lena used to blend into public spaces. In its place is a woman who is all sharp lines and piercing eyes. Lena takes a deep breath, rolls her shoulders back, and purposefully strides out of her dressing room.

Jess is waiting with the set list and banana, knowing full well Lena hasn’t eaten, only ingested copious amounts of coffee. She takes it gratefully and eats half before ditching it in a trash can just off stage. Men and women still dash about all around, preparing for the night. Her band and back up singers mingle on stage. Lena walks up to the mic and waits for her cue to begin.

***

“Alex! You really bought front row tickets?”Kara practically shouts over the noise from all around the Colosseum and the opening act. They both struggle to keep their beers from being jostled and spilled as they make their way between people's legs and the barricade.

“I got a raise. Plus, come on. It's Lena Luthor. This may be the last time tickets like these are within my price range.”

“Okay. But next sister night is on me.”

“So pizza, potstickers, and a movie?”

“Well retired MMA fighters don't make that much when their replacement career is part-time coaching and trying and failing to sell their own art.”

“Hey, you'll sell sometime. It just takes one to the right person.” Kara rolls her eyes.

Suddenly the lights go down and cheers erupt. A slightly eerie chiming begins. A spotlight comes up on a single, raven-haired figure. She is dressed in a leather black v neck vest, leather pants, and boots. Very much what someone would expect from her music.

Hey girl, open the walls, play with your dolls. We'll be a perfect family. When you walk away, it's when we really play You don't hear me when I say, Mom, please wake up Dad's with a slut, and your son is smoking cannabis No one never listens, this wallpaper glistens Don't let them see what goes down in the kitchen

A hush had fallen over the crowd as Lena Luthor began her song. It was called 'Dollhouse’ from what Kara could remember. A catchy song with depressing lyrics. People all around joined in on the next verse, including Alex.

Places, places, get in your places Throw on your dress and put on your doll faces Everyone thinks that we're perfect Please don't let them look through the curtains Picture, picture, smile for the picture Pose with your brother, won't you be a good sister? Everyone thinks that we're perfect Please don't let them look through the curtains

Kara takes a long pull on her beer.

Hey girl, look at my mom, she's got it going on Ha, you're blinded by her jewelry When you turn your back she pulls out a flask And forgets his infidelity Uh-oh, she's coming to the attic, plastic Go back to being plastic No one never listens, this wallpaper glistens One day they'll see what goes down in the kitchen

Kara remembers the rumors that circulated about the Luthor family. Most of it was unconfirmed but this song coming out several years after only renewed them. Lena refused to comment in any of her interviews and ended them whenever a reporter dared to ask. Kara admits that she had gone beyond just listening to Lena’s music. She began to wonder who the person was behind the mysterious facade of a nearly unreachable woman.

Cheers and clapping erupt as the song ends. The next song is a completely different sound as Lena is handed an electric guitar. The lights come up so you can see the whole band and the different lights flashing around the stage. Everyone joins in almost instantly to 'Teenagers’ as smoke billows on to the stage and over the crowd.

They're gonna clean up your looks With all the lies in the books To make a citizen out of you Because they sleep with a gun And keep an eye on you, son So they can watch all the things you do Because the drugs never work They're gonna give you a smirk 'Cause they got methods of keepin' you clean They gonna rip up your heads Your aspirations to shreds Another cog in the murder machine They said all Teenagers scare The living shit out of me They could care less As long as someone'll bleed So darken your clothes Or strike a violent pose Maybe they'll leave you alone But not me

Kara decides just to sit back and enjoy being with her sister. The music is really good and Lena Luthor is really talented. Kara gets three more beers for both of them throughout the two-hour concert. Kara has a good buzz going by the time she and Alex shuffle to the parking lot with the mob of people. They wait for their Uber to pick them up on the sidewalk.

“Thanks for coming with me Kara.” Alex drapes her arm around her slightly shorter sister.

“I will always come when you ask me to. You, my sister, are my best friend.”

“And you're mine.”

***

Lena throws back another shot of Maker's and then let's the girl pulling on her hand lead her to the dance floor. The exclusive after-party was held in the loft of some new nightclub. The concert was long forgotten and it was that weird limbo time that got trapped between late night and early morning. People still packed the club and the pretty girl was more than eager to show Lena how big a fan she was. The brunet was pressing her ass into Lena and Lena let her own hands wander from the girl's hips and up her stomach.

“Want to get out of here?” Lena whispers in her ear.

The girl didn't respond and instead takes Lena's hand to make their way to the door of the club. Jess and her bodyguard follow at a distance, always making sure she is safe, despite Lena’s disregard for her own health. Lena’s hotel for the night is just a block away so the journey is quick. Even so, Lena begins exploring the woman’s body in the elevator. Kissing her neck to her collarbone. Fingers sliding under the white crop top that already showed too much skin. The woman’s hands tangle in Lena’s hair and sinful moans escape her lips.

Somehow Lena manages to open her door and get the woman who will help her feel something for the night onto the bed. Clothes were shed with little ceremony as soon as the door shut behind them. Lena resumed kissing her all over. All over except for the lips. She refused to make that connection. That was the thin line that turned sex from fucking into love and Lena couldn't do that again.

A thigh presses against the heat in Lena's center and she moans into the woman's neck. Slender fingers trail down Lena’s back and then caress her hips. They slide quickly in between the already dripping folds between Lena’s legs.

“Fuck.” Is all the girl says as Lena’s hips buck into her hand. She begins circling the swollen nerves and Lena grips the sheets as she hovers over the nameless woman. Lena is relieved that she is moving quickly because some of her partners would try to drag things out.

Lena bends and begins working on the brunette's nipples. Taking one in her mouth and earning a moan in return. The woman dips lower, finally entering Lena and setting a steady pace. Lena bites down slightly and it causes the fingers inside her to jump, bumping the most sensitive spot. Encouraged by whatever noise Lena made, the woman finds it again. And again. Soon Lena stops her menstruations to let her own sensations build inside her. Her release builds quickly and Lena does nothing to slow it.

Lena falls to the side and breathes deeply, reveling in the feeling of her own release.

“You are fucking sexy.” The woman says.

“Shhh… no talking.” Lena says, silencing her with a finger to the lips. Lena quickly begins to work to return the favor. The woman is easy to push over the edge. Almost as soon as the woman's cries end, Lena stands and throws on her sweatshirt and underwear.

“Feel free to take whatever from the minibar. I'm going for a cigarette. I recommend you be gone when I get back.” Lena says to the slightly confused woman. She nods in a daze and Lena steps out onto the balcony she made Jess pay extra for.

She only allowed herself one cigarette after sex. It always helped take her mind off the women and sometimes men she used and kicked out. Lena heard noses behind her, then the door opening and shutting. Lena pulled on the small comfort and watched the city forty floors below. Despite the late hour, lights still lit windows and moved along streets. Sirens could be heard faintly in the distance. It always amazed Lena that she wasn’t the only one whole really felt alive in the hours after two.

Lena puts out the cigarette butt and climbs back into bed. She stares at the ceiling, hoping for a dreamless sleep that alcohol usually brings her.

***

August 5th, 2017

Sweat pours down Kara’s head and back as she runs through the park. The early summer heat bakes onto her shoulders, already sweltering at eight-thirty. She had removed her t-shirt two miles ago and now clutched it in her fist, using it to wipe sweat out of her eyes. She loved finishing her runs in this park. A big fountain stood in the center, along with an ice cream cart that was always open at eight sharp.

Kara was just rounding the last corner when she ran straight into something or someone. Kara quickly grabs whoever it is to stop their fall, her own reflexes keeping her upright. Kara manages to grab one hand and wrap an arm around their back. Brown eyes stare into hers and Kara gulps, realizing who she is now holding.

“Elena!” The woman's eyes go wide.

“Kara!”

“Well, maybe this is destiny.” Kara surprises herself with how smoothly that came out.

“Yeah, to ruin my morning coffee.” Kara winces and looks at the spilled to-go cup now drained on the sidewalk.

“Well, I guess I’ll need that number so I can buy you a new one.” Kara recovers. Elena clears her throat.

“Kara, can I have my hand back?”

“Can I have your number?” Kara tries again. She isn't usually this forward but something is telling her not to miss this chance. Elena rolls her eyes.

“If I am going to give you my phone to put your number in, I will need my hand back.” Kara brakes into a huge grin and releases Elena. The dark-haired woman pulls her phone out of her back pocket and hands it over after unlocking it. Kara enters her number and sends herself a quick text.

“I'm still leaving town in a few days.” Elena tries.

“Looks like I'll have to take you to dinner tonight.”

Elena shakes her head. The loose bun on her head flopping a little. She pushes her glasses back up her nose.

“I can't tonight. Tomorrow though. I’ll have a few nights off work.”

“Hmm… a beautiful mysterious woman works a night job on weekends.”

“And that's all you will get for now,” Elena says, cursing herself for saying that much.

“Goodbye, Elena Colby. I'll call you tomorrow.”

Kara runs off in the opposite direction of where Lena was headed back to her hotel. The loss of her coffee was eclipsed by the distinct raised abdominal muscles of the persistent blonde that clouded Lena’s judgment.

Lena had to recover before her second performance tonight. After that, the tour was going to have a two-week hiatus and Lena was strongly considering spending that time in National City. She tried to shake off the image of the half-naked and actually very muscular woman but she had a feeling that that would be playing a role in her dreams tonight. Lena heads to buy another coffee before going back to her hotel to get dressed for the day.

***

K- How do you feel about Chinese food?

Kara glances at her phone again, waiting for a response from Elena. She had texted the woman, too impatient to wait for tomorrow to call. Frowning, she heads back to the mat to wait for her trainee to come back from his water break. James was a nice guy. He was friends with her cousin and had just moved to National City a couple months ago. Apparently, Clark had recommended he find Kara and train with her to make a friend and also learn some self-defense after being mugged in Metropolis. They fell into an easy friendship that didn't venture much outside the gym except for the occasional coffee or meal after a workout. Sometimes he would join her, Winn, and Alex for game night.

“You keep checking your phone,” James states while strapping back on his gloves.

“Yeah, I'm waiting for someone to respond. Now put 'em up.” Kara raises her padded gloves for James to hit.

They work methodically together. Kara calling out various moves for James to perform while she blocks each one. They work for about another half an hour before it's time to go. Kara is drying off her arms with a towel when she realizes that James is standing awkwardly in front of her.

“Hey. So I was wondering if you would like to get dinner with me tomorrow night.”

“Like a date?”

“Oh yeah. I mean if not that's cool.”

“Well actually, umm… I kind of already have a date for tomorrow. That's the text I was waiting on earlier.” James looks like a kicked puppy at the news.

“Sorry. Raincheck?” Kara didn't want to turn him down completely. James was a nice guy and all. Probably good for her too. But Elena intrigued her and she couldn't pass up this chance, even if she was leaving soon. It seems to brighten the man.

“Raincheck.” He repeats before leaving the gym. Kara looks back down at her phone and smiles.

E- Can sushi be involved?

K- I guess I could find a place that serves both. I'll send you an address when I do. I would pick you up but I actually don't have a car. How does 7 sound?

E- So do you just run everywhere then? Not that I don't enjoy the view. Seven sounds great.

K- walking or the bus. Sometimes I use my sister's bike but she needs it tomorrow. Besides, National City is best explored on foot. You miss too much otherwise.

E- Guess you'll have to show me around properly then. I'll see you tomorrow at seven.

Lena put down her phone and focused on getting ready for tonight after chuckling at the string of emoji's. She couldn't believe she was breaking almost all her rules and going out with this girl. She never let herself get attached. Attachment led to heartbreak and Lena had enough of that. She takes another swig from the flask and winces slightly at the burning liquid. Jessica sat on the couch managing Lena's life almost down to the second. Lena didn't know what to do without the woman. Jessica had been by her side since the label found her during her final year of college, well when she was eighteen. A talent show Lena had entered on a dare from her then-girlfriend led to her winning and signing a deal with Green Diamond Records. Here she was, two albums, three tours, and five years later. The only person she considered anywhere near to a friend was paid to be here.

Lena decides to leaf through the newspaper left on her dressing table. The front page is, of course, her sold-out concert. Something catches her eye in the bottom half of the paper though. A blurry, dark image of a hooded figure punching another shadowy form. The title reads Justice or Revenge? The word vigilante stands out in the small text so Lena starts reading.

Two nights ago another rapist and Cadmus gang member was apprehended by National City’s Vigilante. The criminal was left tied in an alleyway after an anonymous tip was called into the police. The photo was taken by CatCo’s own photographer, James Olsen who just happened to be working on another story for his own publication. The National City police would like to remind everyone that vigilantism is illegal and the apprehension of criminals should be left to the professionals. Any information about this person should be reported to...

Lena kept reading. There wasn't much. Only that whoever this was had been bringing in a lot of low-level criminals who the police were having trouble finding. Each had enough evidence to be convicted for several long years also. Lena decides to pull out her phone and look for more pictures but apparently, the one from this James Olsen was the only one in existence. No wonder the police couldn't identify them.

“Isn't that interesting news? I mean first the crazy guy in Gotham and now whoever this is taking on Cadmus. “ Jess says from behind Lena.

“Yeah, it takes a certain type of crazy to take on criminals like that.”

“It also takes a certain kind of crazy to do what you do.” Jess points out.

“I never said I was sane.” Lena drawls out. Jess laughs.

“Neither am I. But hey, crazy loves company.”

“Misery loves company.” Lena corrects.

“That too. Alright. Time for the last sound check.”

***

Kara carefully wound the bandage around her bruised ribs. Hissing at the soft pressure that brings slight relief once it's in place. The punch didn't break anything but it still hurt like hell.

“Kara!” Alex calls through the apartment. She winces at the anger in her sister's voice. Kara pulls her shirt back down, hiding the evidence of tonight's activities. Slowly Kara walks out of her bathroom and into the kitchen. Alex throws this morning's paper at her. She sees it. The picture that no one should have caught because it was three in the morning two nights ago. It just so happened to be at the time that James just happened to be working on another story about corruption at the docks.

“So they finally got a picture of this vigilante,” Kara says, trying to remain neutral.

“You know I couldn't figure out how they avoided leaving evidence of any kind. How every camera had been avoided. Now it makes sense. I trained you. Taught you more than I should.”

“I don't know what you are talking about.”

“Save it, Kara. I bought that red and blue hoodie for you last Christmas. The marks left on the captives are consistent with a professional fighter. Most of the men would take significant strength to bring down. I know it's you. You have lied to my face about this for the last time.”

Alex is serious. If Kara pushes this could be their worse fight yet. Alex knows and Kara can't pretend any longer. Kara drops her head and goes to sit on the couch, hoping that siting will de-escalate the tension before Alex actually explodes. She winces as the bandages pull at her bruised ribs.

“Okay. Yes. It's me. I couldn't keep doing nothing. Not after that girl was raped and left to die not four blocks from here. Not when I can do something.” Alex follows Kara but doesn't sit.

“Kara! You need to leave this to the professionals. The police are trying to do their job and they can't if you are…”

“If I'm what?!” Kara explodes, standing again in front of her sister.

“If I am leaving criminals nicely tied up with everything but a bow? If I am leaving them alive and willing to testify against those even higher up? If I am giving people hope?”

“That isn't the point. It's illegal, what you are doing. It has been since the crazy Archer started killing off corrupt politicians in Starling City two years ago.”

“I'm not killing anyone! The police aren't actively looking for me because of that. Yes, they warn against it and try to seem like they are doing something but most of those cops are relieved that something can actually be done. Maggie told me so.” That makes Alex pause.

“Maggie knows?”

“Not who I am. She just thanked me after the third guy I practically dropped on the hood of her cruiser. I wear a mask and use a voice modulator.”

“How the hell do you have a voice modulator?” Kara winces. Knowing she slipped up again.

“Umm...Winn?”

“Winn!?”

“Well yeah, he's like super smart. Like the top IT guy for CatCo smart should have gone to MIT smart... Well, he made me a mask and a voice modulator and he's actually working on a suit for me to wear.”

“Winn knows.” Alex states.

“Winn gave me the idea. He has supported me through this whole thing.”

“I'm going to kill him.”

“Alex leave him out of this. It was my choice.”

“It's a stupid choice!”

“Well, I made it. And I'm not changing my mind now!” Kara yells back. She was right. This would be their worst fight. The never yelled like this. Not since Kara's very misguided choice of dating that man-child Mike.

“Kara!”

“Alex! For the first time since I quit the ring I feel like myself. Like helping people is what I am meant to do.”

“You can help people in other ways.”

“And I will. I'm going to start teaching self-defense lessons at different schools. But this, Alex this is making a difference. I can already see it.”

“You could get killed,” Alex says, suddenly soft.

“Or I'll risk regretting my life. I know the danger is real. That is why I am careful. It's why Winn has my back.”

“How does Winn have your back?” Alex asks.

“Umm… not something I think I can tell a federal agent who already hates him.” Alex finally sits on the couch and Kara follows her.

“Just promise me you won't be reckless.”

“I swear. We don't do anything without a plan.”

“Okay. So why did you ask me to come over then? I assume it wasn't so we could scream at each other.”

“I have a date tomorrow.” Kara grins at her big sister.

“Who?”

“The girl from Noonan’s. I literally ran into her at the park and pulled the smoothest line ever.”

“Blushing, babbling Kara Danvers pulled a smooth line on a pretty girl? Now I know your lying.”

“Well, I set myself up for it yesterday, even though it was the cheesiest thing to say, ever. I told her if I saw her again it would be fate or destiny and I would ask for her number again. Then on my usual morning jog, I turned a corner in the park and literally had to catch her from falling. She agreed to a date once I called it fate again.”

“You realize that your 'morning jog’ is something most people train for months to do once?”

“Not the point Alex.”

“Right, so does this girl believe in fate then?”

“No, I just think it was a good line.”

“Okay, so where are you taking her?”

“I want potstickers and she wants sushi so I was thinking that new Fusion restaurant. But I have no idea what to wear. I mean I haven't been on a date since forever. Help me?” Alex laughs at the pleading look on her sister’s face and stands to go look through her closet.

“You could do with fewer cardigans, you know,” Alex calls from the other room.

“I like them. They go with everything.” Kara calls back as she gets up to follow her sister.

“Well, they aren't really first date-worthy. Give me a second. I think I remember you having.. ah, here it is. Now if only you had… these work… shoes...shoes...shoes…” Alex is mumbling to herself while Kara sits on her bed to wait.

“Perfect!” Alex exclaims.

Kara perks up as Alex lays the outfit out on the bed. A dark blue off the shoulder shirt she forgot she owned with black ripped jeans and ankle boots.

“Blue was always your color. And arms are probably one of your best features. Especially for sweeping pretty girls off their feet.” Kara squeals and hugs her sister excitedly.

“Thank you, Alex!” Alex brings her arms up to hug Kara back. The pressure causes Kara to intake a sharp breath. Alex doesn't even ask what's wrong. She jerks her sister’s shirt up to find the bandages wrapping Kara’s torso.

“Kara!”

“It's fine Alex. Just some bruised ribs. Nothing is broken.” Kara thinks she can literally see Alex swallowing her next words. She just nods instead, not wanting to renew the anger already.

“Have fun on your date tomorrow. I have to go. Maggie and I are meeting to go over another case.”

“Have fun on your date then.” Alex rolls her eyes.

“It's not a date. Our superiors are just glad we are closing a bunch of cases. She has good connections on the streets. I have good connections in the FBI.”

“Okay, sis. But I'm calling it now.”

“Calling what?”

“Being the maid of honor at your wedding.” Alex begins sputtering in response.

“Goodbye, Kara. Remember the three date rule.”

“Three date rule?” That gives Alex some of her swagger back.

“Bye Kara.” She calls over her shoulder on the way to the door.

“Alex!” Kara calls after the woman, the door shuts without further explanation.

#supergirl #supercorp #kara danvers #lena luthor #au #vigilante #singer #WTFU #fanfiction

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moviegroovies · 5 years

Text

oh god after last time i really did think i was done but i must have unlocked some new level of hell because here we go, here we go, lost boys hcs PART 3!!!!

so ummmmm michael... is sort of dumb.

like, ok, specifically??? i think he’s got a higher than average emotional intelligence, but he’s just one of those kids who’s bad at school. there’s some hints of this in the movie: when michael is telling sam that he can’t tell lucy about the vampirism thing, sam’s line is that it’s “not like getting a D in school, mike!”, implying that hiding that kind of thing is something the two of them have been over before, and a deleted subplot has him repeatedly insisting to lucy that he’s going to drop out of school to get a job and help her pay for things.

tbh i think he’s got that classic “child of divorce” thing going on. he feels like a burden on sparse resources and can’t stand the thought of wasting his days in school, where he doesn’t even want to be. he wants to help his mom! he gets a job for he so he can do that! what a good, sweet boy!!!

hmmm. dyslexic michael, anyone? like, i was going to say that he was particularly vexed by math & science, but the more i think about it, the more i’m leaning toward him maybe just being disinterested in those subjects, even though they’re the ones he’s better at, while english and history (but particularly english) really piss him off because studying takes so goddamn long.

so he gets like, C+/B- in math and science, consistent C- in history, and wavers C- to D+ or even lower in english.

he’s so polite to his teachers that they help him when they can though, especially because they know he’s trying so hard, but he’s just not entirely gifted at this sort of stuff.

the worst is when he has to keep his grades up to stay eligible for sports--that pressure just makes everything seem so much worse.

i think michael plays some of everything. he’s like, some kind of guard on the football team, not particularly their star player or anything, but i think he’s also got a starter position on the basketball team, and he is the star pitcher on the baseball team.

physical stuff just comes easier to him than academic stuff, you know?

his high school girlfriend was a cheerleader, but they weren’t that serious. she was a kind of preppy girl, a little vapid, and it felt to michael like they only really dated because they were supposed to. breaking up with her kind of led to michael’s attraction to star; he saw her on the boardwalk and she looked like she dressed for herself and she was outwardly enjoying her time at the concert--plus, you know, she’s really pretty.

he hates to admit it, but michael’s favorite classes in school were the home ec classes that his guidance counselor suggested he take. he took shop first, which was okay, but really, what he liked to do the most was the cooking and sewing shit. when he joins the lost boys, he kind of “takes over” these roles from star (who had been pressured into acting the mother for all these assholes who could be her great grandfathers, easily), and it turns out that he’s a lot better at that stuff than she is.

guess he was always kind of training to be david’s bitch after all.

the guys stop ribbing on him once he shows them how he can fix their clothes and shit, though. goddamn assholes.

michael’s main circle of friends in highschool was made up of other jocks, and like with his girlfriend, they weren’t super close. he often got excluded from stuff because he would insist he couldn’t do something or other on account of his mom needing him home that night, or he would get pissed at them for making fun of sam.

michael said family comes first, fuckers!

he did drink and smoke and shit like that back in phoenix when he knew he wouldn’t be missed at home, though. he’s not a goody two shoes, really, he just didn’t want to make things harder than they were for his mom.

one day he did come home drunk, and he’ll never forget how upset lucy looked. he still doesn’t feel like he’s made that up to her. ouch.

one of the guys michael hung out with, probably the closest michael had to a “best friend” was a dude named declan who he’d known since elementary school. declan as the only one of the jock guys who didn’t really hold it against him when he’d skip out on stuff, and the only one he ever even thought about telling the divorce shit to, although in the end, he chickened out of actually doing it.

like i said, they weren’t best friends or anything, but they could have been, y’know?

one of the less nice dudes in his group (probs one michael got in fights with often) started dating michael’s girlfriend about a week after he moved. michael wasn’t really pissed by the time he found out about that; he had way bigger problems to worry about by then.

there was a guy that michael saw around who was kind of a beatnik loner outcast and almost definitely a fag. he liked shakespeare and oscar wilde and probably drew pretty things in the margins of his notebook, and the guys that michael hung out with trashed on him pretty much constantly. michael himself, however, had kind of a thing for the guy: he thought he was cool and would ask when he could to see what he was working on.

you know how michael acted around star at the very beginning of their association? that’s pretty much how he was around this dude. local bi disaster is bi.

the guy (i was going to say fuck it and name him after the guy who i’m sort of basing him on from peggy sue got married, but guess what my fucking luck is, that dude’s name is michael. jfc. let’s call him charlie) thought michael was just there to make fun of him like the others did, but he eventually, he might have come around to trusting that mike really was just interested in his art.

maybe they made out or something before charlie eventually pushed back against him because he didn’t want to get fucking murdered by michael’s friends for making him queer if they got caught

michael always felt like he should have pushed harder to have some sort of relationship with charlie, but once he moves to santa carla, there’s no use in thinking about it anymore.

unlike michael, sam did have a close circle of friends at school, even though he wasn’t as classically “popular” as his brother.

it was probs this reason that made him take the move a lot harder than his brother did.

sam, also unlike michael, was/is really good at school. he’s super skilled at memorizing dates & facts (just look at him rattle off semi-obscure superman trivia lol), and pretty talented at writing to boot. he doesn’t like math as much, but if he works at it, it comes to him pretty quickly.

gifted kid perks™

being that everything came easy to sam, and that he didn’t do any sports like michael did, he had a lot of downtime to read books and comics, keep up w/ pop culture, and hang out with his nerdy friends who liked to do the same. he was even in a d&d group

his character was an elf rogue.

it’s about gay rights

re: sports, it’s not that sam couldn’t be athletic, just that he didn’t ever really want to be. he used to do little league to be like michael and as a concession to his father, but really, he was always put in the outfield, and at the end of the day he would just rather read or watch tv than stand out in the hot sun playing this game he didn’t care about.

when they were little, michael trained himself to get better at reading so that he could read stuff to sam when their parents were fighting or their mom was away. he remembered how his parents (in better times) had read to him, and he knew it made sam feel better, so he put aside his difficulties and discomfort to read to his brother before bed.

the easiest things to read for him were comic books (he had some batmans and supermans and even a few wonder womans, although it wasn’t all superhero stuff. he also had richie rich and, of course, archies), which kind of sparked sam’s love for them--they were something he shared with his brother. <3

i’m thinking sam’s nerd club was the prototypical “mostly boys who never talked to a girl in their lives” type thing, but at the same time i’d like to imagine that at least one of them had a pretty brash (and nerdy) sister who pushed her way into the club, winning their respect by doing what sam did to frog brothers, only with star wars lore.

also, i’m kind of picturing a shy girl from their school who sam takes under his wing when she’s getting bullied, only to find out that she’s really into that stuff too.

she’s part of their d&d campaign; she plays a badass orc barbarian woman and consistently has the best luck with the dice.

the girl is almost definitely a lesbian, but sam asks her to homecoming and stuff like that so that they’ll both have dates; they’re basically each other’s beards.

Gay Rights.

one of the only ways michael could ever really relate to his dad was when they played baseball and the dad taught him Sports™ things, so sam not being at all interested in that stuff made him kind of a disappointment. even still (or maybe for that reason), michael was always the mama’s boy, while sam spent a long time desperate for his dad’s approval.

maybe bc michael and lucy tried really hard to protect him from just how shitty their dad really was, to be honest.

speaking of michael and sam’s dad, i’ve been doing a lot of thinking about him, and now i’ve got Opinions.

contrary to what i guess is the general fandom consensus (at least from what i’ve seen? but my scope might not be that big regarding this character, so if i’m wrong, i’m wrong lol) regarding the dad, i can’t see him being particularly abusive physically.

however, given how sweet and agreeable lucy is, i get a sense that there must have been something REALLY insurmountable in their relationship to make her decide that divorce was the only option. the way i see it, michael and sam’s father started as one of those anti-establishment punks who eventually grew up and just... snapped back the other way entirely to end up as the establishment himself.

main justification for this is that scene w/ michael and star; he doesn’t just refer to his mother being an ex-hippie, he refers to his folks. plus, i mean, there must have been something about the man that endeared him to lucy, right?

so, over the course of their marriage, the guy goes from being a radical dreamer type with maybe some kind punk rock aspirations to being like.... reagan’s “moral majority.”

he starts totally stomping down his old dreams and, in the process, mocking lucy for holding onto anything from their past (you know how she told sam part of the reason she divorced him was that “he never believed in the closet monster”? that was a symptom tbh). i imagine that this, in itself, was soul crushing, but what was really the last straw was when he started in on michael and sam: getting mad and telling michael that he wasn’t going to make it in the MLB and that he had to get his shitty grades up if he wanted to amount to anything (only making him hate school even more lbr), and openly disliking sam’s rejection of sports and stuff in favor of his comic books and MTV.

before the end, i think michael got in a lot of fights with his dad when he’d make passive-aggressive comments at sam for not being enough of a man.

who made you the fucking authority on that, huh?

if he was ever actually physically violent with anyone, it was probably michael during these fights, or mayyyybe even lucy when she’d step in.

eventually, something just tips lucy’s goddamn scales, and she snaps and goes out right then and there to file for divorce. they never saw the point in signing a prenup or anything back then, y’know, so without really fighting for it, lucy wasn’t going to get anything in the divorce.

she doesn’t. they leave arizona with just about the clothes on their backs.

if anyone actually fought against the divorce proceedings, honestly i think it was the dad. he had this idea of his respectable nuclear family, and, even though he was basically an emotionally neglectful POS to his sons, he hated the idea of his wallstreet suit-type coworkers coming to know that his home life was anything less than perfect.

as a last ditch effort, he probably tried to win lucy back at the very last minute, even twisting her arm in an attempt to get her to stay for the boys’ sake, but he clearly no longer knows what attracted her to him in the first place, and the “effort” just makes her sad.

in her mind, she’s already gone by then, you know?

finally, he just ives up and signs the divorce papers. for a hot second it really fucks him up; he goes in to work unshaven and haggard, he’s back to eating like a bachelor, his heart isn’t in what he’s doing. this isn’t about grief over losing his family, though, is the shitty thing. not really. instead, he’s just dealing with uncertainty over how to remake his image.

unfortunately, that’s about as much karma as their dad gets. by the time lucy, sam, and michael are gone for good, he finds it’s easiest to just pretend that they never happened. lucy didn’t demand it, but he sends the occasional bare bones childcare check in the mail and feels like he’s the goddamn father of the year or something, and meanwhile, he remarries a woman that’s both younger and more conservative than lucy, sooner or later fathering a son with her.

lucy isn’t cruel; she doesn’t want the boys to be totally cut off from their father, and even though they both pretty clearly sided with her in the divorce she offers him visitation rights and partial custody (saying that they could stay with him at least every summer and for whatever other holidays he wanted), but he mostly rejects this.

when the boys try to call him to ask, he gives them a noncommittal answer about them maybe visiting next summer, after they’ve all gotten settled in.

they pretty much stop calling after that.

remember how i said michael has an above-average emotional intelligence? he’s definitely the one who helps lucy through the divorce the most. he picks up on the signals she sends about when she needs help and when she needs space, and chides sam for pushing her too hard every now and then.

sam, on the other hand, is definitely a good kid who cares about his mom a lot, but he’s a little more selfish and has a harder time acting like he’s got no problem leaving phoenix for her. the only real fights the two of them get into before all the vampire mess are centered around sam not being sympathetic enough to lucy and michael getting onto him for it.

i think that their dad might end up being a much better father and husband for his new family, and when the eventually visit him long enough to realize this, michael and sam... aren’t sure what to think.

like, they’re glad he’s not repeating the same mistakes he made before, but it’s not fair, is it? to see your little half-brother get the father you always wanted but never got.

their new stepmom is a sweet lady, though. she really does want to try and welcome sam and michael into the family. sam, michael, and their dad all try, but in the end they find it uncomfortable, and the boys know it’s just a facade on all sides to make her happy.

everyone is a little bit relieved when the boys just give up and go back to santa carla.

when michael meets the lost boys (& subsequently learns about dwayne’s past with jasper and, you know, the total boner david has for him, and oh yeah, the fact that these guys are kind of universally gay asf), his only experience with gay shit had been his closeted fumbling with charlie and like, negative stereotypes from media, so he’s kind of amazed by these totally queer dudes who just... take no shit.

like, he gets challenged to a motorcycle race and their leader doesn’t back down at all from the fight michael tries to incite, they take him back to drink and hang out in a semi-nasty man cave. these dudes aren’t what he expects from fags at all (they’re not sissies, and that’s kind of the end of his knowledge about the gay community at that time lol), and he just doesn’t... know what to think about them.

he kind of wants to be them.

like, you know how immediately after seeing them for the first time, michael buys himself a leather jacket and goes to get his ear pierced? there’s a reason for that, babes!

in other news, michael is a cancer and there’s nothing y’all can do about it.

i mean, i have Evidence behind my theory but also i’m just right.

but like, going back to that scene with michael and star again, when he’s introducing himself, you know how he tells her that he was nearly named moonbeam or moonchild or something like that? well, another name for cancers that i’ve seen is moonchildren, after the way cancer is ruled by the moon (and bc the term “cancer” itself has some... other connotations).

in conclusion, lucy really was That Bitch sgdfhghdh

#the lost boys #michael emerson #sam emerson #text post #headcanons #sdfhgh the other ones of these i did i tried to spread shit out between the characters more but here i am #just absolutely MICHAEL POSTING ON MAIN #wait this isn't main #that's alright then #god it's just that. i love him?#also i have no idea where the absolute swarm of ocs that turned up in this post came from but they just kind of... felt right. yknow?#me: gets into the lost boys #me: i hope this doesn't... awaken anything in me

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theliberaltony · 6 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is at long last over. After nearly two years, we have a summary of Mueller’s report from Attorney General William Barr, and that summary, in a letter to Congress, says that the Trump campaign did not coordinate with Russia. What’s less clear is where Mueller landed on the question of obstruction of justice: Barr’s summary says that the special counsel didn’t reach a conclusion, and we still don’t have the report.

This means we can expect a political fight until the full report is released, but how should House Democrats proceed in light of what information we do have? And how this could affect the 2020 election?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I don’t think it will affect 2020. None of the Democratic candidates was really hammering the Trump-Russia thing. And it doesn’t seem to be a major focus with voters either. In a recent CNN poll, respondents were asked to name what issue will be the most important to them in deciding whom to support in 2020, but not a single respondent mentioned the Russia investigation. And as for the campaign trail, Elizabeth Warren recently said to reporters that she wasn’t getting questions on the Mueller report from voters during events in Iowa and New Hampshire.

sarahf: I don’t know if it’s quite fair to say that 2020 candidates haven’t hammered the Trump-Russia thing at all. Beto O’Rourke did accuse President Trump of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election in a speech he gave on Saturday (before Barr’s letter was public).

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Are you saying that it won’t affect the 2020 general election? Or the 2020 Democratic primary?

nrakich: The primary.

There’s more of a chance it affects the general election. But attitudes do seem pretty baked in at this point.

natesilver: On the primary, I tend to agree, although the counter-factual where Mueller finds some huge smoking gun … it seems like things might be different then. At the very least, Democrats would have to stake out a clearer position on impeachment.

It is somewhat telling that none of the 2020 candidates had made the special counsel investigation a particular focus of their campaigns. Maybe you have someone like Beto who has talked about it, or maybe even said a few things he might consider walking back, but it’s not like it’s “Beto O’Rourke, the Russia candidate.”

Eric Swalwell sort of has tried to run on that in the invisible primary, and there doesn’t seem to be much interest in his campaign.

And Michael Avenatti was sort of running on that basis before he encountered … uh … other problems. And there wasn’t much of an appetite for an Avenatti campaign either, with him polling at 1 percent or so back when he was included in surveys.

nrakich: Yeah. Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 won largely by running on bread-and-butter issues, like health care. The 2020 candidates understand that.

And speaking of health care, Trump may have already stepped on his good-news surge from the Mueller report by bringing up Obamacare repeal again.

natesilver: Yeah. I mean, there’s just sort of so much that Trump is putting into the washing machine that both good stories and bad ones sort of all come out in the wash. (I think I butchered that metaphor.)

It’s not crazy to think that the Affordable Care Act could be more consequential to 2020 than the Mueller report. I don’t think I think that, but it’s not crazy. Rank-and-file voters care a lot about health care.

sarahf: But don’t you think that if House Democrats continue to pursue an investigation-heavy agenda, they risk alienating voters?

natesilver: I mean, I think the Michael Cohen testimony was fairly effective for Democrats. It was pointed and dramatic, and it took a day, rather than dragging on for months.

nrakich: And there are other investigations of Trump going on, including those over allegations of campaign-finance and emoluments clause violations.

natesilver: So, like, Democrats have to pick their shots. And maybe the threshold is higher, post-Mueller. But I don’t get the notion that they can’t pick their shots fairly effectively. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to have pretty good control of her caucus.

sarahf: But I guess that’s my question. Will the American public have the same appetite for those investigations? Or do Democrats risk their investigations being viewed in too partisan of a light?

nrakich: I just don’t know that it will matter one way or the other.

natesilver: Remember that the Mueller report itself has not been released. And even though I’m quite skeptical that what’s in the Muller report can be that much worse for Trump than what’s in Barr’s summary, it will affect public perceptions quite a bit if Republicans are slow to release the Mueller report.

sarahf: That’s true — that could work in the Democrats’ favor. (House Democrats have demanded the Justice Department turn over the full report by April 2.)

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Some of the Democrats in Congress are suggesting that the party should broadly back off of Trump-related investigations (not just the Russia probe) and focus more on policy. I think that’s an important internal debate where there will be different views in the caucus. Some members from purple/red districts have never been that excited about an anti-Trump focus, and I assume that the Mueller report news from last weekend will push them even further in that direction.

nrakich: Perry, I would agree with that if I were advising a presidential candidate, but I’m not sure that it’s going to matter what Congress does.

natesilver: Part of me wonders whether House Democrats will investigate Trump more than they “should” in the sense of it being politically optimal just because they have a lot of time on their hands.

They can’t really pass much legislation that’s going to get through the Senate and through Trump. But they sure as hell can investigate.

nrakich: It’s pretty normal for the House to ramp up the investigations under divided government.

And just glancing at the data, it doesn’t seem that the party in control of the House at that time suffered political consequences for it later on.

The strength of the candidates at the top of the ticket is probably what’s going to dictate if those red-district Democrats keep their seats in 2020.

perry: I do think the “release the report” argument from Democrats is important. Media reports that Trump tried to stop or stall the investigation are different from an official Justice Department report saying it and giving lots of details.

I think the Democrats can only gain from the Mueller report’s release. I’m not saying that it will change anyone’s vote in 2020 necessarily, but it will be useful for the Democrats to have the details out there.

sarahf: But OK, what does this mean for Republicans? How will they use the investigation in 2020?

perry: One way to look at it is that the results of the investigation weren’t great news for someone like Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, who has been hinting that he is open to challenging Trump in a GOP presidential primary.

Not that Hogan had much of a chance to begin with, but this closes one potential avenue for a GOP challenger to Trump.

nrakich: Yeah, basically the only prayer for Bill Weld or another Republican hopeful was for Trump to be indicted, AND the economy to tank, AND the pee tape mentioned in the Steele dossier to come out … it had to be a perfect storm.

natesilver: I do want to push back at something Perry said first. Clearly, Democrats would not gain from the report being released if it’s extremely skeptical about anything resembling collusion.

perry: I felt like Barr’s summary was already pretty skeptical, so it’s hard to imagine the full report being even more skeptical.

natesilver: I just think there’s a middle ground where Barr can probably spin things a bit, but if he spins too much, it’s very risky if the report eventually gets released or if details surface through other means (i.e., leaks).

perry: In terms of the Republicans, I think Trump and his allies were going to attack the Justice Department officials who were involved in the Russia investigation and the media outlets that covered the investigative intensely no matter what. But that instinct to attack the media and the group of people who started the Russia investigation will be reinforced by this report.

I think a big part of Trump’s 2020 campaign will be an anti-institutional argument. Which he was making in 2016 too, I suppose, but the anti-media, anti-“deep state” part will be even more aggressive.

natesilver: It’s a thin line, though, for Trump to attack the media while also getting relatively friendly coverage about the Mueller report. And I’m not sure that I trust the White House to walk that line effectively. Like, I think they’ve been dunking a bit too much and not using this report to maximize their standing with swing voters.

sarahf: But just think of the chant at the rallies: NO COLLUSION!

natesilver: It will be “WITCH HUNT!!” “NO COLLUSION!!” like the old “TASTES GREAT!!” “LESS FILLING!!” commercials (dating myself here).

perry: I’m not sure this is a good election strategy. I just think it’s likely to be what happens — hating the media and the “deep state” is going to become a bigger part of GOP politics now.

natesilver: Yeah, and as I wrote a couple of days ago, Trump could stand to gain among Trump-skeptical Republicans who are also skeptical of the media.

sarahf: A key demographic to watch will also be independents and how they respond. As Nathaniel wrote previously, there was some polling that showed independents weren’t against the investigation. But I wonder if that changes or shifts now.

natesilver: Also given the timing of this … the Mueller report is coming early enough that if it had been really bad, Republicans could have considered taking an off-ramp from Trump.

But suppose, hypothetically, that there’s some new scandal. It’s going to take a lot of time to metastasize into something. And it’ll be too late for Republicans to nominate someone else for 2020, most likely.

So they’re probably fairly committed to Trump as their nominee at this point, and that’s likely to start affecting their behavior right away. Not that there was ever much of a chance that Republicans would nominate someone else, but if there was just the slightest bit of daylight, there’s less now.

perry: And you’re already seeing signs of that. Republicans like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who used to criticize Trump a lot, are now trying to portray themselves as more pro-Trump.

Will it be harder for elected Republicans to criticize Trump when he does more outlandish things? I think so.

Trump has gained more and more control of the GOP over the past two years. And I think he’s strengthened by the ending of the uncertainty that surrounded the Mueller investigation while it was underway.

natesilver: So maybe that’s the simplest effect. It will increase the degree of party unity behind Trump.

perry: Jumping back to the Democrats, there are basically two camps among the presidential candidates. One group says that Trump is bad, but the country’s problems are much broader — rooted in the unequal power that the wealthy and elites wield. (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders fall into this camp.) The other group says the problem is Trump and to some extent the Republican Party. (Most of the other candidates fall into this group.)

Because Trump has not been implicated by the Mueller investigation (at least based on Barr’s summary of the report), I think we’ll see Democratic primary candidates move toward the Warren-Sanders view. And that’s important.

I’m not sure if Warren or Sanders will win the primary, but it will be interesting to see if their broader vision takes hold within the party.

natesilver: My initial instinct, FWIW, was the opposite — that if the Mueller report has any effect (it probably/might not), it would help the more centrist candidates because Trump will be seen as more formidable now and therefore a higher premium will be placed on “electability.”

nrakich: It’s not a single spectrum, though. Perry is right that, say, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand have been running more explicitly anti-Trump campaigns than Sanders and Warren have. But they’re all still lumped together as “progressive.”

natesilver: What about the Booker/Buttigieg/Beto gang, who have been running on a more upbeat, optimistic message?

perry: Electability is a huge focus of this primary. Full stop. But I also think the day-to-day exchanges in this campaign are about policy, and even people like Booker/Buttigieg/Beto

are moving toward more aggressive ideas like getting rid of the filibuster and the Electoral College.

It’s complicated. I feel like the primary is moving to the left on policy but is also really shaped by electability.

natesilver: It does seem like there are four quadrants. On the one hand, there’s “everything is going to hell” vs. “everything is going to be OK.” On the other hand, there’s “Trump is the biggest problem we’ve got” vs. “Trump is just a symptom of larger issues.”

sarahf: OK, so it sounds as though we think the effect of the Mueller report could be felt in two key ways in 2020:

There will be greater party unity behind Trump, regardless of how he chooses to spin the report’s findings (and setting aside the question of whether that’s a good strategy for winning swing voters).

Democratic presidential hopefuls might redirect their focus from Trump to saying the problem is bigger than Trump.

What else would you add?

nrakich: I’d just qualify No. 2 by saying that I don’t really think the Mueller report will have any effect on the primary. Primary voters are already partisan Democrats and have made up their minds about how shady Trump is.

natesilver: I don’t know. There was a mainstream media perception post-midterms, post-shutdown (Remember the shutdown? It wasn’t that long ago!) that Trump was in deep trouble and wasn’t so Teflon after all. Now you literally have headlines saying “TEFLON DON” and scoldy media people scolding other people in the media for underestimating Trump again. So the background climate changes a little bit.

Does it precipitate a change in behavior from the Democratic candidates? Maybe not.

nrakich: Yeah. Maybe it makes Democratic voters more concerned about the issue of electability in the short term. But “electability” means different things to different people. And in the long term, who knows?

natesilver: I’d just say that the Mueller news cycle already feels pretty different 48 hours later. You have some crazy stories — Avenatti, Jussie Smollett. You have the Justice Department taking a new position on Obamacare. You have this controversy over when and whether the Mueller report itself is going to be released. The news cycle moves on pretty quickly.

nrakich: Exactly.

I look forward to summer 2020 when we’re all talking about the political implications of Oprah giving every American a universal basic income.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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turtlethon · 2 years

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Turtlethon Extra Slices: “Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue”

(CW for today’s post, which contains extensive discussions and depictions of drug use, as well as George Bush. Not that one, the other one.)

Before Turtlethon heads into season five, let’s take a step back to look at one of the strangest projects the 1987 Turtles were ever associated with. Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was a half-hour anti-drug special produced by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation and Southern Star Productions, which was simulcast across the big four US TV networks on April 21, 1990. For our purposes, it’s worth noting that this was a few months after season three of TMNT was first broadcast, and the live-action movie was topping the box-office at this point.

Funded by McDonalds, Cartoon All-Stars is an extension of the “Just Say No” campaign that was the brainchild of the Reagan administration. Those fingerprints are all over the home video release, which opens with a treacly and seemingly endless advertisement for Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities, followed by a message by then-current President George Bush and his wife Barbara that amounts to little beyond explaining the cartoon’s premise and re-iterating that drugs are indeed bad. (Subsequent TV broadcasts in Canada, Australia and New Zealand would replace this portion with a message from each nation’s respective big cheese.)

The show proper kicks off with the piggy bank of a little girl called Corey being stolen while she sleeps. Watching this from inside a comic book are The Smurfs, who march out into the real world to alert her. Also coming to life is the cartoon version of ALF, who springs forth from a picture frame. He in turn awakes a Garfield lamp, who for the purposes of the show is now the famous cartoon cat himself. When Garfield announces he’s too lazy to help out, ALF threatens to eat him. I’ve gotta say this pairing actually has pretty great chemistry. Alvin and the Chipmunks are also here and for the moment have nothing much to contribute.

With the aid of Winnie the Pooh – formerly a stuffed toy – the various cartoon characters wake up an alarm clock of Kermit the Frog, seen here in his Muppet Babies incarnation, who in turn interrupts Corey’s slumber. Slimer from The Real Ghostbusters then passes through the wall into the bedroom, and as he wasn’t formerly a toy or some other household item, I guess he may be the actual Slimer. If you’re wondering why RGB wasn’t represented by at least one of the actual Ghostbusters, keep in mind that this was during the period where network executives had decided to push Slimer to the moon, to that show’s detriment. The green ghost swallows a desk lamp made to resemble some fruit, and subsequently shines a light on the spot where the piggy bank is now missing.

The toons sneak into the room of Corey’s brother Michael and watch him smash the piggy bank, scooping up the money inside; as Corey herself soon shows up to confront him without their help, they’re really only here to provide running commentary at this point. During the domestic squabble that follows between the two siblings, Michael hides his stash under the bed, unaware that the various cartoon characters are hiding there. This leads to one of the special’s funnier moments as Simon of the Chipmunks confirms Michael is in possession of “marijuana - an unlawful substance used to experience artificial highs!”

Michael storms out of the house, and the assembled cartoons head off to confront him. Winnie the Pooh stays behind to pursue his own sub-plot, but makes a point of wishing the others good luck.

At the arcade, Michael hangs around with a group of Cool Kids™ and is egged on by a ghostly cartoon pusher called Smoke to try harder drugs. The sound of approaching sirens leads the kids to split up, with Michael fleeing into an alley. He’s confronted by a police officer who turns out to actually be Bugs Bunny. After briefly containing Smoke in a trash can, Bugs lectures Michael about his behaviour, leading him into a time machine. Meanwhile Michael’s father notices some of his beers have gone missing, and Corey is pressured by Winnie the Pooh to confess everything she knows to her parents.

Bugs transports Michael to the past, where everything is in black and white and people prominently wear their initials on their clothes to aid in viewer identification. The rabbit shows Michael how he picked up his current habit and goes back and forth with Smoke debating the risks and benefits of his actions.

Michael’s father is busy in the shed with his... “KLIY”(?) when Corey appears to further her own B-plot. She tries to tell him about Michael, but it doesn’t go well. Okay, enough of this, let’s get to the reason why we’re all here.

Michael has apparently been dumped back in the present day by Bugs, and is now hanging out with the Cool Kids again when they decide out of nowhere that maybe they could try crack. Smoke is also present to spur them on, and although Michael is hesitant, the others soon steal his wallet. While in pursuit, he falls into a sewer, where he’s confronted by Michaelangelo. As the animation for this special was handled by Wang Film Productions – who handled the visual oddity that was “Cowabunga Shredhead” - Mikey is bigger and puffier-looking than usual, looming over the other characters. He’s also angrier than we typically see him as he reads both Michael and Smoke the riot act. This segment ends all too quickly as Mikey yanks a giant plug-stopper out of the sewer waters beneath his feet, pulling the boy and his enabler into the drain below.

Michael and Smoke then find themselves on a roller-coaster ride with baby Kermit, Miss Piggy and Gonzo, who demonstrate the effects that drugs are having on Michael’s brain. After waking up in a park, Michael then encounters Huey, Dewey and Louie, who perform a song about the virtues of saying “no”. Some of the other characters who’ve appeared throughout the special also chip in to suggest excuses Michael could use to not take drugs; Michaelangelo eventually pops up to suggest “I’ve got too much homework”. (Mikey isn’t particularly well-drawn here, and has some funky-looking arms.)

Waking up in his bedroom, Michael is confronted by Corey, so I guess that last sequence may have been a dream, and the roller coaster scene was itself a dream within a dream. The two siblings bicker some more before ALF pulls Michael into a hall of mirrors, presenting a ghoulish reflection of the teenager which the alien insists is what he really looks like. All of this would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that we as viewers can see that Michael does not in fact look like the Cryptkeeper, so the whole thing comes off as if ALF is gaslighting him.

ALF then guides Michael to a room where a sign on the door reads “THE MAN IN CHARGE”. Inside is a crude, boxy approximation of Smoke, who then jump cuts to his normal character model. Wait, did the animators just draw some kind of fill-in figure and then accidentally leave it in the finished show? Roy Disney said at the time of this special’s release that the animation was done in eight weeks, which seems implausible, but there’s no doubt from looking at it that it was a rush job.

Corey enters Michael’s room and discovers his stash, which leads to her having an encounter with Smoke. Winnie the Pooh warns her that he’s bad news, only to get thrown into a nearby cupboard. Meanwhile Michael is having a bad trip, imagining that he’s being chased by Dewey on the Roller Coaster of Death, or something to that effect. He bounces through some more nightmarish scenes as discordant rock music warbles, before finally winding up outside a “SEE YOUR FUTURE” tent. Inside is Daffy Duck, who reveals the fate that awaits him, as a zombie-like Michael is seen writhing on a table.

The “All-Stars” then assemble once more and everyone again gets to say their own little bit about the importance of not doing drugs. Michaelangelo materialises, looking somehow even worse than in his previous appearance, and chips in by telling Michael he’s excellent “just the way [he is] - without drugs!” I get what he’s going for here, but it’s a confusing statement as he clearly is currently very much “with drugs”.

Having finally had his big revelatory moment, Michael returns home and confronts Smoke, who’s in the middle of trying to win over Corey. The teenager hurls the ghostly villain into a garbage truck passing outside, and the siblings vow to be ready should he return. They’re cheered on by the Cartoon All-Stars, who apparently now all reside on a poster even though that wasn’t where any of them started out. Michael and Corey decide to “go talk to mom and dad”, and the lengthy credits abruptly roll. Just in case you forgot who ponied up the dough for all of this, the Ronald McDonald House ad runs for a second time at the end of the VHS release.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue has developed a reputation as something of a cult oddity over the last three decades and it’s not hard to see why. There’s an uncanny quality to the whole thing – the bizarre sight of The Chipmunks and the like talking in detail about drug use. The project is emblematic of the wider “Just Say No” and contemporaneous D.A.R.E. movements, as well as the wider War on Drugs ethos of the time, all of which hinged upon the idea of educating otherwise unwitting children about the subject early on in the hopes that this would turn them off, when it actually turned out to have the opposite effect.

Beyond the novelty of your kid-vid faves rappin’ about drugs, the other obvious reason this special still gets talked about is the crossover element. While having characters from otherwise unrelated properties interacting with each other is commonplace now – particularly given that the vast majority of all major IPs are now owned by five or six massive media conglomerates – this kind of thing was almost unheard of in 1990, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? being the obvious exception. What we get as a result is a line-up of notable fixtures of Saturday morning network line-ups in this era, as well as some old-timers like Bugs and Daffy. It’s revealing, however, that Disney weren’t about to offer up their counterparts here, and that neither Mickey nor Donald – or even Goofy, for that matter – were up for use.

Further analysis of the line-up also demonstrates how much the pendulum had swung back by 1990, in that only Michaelangelo and Slimer represent action-adventure cartoons. If this project had been commissioned five years earlier, it’s easy to imagine the cast being dominated by the syndicated stars of the day, with He-Man, She-Ra, Bumblebee, Lion-O and members of GI Joe all making an unlikely alliance to scold Michael for his weed use. As it is, Cartoon All-Stars marks the first cross-over event between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Ghostbusters, something we wouldn’t see again until IDW published a four-issue comic mini-series bringing the two teams together in 2014. Michaelangelo and Slimer have no real interactions with each other in this special, in fact poor Slimer is barely used at all. (The Turtles are on the rise at this point though and it’s arguably been at the expense of the now-waning Ghostbusters, a subject we’ll revisit another time.)

As an aside, I should point out that I’m not aware of any TV screening or VHS release of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue in the UK. It’s hard to imagine the three major broadcasters at the time working together to simulcast something like this in the spring of 1990. The BBC in particular had gotten into hot water three years earlier for an anti-drugs storyline in Grange Hill that revolved around a character becoming addicted to heroin, and surely wouldn’t have wanted to go down that road again; as we’ve covered previously in Turtlethon, they also had an ingrained cultural resistance to US cartoon characters in general. The involvement of McDonalds in the creation of this whole affair couldn’t have helped either.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue is must-see viewing for any afficionados of eighties or early nineties TV animation, if only to experience how figuratively and literally trippy the whole misguided project is. Due to the spider-web of rights issues involved and the fact that this was a not-for-profit venture anyway it’s widely available online, and in fact a nice 720p VHS rip is now up on the Internet Archive for you to enjoy. On our journey through the history of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show it marks an interesting turning point, where the green teens are the biggest stars in all of animation, and not yet Saturday morning mainstays like the other characters here, though that would soon change.

#Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue #1990 #PSA #PSAs #Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT 1987 #tmnt mikey #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt michaelangelo #ALF #Garfield #Slimer #Muppet Babies #TMNT #Ninja Turtles #Just Say No

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