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caramel-ribbons · 2 years ago

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Feminist Recs for Anime (For Women’s History Month)

If you want a little more in-depth explanation, then check out my previous post, but this is a project I’ll be dabbling in for women’s history month. Throughout March (we’re already five days in, I know, don’t mention it), I’ll be recommending feminist anime, or at least anime I believe are feminist, for you to add to your list as a celebration for women’s history month.

These anime feature strong female protagonists, fleshed out casts of female characters, little to no fanservice, and some have social and political themes related to womanhood, female friendships, and focus on female-driven narratives.

2. Sailor Moon (Original 90s Anime)

Features a majority female cast with a female lead and a sci-fi fantasy story.

Today, we’re going with a classic. Everyone knows what Sailor Moon is. Even if they don’t know the names of all the senshi, and even if they haven’t picked up a single issue of the manga or watched a single episode of either one of the anime adaptations, they still probably know the words to the English theme song or can attribute the now iconic sailor uniforms to this show. Not to mention this catchphrase. Sailor Moon has become a staple of the magical girl genre and is responsible for its popularity and many of the tropes we now associate with it.

For a run down on the story, Sailor Moon is about Usagi Tsukino; an ordinary teenage girl who is one day assigned a magical destiny to become a sailor senshi (a guardian and monster fighter), find a missing princess, and defeat an evil queen who’s in some way responsible for her disappearance (at least this is the plot of the first season cause the show drifts away from this initial story as we’re exposed to more villains and characters). Along the way, she finds the other senshi and learns more about her duty to not just the Earth, but to her galaxy.

Sailor Moon is well-beloved for a reason. It’s funny (think slapstick and situational humor), and starts off with relatively low stakes, but as the show goes on, the mystery and intrigue surrounding this story is slowly revealed to us. It’s big in terms of the scale of its plot. Since this is a sci-fi focused on planetary themed heroes, the villains and challenges vary between monster of the week to galaxy-level threats, especially in later episodes and seasons. Villains become harder to defeat, and the ensuing battles as you near the end of seasons becomes so gripping it’s hard to resist stopping once you’ve reached the final 5 or 6 episode finales.

Most of the characters aren’t the most deep or unique, but they are all fun and likable, and they’re definitely solid in terms of how diverse they’re portrayals of femininity are. This is one area where Sailor Moon shines. More than most Western animated shows, Sailor Moon managed to offer varied depictions of teenage girls unseen at the time. Some were elegant and artistic like Sailor Neptune, others were hot-headed and ambitious like Sailor Mars. You had the quiet intelligence of Sailor Mercury as well as the determined passion of Sailor Venus.

Makoto, aka. Sailor Jupiter, one of my favorites of the senshi, embodies this femininity concept as she is both feminine (an excellent cook and hopeless romantic), as well as masculine (brave, strong, and an excellent fighter). The anime doesn’t demonize femininity or masculinity, and as a result, the characters are allowed to fall on a scale in terms of their gender expression (which we’ll get to later). While the anime has since been criticized for having characters who feel too rooted in stagnant tropes, I think that, for the most part, the sailor senshi are given enough screen time and development to at least be easy to root for. And, the relationships the girls have with each other really inspires you to love them as you become invested in their friendship.

And, of course, Usagi, our Sailor Moon, is a protagonist who ages well. This is a chosen one story, and I’d argue that it’s one of the better ones because of how it handles Usagi. She famously starts out as a lazy, flighty crybaby but comes into her own as a leader and learns to take her destiny more seriously (…for the most part anyway). The chosen one narrative really lands because, as the series progresses, we see Usagi grapple with her responsibilities. Her kindness is valued as much as her strength, if not more. The thing that makes her question and voice regrets towards her destiny is the same thing that drives her to make good choices, especially in the later seasons.

Beyond the coming of age themes featured heavily in this show, there are themes of fate, love, loneliness, responsibility, and even moral and philosophical questions asked later on in the show when our characters are a little older. Relationships are important in this series whether they be the romantic (think Sailor Uranus and Neptune as well as Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask), or platonic. Friendships, specifically female friendships, are not only seen as important. They’re a superpower. As much as Usagi’s relationship with Mamoru, aka. Tuxedo Mask, is an important relationship throughout the series, it’s the bond Usagi shares with her fellow senshi and friends that helps them save the world, and as cheesy as that sounds, to have something so simple and so beautiful be the solution to end of the world level problems feels comforting in the times we’re in right now.

When it comes to the good, Sailor Moon is a mixture of fun, episodic adventures and serialized, earth-shattering conflicts. Also, there’s the show’s overall aesthetic. While the animation itself is pretty slow and stilted, (particularly in the older seasons), the backgrounds are very pretty to look at and the fashion is objectively magnificent (unless your Tuxedo Mask then rip). There’s a reason you see so many aesthetic boards related to this anime. The pastel, watercolor style is so nice to look at. As for the soundtrack, it’s as magical as the show. Some favorites of mine, besides the theme song, are the ending of season 3, Tuxedo Mirage, Moon Revenge, and We Believe You.

There’s also Sailor Moon’s diversity in terms of gender expression and sexuality. The girls often talk about boys, Usagi even has a relationship with Mamoru (the only recurring male character for a solid four seasons if you don’t count Artemis), but they’re not straight in the slightest. With the entrance of two important characters, Sailor Moon displays it’s first instance of LGBT representation that would set the series a part from other anime of this time:

Sailor Uranus and Neptune.

The same way Sailor Moon earns its status as a mainstay in Shoujo and magical girl anime, Sailor Uranus and Neptune, aka. Haruka and Michiru deserve their status as one of the best examples of LGBT representation not only in Shoujo, not only in anime, but in media itself. Even though we (technically) never see them share a kiss, the relationship between Haruka and Michiru is one of the strongest in the series. They’re given history, they get to express affection. These two are literally meant to be by each other’s side. When they enter the series, suddenly all of our protagonists display some level of attraction towards them, especially towards Haruka, and increasingly it isn’t seen as weird to them where it once was. Best of all, Haruka and Michiru are characters who are allowed to be beautiful and talented as well as morally-questionable, even downright unlikable, and while this makes it hard for some fans to enjoy their 90s portrayal, I really like having one of the earliest examples of queer characters in anime being two women who are admirable and heroic as much as they are unsympathetic and flawed.

But Sailor Moon doesn’t stop at inclusions of LGBT relationships. It also explores gender identity in a way that still feels unfamiliar even now. Haruka is more butch-presenting. The aforementioned Jupiter is both girly and tomboyish, and then there’s the depiction of the Sailor Starlights as gender-fluid. One of the Sailor Starlights, Seiya, even had a (mostly) unrequited crush on Usagi.

Now for the…not so good.

Sailor Moon is long. Like…absurdly long, and like most long-running anime, this is due to massive amounts of filler. I will say that the filler episodes vary. Some have great character moments, some are emotional, and there are some episodes which are just as much must-watches as any plot-drive episode. I’d even argue for some of the filler arcs people like to skip such as the twin alien arc of season 2 and the Nephrite arc which, while creepy and weird and definitely worthy of criticism, offers greater development for a side character and gives us our first glimpse of a sympathetic villain.

That’s not to say there aren’t any bad filler episodes. That’s definitely not the case. Sailor Moon has its fair share of boring, tedious, or otherwise unnecessary episodes which do nothing to develop the characters or flesh out their dynamic. The original anime is 200 episodes long, so it’s up to you to decide if you want to watch all the episodes or if you want to plow through and decide which episodes are worth your time because I can say that not all of them are.

There’s also the divisive nature of Usagi, or rather, how she’s treated. For some, the show is too mean-spirited to her regarding her laziness and immaturity (basically her child-like traits because she’s, y’know, a child). For some, this is particularly egregious with how she’s treated by Luna, Chibi Moon, and Sailor Mars. This is also a good time to mention the…strange diet culture surrounding Sailor Moon. It isn’t unique to this series, sadly, and it isn’t even the worst example of it. Everything from Toradora to Azumanga Daioh to K-On to Lucky Star has dialogue and even certain characters who are the butt of fat jokes or minor, but still present, diet plot lines. Sailor Moon isn’t the worst offender, but it’s still present, particularly with Usagi who, despite being as skinny as all of the other senshi, seems to be the main recipient of weight-related comments.

So, if you want a show with a wide variety of female characters and a greater focus on their friendships and heroism, and if you’re willing to deal with some filler content, minor references to diet culture (as long as you skip episode 4 I’m begging you to skip episode 4 it’s not good), and some minor but persistent humor poking fun at our protagonist, then I think everyone looking for female-centric anime should start here.

(Also if you’re willing to put up with some pretty nonsensical drama between Usagi and Mamoru for two seasons, give this a shot).

#sailor moon #anime #shoujo #feminism #women’s history month

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la-noche-cae · 2 years ago

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Elaborating on Nightfall's coding, antiblack racism.

Since I mentioned antiblack coding on this previous post, I feel I had to bring up specifics. Let's get into it:

Skylanders has many issues with racial coding, especially when the human characters were all white (until like a year ago presented in Ring of Heroes). We can say the elves coded as Asian is a problem, or the fact that Glumshanks- a Troll- participating in Judaism is suspicious (both of which do have the stereotyped green skin). The fact Fiesta is called Fiesta. Bad Juju and Voodood’s names are references to black & latine religions that have been demonized, or simply put as “spooky magic”- contributing to the homogenization of black religions.

/Racial coding/

Even if Nightfall's skin tone is not human, it is a deep dark. Media has long represented evil characters with a darker color palette (if they’re a nonhuman) and a darker skin color than the protagonists (if human, which is straight up racism). Why do we associate dark things in general with bad things? Reminder Nightfall's catchphrase is "Dark and dangerous!".

While probably not a human looking species, dreadwalkers are represented by Nightfall. Why are they named after dreads? Because it’s a hair pun, referencing how Nightfall’s hair looks "like dreads" and the dark element, “dreadful”, how her hair is linked to the floor, hence "walking" on them. Her attacks are based on hair puns, examples of which is Whip lash and Bad hair day. One of the paths you can develop for her powers is called Dreadhead…

Hair puns, especially Bad hair day, just.. why? Black people have had their natural and protective hairstyles demonized. Latines have the racist habit of calling tighter curly hair, "bad hair" (pelo malo), and in general black hairstyles are considered "unprofessional" and "unkempt", etc. Put together with how Nightfall's presented as aggressive, this is not good.

/Hyperaggression/

Remember when Nightfall told Stormblade she liked her better when depressive because she was “less chirping”, then invaded her personal space to take something she could easily ask for? Stormblade was scared, she is after all in a cage, with no magic, with Nightfall who looks about to pounce on her, who then corners her to take one of her steel feathers.

Perhaps this shows us Stormblade reacting to how she thinks Nightfall is, making the assumption she would hurt her. Though that’s another way the writing demonized Nightfall, through relationships.

Nightfall is described as having a “strong sense of justice”, that I personally consider a good thing, but in canon has been put as bad, for example, Stormblade saying she’s “harsh” for attacking a the villain keeping them captive, Nightfall confirming and apologizing about that she’s been harsh to Stormblade. This goes along with what I mentioned of making GNC women- namely butches and trans women- put as radical and angry. Now add the anti black sentiment of "angry black woman".

I think I’m about done explaining some of my issues with Skylanders, putting the especific words out. I had already addressed the demonization of GNC women, and lack of tact with mental health issues, but I needed to also address the anti-black coding. In fact I’d say it’s the heaviest thing about Nightfall’s negative stereotyping.

Thank you for reading.

#skylanders #skylanders superchargers #skylanders nightfall #nightfall #skylanders critique #my own posts #post:nightfall #skylanders academy #skylanders roh #skylanders ring of heroes #antiblackness #antiblack racism #antisemitism #text post

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666writingcafe · 2 years ago

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Who Killed the Witch?

Author’s Note: “Lucifer” = “Satan (Lucifer)“, “Satan” = “Lucifer (Satan)”

"Let's hear it," Lucifer demands a rather silent Mammon. Looking down, the second born doesn't respond.

"What did you do this time, Mammon?" Satan asks.

"I didn't do anything, I swear!" Mammon protests.

"He's lying!" a man shouts. "He killed her! He killed that woman!"

"That's right!" a woman replies. "He stabbed her with a knife!"

No, he didn't, a woman's voice responds in my head. Great. As if I needed yet another person inside my head.

"Hey, you three," a second man says, gesturing at us. "Are you with this man?!"

Tell the truth, the woman instructs.

"Yes, we are," I answer.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Satan replies. "I have never seen this man before in my life."

"Neither have I," Lucifer adds.

You keep peculiar companions, MC, the woman states. How can you associate yourself with demons that won't stand up for their own brother?

Who are you? I ask her.

Someone who is aware of your situation. You've become a magnet for trouble, MC. Everywhere you go, it seems to follow you. You need to stop this from escalating, or all four of you will be in serious trouble.

"Mammon, why don't you tell us what happened?" I ask calmly, which seems to interrupt the argument that's developed between the brothers. "Start at the beginning."

"Well, I was lookin' for the dining car, since I was hungry," Mammon answers. "I was gonna take some pictures and then show them to Beel later. You know, to brag. But then I ended up at a door that appeared to be locked. There was a sign on it that read, 'No admittance. This car has been reserved for a private party.' That bummed me out, because if I couldn't get through that car, then I couldn't get to the dining car."

"So, what did you do?"

"I decided to ignore the sign and just enter the car. However, when I stepped inside and closed the door, the car was pitch black. I couldn't see a thing! I heard a weird noise, and then all of a sudden the lights came up, and there was this woman chanting, 'Elohim Essaim Frugativi et appelavi.'

I call upon the gods, the woman translates.

"Then this guy--" Mammon points at the first gentleman. "--says, 'Come to us. We beseech you.' And this lady--" He points at the woman. "--adds, "Hear our words. Heed our summons. And then this guy--" He points at the second gentleman. "--says, 'Show yourself. Appear before us.' Curious, I ask the group what they were doin', and the second guy was goin' on about how I was a spirit, which caused the woman to begin screaming, and then the lady that was chanting collapses."

"What made her collapse?" I ask.

"She was stabbed in the back," the woman answers. "The spirit medium called out the name 'Mammon' before she died, and then this guy--" She points at Mammon. "--claims to be the very guy that she called out to!"

"She was trying to tell us who killed her!" the first guy adds.

I was trying to deliver a message to him, you idiots, the woman--who I suppose is the spirit medium--replies. Lucifer and Satan start tearing into Mammon, calling him all sorts of names.

"Guys, stop it!" I yell. "Mammon, this isn't your fault. It was just bad luck, that's all."

"I don't know why you'd actually come to his defense," Lucifer tells me. "You're only encouraging him, and he's annoying enough as it is."

"But that doesn't make him a murderer. I know things work differently in the Devildom where this is concerned, but we're in the human world. Mammon deserves a fair trial."

"I don't believe this. As if we needed another problem to deal with."

"Only one version of events is ever true!" Satan exclaims, putting an end to our argument.

"What're you talkin' about?" Mammon asks, just as confused as I am.

"It's a line from 'The Midsomer Murders,' a human world crime suspense series," Satan answers. "That was the lead character Inspector Barnaby's famous catchphrase."

"Are you sure about that?" I ask. "I don't remember him saying that." Satan ignores me as he quotes,

"The perpetrators had best give themselves up now while they still have the chance. Because I will find them." He smiles. "I never thought the day would come when I'd actually get to say that in real life."

"I'm not sure I completely understand what this is about, but I can tell that you're motivated, and that's what's important," Lucifer tells Satan.

"You three, this is no time to be standing around joking!" the second man yells. "If this man is the killer, then we'll just hand him over to Scotland Yard at the next station--"

I think all of you should go wait in the dining car. The man becomes still and then shakes his head, as though he's snapping out of a trance.

"Right, good idea," he says. "We'll let you guys track down whoever did it." He beckons the other man and woman to join him. Once they're out of earshot, I ask Satan and Lucifer what just happened.

"I think some of our powers must have transferred over to you," Satan replies.

"What do you mean?"

"One of our powers as demons is being able to manipulate humans, sort of like a form of hypnosis."

"So you're telling me that I hypnotized those people?"

I don't know why you find that hard to believe, the spirit medium responds. You are a very powerful human, MC. The demons inside you just so happen to be amplifying your abilities to the point that you're able to control beings the way they can.

"Lucky for you, Lord Diavolo has explicitly forbidden anyone from doing that to you, so don't worry."

"That really isn't my concern right now, but I appreciate the heads-up."

"As long as we're on the subject, I should note that Asmo's power to seduce others is an even more powerful form of manipulation."

"What does that have to do with anything? His powers have yet to work on me."

"You see, every once in a while, we come across special humans who are immune like that. Almost all of them turn out to be witches or sorcerers--people with exceptional magical power."

Which is what you have.

"Guys," Lucifer calls out to us, beckoning us over to the body of the spirit medium. "This is Grisella."

"What did you say?!" Satan exclaims in shock.

"Who's Grisella?" I ask.

"She's the witch we were supposed to be going to see," Lucifer answers.

I was in a chair facing away from the door out into the hall, Grisella tells me. Mammon came through that door into the lounge, the one I had my back to. As soon as we realized that someone was intruding on us, we all turned to see who it was. Since I was facing Mammon's position, there's no way he would have stabbed me in the back.

"Guys, Mammon is innocent," I tell the brothers.

"How do you know?" Satan asks.

"Because I told them." Grisella's spirit suddenly appears before us, startling Mammon. "You need to seal off this lounge until this train reaches the next station. Whoever killed me is still hiding somewhere in this train."

"What do we tell the other passengers?" Lucifer asks. Both he and Satan appeared unphased by Grisella.

"Instruct them to remain in their cabins until further notice. Since Satan wants to play detective while he's in your body, Lucifer, he can be the one to deliver the news. Normally, I don't enjoy working with demons, but since MC's with you, I'm willing to cooperate long enough to find out who killed me."

"Wait, wait, wait," Mammon blurts out. "Are you telling me that you guys know each other?!"

"I don't have to be particularly acquainted with MC to know that they can be trusted," Grisella responds. "I can see into the future, after all."

"Did ya happen to check and see when you were gonna die?!" If Grisella had the ability, I'm sure she would have slapped Mammon for asking that question.

"I knew that I would die at some point during my trip on this train. I just didn't know that it would happen so soon, or how my death would have occurred."

"Couldn't ya have done something to change it?!"

"When it's time to die, it's time to die. There's no changing that. There's no cheating death. I accept my fate; however, I'd at least like to know why I was killed before I rest. I need your help in figuring that out. In exchange, I'll lift the curse that has affected the three of you."

"Three...but only Satan and Lucifer swapped bodies!" I sigh. It's time to tell him the truth.

"I touched the book at the same time your brothers did," I explain. "Ever since then, Lucifer and Satan have taken residence inside my mind. Solomon has been supplying me potions to keep things under control, but I can't rely on him forever."

"Come to think of it, the killer's gotta be one of the other three people that were in the room with you during the seance, right?" Mammon asks, seemingly motivated by my words to get to the bottom of the mystery. "I mean, it couldn't be anyone else."

"Exactly," she replies. "The first of the three is named Noah. He's someone I'm well-acquainted with. He hoped to become my apprentice, and he was also the person who introduced me to the people requesting today's seance. As for the other two, I've never met them before now. Their names are Lucas and Sophia, and they're siblings. It was they who requested the seance. They were hoping to speak with the spirit of their dead younger sister."

"So then, I guess we only need to torture each one of them separately until we find our answer," Satan states.

"I know this is going to sound like a dumb question, but do you remember being stabbed, Grisella?" I ask.

"I remember the sensation," she answers. "It felt like it was thrust up from below. It burned like fire. I'll never, ever forget that feeling. Unfortunately, that's all I can recall."

"Makes sense." I turn my attention to Mammon. "What did you see when you first entered the room?"

"At first I thought it was pitch black in there. But then I looked harder, and I saw that there was actually a candle burnin' on a table in the middle of the room. Grisella was the person closest to the door I came through. That's why everyone ended up blamin' me for it. Behind her were the two guys, and the girl was sittin' farthest way. Oh, and one of the guys was wearin' this crazy-lookin' shirt. It was super flashy and super lame."

"That would be Noah," Grisella responds. "He likes to be unique and make a statement."

"Yeah. Well, he stayed sittin' there in his chair the whole time. Maybe he was so freaked out about you bein' stabbed that he couldn't even manage to stand?" He chuckles.

"Or maybe he was sitting close enough to Grisella that he didn't have to move too much to stab her." Everyone looks at me in shock.

"Out of the three, he's the most likely subject. Sophia was sitting too far away to have stabbed Grisella, and Lucas wouldn't have known her long enough to have had any reason to hurt her. Noah has the most history with her, being the guy that wanted to be her assistant."

"I see," Lucifer states. "Well, there's only one way to find out if you're correct. Satan, Mammon, you go get Noah. I'll get the two siblings and bring them here." Once the brothers have left the lounge, Grisella turns to me.

"I have to say, I'm surprised. I never expected Lucifer of all demons to listen to a human, but that's what he did." She smiles. "Then again, you're not just any ordinary human. You're someone that both demons and angels can trust."

"I'm sure you're aware of the other demon inside my head," I tell her.

"Belphegor?" I nod my head. "I had a vision that something like this would happen, but I didn't know that you would be the one he'd possess. Thankfully, nothing lasts forever."

"I take it you foresee Belphegor becoming free in the near future?" She nods her head.

"Sooner than you might think. Violence will ensue upon his release, and you are at the center of it." Grisella takes my pause to mean hesitance, and she adds,

"Whether you believe me or not is up to you. I'm simply telling you the future that I see for you."

"I have no reason to believe that you would be lying to me."

"Do be careful. I don't want to see you on this side of the realm any time soon."

#obey me shall we date #obey me mc #obey me lucifer #obey me satan #obey me mammon #obey me brothers #yes i combined scenes into this one version #i also made grisella a bit more involved in my version of events #i figured it would be more interesting that way

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lunari162 · 2 years ago

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It’s nearly the eve of yuri6th, so here are all the spoilers I posted on Twitter combined into one post! (Aside from the reference sheet, which I posted earlier)

- The post will premiere at 6 pm EST on Monday, September 12! You can access it here on YouTube -

Let’s start with the most recent one. Above is a short preview of the vocals! Do you think you know where the lyrics are from? 👀

...The answer to that question should be “no.” And that’s because the big reveal is that I made an original song for Yuri’s anniversary this year!

Next is a timeline of Yuri’s catchphrases. The old ones were bad, I know ^^; but since they’re all a part of Yuri’s history, I made little references to all of them in this year’s post!

Another “spoiler” was really just a callback to two comics. The first discussed her favorite number, 88. The second was about relating her name to the Japanese word for ally. While these don’t reveal anything directly about the upload, the concept of unity will be present! 88′s relation to infinity is referenced in the first picture below...

...and because of that, I’ve nicknamed that hand pose “infinity wings” and would like it to be associated with the song!

Lastly, we have some screenshots of the PV! I didn’t make the art or video this time. Guess what that means? The post will actually look good this time!! ^^ yuri5th wasn’t horrible though imo

Maybe my spoilers were too spoilery, and it was obvious what the surprise is this year all along... I still had fun planning them, though. Everyone I contacted for assistance worked hard on this project, and so did I, of course! Please give all of us your support, including Yuri! Thanks for reading!

#utau #utauloid #yuri tamaki #環百合 #yuri_stargazers

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evillious-analysis · 3 years ago

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Analysis of “the song that resounds with lu li la, lu li la” (part 2.5 - is Luna connected to the clockwork lullaby?)

To demonstrate this, i want to jump to the “seven crimes and punishments” story.

Before quoting what i want to quote, i want to give a quick overview of the short story.

The small booklet is about an alternate timeline to the novel “master of the heavenly yard”, where Allen fails at preventing the destruction of the “spirit data” of the third period by the action of Amostia.

In the short story, there is a particular event featured as a “bonus story” in which Rahab and Gilles meet after quite some time; a part of the dialogue involves the topic of Luna’s whereabouts.

Rahab and Gilles both immediately understood that this was the light of “punishment”. (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

In the context of this story, “punishment” is Amostia that provokes a bright explosion to destroy the souls.

“…Looks like Allen’s failed.”

“Seems that way…Rahab, when we…when we’re swallowed up by that light…will we die?”

“—No. I think…we’ll just do it over again. As long as the ‘moon goddess’ is still around.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

This kind of reminds me of a videogame in which there is a game over and the player starts again from the last save. This will come back as one of Luna’s catchphrases, (not so) coincidentally.

“–! …Then she’s still alive?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, even you have already met with her.”

“…?”

“Not just you. Myself as well…all the people who live in this world are aware of her existence. But no one’s realized this. Excepting myself…and the ‘sun god’." (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

Everyone met Luna…mmh? What could this mean? This reminds a lot of what "Sickle" said in "master of the heavenly yard" (the line i signaled with (^) in the previous part).

“Haha…Well then, Allen. Were you able to find out the ‘reality’ of this world?” Rahab muttered, gazing at the light. “The ‘four pillar gods’ who created the world—first you must search for the ‘lie’ therein.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

Luna seems to be involved in the topic of the reality of the evillious world if we put those words into context.

I wonder what is the lie at this point. Is the lie the one shown by "Sickle", or is it from Behemo? Behemo doesn’t seem to involve Luna in his tale at all, where she seems to be crucial.

Also…the way that sentence was phrased: “the ‘four pillar gods’ who created the world—first you must search for the ‘lie’ therein.”

Is she meaning that it wasn’t true that Levia, Behemo, "Sickle" and Held tried to make the first period planet inhabitable in the series, as the story went? What really happened?

I want to say more, though. According to Rahab’s account, only she and Sickle are the ones that are aware of Luna��s whereabouts.

Levia didn’t look aware of it from her point of view, and possibly Behemo is missing some pieces too, if Rahab’s story is correct.

On hearing that, Gilles’ eyes suddenly flung open wide.

“I see…That’s how it is! I have one more question. Why is everyone—”

“If you attune your ears and are able to hear the true ‘clockwork lullaby’, then maybe—” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

I’m not sure of what Gilles was trying to say, but i’ll make a guess: maybe he was saying “why is everyone unaware of Luna, despite the claim that “everyone met her”?

If that was what he was trying to say, then Rahab’s answer would have been: “there is a true clockwork lullaby, if you listened to it, then you too would realize Luna’s whereabouts.”

I might be wrong about this guess, though.

This is the point of the discussion…associated with Luna and the “true reality” of the series there seems to be a true “clockwork lullaby”.

I wonder what this means since that is never really explained.

Despite this, i will try speculating (i’m ready to be dismissed by the akuno in this): as i told you before, the clockwork lullaby is associated with the depicting of time and destiny in the series...therefore...

...what if Luna was in control of the timelines in the series?

A lot of things in the series are something that takes after elements from Luna Hazuki’s videogames; an example of that would be the series’ countries: they are named after Luna’s favorite videogame:

Evillious, lucifenia, elphegort—

All of these names had been given by Hazuki.

She had said that they were names that featured in her favorite game. (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 5–black box; scene 5).

The dynamics by which the series works are also after Luna’s videogames, like the presence of magic that wasn’t present in the “second period”, and all those exaggerated abilities those scientists have in the “third period” we don’t know where they come from. All of that would make sense.

“—Ah, that’s not right, miss Barisol. Magic doesn’t work on that guy.”

“…Hey. Do I have to keep doing this? I want to get back to my research soon.”

“You need to take a breather every once in a while. Play a game, even.”

“…Feels like I’m getting more stressed, not less.”

“Anyway, the cyclops has a magic resistance of 90%, so you’ve gotta attack him with physics.”

“I don’t get this. How can such a puny man as the protagonist have any effect on such an enormous monster just by swinging a sword around?”

“It’s a game.”

“Sigh…”

“You should learn the combat system of this game first, miss Barisol. Generally attacks on things with opposite attributes doesn’t work in this. Use physics for physics, and magic for magic!”

“Alright alright, I got it…miss Hazuki—"

[...]

She carefully set her aim.

She aligned her sight towards a gap in the box…a place where wiring could faintly be seen.

…Physics for physics! (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 5–black box; scene 5).

Levia was applying the principles of a videogame to the evillious world, and in that game, there was magic too, just like in the series.

Taking all of this aside, there is a particular dynamic that seems to confirm one of the statements Rahab makes in the short story.

“…Looks like Allen’s failed.”

“Seems that way…Rahab, when we…when we’re swallowed up by that light…will we die?”

“—No. I think…we’ll just do it over again. As long as the ‘moon goddess’ is still around.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

When Allen failed to prevent the complete annihilation of the world by Amostia, time just went back to a certain point and the story continued from there as if there had been a game over and the game just went back to the last saving point.

Let me show you how this played out.

The starting point was “prologue, scene 3” in the short story “seven crimes and punishments”; in that scene, Allen has finished learning the story of the world from "Sickle"’s black box and the false god opened the lid of the device to make Allen get out from it, to make him prevent the destruction of the souls and (falsely, you will see why in the future) save the world by making a utopia (that won’t actually be achieved).

I will extract some excerpts from the scene and underline specific parts of it:

My eyes were dazzled by a bright light that suddenly came in from the ceiling.

Someone had opened the box’s lid. Someone other than me.

I knew well who it was. There was only one person who could open the box from outside, and that was the one who’d made it himself.

“How are you faring, Allen?” the face peering in from above asked me.

He sounded the same as always. He was smiling as always.

[...]

I nodded and floated into the air. Then I flew in a straight line towards the top of the box.

When I looked down at the ground from the box’s summit, I saw that there were heads of rice growing along its surface.

[...]

“And now—your time has arrived.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, prologue, scene 3).

When Allen failed at preventing the evillious world’s annihilation due to Amostia destroying all the “spirit data” of the characters of the story, time went back to the scene of the prologue; in fact, there are many similarities between the scene of the epilogue and the scene of the prologue for that reason.

“How are you faring, Allen?” the face peering in from above asked me.

He sounded the same as always. He was smiling as always.

I floated up into the air, and flew from the black box.

[...]

“Well, your turn has arrived.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, epilogue, scene 2).

Do you see how the lines are so similar? It’s as if the evillious world worked like a videogame that went back to the last save point, after a game over, and apparently, for Rahab, that’s because of Luna Hazuki.

I wanted to point out something else too though.

The new “reset” is not the same as the previous one, Allen seemed to remember the previous timeline.

–Had that been a dream?

The “grave yard” that i had visited with Hänsel.

I had been swallowed up by the light of “punishment” [aka Amostia] there—

And when I came to, i was once more in a black box.

That wasn’t a dream.

I was convinced of that.

"Sickle" didn’t tell me anything. (“seven crimes and punishments”, epilogue, scene 2).

This phenomenon is explained by Seth in the short story “outlaw and lychgate”:

Unable to intervene in the world himself, "Sickle" decided to use an irregular, Allen Avadonia, to solve the problem.

So far, so good…But I’d wager he was able to calculate with a fair degree of accuracy Allen’s odds of success.

Incidentally, the probability I came up with was—3%. At that rate, Allen would most likely fail. Even so, those odds were preferable to that of any other method.

I can think of a few ways one could strengthen their odds of success.

Yes…If the game-loving Hazuki were to explain it, I think she’d put it like this:

“If you lose, just start over again from where you last saved.”

If you do the same thing over again, you could come up with many countermeasures based on your experiences. Your odds of success would go up dramatically.

Naturally that’s just for games, and it can’t work like that in the real world.

You can’t turn back time…Or rather, strictly speaking it’s possible, but the place you would rewind back to would be a “different world” from this one.

The world "Sickle" wanted to save was this one, so there wouldn’t be any point to it.

So then, what did "Sickle" do?

He didn’t have the courage gamble on such slim odds.

And so I think…he summoned something.

That is—

A “parallel universe” Allen that had already “experienced failure”.

There were few people who actually paid any heed to the parallel worlds theory that I put forward.

Out of the researchers on that spaceship it had just been Levia, Behemo, Held…and Hazuki.

The theory i told Hazuki was most likely programmed into "Sickle" as well.

…There was someone in the second period who had succeeded in bringing over their “alternate universe self”.

Sickle must have done something similar to that.

[...]

So then…if it were me…i would have taken the approach of just fusing together the two souls of our world’s Allen and the one from the parallel world. (“outlaw and lychgate”, chapter 3-funeral procession of the dead; scene 3).

From Seth’s complicated explanation, it’s possible to understand that "Sickle" (in some way, in the series) managed to fuse the souls of two Allens from two different timelines (the current one and another that failed to prevent the destruction of the evillious world).

Also…did you read the highlightened sentence? That’s exactly what happened in the short story i considered before.

From the text, though, we can’t tell that Sickle specifically triggered the reset, it only fused the Allens from the two different timelines.

I’m really persuaded that Luna and "Sickle" did different things, respectively the reset and the fusion of the Allens.

With this whole discussion i wanted to get to this point.

The series’ doesn’t seem to work according to the laws of the “earth” as Behemo told in his story, it works more like the videogames Luna Hazuki used to play:

It has magic.

It works according to laws and systems of videogames, like “magic for magic and physics for physics”.

It seems to have game overs and save points from which the story restarts.

It features characters with their own abilities that those characters didn’t have in the second period (like Levia’s abilities that go far beyond what she could do in the second period).

it had stuff like irregulars that didn’t exist in the second period.

the souls of the characters in the third period are also artificial data like the ones of the second period that was an artificial reality.

It really looks like that the evillious world is a mirror that reflects Luna Hazuki's wishes as that line of the "master of the heavenly yard" song goes.

"The world is a mirror that reflects the moon."

Behemo, in his tale, kinda explains away all of that with:

“But the avatars proved too advanced. And so the new humanity wound up possessing peculiar powers that hadn’t existed in the first period humanity. –magic, demons, and irregular, and the like.” (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 11, section 2–truth; scene 3).

Ok, man, you’re telling me that in a realistic scenario of a bat flying on earth, he managed to completely mess up the physics law of the planet.

Other than that…there are other strange things, like what Levia pointed out: when did Held and "Sickle" find the time to reincarnate, just before the imminent crash? For that, i imagined a crack-scenario.

What if after the crash of the spaceship every second-period character died (except Luna for some unknown reason) and she prepared a virtual reality (programmed like her favourite videogames) with everyone’s “spirit data”?

That would be something along the lines of another “second period”. And what would Luna do, at that point?

Luna would leave her body and move her spirit data to a place and there she would reset the timelines (like she did in scap), and also give the magic.

According to Rahab’s cryptic account, only she and Sickle know about Luna Hazuki’s current whereabouts, and apparently “everyone in the series met her”.

In my crack headcanon, the moon. Every character in the series has seen the moon at some point, Luna is strictly associated to the moon and the latter (with its phases) indicates different points in time, like a giant clock (and that would connect with the binomial Luna-time-clockwork lullaby).

Luna’s body would be the moon itself. Is that possible? In the logic of the series yes…i mean, there are two characters that became theatres, so, a character reincarnating as the moon can be possible.

The moon in the series influences magic, as we know, and Luna interfering with the timelines (like in the reset that happened in scap) would mean directly changing the story…and with that, the clockwork lullaby; adding to that, influencing the magic makes a difference in the outcome of certain events, and that too influences the story, indirectly.

And what would be the time in which those interferences could be most influential? The time of a full moon. That could be a reason the moon has a relevant role in the series, and that could be explain the line in the track “the song that resounds with lu li la, lu li la”.

“On the night of a full moon, it continued to be refined”.

That would mean that the night of a full moon is the ideal time in the series to change and build the clockwork lullaby.

This crack-theory could explain Rahab’s cryptic claim that “the four pillar gods ‘creating’ the world” was a lie. Luna would be the true ‘goddess’ of her virtual reality.

More than that, this crack theory could possibly explain the existence of magic and why it follows the laws of a videogame, rather than the ones of the earth, as Behemo put it.

Now i’m going to be answering to a bunch of questions you may ask about this crack-scenario.

Should Levia be supposed to know that her “spirit data” of the second period was moved into that new virtual reality?

Maybe she just doesn’t remember what happened right after the crash, her memories of her being moved were erased, as well as Luna’s whereabouts.

After all, in the second period tech, there were strange method to “reset minds” or implant false memories, so that would be possible as well.

The same would apply to every character except Sickle and Rahab (for some reason).

That would invalidate Behemo’s story, right?

Not really, Behemo could have said the truth about what he tried to do, except for what happened after the crash. After all, he never ventured to explain that part of the story, didn’t he?

Most likely Behemo is convinced of what he said.

It’s strange how Sickle doesn’t tell him or admit to Allen of what he knows about Luna, maybe she wanted so.

What about Sickle?

Sickle knows about all of this and would be the manager of the “rules” of the virtual reality according to how Hazuki programmed him and her preferences.

What about Gallerian? What did he see in the grave yard

We don’t get a lot of information about that specific device and what it does, but i really think that’s not Luna because not so many characters accessed the grave yard, and that would invalidate Rahab’s statement “everyone has met Luna”. That would be untrue.

What about what Allen saw in the “climb one”?

That could have easily been an illusion conjured up by Sickle in that moment and not the real thing. After all, Allen had the impression that what he was experiencing wasn’t real…

A feeling of unreality, as though inside a dream—Allen had been assailed with that sensation ever since he had woken up here. (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 11, section 2–truth; scene 2).

Another strange detail is that at one point the old lady Hazuki suddenly disappeared without a trace. That contribuites to the point that what Allen experienced was not real.

At some point, Luna Hazuki—the old woman—had vanished, and in her place a “black box” was floating there. (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 11, section 2–truth; scene 4).

What did Amostia mean with those lines:

"We’re going on a journey. No one can get in our way.”

“Tell me who’s inside that coffin!”

“…It’s a corpse. You all called her—‘Luna Hazuki’.”

“–!?”

“And to me, she is—” (“outlaw and lychgate”, chapter 3-funeral procession of the dead; scene 4).

That…i don’t know…i don’t know what Luna Hazuki is to Amostia and i don’t know why he’s taking her corpse into an alternate timeline. At the same time, it’s true that Amostia has changed since the merging of the two Allens happened, but no one in the series has a clue on how...not even Seth, that was the person closest to him.

Which left…Amostia, who we are currently confronting.

He had clearly become a different being than the “boy” that I knew.

At present I don’t know in what way Amostia changed, or what he was currently trying to do.

(“outlaw and lychgate”, chapter 3-funeral procession of the dead; scene 3).

#evillious #evillious chronicles #vocaloid #clockwork lullaby series #clockwork lullaby

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movie-magic · 4 years ago

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Loki: Every MCU Easter Egg In Episode 1

Loki has officially begun on Disney+, and Tom Hiddleston comes bearing plenty of Marvel Easter eggs in the premiere episode. Here's what we found.

The premiere episode of Loki is burdened with glorious Marvel Easter eggs, from potential future villain teases to skulking Skrulls. Even before the considerable success enjoyed by WandaVision and Falcon & The Winter Soldier, MCU fans were eagerly anticipating Tom Hiddleston's return as the God of Mischief. Now blessed with his own Disney+ solo series, Loki has all of time and space to bother, and the premiere wastes little time throwing Hiddleston from the Avengers' frying pan into the TVA's fire.

After using the Tesseract to escape The Avengers in Avengers: Endgame, Loki is swiftly picked up by the Time Variance Authority - a seemingly omniscient organization overseeing the entirety of time and space. Evidently not ones to take prisoners, Loki's fate at the TVA looks grim, but Owen Wilson's Major Mobius intervenes, handing the silver-tongued variant a reprieve. In the opening episode, Mobius successfully digs to the root of Loki's dastardly ways, breaking him down to (presumably) build him back up, all with the aim of enlisting Loki's services as an ally to hunt down an especially vicious variant murdering the TVA's Minute Men.

Loki's premiere is predictably heavy with exposition, and relatively limited in scope, mostly taking place within the walls of TVA HQ. Nevertheless, Michael Waldron (creator) and Kate Herron (director) pepper the 50-minute installment with an array of references to the Marvel comics, MCU history callbacks, and hints of the multiverse madness to come. Here's every Easter egg we discovered in Loki's "Glorious Purpose."

The Avengers Intro Sequence:

Loki's introductory scene is somewhat of an Easter egg itself, retelling the famous Tesseract heist from Avengers: Endgame. Much of the footage here derives straight from the 2019 box office behemoth, meaning no other MCU stars filmed additional footage or recorded new dialogue especially for Loki. With that said, a few extra Tom Hiddleston moments are spliced into the existing footage to show events entirely from Loki's point of view. The villain's Steve Rogers "search and rescue" gag is zoomed-in, and there's a closer shot of Loki waving goodbye to Hulk in the elevator, as well as fresh reaction shots during the Stark scuffle in the lobby.

An Iron Man Callback:

After commandeering the Tesseract in New York, Loki finds himself falling from the sky above Mongolia's Gobi Desert, landing unceremoniously in the sand below, and this scene might trigger a sense of déjà vu for longtime MCU fans. In 2008's Iron Man, Tony Stark escapes capture by creating a rudimentary suit of hi-tech armor. Flying to safety, the genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist also lands roughly in a remote desert. There's a symbolic correlation in how Iron Man marked the beginning of the MCU, while Loki is now ushering in a whole new chapter, and both begin with their protagonists in matching predicaments. Both characters also crash while evading incarceration, though only Loki immediately finds himself in chains once again.

"Burdened With Glorious Purpose":

As a man who rarely shuts up, Loki has plenty of wry MCU catchphrases, and one of his most famous would be "I am burdened with glorious purpose" from The Avengers. Disney +'s Loki premiere leans heavily into the line's popularity, with Tom Hiddleston repeating the quote on several occasions throughout the episode, the phrase becoming less sinister with every utterance.

The TVA:

The addition of the TVA to MCU canon was confirmed ahead of time via Loki's trailer and, sure enough, the paradoxical pen-pushers play a prominent part in the premiere. Although their motivations and methods are somewhat altered from the source material (as well as their aesthetic, which now sits closer to The Umbrella Academy's Commission), the TVA hails directly from the Marvel comic books. They were introduced by a 1986 issue of Thor that featured several time-hopping agents, one of which picked a random Earthling up for jaywalking.

A Skrull At The TVA:

Given their propensity to shape-shift and assimilate the forms of other races, it's not surprising that a Skrull might be lurking around the TVA's front desk. One of the MCU's green aliens can be spotted in the background as Loki gets marched in, and though it's not clear why the Skrull is present, the distinct lack of guards would suggest they aren't a variant. A timely reminder that Secret Invasion is right around the corner.

The Time Twisters:

As you'd predict, Loki tries running away. With minimum effort, Hunter B-15 (played by Wunmi Mosaku) clicks a device, and Loki is pulled back to where he stood moments earlier, effectively making escape impossible. These time twisters appear to be standard issue at the TVA, and have a vaguely similar counterpart in the Marvel comics called the Retroactive Cannon. Far more lethal than Loki's little clickers, these devices would rewind a person completely until they were unwritten from history. Like The Algorithm in Tenet, but less confusing.

Life Model Decoys:

For someone who spent many, many years unaware he was actually a Frost Giant, Loki probably shouldn't be shocked that some people don't realize they're secretly robots. Heading through the TVA's airport scanner, Loki passes the test with flying colors, though he remains perplexed by the idea someone could be unknowingly cybernetic, Loki's line is a nod to Life Model Decoys, which have appeared in both the Marvel comics, and Agents of SHIELD. These lifelike androids can mimic mankind so perfectly, the LMD itself isn't always certain of the truth.

Secret Wars?:

Whether you've accidentally arrived late for work, or just escaped a group of costumed vigilantes by seizing a glowing blue cube from the beginning of time, being labeled as a variant is confusing stuff. Luckily, the TVA has put together a short animation to fill quantum criminals in on the basics. The helpful Miss Minutes finally provides an explanation of the MCU multiverse, revealing how, long ago, separate timelines fought an inter-dimensional war for supremacy that almost resulted in total annihilation. Since then, the TVA has strictly maintained one single reality - the Sacred Timeline *echoes*. The history lesson bears some similarity to 2015's Secret Wars comic event, in which conflicting universes came together in Battleworld (the setting of the original Secret Wars), and attempts were made to streamline Marvel's sandbox.

The Time-Keepers:

The TVA's infomercial also confirms the organization are led by three Time-Keepers, who oversee the combined reality and dictate the proper flow of history. This big-faced trio were first introduced in the late 1970s, created from the sole remaining survivor of the previous universe's destruction. The mysterious overlords performed much the same function in the comics as they do in Loki, and possessed virtually complete mastery over time.

Kree And Nova's Attack On Titan:

As the animated exposition rumbles on, Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong) uses "starting an uprising" as an example of something the TVA might potentially frown upon. The corresponding image shows two armies clashing, with the blue folk on the left appearing to be Kree, and the force on the right possibly the Nova Corps. Based on the spiky ruins in the background, the battle is taking place on Thanos' home planet of Titan. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Ronan confirmed the Kree and Nova Corps were at war for 1000 years - was the TVA involved somehow?

Nexus Events:

This week's lesson from Miss Minutes explains how stepping off one's designated path can create a "Nexus event," and spiral out of control to spawn countless alternate timelines that trigger another war. This word has cropped up several times in the MCU, first as an internet facility in Oslo (Avengers: Age of Ultron), and then as an antidepressant drug during one of WandaVision's fake commercials. The latter was most likely a reference to the Nexus of All Realities from the Marvel comics, which is essentially a gateway between every possible timeline. The TVA's Nexus events could take their name from the very same source.

The Timeline Diagram:

Throughout Loki's Disney+ debut, the TVA repeatedly use diagrams of a single flowing timeline with branches shooting off to represent unwanted deviations. MCU fans might recognize this from Avengers: Endgame, where the Ancient One drew something extremely similar while explaining the consequences of time travel to Bruce Banner. Perhaps Ms. One has visited the TVA herself once or twice?

Devil In The Church:

MEPHISTO. There, we said it. When Mobius asks a young girl who committed time crimes in 16th century France and the child points to a stained glass window depicting the Devil, Loki knew exactly what it was doing. WandaVision dropped several hints that Marvel's own Satan would appear, all of which proved fruitless, and Loki seems to be heading down the same hellish vein. Alas, there could be a simpler explanation. Mobius claims to be chasing an alternate version of Loki, and it's highly likely the child has mistaken the God of Mischief's famous horned helmet for the demonic horns of Lucifer.

Ravonna Renslayer:

Though her name isn't mentioned in Loki's premiere, Gugu MBatha-Raw's TVA judge is actually Ravonna Renslayer, who made her debut in a 1965 Avengers issue. In the comics, Renslayer is a human from the far future, most often a villainous figure associated with Kang the Conqueror. She certainly isn't a legal official sat behind a desk. One would imagine Marvel Studios has something more interesting in store for Renslayer further down the line.

Explaining Endgame:

During his TVA interrogation, Loki quite rightly points out that it was not he who meddled with the timeline. T'was those pesky Avengers who penetrated the Quantum Realm and disrupted the natural course of events in the aftermath of the Battle of New York; Loki merely picked up the Tesseract that fell at his feet. Unfortunately, this excuse falls on deaf ears, as Gugu MBatha-Raw confirms the Avengers' ambitious time heist was entirely sanctioned by the Time-Keepers. This exchange more or less clears up every single timeline wrinkle in the MCU, including Steve Rogers' reunion with Peggy, and Gamora from the past staying in the present. It's not altering time that irks the TVA; it's altering time in a manner the Time-Keepers haven't permitted.

Loki's "Wooing":

After Owen Wilson saves Loki from being "reset," the pair sit down for a more friendly conversation, but when Loki warns Mobius that cooperation isn't an option, the TVA officer retorts with, "even when you're wooing someone powerful you intend to betray?" Loki has betrayed a fair few people during his time, and Mobius' accusation could easily apply to Odin or Thor. Most likely, however, Mobius is alluding to Thanos here - a powerful figure Loki tried buttering up with intent to usurp him once the universe was brought to its knees.

Josta:

While not strictly a Marvel reference, it's worth noting that Mobius is a big fan of an ice cold Josta. Viewers of a certain age might not recognize this soda brand, but Josta is a genuine Pepsi product that was available in the late 1990s before being discontinued. An early variety of energy drink, there's evidently a few perks to hunting down timeline criminals. In Mobius' case, this includes sugary contraband.

Loki's Greatest Hits:

In a twisted version of It's A Wonderful Life, Mobius tries to change Loki by examining his choices in the past, present and future. Unlike the jaunty 1946 holiday classic, Mobius has access to a handy hi-tech screen which displays Loki's "greatest hits." The footage begins with the God of Mischief's defeat and arrest in 2012's The Avengers - perhaps not an entry Loki himself would've picked for the highlight reel. The screen next switches to Phil Coulson's death (which Loki definitely would pick), before moving on to images of civilian deaths from the Battle of New York, the gala eyeball removal scene, and the dictator speech, all from The Avengers.

D.B. Cooper:

More an Easter egg from real-world history than Marvel lore, Loki reveals the truth about D.B. Cooper - it was Agatha Loki all along! In 1971, an as-yet-identified man boarded a Boeing 727, held the aircraft ransom for $200,000, then parachuted out with the cash. Mobius' dive into Loki's past reveals that, thanks to a lost bet with Thor, the God of Mischief descended from Asgard to pull the plane heist himself as some kind of stunt. From Loki's hairstyle matching the real D.B. Cooper artist's impression to the smattering of bank notes left behind, there's an impressive attention to detail in this scene.

Infinity Stones In The Desk:

The Infinity Stones... Thanos would give his own daughter just for one. Entire worlds brought to their knees by their power. Humans turned into Gods at the merest touch. Gary from the TVA's HR department using one as a paperweight. Threatening Casey with a fishy demise, Loki finally gets his hands back on the Tesseract, only to discover even Infinity Stones are useless within the TVA's jurisdiction. To Loki's immense surprise, Casey's desk draw is chock-full of discarded Infinity Stones, most either of the Time or Reality variety (no surprises there). The scene essentially confirms that the power of these fabled jewels has led to more than a few timeline variant incidents over the years, but perhaps also undermines the once-unstoppable power of the Infinity Stones. Well, the Infinity Saga is over.

A 3rd Millennium Kang Hint?:

In its final scene, the Loki premiere might just be hinting at the future villain of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania. The MCU will soon introduce Kang the Conqueror, a major comic book baddie played by Jonathan Majors, and "Glorious Purpose" could represent the first step toward his arrival. Called out to 19th century Oklahoma, TVA agents find a piece of technology hailing from the 3rd millennium. Though it might be a coincidence, Kang hails from the 31st century, and is known for using advanced tech in his dominion of the timeline. The mysterious hooded figure is more likely a Loki variant than Kang himself, but since Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and Loki both deal in temporal themes, it wouldn't be strange for the Kang foundations to be laid on Disney+.

- Screen Rant

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

#loki series #loki #loki odinson #loki show #loki spoilers #tv news #tv show #movie magic #mcu #marvel #movies #marvel cinematic universe #movie news #mcu phase 4 #news #disney+#tv series

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toku-explained · 4 years ago

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Nothing airing this week, let's talk Dogengers.

I've decided to give my thoughts on the first season of Dogengers alongside the rebroadcast, since I didn't cover it at the time. There should then be a 2 week break before the second season starts, which I will use to cover episode 12.5. Is with that said, as the Episode 0 stage show is on their YouTube, we'll look at that shall we?

To start with, when talking about Dogengers, we first have to talk about Local Heroes. In other comedy/parody hero works, like Kamen Norider, Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, Kanpai Senshi After V or even Ultraman Zearth or Nice, the focus is on a new character created to parody an existing series, and references to Sentai, Rider and Ultra are so prevalent in Japanese media that you could watch most of these without having ever watched an episode of the original property and still understand what is being parodied. However, with a couple of exceptions, the characters of Dogengers are not new characters, several of them have careers spanning years as local heroes, or indeed villains, and continue to act in this capacity after the first season.

Probably the most famous Local Hero in western fandom, at least before Dogengers happened, is Sea Jetter Kaito, local hero for Ishinomaki, based on designs created by the King of Manga himself. But many cities, prefectures, tourism spots, and corporations have these heroes representing them, and indeed plenty of the heroes that aren't mascots still have sponsorship from companies. These heroes perform at events, and a good number of them, like series breakout Kitaqman and arch-villain Yabai Kamen, have official theme songs predating the launch of this series. Of course, a good hero needs some good villains, and that's where Kabushikigaisha "Aku no Himitsu Kessha" comes in. (Essentially Secret Society of Evil Co. Ltd., I'll call them AHK from now on). AHK is a company that employs a number of villain's to act as villain's for the local heroes in various products, naturally in universe they're a literal company whose business is evil, and they serve as the series villains, and while almost all the villain's are preexisting, not all of them are normally considered to be part of AHK, but most of them are at least associated with it. The series is set in Fukuoka prefecture, I believe primarily in Fukuoka city, and the majority of the characters are based there.

Anyway, I've wasted enough time, let's go, Dogengers Episode 0. There are no subtitles for this so bear with me.

Dogengers: The show is opened by Shaberryman, the Wide Cannon department head for AHK, here he's just wearing his mask, but he'll have his full ensemble on in the show itself. Shaberryman serves as the writer for Dogengers, and the narrator for the recaps. After he does his brief intro, Yabai Kamen, CEO of AHK and the primary villain for Dogengers, takes the stage, with some AHK footsoldiers, the Karami. Yabai Kamen's appearance is the 3rd and longest serving version, the Headquarters version. After a little bit of scheming and what have you, the hero takes the stage, Kitaqman. Kitaqman represents Kitakyushu, and is noted for his preferring not to fight (claiming he's stiff and the like) and instead focus on his social media profile and the like, sharing his food on twitter, he might also be in charge of some of the editing on the show. His current costume is his 4th, and at this point is probably the one he has used the longest, making him a little more active. Anyway, after a little talking the villains attack Kitaqman who tries to.avoid attacks, before using his special move, phoning someone else to come deal with it. Help comes in the form of Yakuzai Senshi Ohgaman, a representative of Ohga Pharmacy, in story serving as their CEO. Ohgaman is noted for his ludicrously high stats, and his catchphrase, advising people of take their medicine and go to sleep. Here he walks on stage with his Visor Horn up, in the show I don't believe he ever appears without it already being down. He makes quick work of the villain's, who flew, but he captures the last Karami. Kitaqman tells Ohgaman about his idea for a Fukuoka Hero project called Hero House, the Karami is let go at this point, essentially a superhero version of the infamous Terrace House. He refuses to participate, because he's married and I believe has a child. The escaped Karami reports on Hero House to Yabai Kamen, and how the heroes will be on Nokonoshima Island to film it, leaving Fukuoka virtually undefended, he leaves Shaberryman to make plans surrounding that. After a long while Ohgaman comes to fight off Shaberryman and his Karami, leaving Yabai Kamen alone when he arrives, until the sudden arrival of Mushi Otome, an office manager for AHK, who doesn't appear in the show proper. Initially being very Dere with Yabai Kamen, she gets aggressive when Ohgaman interrupts her. Yabai Kamen takes a member of the audience hostage, leading Ohgaman to stop fighting briefly. He power up, Kitaqman coming along with Ohgaman's weapon to use as they fight. Kitaqman gets the Karami trio to flee, and pursues Yabai Kamen, while Ohgaman defeats Mushi Otome, and the pair join to defeat Yabai Kamen. After the two heroes give some parting words, Shaberryman appears to close things.

#toku explained #dogengers

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daybreakdarling · 5 years ago

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Rattlesnakes and Peacekeepers (McCree x Reader)

Word Count: 6.2k+ Trigger warnings: Snakes, minor violence Crossposted on: Ao3

- - - - -

Not a lot happened within Route 66. While it still was a tourist attraction, every ring loses its shine after a while. There were the curious tourists that come for the vast canyon views, locals that lazed under the humid air, and rowdy biker groups that liked to cause minor inconveniences, but unless unless you had a knack for the oddly-shaped cacti or dirt-tasting coffee, nothing particularly interesting would be seen in it.

If something did happen, it’s usually just out of it.

Just by the borders of the main area, almost close to the next road, was a shooting range. One hectare of field boxed by metal fencing with a farm on the east and a house just by the left of it. It had been managed by a nice family of five. It had what you needed: If you wanted to shoot, you line up cans and bottles. If you wanted a break, the family had drinks ready on the porch. If you needed a place to stay, rooms were offered at reasonable prices.

The only rule: always shoot something, never someone.

It used to be the joy of those two lived between the counties; anyone who came by at least once would always agree that it was a gem in the land—a getaway for the good, bad, and anyone in between. The family didn’t ask for a lot either, just good company, and the people were happy to oblige to such good hospitality.

However, after a raid by a gang from the neighboring state, the place was unsalvageable. The family moved out, and the joy with them. No one bothered to take care of it either; it wouldn’t be the same. From there, it was left to collect dust.

That was twenty years ago.

McCree was staying in New Mexico for a few days. It was that time of the year where a number of agents were heading back to their hometowns, and since he hadn’t been called for any missions for a while, he decided to do the same. Soldier was a little skeptical to have him visit due to a possible run in with his old gang, but Ana was quick to allow McCree with the reassurance that it would be good for him.

So there he was, on the last day of his short break, standing under the canopy of the abandoned farmhouse.

He visited the range a lot with his parents when he was younger. McCree spent long afternoons practicing with his father while his mother talked with the family. Even after he joined Deadlock, a number of the gang members, himself included, visited the range just to enjoy a place where everyone was viewed the same. He had a lot of good memories associated with it, so when the news of the attack went across New Mexico, it was an understatement to say that he was devastated.

He leaned on the porch fence, careful not to put too much weight and cause more damage. If the buildings creaked just by the desert wind, what more by him?

Looking around, the field’s grasses were tall and unkept, and the barrels, boxes, and fences used for the shooting range across the land were old and withered. The place definitely saw better days, but it was just as he remembered it.

A number of bottles were on the fences, so McCree raised Peacekeeper for a casual shot.

Kling!

…

That wasn’t his bullet.

McCree looked to the direction of the shot to see an officer. You were dressed in casual attire: a tan blouse, greyish-green tactical pants, and brown hiking boots. On your head was a cowboy hat like McCree’s, but the brown had already withered into a lighter shade and your hat band was a white weaved braid. You were far from him, but the only thing that gave McCree the idea of your position was the shining star lapel on the left of your shirt, and a mean-looking revolver.

The cowboy took a shot to the can next to yours.

McCree was quick to raise his hands up when you point your gun at him.

“I don’t mean t’cause any harm!” McCree called out. Even in the long distance, anyone in Route 66 could easily shoot a man between the eyes (example: himself).

McCree hoped that you’ll put down the gun or return to shooting, but you started to advance towards him. The cowboy knew not to mess with the law (he’d done so many times in the past, and that definitely got him somewhere), so he stood on guard; McCree even placed his hat to his chest, hoping that showing respect will keep him from being turned in. He did have a bounty over his head, after all.

“State your name and business,” you demanded.

“The name’s Jesse McCree.”

There’s shock, then a slight shift in your grip. The man’s been on gun point many times like these before, but for some reason your presence just intimidated him more than it should. McCree was quick to speak up.

“Just ‘ere t’enjoy the Miller’s shootin’ range like anyone else, deputy.”

After what felt like an eternity, McCree sighed as you returned your gun to your holster.

You leaned on the porch fence beside him, arms crossed as you looked into the distance. The air wasn’t completely comfortable, but it wasn’t tense. McCree took out a cigar, and he gestured it to you as if to ask if you wanted one. You shook your head, and he proceeded to light it.

“What’s an officer of the law doin’ ‘round the dusty outskirts of Route 66?” he asked, blowing out a puff of smoke.

“Shootin’,” you answered simply.

You gave him a look over.

“What’s an ex-Deadlock gang member turned covert-operative Overwatch agent doin’ round ‘ere?”

McCree choked on the cigar for a second.

“... shootin’.”

Silence passed.

“Well, there’s some more bottles n’ caps by th’ back of th’ house,” you chirped, brushing past him.

“I’ll fetch ‘em for ya. I’d like t’see that infamous aim of yours.”

It takes McCree a moment to register that you just called him out of his affiliations, one of which he was sure would not reach as these parts of the world, and simply dropped the topic as if it was a broken gun. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve taken for as just a normal officer doing their job, but it was clear that you knew a lot more than you let on.

He whipped around to see you heading to the back of the farm house, and he rushed to get to you.

“Now wait a gosh darn second, how’d you—“

”It’s either we shoot glasses as equals, or I’m interrogating you as an officer of the law,” you cut him off, facing him just as he was about to reach for you.

With eyes narrowed and threatening, McCree could say that he was looking at a snake that was ready to bite. If looks could kill, he’d be dead just by the fierceness in your eyes. As he took in your features, there were a faint scars on your face, light eyebags, and faint wrinkles, no doubt all from your time bringing peace and order as your duty called for it. A thought of how many criminals you have wrangled in your years came to him. You looked only a couple of years older than him, had you encountered Deadlock in the day as well? Did you hear of him from those days? McCree cleared his throat, hand subconsciously reaching for his gun.

You looked at his hand, and at your glance he took hold of the handle.

“Nothing goes past Rattlesnake,” you threatened, hand patting the holster of your gun.

“And if I was on my shift you’d be behind bars by now.”

McCree expected you to pull out some handcuffs—your statement sounded exactly like those catchphrases in shows before a character does something—but when you turned away and knelt down to collect bottles he’s just left to blink.

“But I’m not,” you shrugged.

“Besides, it’d be disrespectful t’go against the one rule on this old range. You know that rule?”

“Shoot something, never someone.”

Getting up with the targets, you shove a number in his arms without warning, making McCree scramble in an attempt to not drop any of the glass-based targets. You explained to him that you’ll find some more by the other side of the house, and then told him to line up the ones you had given him.

“If I’m not back by th’ time you’re done, just go ahead. I might be findin’ somethin’ a lil’ more interestin’ than bottles.”

As you turned away to do your task, McCree thanked the heavens that the rules of the shooting range haven’t changed after all those years.

>>>

Your aim was impressive. As the two of you stood across each other and shot down targets, McCree can’t help but nod approvingly at your shots. When he asked you to shoot six targets off a fence, each one is knocked off clean with a speed that competed with his own. Even when he tries to one up you with tricks like spinning his revolver out before shooting, you do him one better by making twice the amount of spins before taking out targets that were farther than him. McCree knew he was a show off, but you were really rubbing it in.

Not that he minded anyway.

“Haven’t gotten your name, deputy,” McCree called over a shot.

“Can’t keep callin’ ya that now, can I?”

He heard a snort from beside him.

“You can and you will if you want to keep th’ hat from a bullet,” you replied mischievously, flashing him a grin.

McCree placed a hand on his hat protectively, making you holler.

“(Y/N) (L/N). Heard the last name before?” you asked.

“Sorta rings a bell,” he replied.

“Am I supposed t’know?”

You feigned hurt, and McCree rolled his eyes as he reloaded his gun.

“If you’ve ever heard of th’ ‘Desert Venom’ predicament, my father was th’ one who wrangled that rattlesnake. Our family’s known for handlin’ those devils, even got a couple myself,” you boasted, pointing a thumb at yourself for emphasis.

McCree smiled at your confidence.

“I know of those days; just didn’t know it was your Pa that got it,” McCree said, remembering news of a six foot long rattlesnake that went around New Mexico for a couple of months. He was in his teen years when it was taking place, and he was glad that the reptile had been caught before it could reach Santa Fe.

“Is that why your gun’s called Rattlesnake?” he asked.

You shrugged, “Sorta? A good gunsmith buddy of mine made her for me. I didn’t even ask ‘im t’design her like this, but he did, and I loved it.”

“Mind if I take a closer look?”

McCree had actually been eyeing your gun for a while. He didn’t notice it when you had the weapon straight at him, but the gold and silver embossing around the revolver got his attention in the span of your friendly competition. Stolen glances weren’t enough to really see what was on it (especially with you shooting at rapid speed, it was just the gun rolling back and forth and never staying still), but it was already eating at him.

He was half-expecting you to say no to him, since there were unspoken rules about handling fellow gunslingers’ guns, but McCree was shocked when you gestured the gun towards him.

“I’ll let you see her if you show me yours.”

He obliged, handing you Peacekeeper.

“Careful, she bites,” you joked as you watched him gawk over the amount of work on the gun.

The more he analyzed it the more details he found. The rattlesnake started from the frame from the revolver and coiled throughout. Engravings were left out from the cylinder but continued around the barrel, and despite it’s minimalized look it was clear that it was made to look as if the snake was striking with its open mouth aligned with the muzzle. McCree wished he had met your friend to applaud the work because heck, even the scales were insanely realistic to the touch.

“She’s a beauty,” he whistled.

“I have to say the same for yours,” you spoke. McCree watched as you held his gun, the same look of wonder and curiosity on your face.

“Name?”

“Peacekeeper.”

“That’s a lil’ ironic considering your work.”

McCree shrugged.

“You have a gun named after one of th’ most venomous snakes in New Mexico, and you’re an officer of th’ law. I’d say that’s ironic.”

You both shared a laugh.

“Let’s get out of th’ heat,” you offered, lightly tugging him by the serape to lead him back to the house.

Once you both were out of the desert sun and seated on the porch, the two of you shared some stories. McCree happily talked about his life when he still lived in New Mexico, occasionally dabbled into some Deadlock days, and quietly mumbled about Blackwatch events. You asked him some normal questions (“Favorite part of town?”, “Been to the High Side Saloon?”), but of course he expected some rather personal ones (“How did you join Deadlock?”). McCree answered those more-or-less truthfully, but when he only gave you silence you knew better than to test your luck.

“I apologize for prying too much,” you said sheepishly.

“Comes with years of interrogatin’ folks.”

You were a good fellow—McCree admitted to you that he enjoyed your company more than he expected—but he couldn’t get too comfortable with someone he just met. A feeling in his gut told him that maybe, just maybe, he could open up to you more with time.

You, on the other hand, talked freely about your life. Before becoming an officer, you were a bit of a rebel in your youth, wreaking havoc in your mother’s diner and stealing bikes parked around saloons. You were a kid with a dream to live up to your family name, capturing and wrangling dangerous snakes from across the lands. It was endearing to see the passion in your eyes, but then you explained that you had to become a deputy to earn money for your family. Your bright demeanor turned into one of disappointment.

“A trade-off, really,” you said sadly.

“Parents didn’t force me to do it either, but we needed more income. Snake wranglin’ can only give so much, and it really pays when something big is out there, which is rare.”

“What made you become an officer then?”

“Similarities. Instead of takin’ out poisonous snakes, I’m takin’ out poisonous people,” you answered, voice taking a more serious tone.

“See it this way: almost all snakes attack humans out of self defense. We take them out ‘cause we don’t want them t’hurt others, but killin’ doesn’t have t’be the first decision. They’re just out there survivin’. The snakes my family catch are relocated to research centers for antidotes.

“People on the other hand? It depends. If you’re protectin’ yourself, alright, I’m just gonna take a different plan for ya. If you’re savin’ someone, I’ll even help if there’s a more wicked party involved. But if you’re hurtin’ someone for th’ sole purpose of being a dick? I’m not about that. I make sure not to kill the guys, but if push comes to shove then a few bullets will need to hit some areas. They all end up in the county jail under my call.”

“So people are like snakes to you?” McCree asked.

“At the start of the job it looked that way, yeah, but after years under this hat, you learn how to decipher a person with a look or two.”

You hung your head down as your eyes were casted to the sands, a distant look on your face. You were probably thinking of those years, having to bring people behind bars for the crimes and felonies they committed. The contemplation made you look a lot older than you were, and McCree wondered if he looked the same on days where he would be in deep thought such as yourself.

“Is that why you haven’t arrested me yet?”

“You’re an outlaw worth sixty million, McCree, but I know a man with a good heart when I see one,” you said as looked at him straight in the eyes.

“Snakes will shed their skin for the season, and people can leave behind their pasts for the future. I know you’re not the man you once were.”

The two of you became silent.

“The way you reference your advice to snakes is almost unhealthy,” McCree chuckled after a moment.

You were about to retort to his statement until you see the genuine grin on his face.

“But I’ll have you know that all your words mean a lot to me.”

McCree watched as you blinked, clearly not expecting his response. You probably weren’t expecting him to be as understanding to your weird philosophy on life, and judging at how pleased you were, McCree would be more than welcome to listen to you talk a lot more. Your eyes then closed as a meek smile came upon your face, and a soft snort came from you as you mumbled something about him being a dork.

Just as you were about to speak, something started beeping. McCree shot up in his seat in alarm, but he noticed a flashing light from a metal wristband you wore on your left.

You had that the whole time?

“It’s a voice call, they won’t see you,” you assured him, pressing the small light on the metal. Before he could ask who you meant by “they”, a small blue hologram came up with a phone icon and words too small from him to read.

[ CALLING FROM: “THE HITCHING POST” SALOON, AMARILLO, NEW MEXICO ]

“Sheriff (Y/N) (L/N) speaking.”

Wait a minute, you were the sheriff? Not just a deputy?

“Sheriff!” a hurried voice called.

Gunshots were heard, and people were screaming from the other line. At this point you had gotten up, your face scrunched up in worry. McCree could only watch as your fists trembled.

“Officer, what’s goin—”

“It’s the Valley Marauders! T-They’re here again and we thought we could handle—”

CRASH!

“If any of ya shits call the cops on us, you’ve got a bullet waitin’ for ya!” a shrill voice rang before a rapid succession of shots came, all of which slightly muffled from all the sounds coming through.

“They just don’t learn their fuckin’ lesson,” you growled.

McCree held his tongue as he watched you worked quickly, sending a number of different messages and signals with the watch. He noticed as you pulled up one red screen with a striking snake symbol, and immediately swiping it up. From afar he heard a loud engine roar.

“I’ve sent more officers. Be there in five,” you answered through gritted teeth, clearly trying to stay calm for the sake of the victim.

“Please hurry—”

The line went dead.

McCree attempted to speak to you before he saw dust pick from his peripheral vision. He turned to look and there in the distance a driverless motorcycle came speeding down towards the two of you. The vehicle was a shimmering black and silver, it had glowing blue wheels indicating that it ran on a hard light technology, and it ran in a speed that would break all the laws in the world. The main thing however, was how it looked like a striking snake, based on the way the front area had been personalized.

The motorcycle came to an abrupt stop beside you, bringing with it all the dust from its travel. McCree coughed from all the sand, and just as the cloud dispersed, you were sat on the seat with both hands on the handlebars, revving the engine. On the side of the motorcycle were the words “Death Adder”, and if that wasn’t a better name for the bike, he didn’t know what would be. He didn’t think you could look more badass than you were before, but that thought was cast aside as you pulled him and sat him down behind you.

“Hold on to that hat of yours.”

>>>

When you said that you would be there in five minutes, five minutes was really all it took. McCree had passed Amarillo a number of times to know that from the shooting range, it was an approximate fifteen minute ride at the speed limit 70 mph. However, you kicked the gear to 140 mph (or was it higher? He couldn’t remember over ringing in his ears caused by the winds), effectively cutting time and making McCree wonder how people could handle speeds like these. You slowed down once you were within range of the town and parked just outside of it as to not give away your positions.

The area was quiet and deserted. Even the wind was still, making the air feel suffocating with the midday heat of the desert. You and McCree walked through the street, the clicks of his spurs echoing in the silence. When you make a turn, the road opened up to the main road, an open area that stretched to a cliffside closed off by wood fences.

“Just like the movies,” McCree noted.

“You think we’re gonna have a Mexican standoff?”

Just as you were about to joke back, a stout man walked out from an alleyway and stood twenty feet away at the middle of the road opposite of the both of you.

“I was thinkin’ you were never gonna show up, sheriff!” the man grinned, raising dual revolvers up in the air.

“Not I would mind! It’s ‘bout time you ran with your tail between your legs.”

“What do you want, Danford?” you growled.

“That’s Two-Shootin’ Sherrock to you, (L/N),” he hissed.

“Dual-wielding devil! Gang leader of the Valley Marauders! And you best be rememberin’ it when my bullet hits ya!”

“Hey now, since when did anyone give you the permission to make that call?” Mccree said, taking a step forward.

“If anythin’, you’re the one who’s gonna be takin’ a bullet from the sheriff's gun.”

The man’s eyes widened before narrowing, his grin becoming even wider.

“Well,” he dawled, “if it ain’t Jesse McCree.”

“I’m surprised you’re with the sheriff! Aren’cha just as bad as us?”

McCree glanced at you, then back at Danford.

“I’m not bad, not good… but I sure as hell ain’t ugly.”

You tried to keep your smile down, you really did, but the chuckle escaped you. The stout man puffed up in anger, making him appear bigger than he was. Danford brought his fingers to his mouth and made a long shrill whistle. McCree watched as your eyes widened before taking out Rattlesnake, and he took it as a sign to take out Peacekeeper.

“I’m guessin’ that’s bad.”

“No shit, cowboy.”

Footsteps came from multiple directions. McCree’s first guess was that ten men would come out, but after the thirteenth one he was weighing his options as how to go about the situation. Twenty men trapped the both you in a circle. They all stood fifteen feet away from you, and all were armed with a weapon. More than half had their guns at you, but that did little to lessen McCree’s nerves. Peacekeeper only had seven bullets, and even with a quick reload to take out fourteen, their bullets would be shot before he knew it.

“What’re ya gonna do, sheriff?” Danford called from the other side.

You hissed, and McCree had to do a double-take to make sure you actually did that.

“What did you do to the people?”

The gang leader laughed before snapping his fingers.

From his left, two gang members walked out carrying a limp body. McCree watched as you stiffened at the sight: an officer whose face was beaten in, blue, and bleeding. He was alive, but if kept in his current state it didn’t take a genius to know that he wouldn’t last long. You were shaking in rage, and McCree had to take hold of your wrist to keep you grounded.

“This lil’ guy,” Danford gestured, propping the officer’s chin up with the end of his gun. At the sight of discomfort, McCree tightened his grip as you pulled.

“He called you, yeah? Well, we didn’t like that, so we taught ‘im a lesson. And honestly? You gotta get better men! They’re all cozy over by the back of the saloon.”

“Put the gun down!” you yelled.

You lunged forward, but one of the gang members quickly stepped forward and harshly pushed a gun into your temple. You stood still with the barrel pointed straight at you, but no effort was made to move back. McCree gritted his teeth as he pulled you beside him, wrapping an arm by your waist to keep you from at bay... for now.

“How sweet,” the gang member who had pointed the gun at you smiled mockingly.

“Is the outlaw your boyfriend now? How would that look on your reputation, sheriff?”

McCree couldn’t see your expression.

Danford pushed the gun further into the chin of your officer, and at the sight of more pain you struggled under McCree’s grip. He held unto you tighter, not wanting you to get a bullet or twenty into either of you.

“I swear to the all the gods, Jesse,” you murmured just enough from him to hear, “release me.”

“No can do, sheriff,” he replied.

“Bad things come out of people without a plan.”

A face came to McCree’s mind, but the memory was suppressed.

His words were enough to calm you down as your posture slackened. McCree released his hold as you stood straight, looking down at Rattlesnake. Danford barked an order from afar, and all the guns around you were loaded. McCree felt a light jab at his side, and he moved to stay back-to-back with you. You held the brim of your hat before taking it off it completely, a clear sign that you meant business. Before McCree could ask, you pushed your hat into his free hand.

“I didn’t want to use this,” you sighed, grip tightening on your revolver. McCree could feel heat building up from the side where you held your gun.

“At my call, I need you to get down.”

The tone in your voice was similar to when you had threatened him earlier that day, but the malice in your voice was not directed to him. McCree knew that you couldn’t see his nod, but the sentiment was taken as he heard the familiar click of a gun.

“Now!”

BANG!

Silence followed

Your ejector rod clicked the cylinder out, making multiple shell casings hit the ground. McCree peered up to notice a dust cloud clear around him, and he realized that you had done a full 360 turn based on the skids on the dirt. He clutched your hat closer to his chest, and the gunslinger looked beside him to count almost twenty-four empty casings on a pile, not believing that you had shot and loaded quadruple the amount of bullets in your gun.

What in tarnation—

“Argh!”

McCree looked up to see each gang member drop one by one, each clutching to one of their sides. He looked up at you just as you blew the smoke from your gun, and when you looked down at him to give him a small smirk.

“What? Did’ya think that only guys like you had all the flashy shit?”

Once all the bodies hit the ground, McCree handed you your hat as you pulled him up. The leader was shaking. The two gang members who had brought in your officer had fled the scene, leaving Danford to hold up the unconscious man by the scruff of his uniform. He was shaking so much McCree was convinced he’d turn himself in, but when the gun is pointed to the head of the unconscious man, McCree just knew the guy was stubborn.

“Now, y’know I don’t like repeatin’ myself,” you spoke you walked forward. McCree’s gun was pointed straight at the man.

You and McCree backed Danford up to the fence, the wood creaking by the pressure of the man who tried to find an escape route. The cliff was steep slope that curved into a desert meadow with high grasses and rocks. Most gang members would take the opportunity to get down the hill with the assured safety of the grass, but it was obvious that Danford didn’t have the physicality to do so.

“STAY BACK!” Danford yelled, pushing the tip of the gun into a wound, making the officer wince.

McCree sucked in a breath.

“Come on now, Sherrock, no need to get all riled up.”

You and the gang leader looked at him incredulously.

“What?” you seethed.

McCree pointed his gun to you, and you held your hands up. You had no more bullets to shoot.

“Put the man over to the side, and I won’t let the sheriff get t’ ya.”

“McCree, what—”

“Gun down, (L/N).”

Your eyes widened before your expression shifted, and you put your gun back to your holster. He tipped his head down to nod at Danford, and you barely caught the wink he gave you under the brim of his hat.

Sneaky.

Danford wasn’t convinced by McCree’s sudden willingness to help him, so you took the initiative to back away, hands up to prove that you weren’t able to pull anything on him. The man gave McCree a grin, thinking that he had won with the help of a fellow outlaw, then threw the officer to the side. You ran over to him to inspect the wounds; the damage had been done, and he would have to be out of commission for a while.

“Now partner,” Danford said, patting McCree by the shoulder while grinning mockingly at you.

“What do you think we should do ‘bout the deputy? I say we should beat ‘em! It’s two against one!”

The leader was too busy reveling in his “win” that he hasn’t noticed the shift under McCree’s serape. Just as he turned his attention back to him, a flashbang was thrown at him square in the face. You whistled as you watched Danford fall to the ground; it would be an understatement to say that it hurt, judging by the burns to the face. Unfortunately, McCree was barely a few feet away, so he also got the force of the flash.

You ran up to help him, but you weren’t fast enough as he staggered back, lost his footing, and fell on his behind.

“You’re smart,” you said to him with a smile, kneeling beside him to check for any injuries. Besides a slightly singed beard, you handed him a small patch that used biotic technology.

“But reckless. Really reckless.”

“Been livin’ life that way,” he groaned.

“I go with a plan, but I never promise they’d work out perfectly.”

A small beep came from your watch. A hologram was pulled up between you and McCree, and you cursed under your breath. The reinforcements that you had called before your fight had gotten in a scuffle with another gang, and they were just about to reach the scene. While you were glad to get help to rally up the Valley Marauders, McCree would get taken in the moment he would be spotted.

You looked at the fence, and then an idea came.

“Roll off the hill.”

McCree froze just as he was placing the patch you had given him.

“Roll off the hill?” he repeated, looking over the slope.

“Go.”

“Are you shitting me—”

“It’s sloped. Do you trust me?”

McCree slapped his knee with a sarcastic bark, “Don’t you pull that bull—”

“I will kick you off and hope a combat roll is automatic, cowboy,” you commanded.

“Now, do you trust me?”

McCree glanced at you, then at the thirty foot slope awaiting him after the wooden fence.

“… Looks like I got no call in this, sher—”

You swiftly kicked a part of the old fence down, and the wood that rolled off the hill did little to help the situation. McCree is given no time to comprehend what was happened as you grabbed him by his arm, pulled him to the edge, and pushed him.

“Sorry!”

The first two seconds brought more pain to his behind as he hit a few rocks, but McCree willed his body to get into a combat roll as his armor and serape helped against more debris. He skidded down the remaining slope and into the grassy meadow just as he regained balance. Years of being on the run definitely helped, but even then your idea had been uncalled for.

McCree watched as the dust cleared from his trip down the slope. From the top, he could hear the roaring of motorcycle and car engines, boots stomping over the dirt, and your voice barking out orders to deal with what the gang had done. He narrowly missed a few cops that looked over the cliff by rolling into a crevasse of a neighboring hill.

He watched as you stood by the cliff, pointing to the general direction of where he was. For a second, McCree thought you had ratted him out, but after a moment your officers went back to the direction of the town. Just as a few minutes pass, he heard car doors close and the motorcycles speeding away. You still stood by the cliff, and McCree poked his head out just enough for you to see him. With a wave, you skidded down the slope just as he did, albeit a lot more gracefully.

“What’d you tell them?” he asked, walking to you as you dusted yourself off.

“Had them round up the gang,” you explained.

“Apparently someone got word of us meetin’. Told them you got a hit on me and fled.”

“Damn, that’d look good on my resume, wouldn’t it? ‘Escaped the snake sheriff of Amarillo who can can shoot twenty men with a rattlesnake revolver and ride a badass Adder motorcycle’. How the hell did you do that?”

McCree paused as you snorted.

“And you didn’t tell me you were the sheriff! Highest ranking officer of the county! Good lord, where are all your badges?”

At this point you were doubled over, laughing at how McCree was fussing over not addressing you properly—it was cute. He crossed his arms over his chest with a pout, but a small smile came upon his face to see that even after what had happened, you were doing well. You wouldn’t show it, but he was sure that seeing your people in danger had shaken you up.

“About badges, I don’t wear ‘em ‘til I have to. The amount’s too heavy,” you shrugged. To this, McCree sighed.

“And about my shootin’?”

You hummed.

“Let’s just say Rattlesnake doesn’t use normal bullets.”

McCree was about to comment on that line, but he figured that was a whole conversation for another time.

“Now that the fun’s over,” you said, kicking the dirt below you.

“What’re ya gonna do now?”

The realization hit him like a bullet; he was heading back to Gibraltar tomorrow morning. McCree would be picked up by Lena at a town just north of Amarillo, and as much as he wanted to lengthen his stay, he already had a mission waiting for him when he got back. A few days definitely wasn’t enough, but what could he do?

“My trip ends tomorrow, so I gotta pack up,” McCree said, looking down to fiddle with the end of his serape.

“How ‘bout you?”

You pressed your watch, and soon there’s the loud engine of your bike from the distance.

The both of you stood in comfortable silence, neither of you wanting speaking up as you were in each other’s company. When McCree glanced at you, you were looking at him. A faint smile was on your face, but your eyes showed how you felt the same about each other’s departure.

“You’ve done an awful lot for lil ol’ me,” McCree spoke up, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“Like I said, I know a good heart,” you said.

McCree lent out a hand for you to shake, but just as you took it, you pulled him in for a hug. He’s taken aback for a moment, but he eased into the embrace, lingering a little longer than intended.

Now, he really wished he could stay.

“Besides,” you added, pulling away for him to see a grin on your face.

“I also know a good-lookin’ guy when I see one.”

The bike arrived. McCree stood by as you mounted it, subtly mentioning about how he would love to ride it sometime, to which you give him a shrug and a “maybe” to his request. The two of you shared one more laugh together, clearly trying to stall for a bit more time.

"Y'know,” he piped up just as you revved the engine.

“If we knew each other back in th' day, possibly back at th' shootin’ range, I have a good feelin’ that we’d be great partners.”

You tipped your hat at him, and McCree returned the gesture.

“Who says we can’t be?

McCree grinned.

“See ya soon.”

“I’m sure ya will.”

#overwatch x reader #overwatch imagines #overwatch oneshot #overwatch #mccree x reader #mccree #jesse mccree #daybreak.doc

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nadziejastar · 5 years ago

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There are still many mysteries surrounding Castle Oblivion. Was the castle itself constructed by the Organization and was Naminé originally a subject of the experiments going on there? Please tell us about the details of the Organization’s experiments. Also, was that pod that Sora entered something the Organization built in relation to those experiments? Are they the same pods in Twilight Town?

The ultimate goal of the Organization was to obtain a Kingdom Hearts of the hearts of people and become complete beings, and because Nobodies were a new kind of being beyond all expectations, said to be ‘nonexistent beings’, the lack of background knowledge made it necessary for them to collect information relating to their own condition. One major feature of the Nobodies is that they form personalities and feelings through memories without hearts. This means that ‘memory’ is a very important element to them. The creation of Castle Oblivion itself is still a mystery, but, as you can guess from the cutscenes added to this title, you may consider that the Organization discovered the castle, which was there since before the Organization was created, at quite an early stage.

At the same time Roxas awoke in Twilight Town, Naminé awoke in Castle Oblivion. Afterwards, the Organization discovered Naminé. Just as each Organization member has an attribute ability, Naminé possesses the power to manipulate ‘memory’, and they thought that this ability was the key to illuminating the truths of the condition of the Nobodies. The memories of those who enter were used in the experiments on memories going on there.

Above all, Xemnas, the leader of the Organization, seemed to be searching for something important related to ‘memory’. During these experiments, in order for these memories to be broken and then regenerated, those pods were made by the Organization. The pod that Sora woke up in in Twilight Town was the same one from Castle Oblivion. DiZ had moved everything as it was in order to escape pursuit by the Organization. Also, there is an additional scene where Xigbar talks about the “true goal of Castle Oblivion” and when this particular scene appears, I think all mystery surrounding Castle Oblivion should become clear.

Sure, I think it’s extremely likely. I definitely think that there was a lot more we were supposed to learn about the mansion in Twilight Town that was pertinent to the Xehanort Saga. The organization has been aware of Castle Oblivion for a pretty long time. They’d been doing experiments there in order to understand themselves as Nobodies, so I definitely think Lea and Isa were experimented on some more. I also think there was probably an important reason Naminé woke up in Castle Oblivion and Roxas in front of the mansion in Twilight Town.

There’s a connection between those two places. Xemnas was studying memory for some reason. If I had to guess, I’d say it was to find Ventus and also to find some way to regain the use of his Keyblade. Nomura also said the pods were created by the organization to break apart and regenerate memories. Apprentice Xehanort was probably in one of those pods when Ansem experimented on his heart to restore his memory. And those pods were in the mansion in Twilight Town. There were many of them and they had been used before. Maybe they were relocated from Radiant Garden.

The research rooms were two rooms side-by-side. Sometimes, weird cries could be heard from the next room, but apart from frowning, Zexion only silently continued working alone. The day drew close when both these rooms could be moved to another place. Soon, the research facilities inside Castle Oblivion will be complete. That place is a special place. A special place, a special castle. There probably isn’t a more special or suitable place for the purpose of studying memories and that which affects them. The researcher in the next room, Vexen’s work is similar to mine. Vexen is making a doll from memories. And I am—

“Is the job coming along?”

Before the organization went to Castle Oblivion in CoM, Vexen was studying Replicas and Zexion was studying...something else. It was never revealed what that was. Poor Zexion seemed to be accustomed to hearing weird cries, and just stopped reacting to it. Kinda creepy.

This also being true for the weapons belonging to the other members of the Organization, when someone other than the original wielder tries to hold the Keyblade, it naturally returns to the hands of the wielder, but… the Keyblade Xion gripped in her hands didn’t disappear.

And of course, it’s still unexplained how the organization members got their weapons and special abilities. It seems like they all got their weapons and abilities after they became Nobodies. The weapons are special. They are similar to Keyblades in that they are particular about their wielders.

Nobodies derived their personalities and abilities from memories of their human lives. But what exactly were those abilities? What gave rise to them?

The answer that came to mind was the presence of memory itself. They were chained by their memory, and in those bonds was power. So it was probably fair to say that Roxas and Xion were bound by the same memory.

And they are associated with the person’s memories, like Keybaldes are. But Axel didn’t even understand his own abilities. I think the members probably gained the use of their weapons and abilities during an experiment, possibly associated with those memory pods. And more experiments were performed to understand those abilities. Xehanort would need his potential Seekers of Darkness to be strong.

I don’t know how significant this is to the story, but in KHUX, there are hundreds of medals with hundreds of different attack names. They generally tried to remain true to the characters when naming their attacks. Lea’s is “Magic Saucer” which is a good fit for his fire elemental disc attack, which is Axel’s weapon and special attribute.

They didn’t base Isa’s ability off of Saïx, though. He just has the exact same ability as Lea with pretty much the exact same stats. The only difference is that Lea has a speed attribute (which fits him plot-wise) while Isa has a power attribute. Even NPCs who cannot fight got special abilities that fit them as characters. For instance, Naminé’s ability “Mirror” involved copying, and KH2 Kairi provided a strength boost. So did this mean that Isa had no unique abilities of his own? I don’t know. But if so, he got his Claymore and berserk state ability as a Nobody.

Even Lea and Isa’s combined medal has a fire attack. Don’t know exactly what that says about their abilities as kids, but Lea and Isa do have opposite personalities. Lea is outgoing and childish, Isa is shy and mature. Lea enjoyed playfully fighting Ventus, while Isa just watched. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume Isa didn’t like fighting or have much talent for it. Lea probably protected him, so maybe they share the same attack for that reason. Does this mean that Lea could use Fire magic as a kid? Maybe. Who knows, maybe Lea helped Isa learn how to use it, too. Magic is not special in KH, anyone can use it.

Vexen: It seems he desperately wants the Keyblade master for himself—What a foolish plan, indeed. Sora’s is not such an interesting existence. The entity that holds true value—is Riku, the hero of darkness.

The wording for the Zero Gear description is interesting. It’s the weapon that draws forth the wielder’s “true worth”. I suspect Vexen probably had some involvement in these experiments. Axel’s weapon is shaped like the chaos symbol. He’s someone who is not afraid to get his hands dirty. Axel was an assassin, for crying out loud!

Axel: Hmm... Look, I knew Vexen and Zexion would be obstacles. That's why they're not here anymore. When have I ever complained about the dirty work?

That’s why I hated how in KH3, they made it seem like he was this goody-two- shoes guy who just was innocently looking for information on Subject X the whole time, while Saïx was the one who was doing all the icky jobs. What a cop-out. That’s NOT how it was portrayed. Saïx rarely even fought. He was more of an advisor. Axel always offered to do all the dirty work for Saïx and complained that he always got stuck with the icky jobs. It was his damn catchphrase.

Vexen: If you remain bound by the chain of memories and refuse to believe what is truly found inside your heart…then throw it away. You are not a Keyblade master—just a slave to twisted memories. Yes… Exactly like my Riku. Your existence is worth nothing!

If Zero Gear brings out someone’s true worth, I think Isa might have been considered pretty worthless as a human. And that might be why Axel eliminated Vexen in such a merciless manner. Unlike Lea, Isa was never seen play fighting. He wouldn’t have any normal memories to base a weapon off of. If weapons are formed from memories, Axel’s weapon was based off of his frisbees.

Axel thought of asking whether Saïx had been worried about his safety, but couldn’t be bothered putting him in a worse mood. Maybe the memories he has of anger and displeasure are really strong.

Saïx’s weapon was apparently based off of his memories of being experimented on. His claymore is called Lunatic, and it puts him into a state of madness. He “awakened to a new purpose”, which was to become stronger. As a Nobody, Saïx might have willingly gone along with experiments to become stronger, especially if he was planning to overthrow the organization with Axel. But even in the novel, he said he didn’t like fighting and when he fought Roxas, it was his first battle in quite a long time.

Kairi looked up at him then. “Aren’t you…a bad guy?”

“I’m not,” Axel replied, completely serious. “But not really a good guy, either.”

Then there’s the weapons that bring forth the wielder’s “personality”, which is also formed by memories. While I think the Zero Gear is more representative of the person’s identity as a Nobody, I think the Mystery Gear is more representative of their identity as a human. That’s why it’s such a unique weapon. Axel’s is shaped like a (卐) swastika, symbolizing surya (sun), prosperity and good luck. And it has a Recusant’s Sigil in the middle. A recusant is a traitor. And Axel was never, ever loyal to the organization. From the very beginning he was plotting with Saïx. The Fuma clan was a deadly and ruthless ninja group that was skilled in smoke and fire techniques.

“It’s the best thing for everyone,” said Xion.

Everyone? Everyone, who? For us? Or…for someone else?

“How do you know that?” Axel demanded. “Everyone thinks they’re right…”

“This is right,” Xion said firmly. “It’s better this way.”

Axel hated that argument. Nothing was better any which way. All it came down to was what you wanted to do and what you didn’t. He’d learned that lesson back when he had a heart.

“So it’s better for you to disappear?” he protested.

The Moon Rabbit is also known as the Selfless Hare. It seemed like Isa was the selfless one who wanted to do what was best for everyone. Lea was the one that said, “Screw what’s best for everyone. All that matters is what I want. And I want to save you.” Even as a human, I think Lea was willing to get his hands dirty for Isa’s sake. And that relationship carried on as Nobodies. Though Saïx took advantage of it. So, basically I do think Saïx especially had more experiments done to him as a Nobody, considering how strong he is.

#kh #kh meta #kh axel #kh saix #kh lea #kh isa

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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DONALD TRUMP’S STRANGE AND DANGEROUS ‘ABSOLUTE RIGHTS’ IDEA

This is a profound misunderstanding of the American constitutional system.

FEBRUARY 29, 2020

By Jane Chong, Former law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit | Published February 29, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted March 01, 2020 |

President Donald Trump’s theory of executive power starts and ends with his “absolute rights.”

Trump invoked that catchphrase earlier this month, when, in apparent response to his angry tweets, the Justice Department undercut its own prosecutors and reduced their recommended prison sentence for Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime friend and former campaign adviser. Trump denied having asked the Justice Department to step in—but not without insisting that he had the “absolute right to do it” if he so chose.

That claim is a favorite Trump refrain, and like a brake warning light, it tends to signal that the car is no longer safely in contact with the legal road. In May 2017, after The New York Times reported that Trump had spilled highly classified information to Russian government officials, he tweeted that he had “the absolute right to do so.” In December of that year, when asked whether the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails should be reopened, Trump invoked his “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” Six months later, in June 2018, Trump tweeted that Robert Mueller’s investigation was “totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” and that if push came to shove, “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.”

[ Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: 23 dangerous propositions the Senate just ratified]

Things snowballed in 2019. In February of that year, Trump announced that he had the “absolute right to declare a national emergency” in order to obtain border-wall funding that Congress had not authorized. In April, Trump denied reports that he had offered to pardon the Customs and Border Protection commissioner if he were arrested for enforcing Trump’s policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, but tweeted that he had “the absolute right” to close the border. In October, in the midst of the House impeachment inquiry into his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump claimed that he had an “absolute right, perhaps even a duty,” to ask foreign countries for help in investigating corruption. In November, he derided Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, by tweet in the middle of her testimony before the House Intelligence Committee and claimed his “absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

The temptation may be to dismiss Trump’s theory of absolute rights as a showy rhetorical tic. But one of his very first acts as president was to operationalize that theory, not long after debuting it on the campaign trail. “The president has the right to ban any group or anybody … that he feels is going to do harm to our country,” Trump explained in a June 2016 appearance on Howie Carr’s radio show, while inveighing against Muslim immigration to the United States after the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. “They have an absolute right, Howie.” Seven days after his inauguration, Trump signed a legally and operationally unworkable executive order imposing a 120-day ban on entry for all refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries and an indefinite ban on all refugees from Syria, which reportedly underwent none of the usual interagency review processes.

Most recently, less than a week after claiming his “absolute right” to intervene in Stone’s case, Trump issued a round of pardons that conspicuously included his friends and associates, most colorfully Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor and a contestant on Trump’s show Celebrity Apprentice, who was caught on FBI wiretaps in 2008 trying to sell President Barack Obama’s Senate seat. The move suggests more coming interference on behalf of Stone, the “tough, loyal guy” whose case, Trump alleges, was “totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought,” and whose trial, Trump claims, suffered “significant bias.” Last week, when asked again about his plans regarding Stone, Trump mused aloud, “I’m allowed to be totally involved. I’m actually, I guess, the chief law-enforcement officer of the country.”

[ Read: Will Trump destroy the presidency?]

The point is, Trump’s theory of executive power does real work and has had real consequences. The opening memorandum prepared by Trump’s defense team for his Senate impeachment trial, for example, served as an homage to the general concept of absolute rights and built from its vision of an unconstrained executive the startling argument that the president cannot be impeached for abuses of power. Trump’s coinage actually made a revealing, and legally mystifying, appearance in the brief: “It is well settled that the President has a virtually absolute right to maintain the confidentiality of his diplomatic communications with foreign leaders.” As support for this sweeping claim, Trump’s team cited the Supreme Court’s 1974 decision in United States v. Nixon. But that decision notes nothing more than the courts’ traditional deference to the president’s claims of executive privilege over communications bearing on sensitive foreign-policy and national-security matters—and ultimately determined that President Richard Nixon had to hand over tapes subpoenaed by the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal.

Where Trump derived the idea that as president he enjoys absolute rights is unclear. But his chosen phraseology is sticky and evocative. It carries a quasi-juridical ring that belies its conceptual incoherence. Closely examined, his incessant invocation of the phrase evokes the image not of the leader of the free world, but of a freeholder enjoying untrammeled and indefinite possession of his estate. Constitutionally baseless but rhetorically compelling, the whole concept of “absolute rights” is best described as a legal innovation by a real-estate mogul who understands power through the prism of private property rather than public obligation.

As the owner and developer of a sprawling global real-estate empire, Trump, of course, knows a thing or two about property. And in the world of property, the best kind of ownership is “absolute”—or “perfect”—title. Absolute title grants the title holder unequivocal, unchallengeable ownership rights. The property is free and clear, to be enjoyed and used by the owner as he sees fit. It is encumbered by nothing. The owner is beholden to no one.

What does it mean for Trump to claim ownership of not a golf resort but the executive branch of the U.S. government?

Commentators have repeatedly observed that Trump “has often seemed to conflate himself with the government, and his own interests with the nation’s.” Thus, to criticize Trump is to attack America. This makes some sense if the unitary executive is reimagined as a sole proprietorship, an arrangement in which the business enterprise enjoys no legal existence separate from its owner.

“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” Trump crowed to a group of teenage conservatives at a Washington, D.C., summit in July, awkwardly waving his constitutional authority like a golden ticket entitling him to full possession of a chocolate factory. Conceived this way, as absolute title, Article II vests the president not with power sanctioned by and concomitant with his obligations to the people, but with rights enforceable against them.

This is a profound misunderstanding of the American constitutional system. Within that system, rights protect individuals against incursions by the state. The assertion of “absolute rights” by the country’s chief executive stands this concept on its head by purporting to insulate state conduct, however arbitrary and transgressive, from review or even critique. The idea is incompatible with the design of Article II, which vests the president with conditional, circumscribed authority to ensure that the laws are “faithfully executed.” Some of that authority is his alone to exercise—for example, only the president can grant pardons, command the armed forces, and recognize foreign states. But to the extent he misunderstands or abuses that authority, the Constitution facilitates challenge by the other branches. In extreme cases, that challenge is supposed to take the form of impeachment and removal.

In short, absolute presidential rights have no place within a constitutional democracy, wherein all power is derived from the will of the governed. And they have no purchase in a three-branch federalist republic, wherein the national executive is subject to check by Congress and the courts, and forbidden from seizing powers held by the states.

Since the start of his presidency, Trump has been criticized for asserting what amounts to a kingship—prompting one of his personal lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, to announce during the House impeachment inquiry that as president, Trump “has the power that kings have never had.” Dershowitz’s unabashed embrace of the comparison calls to mind the closing words of Alexander Hamilton’s “Federalist No. 69,” which underscore the differences between the president of the United States and the king of Great Britain. The president is an officer elected by the people; the king is “perpetual and hereditary.” The president is “amenable to personal punishment and disgrace”; the king is “sacred and inviolable.” Hamilton concluded his exercise with a call to resist those who claim “things so unlike resemble each other.”

But closely examined, the executive-power claims pioneered by Trump, the consummate wheeler and dealer, may not require leaping to a wholly different governmental paradigm. Something messier is happening here, something less lucid and self-aware than a power grab by a would-be monarch. For Trump, who inherited and then spent a lifetime expanding an empire that embodies ownership on a scale unimaginable to the ordinary American, power has always been property, property has always been power. James Madison wrote, “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.” In Trump’s view, that protected property happens to include all the authorities and privileges encompassed in the “absolute rights” of the American presidency, the greatest deal he has ever closed.

________

This story is part of the project “The Battle for the Constitution,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center.

_____

JANE CHONG is the former deputy managing editor of Lawfare and served as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

*********

TRUMP’S QUIET POWER GRAB

The president’s administration is attempting to bring thousands of federal employees under his control, and the public is largely unaware.

By Peter M. Shane | Published February 26, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted March 01, 2020 |

Throughout the federal government are thousands of officials who do not direct courtrooms, but who are, in a sense, judges. They are federal employees who preside over trial-like disputes, hear evidence and testimony, and make decisions that can deeply shape people’s lives, such as the granting of asylum and veterans benefits. These executive-branch employees are administrative adjudicators.

The Trump administration has launched an obscure but dangerous effort to undermine this system, and to dictate both the appropriate circumstances for commencing adjudication and the rules that govern how disputes with agencies are resolved. If the Trump administration’s strategy works, it will have steered the federal bureaucracy further toward an authoritarian future in which all executive-branch policy making must bend to the whims of a single individual, the president.

[ Shadi Hamid: The fundamental legitimacy of Donald Trump.]

Although precise data are hard to find, recent work by two leading administrative-law scholars suggests there are roughly 12,000 of these agency adjudicators of various types across the federal bureaucracy, as compared with about 870 permanently authorized federal-court judges. Though the number of matters these adjudicators handle is very hard to come by, a 2016 estimate suggests that they decide more than 750,000 cases annually, which would be about double the number of civil and criminal felony case filings in federal district court.

A plurality of administrative adjudications involve Social Security disability claims. But there is extensive variety among the several hundred agencies and programs involved in administrative adjudication. Some agencies, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, engage in licensing. Others, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Trade Commission, impose penalties for legal noncompliance. Numerous adjudication schemes across multiple agencies involve disputes about government payments, the awarding and administration of government contracts and benefits, and the imposition of employee discipline. A database created by Stanford Law School and the Administrative Conference of the United States numbers these programs and the agencies involved in the hundreds.

The public is, for the most part, quite oblivious to much of this activity’s scope and importance, much less the Trump administration’s attacks on its integrity. What is at stake is not the specific resolution of individual disputes—at least not thus far—but rather the authority to dictate the general rules by which agencies decide individual cases, cases in which accuracy and impartiality are key values.

Administrative adjudication is essential to the effective implementation of federal law. For some agencies, adjudication is a necessary component of policy making, because the statutes they enforce are extremely general and sweeping; specificity gets fleshed out on a case-by-case basis. Indeed, prior to the 1960s, administrative adjudication was more prevalent than issuing general regulations as a policy-making vehicle. For example, the National Labor Relations Board is charged with combatting “unfair labor practices.” It gives that standard meaning by bringing cases against individual employers who engage in activity the NLRB suspects is unlawful. These matters are tried before officials called administrative-law judges, or ALJs, whose decisions are reviewable first by the five members of the NLRB and then, if appealed, by a federal court. Lawyers working on subsequent labor disputes can consult the administrative orders that emanate from these adjudicative proceedings, just as they would read court decisions, to find out how the NLRB interprets the law. This is, likewise, how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) pursues “unfair or deceptive trade practices,” and how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prosecutes a variety of offenses under the federal Securities Act.

Congress also empowers a wide variety of administrative judges to be the first-line decision makers regarding individual applicants for all sorts of government benefits. The largest group comprises the ALJs who work for the Social Security Administration. Other agencies use different categories of administrative judges to approve applications under programs as diverse as veterans benefits, patents, and refugee asylum. ALJs enjoy a number of statutory protections intended to depoliticize their service and to protect, within bounds, the independence of their judgment. Other agency adjudicators with different titles almost always enjoy less protection for their decision-making independence, based on their agencies’ governing statutes.

[ Kim Wehle: Congress has lost its power over Trump.]

The Trump administration is now waging a two-pronged attack on the independence of all administrative adjudicators, including ALJs, and the agencies that employ them. The first prong involves telling agencies, via executive orders, how to exercise the discretion that Congress has given them to conduct adjudication. One such order, from October 2019, boasts the lofty title “Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication.” Among its provisions is a limit on when agencies may judge a private party’s past conduct to be unlawful based on a general legal standard. The executive order says that no such agency determination may be issued unless the agency has first warned the public—through a specific rule—that the general legal standard prohibits the conduct the agency would now challenge.

This may not sound like much, but in practice it would make the work of a number of federal agencies far more difficult. Consider this scenario: The FTC finds that a company has been using artificial intelligence in a novel way to ascertain which of its online customers can most effectively be tempted by a misleading, if not outright duplicitous, sales pitch. The FTC has never encountered the practice before. The FTC’s statute currently gives the agency discretion to launch an administrative proceeding against the company to determine whether the technique should be deemed a forbidden “unfair or deceptive trade practice.” If, based on the agency’s policy deliberations and a carefully assembled factual record, the FTC determines that the practice is “unfair” or “deceptive,” it could prohibit the company’s future use of that practice. What the FTC could not do would be to penalize the company for its pre-adjudication conduct—for example, by levying a fine—if no prior FTC proceeding had warned the company that it was violating federal law. The relief—as lawyers call a remedy to a legal problem—would have to be entirely forward-looking. The Supreme Court has approved this manner of administrative adjudication since 1947.

Under the Trump order, the FTC would not be allowed to proceed as I have described. It would first have to conduct a rule-making on the fairness of AI-guided online sales practices before it could go after any firm. This might be grossly inefficient and would disable the FTC from developing a nuanced factual understanding of regulated practices through individual cases. The Trump order does insist: “Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect … the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof.” The problem with this promise not to “impair” is that the order’s so-called fair-warning requirement, if applied to delay or prevent adjudication, would do just that. On this issue, Trump’s order either alters the discretion of administrative agencies or it is meaningless.

[ Peter M. Shane: The obscure—but crucial—rules the Trump administration has sought to corrupt ]

The second and even more aggressive prong is the Trump administration’s campaign to undermine independent agencies, which conduct a lot of the highest-profile administrative adjudications. The aim is to put an end altogether to the idea of independent officers in the executive branch. An agency is considered an “independent agency” if its head or heads may be dismissed by the president only with good cause—typically, “inefficiency, malfeasance, or neglect of office.” Conventional understanding is that presidents may fire at will any administrator who lacks such statutory protection. The Department of Justice under Trump, however, has been working hard to nudge the Supreme Court into determining either that any statutory limits on presidential at-will removal authority are categorically unconstitutional or that “inefficiency, malfeasance, or neglect of office” must be interpreted broadly enough that failure to follow any presidential directive would become “good cause” for dismissal. This would effectively end, for example, the independence of the Federal Reserve System.

The Justice Department’s first attempt at curtailing independence came in a 2018 case called Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission. The issue in Lucia was whether ALJs used by the SEC were “officers”—as opposed to “employees” of the United States—and thus had to be directly appointed by the SEC itself. (Under Article II of the Constitution, Congress may allow heads of agencies to appoint “inferior” officers. The president must appoint “principal officers” with Senate advice and consent. Congress has free rein for determining how “employees” may be hired.) The Court determined that the ALJs were indeed “officers” under the Constitution. It thus concluded that the SEC had acted unconstitutionally by allowing its chief administrative-law judge, working with SEC staff, to choose the commission’s ALJs. By not personally signing off on the appointments, the SEC commissioners had hoped to create the appearance of greater impartiality when their ALJs decided cases in which the SEC itself was a party. But given the Court’s holding, the SEC commissioners—the agency’s principal political appointees—would henceforth have to formally appoint the bureaucratic judges deciding the agency’s cases.

The Justice Department wanted the Court to go further, however. It argued that if the ALJs are “officers,” then the statute protecting them from at-will discharge would have to be narrowly interpreted so that they could be fired simply for failing to follow directions. The Court explicitly refused to discuss the issue. But the Solicitor General proceeded to issue a memorandum to all agency general counsels, advertising the Department’s eagerness to mount this argument in a future case.

A more direct vehicle for pushing the Court to invalidate agency independence from presidential control is a case to be argued on March 3, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (I helped write an amicus brief in this case defending the constitutionality of the CFPB’s structure.) The Justice Department’s position is that the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1935 decision upholding agency independence, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, should be overruled. Should the Court agree, it would not only render independent judges unconstitutional within any agency, but Congress would no longer be able, through tenure protections, to limit direct presidential policy control over the principal officers who deliver each agency’s final judgments—members of the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and all the similar bodies I have already mentioned. All would become removable by the president at will.

The Trump administration, in short, is challenging agencies’ ability to go after wrongdoing through administrative adjudication, and is seeking to undermine the independence of both first-line agency adjudicators and the heads of the agencies they work for. The administration appears intent on expanding this campaign. On January 30, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a request for information that could be used to inform further agency-adjudication orders. Public comments are due on March 16. The questions posed by the OMB suggest the Trump administration is interested in significantly rewriting the rules by which agencies conduct their trial-type proceedings.

Yoni Appelbaum: Americans aren’t practicing democracy anymore

By making the investigation and prosecution of regulated parties more difficult, the president threatens to create a system that, through centralized control, would allow cronyism and “agency capture” to protect corporate interests ahead of the public interest. New rules shaping adjudication could also enable political officials to make it harder for individuals to get the government benefits to which they are entitled.

A group of administrative-law scholars at George Washington University wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in Lucia warning of the disaster that would follow tightening political controls over agency adjudicators. They pointed out that “Congress devoted a substantial amount of time during the 1930s and 1940s to the question of how to structure agencies that engage in adjudication of regulatory disputes.” By statute, Congress imposed procedures for ALJs that were “specifically designed to ensure that they had an appropriate degree of decisional independence from the agencies whose cases they were to hear.” Making ALJs removable at will, or simply for failing to follow directions by political superiors, would undermine the impartiality that Congress sought to guarantee.

Impartiality is anathema to Trumpism. That the Trump administration wants to upend a long-standing system for assuring both the reality and appearance of fairness in agency adjudication may be shocking. But it is not surprising. If you consider yourself on block watch for threats to democracy, take your eyes for a moment off the president’s Twitter feed and turn your attention to administrative law. Danger is lurking amid the complexity.

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This story is part of the project “The Battle for the Constitution,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center.

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PETER M. SHANE is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II chair in law at the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

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The World Is Experiencing a New Form of Autocracy

Today’s authoritarians use legal measures to subvert constitutional constraints on their power.

By Tim Horley, Anne Meng, Mila Versteeg | Published March 01, 2020 7:30 AM ET | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted March 01, 2020 |

In March 2018, Donald Trump, addressing a crowd of donors at his Florida estate, told what sounded like a joke. He was talking about the recent amendment of China’s constitution to remove presidential term limits, allowing Xi Jinping to serve in that office indefinitely. About Xi, Trump said: “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give it a shot someday.” The crowd cheered and applauded in response. In fact, Trump has told one version or another of this joke many times since becoming president.

And though Trump’s remarks are generally perceived as facetious, many of his counterparts on the world stage are quite serious. In January, Vladimir Putin addressed the Russian nation in an annual State of the Union–esque speech. Alongside pledges to improve living standards by, among other things, offering free hot meals to schoolchildren, he proposed major constitutional reforms that could see the presidential office weakened and the prime ministry and State Council strengthened—measures very likely aimed at ensuring that Putin can remain in power after 2024, when constitutional term limits will force him out of the presidency.

[ Barbara McQuade: What would happen if Trump refused to leave Office? SEE TIMELINE]

This is how authoritarianism looks today. Our original study documents all term limit evasion strategies worldwide since the year 2000. We found that presidential-term-limit evasion is exceedingly common: About one-third of all presidents who reached the end of their term made a serious attempt to overstay. Two-thirds of those who made the attempt succeeded.

What’s particularly interesting is not only that so many presidents try to evade term limits, but that they are more and more sophisticated and legalistic in how they do so. Whereas leaders once used unmistakably authoritarian actions to stay in power, such as banning opposition parties or dismissing the legislature, today’s heads of state instead use democratic institutions and legal measures to subvert constitutional constraints on their power. More specifically, we found that there are four basic strategies for evading term limits, none of which violates a constitution outright: adding constitutional amendments, rewriting the constitution, using the courts to reinterpret the constitution, and appointing a placeholder president.

The first and most common strategy—used in some 66 percent of the attempts in our data—is simply to amend the constitution to extend or remove term limits. This is the path Xi took when, with hardly a whisper of dissent, he removed any limit on the number of five-year terms he could serve. Often, such changes are breathtaking in their sophistication. In Rwanda, for instance, Paul Kagame presided over a constitutional amendment process that will allow him to serve for a total of 35 years (or longer, if further amendments are in the offing). The effort began in 2015, when Kagame’s party encouraged voters to sign petitions urging Parliament to give the president an additional term. The party—the Rwandan Patriotic Front—withheld its formal endorsement for these efforts until a critical mass of signatures was reached. Once this happened, Parliament passed an amendment unanimously, and then a reported 98.9 percent of voters in a popular referendum ensured that the amendment would take effect. Throughout, Kagame himself never made public whether he intended to remain in office or otherwise commented on the amendment process, and he announced his intention to seek another term only after the measure had passed. The amendment allows Kagame—and only Kagame—an additional seven-year term, after which a new limit of two five-year terms (passed as part of the amendment package) will apply to him on a prospective basis. Thus, he may remain in office until 2034 while preserving an aura of democratic legitimacy and guaranteeing, at least on paper, that his successor will be limited to a maximum of 10 years.

A second strategy, which constitutes about 8 percent of evasion attempts, is what we call the “blank slate” strategy: when a leader creates an entirely new constitution, essentially nullifying the old term limits. When a new constitution is created, the leader’s term is effectively restarted, without any apparent constitutional violation. This was one of the methods employed by former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir until his ouster last year: After taking power in 1989, he oversaw not one but two entirely new constitutions, and thus remained in power for decades without formally violating term limits; each time there was a new constitution, his term started all over again.

A third strategy, which has had remarkable success in Latin America in particular, is to challenge the very legality of term limits in court. This strategy constitutes about 15 percent of evasion attempts since the turn of the millennium. In Nicaragua, for example, President Daniel Ortega was able to successfully remove term limits from his nation’s constitution by arguing that they were a violation of his human rights. The court, reasoning from a body of constitutional and human-rights law, agreed. A similar story unfolded in Bolivia and Honduras. In fact, though one might be tempted to put faith in judges to prevent executive overstay, our study found that courts are remarkably pliant. With the important exception of Colombia, where the Constitutional Court blocked Álvaro Uribe’s attempt to extend his term a second time, courts tend to sign off on term-limit evasion in all its guises.

A fourth strategy, also constituting about 15 percent of evasion attempts, is what we call the “faithful-agent strategy,” which involves presidents seeking a successor they can control, so that they can continue to govern even while formally out of office. Putin was previously able to extend his own rule using this strategy. He took office in 2000, when Russian presidents were limited to two consecutive terms of four years. In 2008, rather than simply moving aside or seeking to overstay his legal term as president, he stepped down, endorsing a handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, as president. Medvedev promised to nominate Putin as prime minister if elected. With Putin’s endorsement, Medvedev easily won the presidency, and very shortly after taking office he oversaw a parliamentary vote confirming Putin as prime minister. For the next four years, Putin served as a potent prime minister to the relatively inert President Medvedev. After constitutional reforms passed in that era, Putin could return to two more consecutive presidential terms, now extended to six years each. Thus, without violating the law, Putin has maintained an iron grip on power for 20 years; he is the longest-serving Russian head of state since Joseph Stalin.

Finally, a small handful of presidents were able to stay past their term by illegally delaying or canceling elections. However, this is the least frequently used strategy (only 5 percent of evasion attempts), most likely because it is more evidently illegal and authoritarian.

Still, one-third of overstay attempts did fail—and typically in spectacular fashion. In recent years, popular movements in Malawi, Burkina Faso, and Paraguay, among many others, have forced presidents to back down. (Burning down parliament, where the president’s allies may be at work on legislation to extend the president’s term, seems to be a particularly effective palliative.)

In Paraguay, for example, a recent push to amend the constitution to remove its strict single five-year term limits initially looked poised to succeed: Then-President Horacio Cartes secured enough support to get the Paraguayan Senate to pass an amendment that would have removed term limits. Unexpectedly, however, the opposition called for nationwide protests, and thousands of Paraguayans heeded the call—a variety of political and religious groups joined in, including, most prominently, the Catholic Church. Protesters clashed with the police, leading to one protester's death, but they managed to burn down the part of the legislature where the Senate met. The strong public backlash was enough to pressure Cartes to back down, formally withdrawing his support for the amendment via a letter to the archbishop of Asunción. Congress then voted down the proposal, and in the 2018 elections, Cartes did not participate, allowing for the election of current President Mario Abdo Benítez.

Paraguay is just one recent example of the power of public resistance; our study found that popular resistance through the coordinated efforts of various civil-society groups, including students, clergy, labor unions, and—in some cases most crucially—defectors from the president’s own party, is by far the most effective means of preventing overstay. Another source of optimism is that in well-established democracies with a long history of rotation from power, executive overstay is relatively rare. Out of these democracies in our data set, only 18 percent of leaders attempted to evade term limits, mostly through constitutional amendments.

Nonetheless, the legal and constitutional strategies that leaders use to keep themselves in power are particularly dangerous precisely because they are perceived as being procedurally democratic. A new generation of autocrats has perfected the art of looking democratic while pursuing authoritarian goals. Whether they succeed usually comes down to whether ordinary citizens take the threat seriously enough to do something about it.

This story is part of the project “The Battle for the Constitution,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center.

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TIM HORLEY is a lawyer and a 2018 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law.

ANNE MENG is an assistant professor of politics at the University of Virginia. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Constraining Dictatorship.

MILA VERSTEEG is the Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and a senior fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs. She is the author of the forthcoming book, How Constitutional Rights Matter.

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#trump administration #politics #president donald trump #politics and government #trump scandals #trumpism #republican politics #donald trump #us politics #trump news #u.s. constitution #constitution

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filmmakersvision · 6 years ago

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Top 10 Hindi Films of 2018

January 13, 2019

by Inakshi Chandra-Mohanty

1. October

October is like poetry unfolding on screen. An amalgamation of visual pleasure, a heart-warming score, and some of the strongest, most emotional performances of the year, this film is the definition of beauty. With an extremely simple plot, October thrives on the humorous antics of the eccentric Dan (Varun Dhawan) as he develops an unspoken bond with Shiuli (Banita Sandhu). As the trailer stated, it’s not a love story, but instead a story of love. There is the love between mother and daughter, which is tested time and again as the mother (Gitanjali Rao) is pushed by her brother-in-law to take Shiuli off the ventilator. And on the other hand, there are the selfless emotions that Dan has for Shiuli. His feelings for her are never explained, while what she feels for him can never be known. There is so much more to explore in the film, so many more nuances to touch on, which is why it is the best film of the year.

2. Tumbbad

“So jaa varna hastar aa jayega.” When children cry at night, mothers say phrases like this interchanging the villain (for example, Gabbar Singh), to make the children go to sleep. It has become such a popular phrase in the media, that the Tumbbad writers used it as the catchphrase of their film. This mythological horror fantasy film told in three phases, deserves to be recognized for being one of the most imaginative, surreal films made in Hindi cinema. A combination of frightening visual effects, a heart-racing background score, mindblowing cinematography, and creative storytelling, this film is about a man who encounters a mythological demon while searching for an ancient, hidden treasure in his ancestral ‘haveli’ (mansion) situated in the village of Tumbbad. Behind this unique storyline, is a very basic concept of greed in human nature. However, the film manages to present it in a fresh way. The best aspect of this film is the fact that it is a pure entertainer, which is commercially viable. The regular Indian film-going audience would love this film, if they were taken to see it. Unfortunately there is no known name associated with the film, therefore most of this audience has not even heard of the film, let alone gone to see it.

3. Mukkabaaz

Though many people characterize Mukkabaaz as a film about boxing and the hardships sports players in India face, I believe that it is at its core a love story. The heroine, Sunaina Mishra (Zoya Hussain), is the driving force behind the hero, Shravan Kumar Singh’s (Vineet Kumar Singh), passion for boxing. The first time he sees her he rebels against his good-for-nothing, but powerful coach, Bhagwan Das Mishra (Jimmy Shergill), who also happens to be Sunaina’s uncle, in an attempt to impress her. Throughout the film, his motivations, his passion, and his support all derive from his love for her. And even his decision at the end of the film is for the safety and happiness of Sunaina. His passion for boxing is secondary to his love for his wife, which is proven again and again by his actions. Mukkabaaz is Anurag Kashyap’s first attempt at creating a love story and is much better than his latest film, Manmarziyan, which after a certain point, becomes frustrating. Not only is Mukkabaaz a fresh and unique love story, but it also contains elements of Anurag Kashyap’s trademark style, so no true Anurag Kashyap fan will leave the film feeling disappointed.

4. Andhadhun

For many critics and audience members, Andhadhun is being lauded as the film of the year. It is no doubt a great film. The writing is intelligent for the most part, the direction is crisp, and the performances are phenomenal. But in my opinion it is fourth on this list primarily because I viewed it less in comparison to the other films of this year, and more in the context of Sriram Raghavan’s body of work. If compared to his other films, Andhadhun is closest in style and storytelling format to Johnny Gaddaar. Both are told as flashbacks. Both begin with a small mistake spiraling out of control. Both are an ode to 60s and 70s Bollywood crime capers. Both have elements characteristic of a neo-noir. And both are extremely intelligent edge-of-the-seat thrillers, with twists and turns at every moment keeping the suspense high. However, Johnny Gaddaar has a far tighter script than Andhadhun, especially in the second half where Andhadhun becomes slower and slightly less interesting due to the introduction of less entertaining characters. Therefore, Andhadhun is still one of the best films of the year, but my love for Johnny Gaddaar prevents me from rating it higher on this list.

5. Raazi

Bias is the biggest weakness of any film based off of real events. The director’s most difficult obstacle is to not let his/her own views reflect on the objectiveness of the story, while still keeping the emotions intact. With Raazi, Meghna Gulzar has so brilliantly manipulated the audience into empathizing with every character in the film, regardless of nationality, therefore feeling patriotism regardless of country. After watching this film, you won’t hate Pakistan, nor will you hate India. You will just hate war altogether. Everyone will leave the theater feeling patriotic with no specific country in mind. Raazi follows the character Sehmat (Alia Bhatt), the daughter of an Indian spy, who gets married to a Pakistani military officer, Iqbal Syed (Vicky Kaushal), in order to gather information on the Pakistani military plans during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Sehmat is such a well-written character with multiple dimensions. On one side, she is bound by her patriotism towards India, and the promises she has made to her father. And on the other hand, her growing love and affection for her husband and his family comes in the way of her mission. Ultimately, she is torn between these two and can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. There are very few films, which explore so many emotions and so many different sides to an issue with minimum bias, and Raazi is one of them.

6. Mulk

In the current times, when the Hindu-Muslim animosity is still fatal, and when anti-Muslim hatred is spreading widely throughout the world, a film like Mulk is essential. The film explores the backlash and ostracization Muslims face from Hindus and even from their own community, when the word terrorism is applied to a member of their family. After his nephew, Shahid Mohammed (Prateik Babbar), turns to terrorism, it is up to a respected advocate Murad Ali Mohammed (Rishi Kapoor) and his daughter in law Aarti Mohammed (Taapsee Pannu) to reclaim their family’s honor and fight for their prestige, as the whole family is prosecuted in court on charges of terrorism. The issues discussed in Mulk are tackled with sensitivity and minimum bias by writer-director Anubhav Sinha, and are made to resonate with the audience through the poignancy of the film. The film is not a landmark film, but it is an important one and hopefully it will allow people to gain a broader understanding of the type of anti-Muslim hatred that plagues the country.

7. Laila Majnu

It is very difficult to recreate a timeless, epic love story in a period where in film, practicality and realistic situations have begun to take over the classic notion of love. Making people believe in the intensity of emotions and craziness of love is a complicated task. The plot of Laila Majnu is a basic love story, boy meets girl, they fall in love, and their family enmity causes obstacles in the path towards their union. The first half is full of clichés yet remains fresh because of the new faces, the beautiful music, and the strong chemistry between the leads. However, it is the daring second half, when we see the love being torn apart, where Majnu’s separation from Laila causes him to succumb to depression, that makes this film worthy of being on this list.

8. Stree

After Bhool Bhulaiyaa, here is another brilliant horror comedy that has truly left the audience frightened by some scenes but has also managed to make them laugh extremely hard in others. A town is terrorized by a woman, called Stree (Flora Saini), who abducts men, leaving their clothes behind, and Vicky (Rajkumar Rao) attempts to solve this mystery and rid the town of ‘Stree’ forever. The three male leads, Rajkumar Rao, Aparshakti Khurrana, and Abhishek Banerjee, as well as Pankaj Tripathi have impeccable comic timing, which is supported by the hilarious dialogues. And yet the film still lives up to its role as a horror comedy since it is filled with scary moments and jump scares, the essence of which are not affected by the comedy. Stree is an overall entertainer, and its box office success is proof of that.

9. Pari

Pari was harshly criticized by film critics and the audience because it promised a horror film, yet it was not scary. However, its approach at creating a unique universe and widening the imagination of the audience is commendable. Pari is the story of a man, Arnab (Parambrata Chatterjee), who takes in an apparent victim of abuse, Rukhsana (Anushka Sharma), after her mother is killed in an accident caused by his car. However, everything is not as simple as it seems and soon Arnab realizes he has been dragged into a very dark world filled with conspiracies and supernatural forces. The line between good and evil has been blurred, and he no longer knows whom to trust. Though not scary in the moment, it leaves people with nightmarish thoughts and goosebumps afterwards, as the concepts and characters, which are thoroughly developed, are quite frightening. It would have been on the same level of Tumbbad if not for the weak script that completely derailed in the second half. However, despite that, the film works, partly because of the daring to try something new, and the brilliant performances, especially by Anushka Sharma, which will continue to haunt you for days.

10. Blackmail

At the time of its release, this film went almost completely unnoticed, due to bad PR and few noticeable actors. When I went to see the film, there were only two people apart from me in the theater. However, this black comedy is such a hilariously entertaining film. A man, Dev Kaushal (Irfan Khan) returns home one day to find his wife, Reena (Kirti Kulhari), cheating on him, and instead of confronting her like any normal person would, his sadistic mind convinces him to anonymously blackmail her and her lover, Ranjit Arora (Arunoday Singh). What begins as a simple plan, turns into a convoluted game as Ranjit’s wife, Dolly Verma (Divya Dutta), an employee at Dev’s office, Dolly’s father, and a private detective get involved. Though I do believe that a lot more could have been done with the story to make more comedic situations using the unique characters, the film was still thoroughly engaging due to the witty dialogues and brilliant characterization, emphasized further by the amazing performances.

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whenimgoodandready · 6 years ago

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You know, if this were the old days, I’d be writing my reviews by hand on a sheet of paper and posting them on a board to the public about my thoughts and feelings for certain things. Glad we now have modern technology to make things more effeicent, but is it really better? Are the modern things more advanced or are they just eliminating traditional custums that made it original? The debate begins now!

*Bakerix-The episode opens with Nadja Chamack on the news w/ the mayor unveiling the newest form of transportation called the Startrain! A train that can go from Paris to the UK underwater! (Hmmmmm, isn’t there an episode with that name coming up soon?). Boy how well we’ve upped the ante with our industrialism! We’ll get back to that supertrain later, but first, our heroine! Marinette is sewing up a new sweater for her father for his 40th birthday today (oh boy😒we all know where this is goin’), but then she overhears her mother failing to convince her father-in-law to come over to the party on the phone (again) and it’s relived that he’s “traditional” and hasn’t spoken to Marinettes father in 20 years! Marinette never knew anything about him and when she asks more about him, but the parental figures keep saying what they say when they don’t want to answer a youngster. Ask the next parental figure! Womp! Womp! Womp! So Marinette decides to go find her grandfather herself.

Turns out, her mother was right and her partental grandfather, Rolland, is old fashioned 💥TO THE EXTREME!💥. His place looked like it hadn’t been updated since “The Lone Ranger” primered and had become a shut-in (more so than a certain fashion designer/supervillain father). After a few failed attempts, she finally gets in by inpersonating a “delivery intern” (idk why she doesn’t just say “Hey grandpa! It’s me, Marinette! The granddaughter you never knew and I didn’t bother to tell you cuz I know you’re a stubborn old turd who can’t adapt to modern times!”. Her excuse was that he’d say no faster, so she just resorts to trickery) and finds that he’s a grouchy old geezer who hates all things modern and has mice friends like Cinderella. He even has his own catchphrase, “That's not how it's done!”. Marinette continues her disguise and asks him about why he’s so estranged from his son to which he reply’s that he (Tom) used rice in his bread dough that he believes “it’s not how it’s done” and how he doesn’t bother to even try it to see if it’s better, so she challenges him to a bread baking contest, Tradtional vs. Innovative, to see which bread tastes better. During that she hums Habanera (a popular opera song from “Carmen”) and Rolland recognizes it as his and Toms song that only they sang when baking bread and is shocked to find out it’s his own granddaughter he never knew.

He gets upset by this betrayal and is akumatized as Bakerix...................can I say something here.............this is only my opinion and I don’t mean to be harsh but, this is the most stupidest supervilliain I’ve ever seen in the entire show! I’ve seen stupider, but this, this one takes the whole bakery! I mean, sure there was Mr.Pigeon, but at least he had something that was associated with his name, then there was Sandboy and although I was dissatisfied with his appearance, he still had powers befitting him, but Baxerix here, he was a Viking looking pastry man sculpture who’s goal was to destroy all things technologically advanced! WHERE DOES THAT FIT!? Huh? Honestly, where!? When I read comments that if Tom were ever akumatized, he’d be some sort of pastry esque villain, but since that was debunked from this season (“Weredad”), we got his father doing that instead and guess what, I’m very disappointed :P. His form did not suit him on what his theme was and yes I know it “sorta kinda” fits that his main problem was that he was mad at Tom for using a different style of baking bread that was also combined with his hatred of modern technology, but THAT’S NOT HOW IT’S DONE!😳 Holy Sh*t! I sound just like the old turd! Um, I’m gonna take a minute to compose myself after this review.

After his rampage of destroying all things technologically modern (and a good drinking game for this ep every time he says, “That's not how it's done!”) he goes after the Startrain and of course it’s gonna be okay cuz of Ladybugs “Miraculous Ladybug” power and cuz we need it for “Startrain” later in the season. If I thought his supervillain form and goal of using his new powers was stupid, then get a load of how the dynamic duo stop him, it’s-wait for it!....................Defeat by Sandwich! Womp! Womp! Womp! Seriously! Just like what happened to Mama Cass. Only hers was tragic while this was undigestic (that’s not a word, but idk, I’m just trying to make my point here).

God! How I missed writing these reviews! I was busy (and lazy) with my other review (svtfoe finale) and that took forever! But it’s all done now and I can move on to my other shows reviews! These ML eps are commin’ in fast and I hope I can catch up before the seasons all over. As for the ep, we’re foreshadowed on Startrain which I heard that Max’s mother will be akumatized in and I’m guessing from this relieve that she’s probably the conductor for it. We get more family tree history on Marinette and how we meet her paternal grandfather. He’s a family member we can all relate to cuz what child doesn’t have that one stubborn old relative that’s stuck in the past and is strictly traditional and refuses to learn the more modern ways of the current era they’re livin’ in? Totally relatable, but honestly, I’m leaning more towards her maternal grandparents since I hope to God that special, “The Chinese Legend”, where Marinette meets her grandmother from her mothers side, isn’t officially cancelled cuz they said they’ll air it if this show gets a 4th season and Hello people! We’re getting a 5th season and a movie! So yeah, I’m hopeful. I’m still not favorable on Bakerix (the villain) and even though I lashed out about his look being pathetic and his goals of destroying all things modern that didn’t quite fit with it as the critic that I am, it was sorta kinda alright. The detailing on him was crafty, but he’s still at the bottom of my list of least favorite villains on ML. I personally thought his power would be to change all modern day things as old fashioned stuff (ex.a sports car into a buggy and a smart phone as a house phone with the dial ring), but that still wouldn’t have fitted with his akuma name which confused some people on making them think his powers were turning Paris into a gingerbread town! A bit too complex there. The debate on traditional vs. modern was concluded thanks to Cat Noir who points out that both are equally good, but in their own unique ways. The traditional ways are what started the best there in its creation marking it in history and we wouldn’t have our innovative ways of perfecting them to make it more efficient if we didn’t start from scratch while the modern ways help us discover new possibilities to further increase our ever changing lifestyles on a more productive manner. Rolland learned this and even to the point where he had a change of heart seeing as there are some things more important than livin’ in the past. Family. So after 20 years, all it took was a clumsy little “delivery intern” to see that change is a part of life and that it’s best to move on and not stay stuck. Yea Marinette!

#miraculous ladybug #bakerix #miraculous ladybug bakerix

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