#i really deeply recommend this game if you want to be fundamentally changed as a person

[sparrowmoth]

POV you’re me and the bestie @villainsnest playing Digimon Survive

[eddydreaming]

Death's Game - Review

Hey there! Today I want to talk about my first kdrama of the year… Death’s Game. It is divided into two parts, but I will discuss it as if it’s only one. In my opinion, it was ridiculous to divide it into two parts, if they wanted to release the first 4 episodes first and a couple of weeks later the rest, then fine, but no need to make it have two parts. Enough complaining, let's get into it.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Episodes: 8

Release dates: December 15 2023 and January 5 2024

Main Cast:

Plot:

“He's perennially unemployed, his ex-girlfriend has moved on, and he's just lost all his life savings to a Bitcoin scam. Burdened by societal pressures, Choi Yi Jae decides to take his own life. Insulted by his flippant attitude towards dying, Death comes to punish him with her game: he must experience death over and over again through 13 other lives. But if he can find a way to survive the imminent death coming for these lives, he gets to live out their lifetime. His life was a bust, but what about the lives of others?”

(Source: mydramalist)

REVIEW - NO SPOILERS

The main reason I started watching this drama was the crazy cast it has. Like, how can it have so many famous actors? Again, it’s crazy. I mean, look at this:

Then, I decided to watch the trailer to know what I was getting myself into, and I thought, once again, that it was crazy.

My first impression of the drama, without even having watched a single episode, was huge, so the second it came out there I was. I wasn’t prepared enough though. 

The first few episodes of the show were hilarious and entertaining. However, as the story progressed, it became more intense, and before I knew it, I had already finished the first 4 episodes. Okay, it’s alright, now I only have to wait a week to watch the other 4, right? Nope, I had to wait until the 5th of January, because someone decided to torture us watchers by making us wait all that time.

The second part of the drama was even better than the first, particularly the last episode. It was the most thought-provoking thing I've watched in a while.

This drama is not for everyone: its main theme is s**cide and d**th. Of course, it can be hard to watch for many people, but the meaning of life that it tries to convey is worth everything. 

REVIEW - SPOILERS

I recommend not to read this part if you haven’t watched the drama yet. I know some people like reading spoilers and that it makes them want to watch something more, but I am gonna give huge spoilers, including the end, that will for sure affect your experience. 

Now, can we talk a little bit more about a specific character? The ML’s mother. She made me suffer A LOT. Her thinking that her son had committed s**cide because of her hurt me greatly. Because of that, the last episode was… wow. I swear I cried for a whole 30 minutes. 

I truly liked how they got to merge all the stories into one, making all the lives Yi Jae had lived linked. It was thrilling, infuriating and sad, those would be the three words that describe it the best.

One of the most shocking parts was the painter assassin’s death, a death planned by Yi Jae himself. It was horrid, and remembering while writing about it right now gives me the chills. I thought it was unplanned, but he had intended to die in such a way just as a plan for his vengeance. That is outstanding from the ML, so anguished when at the beginning seemed like such a fragile and weak person. That part is when we see the most massive change in the ML, a fundamental character development. 

The ending couldn’t have been more perfect, I couldn’t have asked for more really. He decided to live his mother's life, who had planned to s**cide. That way, he survived Death's challenge, and so she gave him another opportunity, an opportunity to get back to his life. He achieved it.

Yi Jae wanted desperately to go back to his life because he could see that the people he had left behind cared for him deeply, and they deserved him to stay alive. The end is with the ML talking with his mother, who had called him right before he jumped from that roof.

¿DO I RECOMMEND WATCHING IT?

Yes, yes and yes once more. It was shocking and I cried a lot, but it was all worth it. It’s been a while since I watched it, but I still recall the intense emotions it evoked.

The content may be too intense for some viewers. However, if you are hesitant and my review has not been enough to persuade you, go and watch the trailer or give the first episode a chance. If it doesn't capture your interest by the end of the first episode, then it may not be to your liking.

[james-stark-the-writer]

honestly, overall, that was a great fucking finale, actually almost made the show feel like it knew what it was doing the whole time and not like it had to shove 3 episodes worth of character development into one episode. truly, it almost made the whole thing worth it. i'll say episode 9 of The Last of Us S01 was a 8.5/10. i still don't like the opening 10 minutes for how they change the story but the rest absolutely fucking bangs.

it's crazy how 2 of the best episodes (outside of 5 and the flashback parts of 3) were co-written by Neil. i also just noticed Craig Mazin is the only writer on all the episodes besides 1, and 9 which he co-wrote with Neil, and 7 was written all by Neil. whoa, actually maybe my takes about there not being writers actually talking about these decisions was correct then, it was just Craig doing all the writing except for those 3 episodes, that's crazy. it really shows tbh. the season as a whole is a MESS. the show is a fundamentally broken and bad adaptation of The Last of Us and misrepresents the whole appeal of the property but then the stories of the games are fundamentally meant to be game stories and narratives and you can't just copy-paste them into a show. a better writer could've made it work by reassessing and rewriting every tiny bit to work as a TV show instead of feeling like a game narrative cut up into bits and supplanted as a TV narrative but Craig clearly isn't that writer.

honestly i'm sure other people besides me have already said everything there is to say about it, i keep getting enough video essays recommended about the show, and i've said most of what i wanted to say anyway. to me, as an adaptation, the show as a whole is a 6.75/10. it's not a full 7 but there are some really interesting adaptational choices here that at least make it worth a watch, however frustrating that watch might be bc of how much every other part sucks besides the new stuff and Bella's acting. as its own show, it's actually even lower for me, it's a 6/10, it feels like a disjointed fucking mess, like it's being held back (as i elaborated on here) and it really just doesn't really know what it wants to be. it constantly feels torn between wanting to tell its own story and wanting to be an adaptation and the show really suffers for it. the acting and characterization is all over the place and deeply shallow, Craig doesn't know what subtlety or subtext means, all the writing is just so much exposition about what the characters feel and think and basically none of it (again, i'm never talking about Bella here. theyr'e a perfect casting and there's only one moment in the entire show where i didn't absolutely love what they were doing) feels like the characters have actually lived in this world and have gone through the shit the dialogue says they have, it just feels so lifeless and empty and it's honestly exhausting trudging through most of it, watching them hit similar plot beats as the game with all the enthusiasm of running at the crack of dawn when you're not a morning person (idk, my brain's too exhausted to come up with a better example rn). it's like they knew the beginning and ending and forgot to actually do the legwork in the middle to make it make sense and like it has momentum and any real sense of narrative progression.

idk. i love the games, i knew this could never be the games, but i didn't expect it to be. it fails as both an adaptation and as a show. it's a mediocre show adaptation of great source material. i am deeply worried for S02, i need them to get a writer's room more than i need Euphoria to get one.

okay, then. here we are. the finale of The Last of Us S01. onto episode 9, then. if you missed it, here's my thoughts on episode 1:

my thoughts on episode 2:

my thoughts on episode 3:

my thoughts on episode 4:

my thoughts on episode 5:

my thoughts on episode 6:

my thoughts on episode 7:

and my thoughts on episode 8:

[blacknovelist]

Speaking as someone who has played oneshot since its initial iterations as an rpgmaker game a solid... man. It's been like. What. Almost seven years?? Eight???? Screw the progression of time, man, the original game came out literally in 2014

But like it's insane to think about ngl. I remember when it was just this... little short cute lookin meta game I picked up not long after playing OFF (since the meta scene was super popular by then) like, oh, cool, let's see what it can do! It'll be fun!

It turns out what it can do is give you terminal brainrot that lasts a blindingly vivid eight years and the now borderline fundamental childhood-earlyteen memory of crying for over an hour over the weight of the impending decision you'd have to make and the knowledge that the consequences, both good and bad, would be permanent, and it was up to me to decide what i could live with. I assure you all I have been very normal about it this whole time.

I have not been normal ever since holy FUCK that moment was formative

But like... man. I remember thinking, wow. This game is really small and niche. It's gonna be one of those little things I store in my chest and hold onto forever that I won't get to see outside of my sphere much. When the steam version got announced I was MIND blown and SO excited, because this was my favorite game on the PLANET and suddenly it was not only coming to steam but maybe there would be NEW STUFF like holy SHIT! I can recommend it so much easier!

and fucking. Solstice. Solstice. Hang on I need to readmore if I go on cause this is getting into spoilers but motherfucking solstice I just

This game has meant so much to me and it means the world that. Here it is. Joyous and loud and so very cared for. It's small but beloved and I can't believe we got all the way over here. Oneshot is on every major console now. It has its little virtual machine. I love it so much and it's out there for everyone else to see... I am. So glad.

[Spoilers below the cut— I usually believe they don't matter that much, but Oneshot is one of the very few games I believe deeply needs to be experienced mostly blind the first time so please take care]

When oneshot on steam first released tho like. people who Don't Know, I need you to know that solstice did not exist back then. We had two total clues that it was even a thing— the clock in the Refuge, gradually counting down, and the bolded words on the game steam page. Yall, that was IT. When it first came out, there was no "return to the beginning" or whatever, it was just... the journal. And the tower, helping niko even when he didn't know I was there. Hell, the journal was new to steam and I remember it, you know. How afraid I was. For the world. For Niko. For everything, that first time. Because I loved it, and I wanted things to be as good as I could make it.

And we counted the days until solstice. We wondered. We figured out what day the clock would stop counting on, wondered what the door would do. And then it dropped, and suddenly... suddenly there was the chance for everything to change. Do you know how magical that was? Three years of knowing the choice was always one or the other, even when little things changed, only to be told that maybe... maybe this could be it?

Fuck, guys.

And now we are here again. I never would have dreamed this little game I loved would end up on literal game consoles— but it's so clear to me how much love went into this game port to make it happen. The essence is the same but you gave it just enough that I.... man. Man. I. Never knew a gut punch like 'From Niko'. But it reminds me, you know? This world never died, not really. Not even at first, back then, when it was all or nothing, one or the other. It was always in my heart.

It's in Niko's heart too. And all of yours, who played it. I don't know what else to say or think, really, other than... thank you.

[sternbilder]

Camille Has Many KDrama Thoughts

As some of you have possibly noticed, I have recently fallen into a KDrama hole and I can’t get up, and I have just finished my 10th drama, which seems like less of an accomplishment than I thought now that I say it out loud, but anyway,

As a checkpoint/thinly veiled plug of some shows I love very much, here is a very long post with some of my thoughts on all the KDramas I’ve seen so far, as well as what’s next on my list, in case you too were interested in joining me in nonexistent fandom hell!

So firstly, all of the dramas I have watched to completion, in the order of how much I like them. First, my top five:

1. Sungkyunkwan Scandal (2010). My #1 favorite drama to date. I’ve probably watched it in full 4-5 times, and it’s still an absolute treat every time. Is it the best drama I’ve ever seen? Probably not. But it’s so fun and charming that it’s just gotta be at the top of my list. 

The best way I can describe this drama is Ouran High School Host Club, except in Joseon era Korea, and instead of flirting with girls the main characters learn about Confucianism and solve mysteries and play sports (twice) and end up accidentally involved in a complicated political scandal. Also, that one text post about how Shang from Mulan is bi because he falls for Mulan while he thinks she’s a man...This drama has that, except actually canon. And while I won’t pretend this is show is a shining beacon of representation, there are multiple main characters who are explicitly not heterosexual and several others with very plausible queer readings, which earns it a very special place in my heart.

As for the actual premise of the show, it’s basically about a wonderfully determined and kind and clever but lower-class girl whose writing skills catch the eye of the most stubbornly strait-laced but idealistic aspiring politician-type on the planet. She ends up getting a one-way ticket to the most prestigious school in the country, except she has to pretend to be a man the entire time because women aren’t allowed to be educated at this time. 

It’s a bit of a silly, cheesy show, and here are many wacky shenanigans, but the main cast is full of incredibly highly endearing and multifaceted characters, there is a lot of sexual confusion, the slowburn roommate romance has an incredible payoff, and it’s also full of deeply moving social commentary about class, privilege, and gender roles. This drama is a blast and I could go on and on about what I love about it, I absolutely adore it to pieces.

2. Six Flying Dragons (2015-2016). I debated between this and Tree With Deep Roots (next on my list, to which SFD is a prequel) as my #2 but I do think I want to place SFD higher just because it's the drama that I keep thinking about even after finishing it. of course, it has the dual advantages of 1) being released chronologically later (and having better production value, etc., because of this) and 2) being twice as long, but there’s just so much stuff to unpack with SFD that it makes me want to keep coming back to it. 

The show is about the founding of the Joseon dynasty, and six individuals (half of whom are based on real historical figures and half fictional) whose lives are closely tied to the fall of the old regime and the revolution that brought in the new. It has an intricate, intensely political plotline based on the actual events that happened during this time, and though this may sound kind of boring if you’re like me and not super into history (admittedly, the pacing in the beginning is a tiny bit slow), it quickly picks up and becomes this dense web of character relations and political maneuvering. Though none of the major events should come as a surprise if you’ve seen TWDR or if you happen to already know the history it was based on, the show adds such a depth of humanity and emotion to every event and character that nothing ever feels boring or predictable. As a matter of fact, there are several events that were alluded to in TWDR that, when they actually happened in SFD, left me breathless--because although I 100% knew these were foregone conclusions that were coming up at some point, I still had a visceral moment of, “oh no, so that’s how that came to happen.” 

But though I really enjoyed following the story of SFD and learning about the history behind it, the highlight of the show for me is definitely the great character arcs. I loved TWDR’s characters, too (especially Yi Do, So Yi, and obviously Moo Hyul), but with double the episode count SFD just has so much time for rich, dynamic character development, and I absolutely loved seeing how these characters grew and changed over time when their ideologies and fates collided in this turbulent and violent age: How young and ambitious Yi Bang Won eventually spiraled into a ruthless tyrant, how the naive and kind-hearted Moo Hyul struggled to retain his humanity in a bloody revolution that challenged his values and loyalties to the core, how the fiercely determined and idealistic Boon Yi grew into a pragmatic and capable leader who comes to realize what politics and power mean for her and her loved ones. 

SFD was also everything I wanted as a prequel to TWDR--I loved seeing the contrasts between some of the TWDR characters and their younger selves in the SFD timeline: The hardened and ruthless Bang Won as a passionate and righteous adolescent, the cynical and resigned Bang Ji as a cowardly boy who grows into a traumatized and bitter young man, and my personal favorite character, the comically serious bodyguard Moo Hyul as the very model of the dopey, lovable himbo archetype. And though the ending was controversial among fans (particularly those who watched SFD first), I loved how it closed all the loops and tied it back to the events of TWDR, both providing that transition I wanted but also recontextualizing and adding new meaning to the original work. I think it's still a very good drama on its own, but this hand-off is what really sealed the deal for me personally, because it was not only super emotionally satisfying to watch how the stories connected, but it elevated TWDR to something even greater (suggesting that Yi Do and the events of TWDR was the culmination of everything the six dragons fought so long and hard for), which is exactly what I expect from a good prequel. 

I’ve already talked so much about this drama but I also do need to mention that the soundtrack to SFD is A+, and the sword fights are sick as hell. There is also some romance, though it’s not really a focus--and all the pairings that do exist are extremely tragic, which is exactly up my alley. Overall, this is a hell of a historical drama, coming of age, villain origin story, and martial arts film in one, and I highly recommend it.

3. Tree With Deep Roots (2011). The sequel to SFD, though it aired first chronologically. Although this show isn’t one of those shows that I could rewatch once a year like SKKS or keep ruminating on like SFD, TWDR (much like Les Mis, or Fata Morgana) is thematically the kind of story that just makes my heart sing.

The story centers around the creation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, by Yi Do (a.k.a., King Sejong the Great, who is the son and successor of Yi Bang Won, the main character of SFD) as well as two fictional childhood friends whose backstories and ambitions become central to the story of how and why this alphabet came to exist. Not only is the actual process of creating this alphabet absolutely fascinating from a linguistic and scientific POV, but the show dramatizes Yi Do’s motivations in a way that’s so incredibly touching and human--portraying the king as a soft-hearted and extremely charismatic yet fundamentally flawed and conflicted figure who tries so desperately to do right by his people. 

The show explores both a number of personal themes like redemption, atonement, and vengeance, as well as broader societal themes such as the ethics of authority, the democratization of knowledge, and the power of language and literacy. Though the show never forgets to remind the audience of the bitter reality of actual history, it’s still a deeply idealistic show whose musings on social change and how to use privilege and power to make the world better are both elegant and poignant. 

Romance definitely takes a backseat in TWDR, even more so than SFD, though this isn’t something I personally mind. There are, however, a lot of interesting politics surrounding the promulgation of the alphabet, including a string of high-profile assassinations--if SFD is historical/political-thriller-meets-action-film, then TWDR is historical/political-thriller-meets-murder-mystery, and it’s an incredibly tightly written and satisfying story whose pieces fall into place perfectly. Though not the sprawling epic that SFD is, TWDR is an emotional journey and an extremely well-written story with a TON of goodies if you’re as excited about linguistics as I am. 

4. White Christmas (2011). My first non-sageuk on this list! White Christmas is, in a lot of ways, an odd drama. It’s an 8-episode special, and featured largely (at the time) new talent. it’s also neither a historical work nor romance-focused, but instead a short but intense psychological thriller/murder mystery. 

The premise is this: Seven students at a super elite boarding school tucked away in the mountains receive mysterious black letters that compel them to remain on campus during the one vacation of the year. The letters describe various “sins” that the author accuses the students of committing, as well as the threat of a “curse” as well as an impending death. The students quickly find that they’re stranded alone at the school with a murderer in their midst, as they are forced to confront their shared histories and individual traumas to figure out 1) why they’ve been sent the letters, and 2) how to make it out alive. At the center of the survival game the characters find themselves in is a recurring question: “Are monsters born, or can they be made?”

If you’ve been following me for a while, it’s easy to see why I was drawn to this drama. In terms of setup and tone, it’s Zero Escape. In theme, it’s Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. It’s Lord of the Flies meets Dead Poets Society. or as one of my mutuals swyrs@ put it, Breakfast Club meets Agatha Christie. The story is flawlessly paced with not a scene wasted. There’s so much good foreshadowing and use of symbolic imagery, and though I’ve watched it at least 3-4 times, I always find interesting new details to analyze. The plot twists (though not so meta-breaking as ZE) are absolutely nuts, and aside from the somewhat questionable ending, the story is just really masterfully written.

Above all, though, WC is excellent for its character studies. Though I typically tend to stay away from shows that center around teenagers because I don’t find their struggles and experiences particularly relatable, WC does such an excellent job of picking apart every character psychologically, showing their traumas, their desires, their fears, and their insecurities. We see these kids at their most violent and cruel, but also their most vulnerable and honest. Their stories and motivations are so profoundly human that I found even the worst and most despicable characters painfully sympathetic at times, as cowardly and hypocritical and unhinged as they became. 

Like I said, it’s only 8 episodes long with probably the best rewatch value on this list. My only complaints about it are its ending, as well as its relative lack of female characters, but otherwise I would absolutely recommend.

5. Signal (2016). Okay, this might be the recency bias talking because I just finished this series but I'm sure but I'm still reeling at the mind-screw of an ending and I feel like it deserves a place on this spot just for that.

Signal is a crime thriller based on a number of real-life incidents that happened in Korea in the last 30 or so years. In short, a young profiler from the year 2015, who has a grudge against the police after witnessing their incompetence and corruption twice as a child, happens to find a mysterious walkie-talkie that seems to be able to send and receive messages from the past. on the other end is an older detective from 2000 who tells him that he’s about to start receiving messages from his younger self, back in 1989. Through the seemingly sporadic radio communications, the two men work together to solve a series of cold cases, which begin to change the past and alter the timeline.

As they solve these cases, expose corruption within the police department, and correct past injustices, the two men (along with a third, female detective who has connections to both of them) also begin to unravel the mysteries of their pasts, as well as why and how they came to share this connection.

Like WC, the story and pacing of this drama were flawless, reminding me of an extended movie rather than a TV series. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and the 16-episode run went by in no time at all. I always love timeline shenanigans and explorations of causality and fate and the consequences of changing the past, and this show has oodles of that peppered with the heartbreakingly tragic human connections and stories that the main characters share. The main pairing has great chemistry and gave me exactly the pain I crave from a doomed timeline romance, and the cinematography and soundtrack were also beautiful, which also contributed to the polished, cinema-like feel.

My only complaint is that I wish that the ending felt more like an ending, such that the drama could stand on its own. I do realize this is because there’s a second season coming, but right now the show feels somewhat incomplete, ending on a huge, ambiguous cliffhanger/sequel hook and with several loose ends. I obviously can’t give a final verdict until the entire thing airs (and I typically don’t like multi-season shows, so I will wait for the next season to come out both reluctantly and begrudgingly), but even where the show leaves off I still did enjoy it immensely.

...And now, some brief thoughts on the other 5 shows I’ve watched, because I ran out of steam and have less to say about these:

6. Healer (2014-2015). It’s been a few years since I’ve seen this show, but I remember being really impressed by this drama at the time, especially the storyline. Unfortunately though I don’t remember too much about the drama itself, which is a shame. It’s a mystery/thriller, I think, and there is hacking and crimes involved? The main character is a very cute and sweet tabloid writer and she falls in love with a mysterious and cool action boy who helps her uncover the truth behind a tragic incident that relates to her past, or something. Judging from my liveblog it seems like this was an extremely emotional journey, and I enjoyed the main couple (who are both very attractive) a lot, and it was just overall a cathartic and feel-good experience. I feel like I should rewatch this drama at some point?

7. Rooftop Prince (2012). It’s also been forever since I watched this show but I remember thinking it was hilarious and delightful and I definitely cried a lot though I do not remember why (probably something something time travel, something something reincarnation/fated lovers??). I do remember that the premise is that a Joseon-era prince and several of his servants accidentally time travel into modern-day Seoul and end up meeting the main character who is the future reincarnation of his love (?) and he is hilariously anachronistic and also insufferably pretentious, which the MC absolutely does not cut him any slack for, and they have an extremely good dynamic.

8. Coffee Prince (2007). I watched this around the same time as Rooftop Prince and I remember really enjoying it! it’s basically just SKKS, but the modern cafe AU, and I mean that in the best way possible? It definitely shares a lot of the same tropes--crossdressing/tomboy female lead, sexually questioning male lead who falls in love with her despite being “straight,” very good chemistry and also extremely charming secondary characters.

9. Shut Up Flower Boy Band (2012). This show...Was just OK. I enjoyed it at the time, but I can’t say I found it particularly memorable. As I said, I don’t typically find stories about high school students particularly relatable, and the battle of the bands-type plot was interesting enough at the time but didn’t really leave a lasting impression. As expected, the music was pretty good. I kind of watched this mostly to hear Sung Joon sing tbh?

10. Rebel: Thief Who Stole the People (2017). I wanted to like this show. I really did. I wouldn’t say it was bad, but the beginning was painfully slow, and I only really enjoyed the last 10 episodes or so, when the vive la révolution arc finally started kicking off. The pacing was challenging--the pre-timeskip dragged on about twice as long as it needed to, and I just wasn’t really interested in the Amogae/Yiquari storyline very much. I also really, really disliked all the romances in the show, especially the main pairing, since I didn’t particularly love either the male or the female leads until pretty late in the show. Overall I think I would have enjoyed the show more if the first 2/3 of it was about half as long, and it either developed the romance better or cut it out altogether.

What I’m thinking of watching next:

1. Chuno (2010). Mostly because the soundtrack to this show is so goddamn good, but also because I’m craving more historical dramas with good sword fights after SFD. I was kind of hoping Rebel would fill that need but I was a little disappointed tbh?

2. Warrior Baek Dong Soo (2011). Same reasons as above, honestly. also has a very good soundtrack, and Ji Chang Wook, who is a known nice face-haver, doing many very cool sword fights.

3. Mr. Sunshine (2018). Late Joseon era is something I’ve never really seen before in media so I’m pretty intrigued? Also Byun Yo Han was one of my favorites from SFD and I definitely want to see him in more things.

4. Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung (2019). A coworker recommended this to me and the trailer looks delightful. first of all it’s a sageuk with the gorgeous and talented Shin Se Kyoung in it playing a smart and plucky female lead, which have historically been extremely good to me, but also it gives me massive SKKS vibes, so how could I not.

5. My Country: The New Age (2019). This caught my attention because it’s based on the same historical events as SFD, so it features some of the same characters. I am very very interested in Jang Hyuk’s take on Yi Bang Won, even if he is less of a main character here compared to SFD, and he’s already an adult so he’ll already be well on his way to bastardhood. I also hear it’s very heartbreaking, which is instant eyes emoji for me?

6. Chicago Typewriter (2017). It’s about freedom fighters from the colonization era, which I’m very intrigued by after The Handmaiden and Pachinko, plus a reincarnation romance. I am very predictable in my choice of tropes. Also, Yoo Ah In is in it.

7. Arthdal Chronicles (2019-). Ok, it’s a gorgeous-looking historical fantasy set in Korea written by the same writers as TWDR and SFD, plus it has not just one but TWO Song Joong Ki characters, one of which is a pure, doe-eyed soft boy and the other an evil long-haired fae prince looking asshole who I hear is a complete and utter Unhinged Bastard Supreme. Nothing has ever been more Camille Bait than this, but unfortunately this show hasn’t finished airing, which does pain me deeply. speaking of,

8. Kingdom (2019-). It’s a fantasy sageuk with zombies, is about the extent I know about this show. The fact that it also hasn’t finished airing turns me off a bit but it looks absolutely gorgeous and I also just found out it was written by the same writer as Signal, so,,,,,,,,,

9. Gunman in Joseon (2014). I honestly don’t expect too much from this drama but I just enjoy its premise a lot? From what I understand it’s just Percy from Critical Role, but make it Joseon era.......Like, they just straight up took a Shadow the Hedgehog, “let’s make a sageuk, but guns,” approach, and I kind of unironically love that. Also the soundtrack kicks ass, which like...you can really see where my priorities lie here, huh,

10. Misaeng (2014). I don’t remember at this point why this is on my list but I found it in the Keep note I have of all the media I want to watch?? I have no idea what this show is about, except that it takes place in an office. Apparently Byun Yo Han is also in this one? I’m sorry this is the only non-sageuk or sageuk-adjacent show in this list, I know what I’m about, and it’s fancy old-timey costumes and cool braids.

[things2mustdo]

I am not interested in football, neither the American distortion of rugby nor soccer. Unsurprisingly, this can leave one ostracised from many conversations in the workplace and other modern, bourgeois scenarios. Is it because these sports are just too masculine and rough? On the contrary, it is because they are too feminine!

Things only get worse when I explain that I enjoy more masculine, dangerous (not necessarily violent) sports. The very worst reaction comes when I declare it feminine to not be engaged in such sports personally. After a brief, heated discussion, I am usually on the receiving end of the same, silent, frustrated scramble for a good answer. You can forget about mentioning my thoughts on porn – it is hardly alpha male behaviour to masturbate whilst watching another, better-endowed man plough nubile nymphs. This is no digression, mind you; there is something more masculine to being involved in the action, whether conquering foes or fair maidens.

But, can I really prove it?

After all, I might dislike football because I am not particularly good at it and, conversely, like wrestling because I was. Perhaps I had the bias and the others were right – aside from all the padding and effeminate diving about with feigned injuries, perhaps watching a match of some bourgeois, team sport was just as masculine as becoming the Ultimate Fighting Champion.

What are the fundamental differences between the aristocratic sports of old, which focus much more on the individual man, and the spectator sports of today, which focus more on some team, seemingly devised to maximise profitability from said spectators?

Where the traditional aristocrat sought, for example, the adventure of mountaineering, the bien pensants bourgeoisie thinks, ‘Why on earth would you be so reckless? You could get hurt!’ The same attitudes apply to the traditional aristocratic sports, such as boxing, wrestling, historical fencing, horse racing and jousting.

Notice how these sports focus on the individuals, often dueling one against the other. A certain sense of transcendence is required to engage in such daring activities, elevating the noble above mere practical concerns in their struggle for glory – immortal fame, as it were. Once you conquer the mountain, conquer your foe and, in so doing, conquer your fear, you have in a certain sense conquered yourself; winner or loser, the shaking of peers’ hands afterwards is, yes, out of Christian charity, but also a showing of respect for those on the same noble quest.

So, what changed?

Acclaimed historian, Jacques Barzun’s book, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, describes the uneasy relationship between the old, knightly order and the newly developing, modern state, headed by an increasingly dominant bourgeoisie, merchant class. On the subject of duels, he wrote that the ‘desire for self-vindication is deeply ingrained in western man.’

Up to the early modern and revolutionary periods, this ‘was called “the point of honor.” Its moral force derived from medieval chivalry, which regarded the knight as the champion of all that is noble and fair and as an independent judge in his own cause. No monarch wanted his subjects to lose all of these qualities, and the ethos persisted.’ Time has since eroded any such regard for masculine virtue, however.

Barzun uses the example of the bourgeois, French monarch, Louis XIV, who led the transition not only from kingship to monarch but also from the quest for honour to quests for honours: ‘titles, decorations, favors slight in themselves but of infinite value, such as being spoken to by the king before anyone else among a cluster of courtiers.

As for the love of titles and decorations, it has become the rage in the democracies—prizes for everything and everyone.’ Thus, a mere glance at the transition from the medieval to the modern period can give us a clear picture of how far removed the modern, Western man is from his self-vindicating ancestors; whereas the modern bourgeoisie relies on the ubiquitous state to act as middle-man and safety net for all social interactions, and has no communal or cultural authority in his life except for the state, this is a far cry from the chivalry of old.

The Ten Commandments of Chivalry

Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches and thou shalt observe all its directions.

Thou shalt defend the Church.

Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.

Thou shalt love the country in which thou wast born.

Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.

Thou shalt make war against the infidel without cessation and without mercy.

Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.

Thou shalt never lie, and shalt remain faithful to thy pledged word.

Thou shalt be generous, and give largesse to everyone.

Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

It is the generally irresponsible attitude of the modernist, bourgeois mind that I take exception to. For over five hundred years now, Western man has been palming off responsibilities to some far off group, purporting to be the Leviathan state, all in exchange for comforts. Of course, we are increasingly comfortable and entertained. I can’t complain, but we are also increasingly detached from reality, hardship and the consequent gumption to fight for what is ours, let alone to fight for what is right, good and true.

So, when I see grown men talking with the depth of a philosopher on the eve of battle about what is effectively a game for juveniles, and one in which they shall not participate and indeed will be played by overpaid foreigners, not even kinsmen of their beloved region, I dare not laugh, as these are the death throes of my civilisation.

I cannot help but agree with reactionaries of the 20th century in this regard, but this is no idle or defunct theory and I am in good company – the work of Prof. Walter J. Ong on the subject of masculinity confirmed these intuitions from the data regarding male development and competition:

‘Historically, the agonistic, masculinising era has given way to one of greater femininity. In a sense, the male television sports watcher…[described elsewhere as] slumped alone with his can of beer before the screen under the glare of his justifiably outraged sports widow…is a product of a highly feminized culture: no earlier oral-agonistic age could have produced this abstract half-disinvolvement with the agōnia in the arena.’

I would recommend his excellent work, Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness, but more than this, I would recommend we all revolt against the modern world by striving against such disinvolvement, by becoming more engaged in our communities and also in sports which really test our personal mettle. I realise this will be hard for some of us to come to terms with, but, as the proverb says,

Proverbs 27:17 Iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

Read More: Why Chivalry Is Dead

[angel-deux-writes]

50 questions

I was tagged by @agirlnamedkeith :)

What is the colour of your hairbrush? Orange

Name a food you never eat: Mushrooms. I just hate ‘em. Also don’t like seafood!

Are you typically too warm or too cold? Probably too cold, but that’s because being too warm bothers me more. So I’d rather keep my heat set at like 62 than risk being too warm. It’s much better for my eczema.

What were you doing 45 minutes ago? I think probably putting another load of laundry in? I’m trying to tidy up because my sister might be coming to work from home here later, and I have been living in a mild mess for weeks lmao.

What’s your favourite candy bar?  Reese’s. Does that count as a bar? Let’s say yes. The eggs in particular!

Have you ever been to a professional sports game? I used to go see the Red Sox sometimes as a kid, once in Tampa Bay while we were on vacation. I went to see FC Barcelona play while visiting a friend (real talk: I probably would not have gotten on that plane if not for the fact that I really, really loved FC Barcelona at the time lmao. it was great to see my friend again, but I was terrified of going on vacation alone in a country I’d never been to! I didn’t even speak spanish at all before that trip! When I hyperfixate I will do ANYTHING lmao). I’ve also been to DC to see Barcelona play (terrifying. tiny planes. would not recommend. It ruled, though, and I got to take my brothers, which was nice). And several times to see Brazil’s national team play at Gilette, which was much easier, because it was like 20 minutes away from my house.

What was the last thing you said out loud? some variation of “oh for fuck’s sake” because I thought the dudes doing my neighbor’s basement renovation had stopped drilling, and then they picked back up.

What is your favourite ice cream? cookie dough of some kind? though I’m also a big fan of anything black raspberry.

What was the last thing you had to drink? coffee!

Do you like your wallet? I do! It was a gift from my mother, like, five birthdays ago? So I probably need a new one, but it’s cute. 

What was the last thing you ate? .......i had a fruit roll-up. I’m turning 31 in a few days, and the last thing I ate was a fruit roll-up. 

Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? I can’t remember if it was this weekend or last weekend but I DID order a shirt from Redbubble that says “anders was right” lmao

What’s the last sporting event you watched? it was probably a Red Sox game? I used to watch them with my dad back when I could, you know, hang out with him without fear of passing a deadly disease to him and my mom!

What is your favourite flavour of popcorn? butter, tho that caramel corn I always get at Christmas is nice too.

Who is the last person you sent a text message to? My sister to tell her that the dudes next door are STILL DRILLING and that she might want to rethink coming over.

Ever go camping? Nope! Hate even just the idea of it. My dad goes camping with his childhood friends every year, and every time they describe it, it makes me want to die. 

Do you take vitamins? Nope! I used to, but then i ran out, and I haven’t bought any since then. I used to take fish oil pills because my dermatologist thought it might help with my eczema, but it didn’t. 

Do you go to church every Sunday? Church? what’s that?

Do you have a tan? Never in my life. I am very pale, and turn red very easily. I’m slightly red right now because I spent maybe an hour hanging out on my parent’s deck over the weekend lmao. Also I’ve been going on a lot of walks lately, so I’ve got a lot more freckles on my face than I used to! 

Do you prefer Chinese food or pizza? Chinese food. Shouldn’t eat it, because I am allergic to soy, but I accept the stomach aches that come with it.

Do you drink your soda through a straw? Not anymore. I did when I had invisalign, though. I wasn’t supposed to drink ANY sort of soda or coffee with the invisalign in, so I was like “well, what if I use a straw”, and I never got yelled at by the orthodontist, so it must have worked. 

What colour socks do you usually wear? I almost exclusively wear socks from Sock it To Me, so they’re all sorts of patterns. I also have a lot of Star Wars socks, because one of my Christmas gifts for the past few years has been a sock advent calendar! 

Do you ever drive above the speed limit? I’m from Massachusetts, so...... yes.

What terrifies you? Everything? I’m gonna go with lava. I really hate lava.

Look to your left. What do you see? My phone.

What chore do you hate most? Washing dishes. It’s gross, first of all, and the eczema constantly on my fingers means that the extra hand-washing is literally painful.

What do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? lately? @slipsthrufingers lmao

What’s your favourite soda? Probably cherry coke?

Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive-thru? Drive-thru whenever possible.

What’s your favourite number? 15

Who’s the last person you talked to? My sister and her boyfriend as I was leaving their house, probably?

Favourite cut of beef? idk man, I just eat whatever is put in front of me.

Last song you listened to? Something from my Outrun playlist.

Last book you read? GENUINELY cannot remember. Reading has not been fundamental these past few months. I started Michelle Visage’s book, let’s go with that.

Favourite day of the week? Friday, probably

Can you say the alphabet backwards? Probably if I think enough about it!

How do you like your coffee? with creamer in it! 

Favourite pair of shoes? A pair of converse with rainbow bottoms, I think. I also have a pair of gray boots from American Eagle that I love.

Time you normally get up? I used to get up at 4:40, but lately it’s been 7, because I don’t have to commute anymore lmao.

Sunrises or sunsets?  Sunsets!

How many blankets are on your bed? Currently none, because i’m washing my sheets. Usually 3-4

Describe your kitchen plates. Some of them have apples on them, some of them are plain with a green border, and some of them are easter plates with rabbits!

Describe your kitchen at the moment. Teal, small, and messy!

Do you have a favourite alcoholic drink? I love a mojito. Also just...whiskey? of any kind?

Do you play cards? I prefer not to!

What colour is your car? Teal-ish blue!

Do you know how to change a tire? I certainly do not

Your favourite state? probably Massachusetts? I haven’t ever lived anywhere else lmao

Favourite job you’ve had? One summer I worked for my dad’s friend putting stickers on envelops and folding them and counting them and putting them in bigger envelopes, and I fucking loved it. Just mindness nonsense. I guess this job is good too, because I actually get paid and have benefits, but editing tech reports is VERY boring.

How did you get your biggest scar? I had one on my knee for a while that finally went away a few years ago, but it was from falling off a jungle gym at school! There was a gap that was slightly too big for my elementary school body, and I fell probably like 6 feet and landed hard on the pebbles that were scattered beneath it! A few of them were embedded pretty deeply in my skin, and there was this gross flap that was hanging open. They ended up replacing the rocks with sand because of me lmao. But now I guess it’s probably just my biopsy scar from back when they were trying to figure out if my weird rash was eczema or something worse! It’s never really healed right!

I’m not sure who else has been tagged so i’m gonna hit @slipsthrufingers since I already tagged her in this for the accent question lmao

[yanderedbh-moved]

How I Would Classify the Characters as Yanderes

Before I begin this post would not be possible without a very interesting and in-depth post by @thisisallthehattersfault which you can find here! The post basically breaks down the yandere archetype into little subsections which I used as classifications here. Really, I can’t recommend this post enough, so please check out that (and maybe give the account a little love while you’re at it!)

Delusional

Kamski, Delusional

A bit of a creative choice here, but considering how the delusional yandere would expect their love to actually return their affections or at least to come around to answering the feelings. This sounds eerily similar to the way one with an inflated sense of self-worth would feel entitled to others' love and affection.

Even though Kamski genuinely feels that there's no one else in your life who would fall who you would fall for instead of him, that doesn't mean he won't keep you on a tight leash. So don't plan on ever trying to leave his home or staying in contact with others.

It's difficult for Elijah to process the idea that other people are important enough to you to risk and escape attempt to see them again. Though in his mind, Elijah would attribute that irrational decision on the large change in your life rather than because you actually like another more than him.

Despite all his entitlement, though, you must know Elijah would do anything for you and would sacrifice so much to keep you happy. His fault is in his own failure to properly articulate this love, not in the lack thereof.

Ralph, Delusional

It's pretty understandable to put Ralph here, considering he's easily the most detached and unhinged character in the game itself. This fundamental disconnect with reality a tragic result of his own trauma on account of the torture he endured at the hands of humans that fateful night. The way his mind was so entirely rattled by the whole affair completely broke his mind and as a result, his actions forever.

The tragic way Ralph broke leaves him unable to really understand the world around him, to put it bluntly. When Ralph falls for you, he's so utterly in love with you he can't imagine why you wouldn't love him back. After all, you knew he'd already been through so much there's just no way someone as wonderful and lovely as you would ever try to break his heart like this.

Because of this brazen assuredness of your love, Ralph won't be afraid to openly act very cuddly and physically close to with you. Again because of the way his mind was broken so long ago, Ralph is permanently living in his own world and will do his best to provide and care for you as a husband should.

If you were to try and leave him or runaway Ralph wouldn't understand your choice, and it's certain he would be very angry about all this he wouldn't necessarily be angry at you. He wouldn't understand and, more so than anything, would feel more confused than betrayed here.

Semi-Delusional

North, Semi-Delusional

North's feelings of attraction regarding you are unexplainable and completely counter her personal creed to make all humans pay for the cruelty she endured at their hands. Though, deep within her heart of hearts, North knows there's no way she could ever bring herself to believe she hates you.

Despite being a pessimist in most aspects of her life, North can't help but feel a kind of love and warmth around you she's never known from another before. And due to this and experience with love, North can't help but go entirely overboard.

Unfortunately for her, just as the highs of her love for you are, so it goes for the lows. The fear of others getting in her way and the insecurity of losing you to another partner is also all of them were strong. Resulting and her unable to hold back when dealing with any possible rivals.

It's only once North comes down from these intense emotional outbursts that she realizes it's not wise to fall so hard for someone. Though these moments of clarity seldom last before being replaced with another intense wave of emotion.

Chloe, Semi-Delusional

She's far more grounded in reality than Ralph is. But Chloe is actually somewhat similar to Ralph on account of how unlikely it is she would feel guilty for keeping you in such a forceful and restrictive relationship.

Make no mistake. Chloe is not stupid; in fact, Chloe is somewhat unique in her own right because I'm like many characters; she is intelligent in a people-based sense. She can read people well has good intuition Etc.

A Small difference maybe but would result in her using her sharp and always attentive intuition to sense your personal boundaries and would never be so physically pushy as Ralph would.

She wants you to be comfortable around her at all times, primarily focused on getting you to genuinely love her back despite the situation and will be far less unpredictable around you as Ralph would.

Selective

Markus, Selective

So for Markus, it's challenging for him to fully understand the way he feels about you for so many reasons. Markus knows he loves you unconditionally more so than he's ever loved before he grapples heavily with the fact it's unlikely and maybe impossible for you to feel the same way. Still, Markus is ready to use his passion to determine choices.

It's difficult for him to deal with the frustrations of loving someone so much and of knowing they're the world to you only for you to not reciprocate his affections. Unfortunately for you, if you're not careful, Markus might physically take these frustrations out on you, given the opportunity.

Markus might also smother you in a way and cling to you like a life preserver. As the one thing, he knows he can keep all to himself in a world that erupts and changes every day around him. Out of all the yanderes, Markus would be one of the worst to try and escape from as he would clean the hardest and physically fight back with a passion.

The only thing which would be more dangerous than trying to escape would be trying to confide in another that you fear Marcus to be a corrupt leader. Or to try and convince a third party to try and team up with you to eliminate Markus. Then you won't be the only one to feel Markus' wrath, and the latter may be made of a public example.

Josh, Selective

It's challenging to place Josh as someone very clouded by idealism or entirely realistic because of that Josh fits comfortably in the middle. (Which is ironic considering he's supposed to represent total pacifist options, but still.)

Josh is likely someone who if he senses, there's even a chance you're beginning to show signs of coming around to returning his affections it would really trigger his inner idealist. He wouldn't help but double down on his controlling behavior and would become all the more smothering now that he believes that there is genuine love in your heart.

Overall it's safer to say Josh all around is more grounded and less intense as a yandere. Even though it's tough for him to deal with the overall intensity of his feelings, he wouldn't physically hurt you for not returning his affections.

Additionally, if you do find yourself able to overlook his darker impulses and actions and genuinely work to return his feelings, Josh might just become one of the easiest yanderes to reform into a wholesome normal relationship.

Semi-Lucid

Connor: Semi Lucid

While it makes so little sense to him to ever fully embrace and love someone who leaves and feeling so unsure and unable to process things effectively. Connor can't deny the love and warmth he feels around you and comparing that to the cold reality of the rest of his life? This leaves him the weaker.

It's hard for Connor to wholly lean into these feelings of love though considering the probability of you actually returning his feelings. Much less to the same extent as him. Because of this, he desperately fears of being discovered.

Though he's afraid of you discovering the dark reality of his true intentions, that doesn't mean he would hesitate to eliminate any possible rivals behind your back.

It's not something Connor would want to do. Still, he is likely also the kind of yandere who would hurt or physically incapacitate you if it meant keeping you close. Even though he knows this won't make you like him anymore.

Hank, Semi-Lucid

The chief word to characterize this yandere type is Escapist. Considering how long now Hank's lived such a dim and joyless life, it makes too much sense he would do anything to hold onto this joy. Even if that means acting against his best interest.

It also adds up Hank, the person who's lived in such a dark place for so long now would be much less averse to crossing boundaries of what most would consider acceptable and a regular loving relationship. Now that he really feels he has something to lose, its all more important that he keeps you.

Just because Hank knows he wouldn't hesitate to get his hands dirty if it meant keeping you protected, it's not to say he's proud of this, and he is much more aware of how you'd react if you found out.

Likely Hank would use any moments of aggressive protectiveness between the two of you as just a part of his usual rough exterior. Furthermore, he wouldn't really act softer or more loving towards you unless it was only the two of you alone and would react largely the same in groups in efforts to keep a low profile or to prevent others from getting suspicious

Daniel, Semi-Lucid

Even though he's not the most out of his mind is in love with you at first. It mostly resulted on account of a particularly harsh rejection, which would cause Daniel to lose his mind and do something regrettable.

Moreover, Daniel would absolutely be more prone to insecurity or jealousy regarding your relationship with others. This is going to remain the same whether you tell him you love him back or not. It's something so deeply ingrained in his persona he's long since lost the ability to control this.

The kind of person to very quickly catch himself nearly losing his mind falling in love with someone he's only recently met. It's almost animalistic of him to pounce on this person before they potentially leave him or are taken by another. Heavily relies on you to help him to maintain his self-control and leave him feeling assured, so he isn't provoked to do something rash. Daniel isn't afraid to show you how dangerous he is and what he's capable of, even if this runs the risk of frightening you.

Lucid

Nines, Lucid

Genuinely has the most transparent grasp on reality when compared to his fellow yanderes. Not that interesting but, consider this means Nines is likely aware you don't actually love him back, and acting in such a hostile manner isn't helping.

It sounds rather paradoxical. Why would someone act in a way they know won't actually bring them and their loved any closer together? Perhaps Nines only gets so lethal to ensure no one gets close to you is because he sees himself as your guardian angel. This is tough love keeping other people away from you.

Despite how much Nines believes he's in the right here, he still would likely try to hide his actions from you. At least acknowledging that if you find a reason to fear him, you might report his behavior or distance yourself in some other way. Given his spot was track record, though, it wouldn't be difficult for 9 to brush off suspicions as false.

All things considered though, even Ninesmight slip up every now and then and finds his cool exterior slipping as he fails to maintain control of a situation if something were to really trigger his jealousy or give him a reason to cause harm.

Selfish

Zlatko, Selfish

Unlike most other yanderes who would identify love or infatuation as a real key to the relationship, Zlatko is more the type to want to keep you forever by his side and locked away within his abode because of a feeling of interest.

Not at all dissimilar to the way a scientist would fix it compulsively over their test subject or a painter over their muse, Zlatko finds a sick and almost perverse inspiration to you. The kind of fascination which makes him want to test on you to keep everything about you to himself.

He may not identify the connection between two of you as that of love, but it's wrong to say he feels no kind of fondness for you whatsoever. It's just that he has a questionable way of showing it. And the most important thing which has Zlatko pegged as a selfish type is his inability to care for your needs.

The idea of letting you go free or ever return to normal life is virtually impossible for him to imagine. Without you forever in his possession, Zlatko couldn't imagine living in such an unsatisfying home.

Gavin, Selfish

To be entirely honest, it's tough to imagine a sadistic kind of yandere anywhere but here in the ranking. When it comes to Gavin, the type of sadist who derives such a primal satisfaction in your misery. Nowhere but here is fitting.

One of the only people who likely wouldn't be deterred in the slightest that you don't actually like him back. Why should he care? It's not like you have any kind of power in the relationship anyway. So long as you know who belong to, that was all the affirmation he needed. While he's not exactly a control freak or anything like that, Gavin undeniably wants from you in a relationship is the feeling that you are powerless to save yourself while under his control.

Almost like he wants other people to try and get involved. That way, he'll have an excuse to entirely lose it on another person, of course, he wouldn't feel any remorse for this and on account of his cruel nature. 

Selfless

Kara, selfless

Yep, that's right guys, you never would have guessed! But the Android programmed to act as a motherly figure to those she serves is the most likely of the yanderes to hyper fixate your well-being.

Overprotective to a fault, Kara really would do whatever she could to keep you happy and safe while in her care. So much so that you might not even know she holds any feelings of romantic affection towards you at all. Really thinking her love ends with your physical well-being.

The tip-off that causes you to think there might be more on her mind than just keeping you safe is Kara's distrust whenever you choose to spend time with other people over her. You do your best to explain to her that there's no reason to be suspicious, but still, something's not right with her.

But Kara does know it's probably for your best if she allows you to keep in contact with other people. However, the one thing that she won't allow is for you to think any of these people are more important than her or could ever replace her.

Luther, Selfless

This reflects a rather tragic aspect of who Luther is as a person deep down, rather than the choices he would make as a yandere in all honesty. Mostly because Luther has only known selfless unforgiving relationships with those around him, rather than ones of mutual love.

He no doubt would dream about one day, as far away as that might be, finding a beautiful idyllic relationship with you. But it feels almost too good to be true. There would be a part of Luther nearly too afraid to even dream of this, the rejection would simply hurt too much. Leaving him with almost unimaginable pain.

In the meantime, though, Luther would be more than happy to share a relationship with you, which is more discreet, but still, just as emotional. It would be a little difficult for someone as inexperienced as Luther to express his affections naturally. But this would likely manifest in him doing his best to be as gentle around you as possible, and giving you no plausible reason to fear him.

It would be much more difficult for him to remain so sweet and softspoken around any of your friends and family you wish to keep in your life though. So that maybe something you want to keep in mind here.

(Hi editing max here! I literally finished writing and editing this only to realize AFTER the fact I forgot to add Simon to this list, so consider this just a first draft, and when I go through with a second edit I’ll add him in as well. Thank you for reading, please follow this account I was unfairly terminated at 1.1k and now I’m starting back from scratch. :,))

[metalgearkong]

Hitman 2 - Review (PS4)

3/3/20

Developed by IO Interactive, released 2018

Hitman has always been my second favorite stealth-action series, second only to Metal Gear Solid. I’ve always been at awe with each game I’ve played (since Hitman 2: Silent Assassin) of the sheer amount ways to kill your targets and freedom presented in each level. The only game in the series I’ve outright disliked is the failed reboot Hitman: Absolution, which changed some of the core fundamentals for the sake of a fresh take on the franchise. The series was more successfully rebooted in 2016 with the simply titled “Hitman,” and I enjoyed that game much more, as it was a return to form of the entries from the PS2/Xbox generation.

Hitman 2 is almost the same exact game as Hitman 2016 in terms of graphics, mechanics, and design. Some people see this as a bad thing, but it’s usually exactly what I want from a sequel if I loved the former title. Hitman 2 only has 6 levels and a prologue; a fancy beach home, a slum in India, a racetrack in Malibu, a cartel base in the jungle, a Vermont suburb, and a castle hosting an elite party of affluent cultists. The quantity may seem small, but each level holds just as much personality as any of the best levels in the entire franchise. Plus, each mission is so deeply detailed and has so many ways to complete your mission, every level could be replayed 3 or so times without you repeating the same route or techniques of killing your targets.

I can’t stress enough how intimidated I was at the beginning of each and every map seeing how intricate and elegantly they were made. The possibilities always seemed endless. Each location is such a clockwork honeycomb of freedom I could see myself replaying this game many many times in order to appreciate all of its detail. The AI and gameplay mechanics rarely let me down and I could do pretty much everything I wanted to without barriers from the controls or issues with NPCs. I believe one of the only new abilities in Hitman 2 is being able to hide in foliage or among crowds of people, not unlike the Assassin’s Creed series. It’s a natural addition to the series and it only adds to the tactical possibilities in each level. 

Something that I didn’t like about Hitman 2 is how it’s always trying to get you online, and if you’re not online, it passive aggressively keeps reminding you. Many of basic modes and features can only be used if you have an internet connection, and living where I do, it’s something I don’t have. Stuck playing offline, I could never customize my loadout before a mission, choose different starting locations, or even get the rating system after every level is completed. It takes out some of the fun not being able to see yourself achieving a high rank after doing so well. I found myself having to accomplish self-imposed challenges, such as never being witnessed, only killing the targets, not using a gun, and things like that. I also don’t know why the series never brought back how you could read a newspaper article about your exploits, and the details in the reports were completely customized by exactly how you played (a la Hitman: Blood Money).

Another issue is this game’s lack of a good story, as cinematics between missions are quite literally presented as voice-over slide shows. I’ve never cared much for the story in the Hitman series, and I don’t think IO Interactive has either. It’s too the point where I don’t think they should even try anymore, and simply start each level with a little background on the location and your target. I did what I rarely do in games, and that’s skipping cinematics. Maybe if people really paid attention it would add to the experience, but for me I would recommend the developers revamp their storytelling, or drop it completely. The core game is so damned good, however, the fact that the game has a bad story hardly bothers me at all.

Hitman 2 comes the closest to all of the Hitman games to reaching the epic heights of Hitman: Blood Money, one of my favorite games of all time. The detail, player agency, detail, and size found in every single level is deeply impressive and lends to tons of replay value. The campy personality maintains as well, often seeing Agent 47 dawning some truly ridiculous disguises, and hearing the same satirical chatter between NPCs the series has always had. Everything that has made the series unique and great is all here, and I love constantly discovering new ways to approach each mission. I really want more from IO Interactive and hope they haven’t planned on stopping making Hitman games in this style with this much quality.

9/10

[cthulhubert]

Thoughts, not even a review, of Terra Ignota

recently finished Will to Battle.

(Book 3 of Terra Ignota, preceded by Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders. The sequel and finale, Perhaps the Stars, is expected in 2021.)

So I wanted to post some thoughts, not even a review, really.

The take away is that despite many of its major, fundamental features leaving me cold or even actively repulsing me, I overall very much enjoyed reading it.

This is perhaps a higher recommendation than unalloyed praise. The more I like something, the more I complain. For one thing, it's a kind of eustress: the perfect thing has no flaws to catch interest; for another, if I just plain dislike something, I wouldn't spare much thought on it to begin with, much less linearize so many of them into words.

So my mostly negative venting (consisting of immediate and thorough spoilers) beneath the cut

So right off the bat: I HATE the genius serial killer trope; and I detest SFF trolley problem analogs.

I was so irritated by the one-two punch of these big reveals in the first book that I actually let my hold on Seven Surrenders and read several other books in the interim. (I knew I'd be back though, I put a new one on both 2 and 3 next.)

Mycroft Canner... one who believes themself "free" merely because they can kill. It reminds me of something that's stuck in my mind for a long time: a guy calling other peoples cucks because they used alarm clocks to wake up. "I can't believe you let a machine boss you around."

Because I otherwise liked the writing so much, I kept trying to dredge up another layer of meaning to the treatment of Mycroft as torturer-rapist-murderer. For instance: "Oh, so many people around him being sympathetic and liking him is actually the narrative sneakily reminding us that the core trait of serial killers like this is a manipulative personality, which his savant abilities would only feed." Carlyle Foster even brings this up specifically in the scene where we first learn the specifics of Canner's crimes, but of course, their portrayal in that scene (which, reminder, is literally by Mycroft) is of one hysterical and unreasonable.

Palmer did achieve one of most author's highest goals in emotionally transporting me to one of their scenes, but it just really made me wish I was in Carlyle's shoes. To react with, rather than panic, the cold disdain merited by a creature so broken it is wrong about the ways in which it is broken. To spit on them and denigrate their feelings of uniqueness and specialness, arising both from the murders and from their oh so pitiable martyrdom and servitude now. "If only we could mercifully lobotomize away your personality and still use the savanthood modules so unfortunately stapled to them."

Mycroft: "Everybody seems to have one murder they thought was the worst. I thought yours would be []" Me instead of Carlyle, snidely: "Is that a fun game for you, that speculation?"

(In another scene, the Major's sympathy to Mycroft and Saladin as "fellow killers" somewhat raised my hackles; my experience is military people expressing exaggerated disgust for "civilian" killers, perhaps as a way of mental separation between their acts. Though the revelation that the Major is Achilles, with an ancient's attitudes, perhaps ameliorates this.)

As for OS... if you've invented prophecy, there will be heaps upon myriads upon multitudes of miraculous ways to reshape the world before you reach a best value intervention of cold-blooded murder. I was, at least, amused by considering the linear combination of this limitation between the author and the characters. Palmer was quite clever in making sure that the mystical demographic math must be facilitated by humans (and the very odd set-set humans at that).

I admit I hold this philosophy a bit more strongly than my time investment in the fields merit, but I see it this way:

In physics, infinite, friction-less planes in perfect vacuums occupied by inelastic, spherical cows are a useful tool. They approximate things that are theoretically possible, absent the various extra forces.

In ethics, and in any system that is so truly complex, everything you remove makes for a completely different system. None of the elements are basically orthogonal to the circumstances the way air resistance is to a bullet.

These philosophical sorts of thought experiments are, at best, emotional exercises. They are not simplified tools to build a foundation for more complex issues, they're figments born of the phantasmal conditions possible only in the interior of the brain, and too much work with them will only foul both logic and intuition with garbage data.

As for what merely fell flat:

While I deeply enjoyed so much of the speculation about cultural changes brought about by technology, and travel technology specifically, the "no proselytizing" law felt quite forced. I can definitely believe such a law would be passed after the Church Wars described, but holding so strong for centuries?

There are all kinds of supernatural thoughts and beliefs people accept, and there simply isn't a neat threshold between those and religion. Even in the counterfactual world where there was one, it would be quite concealed by the sophistry that's metastasized through the entire discussion space around it.

I can think of a dozen questions off the top of my head that they'd have to decide. And while flipping a coin or an attempt at a definitional framework could answer them, it couldn't do it in a way that's strong enough to stand the test of time. Imagine Laurel/Yanny, the Dress, or if a hot dog is a sandwich, but with material-security level of investment in them!

I'm areligious (to put it... mildly) but for personal, psychosocial reasons, when I sit down to eat I spend a moment in mindful gratitude towards the plants and animals that gave their life for mine. Is that religious? Are ghost hunter shows illegal because they're proselytory for any animistic religion? Would acupuncturists be able to work, or is that a daoist superstition? Could my neighbor's still paint the ceiling of their porch haint blue? Are scientists allowed to register trials for psychic powers? Can schools teach the arguments for dualism?

That doesn't even get into the subjects that, in real life, yank out all the stops on linguistic-conceptual inventiveness! Europe has had a pestilential outbreak of sophistry around head scarves! Would the Alliance ban them for being religious garb? If so, would they ban clothing that covers the ankles as Calvinist religious garb? Or that covers the nipples? (Oh wait, showing the nipples is of significance in some religions! can't allow that!) Should they ban clothing that contains unmixed fibers for being a religious display!? They don't seem to do any of these things, but that's just as much a choice about the First Law as doing so.

Someone proposes personhood begins at conception; I claim that this is fundamentally a supernaturalist belief. Is one of us in violation of the first law? If a hive outlaws birth control, how are they investigated for whether this is a cultural or religious condition? What happens when, I dunno, a Cousin run campus has somebody that wants to put Intelligent Design in the biology textbooks? Most people (well including the people pushing it) know that it's religion wrapped in plausibly deniable words. So is that proselytizing, or is someone pointing it out proselytizing atheism?

Speaking of, there's a pretty good correlation of peace and prosperity with movement to non-religioun. It honestly doesn't seem like sensayers should have much work.

But we meet Bridger and his miracles right at the beginning of the book, before we know a thing about the Church Wars etc. And it's obviously a central tension of the story, intended to be coequal with the brewing war, and yet it quite failed to rouse my interest. The book would've been stronger without it.

Perhaps this *is* just a me thing, since my mind has held miraculous intervention as a solved problem for most of my life. If I were convinced of an event's miraculous character, the most parsimonious explanation is in the vein of, "We're in a simulation that's only been running for a week or so, either as a game or as an experiment, and now we're running under different rules than the ones our (artificial) memories imply." The probability of that happening is too low to waste time processing any other ramifications or possibilities ahead of time.

There is another, related layer of enjoyable consideration, which is of course the reliability of the narrator and his evidence. In Will to Battle, our author is revealed as explicitly delusional, suffering regular, presumably PTSD (and/or anti-sleep drug) related hallucinations. I wish I'd had the patience to do a very close read, or to do a second read—especially given the revelation that 9A edited some of the delusions out of the first two books. Diegetic skepticism is a regular part of the narrative. And there are lots of "rhymes" in the text to mundane circumstances. We're told Bridger looks like Apollo and Seine, and shown the artificial, parentless children, Ganymede and Danaë (crafted to be such a degree of hyperstimulus that among other things, Ganymede has an entire school of art dedicated to him). We're shown that perceptions are malleable, with Thisbe's "witchcraft" and Cato's magician like showmanship. We're constantly exposed to griffincloth and know that just its presence at JEDD's assassination spread skepticism. We're told that scientists proclaim Achilles to have Ancient Greek DNA and an adult's bone structure, but we're also constantly shown an incredible variety of artificial animals and related wonders, and told Apollo was a great scientist.

And yet, over and over the narrative rebukes skepticism. 9A endorses most of what Mycroft has written, and if we go so far as considering them (along with, eg, the officialese headings and warnings) as Mycroft's delusions too, we're at the point where we have to step back so far that the unreliable narrator is actually this "Ada Palmer" character, who is writing about things that don't exist in a year we haven't reached yet!

I was bothered that nobody who learned about it seemed ready to express the proper amount of disgust at the extra-incestuous politics of the world leaders, and honestly find it simply hard to accept that their consortium worked so altruistically.

Finally, ultimately, the central themes of the novel, about peace and war and complacency seem awfully poorly considered for the current era, where voting age children have never known a world without an official war, and the just grown generation is the first since the industrial revolution to be poorer and less healthy and more stressed than their parents. Not just this novel, but the world in general seems to be sorely missing the concept of the important qualitative differences between distress and eustress.

[lichen-soup-scribe]

DEMONBUSTER.COM

If you, like myself, are deeply amused by the particular strain of fundamental Christianity that sees demons around every corner, you owe it to yourself to spend some time poking around on DEMONBUSTER.COM. (Volume warning!)

Per the Wayback Machine, this website has been around since 1998. It was founded by Stan and Elizabeth Madrak, self-described “Deliverance Ministers.” The site is aimed primarily at helping Christians root out the demons in their own lives: “EVERYONE HAS DEMONS, NO EXCEPTIONS,” as it boldly states.

Incredibly, the website has barely changed since its inception -- it’s still mostly a single, extremely long homepage full of centered and frequently all-capsed text; the same midi file still plays in the background. But over the years, the site’s owners added an ever-growing list of articles on the various types of demons they’ve identified; testimonials from site visitors; ramblings on scriptures; MP3 recordings of “deliverance” sessions; and much, much more.

That’s the good stuff. 

Below are a few particularly choice tidbits, sorted into categories. I encourage you to poke around the site for yourself, but content warning for homophobia and the labeling of mental illnesses, physical ailments, other religions and ... pretty much everything as demonic. 

And as the site itself warns:

Although you do not have to feel anything to know that demons have left you, some come out in a yawn, coughing, tears, gas, mucus, screaming, and vomiting. I recommend you don't listen to these tapes while sitting at your keyboard at work, just in case, or have a bucket ready. If you are playing these at work, your boss may not understand if your demons start screaming or you puke on your keyboard. Your boss may have you locked up if your demons start talking or screaming out loud. Talking demons are quite common.

The good stuff starts below the cut!...

___’s a demon

Candles - Don't Burn Them; Get Them Out Of Your Home!

Cards - Poker or Fish, they are called the devil's bible

Diabetes - Squid like demons attack ten parts of your body

Dolls, toys, and stuffed animals - better burn them too: one of the wildest pages on the whole site and a great starting point

“Housecleaning - Get rid of it: owls, frogs, hearts, dolls, unicorns, statues, candles, drums, bells, and more”

Paisley Print Pattern - May be harboring demons

Poverty -- Maybe this is why you are poor

Trolls

Weather Demons by Name - We Can Take Authority over It!

Testimonials

“Binding demons”

Prior to knowing anything about DELIVERANCE, someone told us they had a demon living in their home. They could see the demon. They did have knowledge of "binding", so they merely bound the demon in JESUS' name. I have never heard how long a demon can stay bound, but this person said the demon was "frozen" in their doorway of the kitchen for about six months. It was then the person found out they had the authority to make the demons leave using the name of Jesus. It did.

“Potty trained after deliverance”

"Well my baby boy has been difficult to potty-train. He is past the age that he should be trained and I was getting really tired of it. I would sit him in the toilet for a long time and nothing would happen. When I would put him back in diapers, he would go! And I was sick and tired of it. So I got really mad, sat him in the potty and told him he had to "go". The baby started screaming and I got the idea that it was a demon. So I commanded it to manifest and give me his name. The baby continued screaming and saying: "You can't make me, you can't make me". I insisted in the demon telling me his name, so the Holy Spirit said: "That's his name, "you can't make me". I commanded it out. The baby had deliverance and he has been potty-trained since."

“Fat and various demons”

A lady had been using an underarm anti-perspirant and deodorant scented spray for about two weeks. A painful rash developed in her armpits. We cast out a spirit of anti-perspirant, pain, and probed for others without success. We spoke healing and within two days the problem had disappeared.

General batshittery

Speaking in tongues

You can PRAY IN TONGUES under your breath while working or listening to someone else talk. Try it, especially when someone is being rude to you.

The Box

Father, in the name of Jesus, I put this demon in THE BOX. I tie that box up with iron chains and fetters. I fill that box with the Blood of Jesus. I ask for two angels to go into THE BOX to read you the Word of God day and night, night and day. You will get no peace and no rest. I fill that box with the Glory of God to blind you. I put a gag in your mouth so you cannot communicate with any other demons or the devil himself. 

Dolls, toys and stuffed animals, again

POKEMON in Japanese means "POCKET MONSTER". These little toys come in all shapes, one is a UNICORN, there are gold plated tokens and secret boxes to place the figures in which draws the children to buy them. I have heard children in stores, BEGGING their parents for POKEMON gameboys, videos and games... THIS IS OUT OF CONTROL... (TAKE A BREATH)

And remember: “DELIVERANCE IS OPTIONAL. YOU MAY KEEP ALL YOUR DEMONS IF YOU WANT.”

[grimoire-of-geekery]

Paradigm-a-Dozen: Wherein Rune Discusses the Values and Comparisons of Differing Modes of Magical Theory

(Gods, finding a relevant gif was a total bitch)

Many years ago, before the famed Grimoire Spread post became popular, my most well-known article was my Potato Salad article.  You’re welcome to go read it if you like, for context.  In that article, I shared my revelation that where witchcraft was concerned, differing paradigms of practices were very similar to differing potato salad recipes.  In a potato salad recipe, the only hard and fast rule is that there should be potatoes in it, and the rest is your own trappings.

The same is certainly true of witchcraft- like potatoes, witchcraft is a real and reliable thing in the world.  And like potatoes, witchcraft doesn’t solve everything, but it is certainly a staple in many people’s diets.

Related to that subject, if one were to extrapolate from this metaphor, and decide that potatoes are a metaphor for magic, then it should be noted that not every potato dish is potato salad, and similarly, not all forms of magic are witchcraft.  They do all seem to share the one fundamental rule established for potato salad, though: in a potato dish, there must be potatoes.  In a magical paradigm, there must be actual magic.

Now, I bring this up because, obviously, not all paradigms are equally good for all people.  Some paradigms are, well, frankly rubbish, and fairly often simply the mental wankery of some idiot trying to pretend they’re something they’re not.  This isn’t to say that a person will never be legitimate if they start that way- a large percentage of occultists genuinely start as shitty edgelords or half-delusional manchildren seeking to validate their butthurtery.  If you don’t believe me, take a look at some of the spells which have survived throughout history.  Curse tablets, farting runes, and penis-napping witches, not to mention all the poorly designed spells based upon even more shoddily designed mythology fanfiction.  Humans are ridiculous, and our magic is just as ridiculous as we are.

The thing is... magic works often enough that our ludicrous fantasies on why and how it works can take years to be debunked.  Some of the shittiest and most worthless magical paradigms I’ve ever encountered have withstood the test of history, to the point where they are still practiced today by people who never decided to question them, as some of the exercises or practices associated with them do work well enough that people have resolved not to tamper with something that “isn’t broken.”

Which leads me to today’s point- what do you do when you encounter a functional and powerful paradigm that is so completely different from your own that it calls all of your deeply held beliefs into question? 

In geekomancy, this actually can happen a lot, because geekomancy is kind of like a microcosm of the occult community in and of itself.  In geekomancy, Jedi use the Force against Magic: the Gathering mana-tappers, while Winx Club kids throw spells against Pokemon, and Madoka-style magical girls struggle over territory with My Little Bronies and Marvel comic-book self-inserts.  Basically, geekomancy is the nerdier side of deviantart vomiting all over each other, and nobody stays in their lane, because that’s not how the world works. 

In a sandbox of constantly conflicting paradigms such as this, the “Great Work” of a geekomancer is to first find magical paradigms which function properly, as in a system which regularly generates reliable effects and spells, and to secondly find ways to braid such systems together so as to make a more diverse and potent personal paradigm of magic.  That means, mass consumption of geeky material, study of meta-plot and metastructure (lots of time on the wikis, tbh), and regular experimentation.

In other words, exactly the same as any occultist would do with their own studies of esoterica.  Historically, magicians often wouldn’t bother explaining why their spell had Jesus and Loki in it at the same time, they would just do it because magic.  Oh, some magicians would take more care, and design something which drew upon an established and well-oiled occult system, but many of them just smushed together things they thought were powerful and called it good.  It’s the same thing that modern neopagans do when they call on gods from five different and differing cultures to make a single change.

It works, because magic, but flaws in a paradigm are what makes for unreliable sorcery.  In sorcery, clashing paradigms resolve with the dominant paradigm winning, or with mutual self-destruction between all the battling paradigms.

In short, very much like Super Smash Bros.  Not only do all the characters come from worlds that obey completely different laws, but the landscape itself often changes at random, and other forces inject themselves into the terrain, as catalysts for either side.

I offer this recommendation, to prepare geekomancers and protect them from misfortune: do all your own research, and do your experiments as far away from other geekomancers as possible.  You don’t want to be fighting with your own paradigm at the same time as you’re fighting for territory.  That’s like warring with your wardrobe while dueling.  It’s a recipe for disaster.

In my Grimoire tab, I have several sections, one for each different kind of geeky magic I’ve studied and elected to share over the years.  Some of them work well together, and others really do not.  For example, I’ve been able to work out similarities between Final Fantasy, Madoka Magica, Bayonetta, and even Homestuck, but Legend of Zelda operates on elemental principles that quite frankly defy my ability to sync up with (although they have helped to prove a rule or two in my greater understanding of elemental magic as a whole). 

When I do LoZ magic, I have to depart from my own growing paradigm and leave it behind, in favor of the magic of Hyrule.  This is frustrating, as I love Hyrule, and I want to make it part of my practice on the regular.  It’s simply not in the cards at the moment.  Perhaps one day they’ll make a game which will resolve my conflict, but they haven’t done so yet.

In the meantime, I use it to break my own spells when needed, as it changes the rules sufficiently that I can use one system to counter another, and I’ve also learned how to use one paradigm to defend adequately against another.  If the magic of the paradigm wasn’t functional, it would have to sit on a shelf until I could figure out something to do with it.  It doesn’t matter how much I love a franchise or fandom- if its magical system isn’t mystically viable, it’s not safe to take with me out into the world.

I encourage all my followers to test things and be willing to have cherished beliefs challenged, and to be careful out there.  You don’t want to be thrown off the battlefield because you underestimated a pink puffball or a silly green dinosaur.  ;)

[patriotsnet]

How Many Republicans Would Need To Vote For Impeachment

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-republicans-would-need-to-vote-for-impeachment/

How Many Republicans Would Need To Vote For Impeachment

Ten Republicans Vote To Impeach Trump Giving The Vote Bipartisan Bona Fides That Could Win Over Senate Gop

The Washington Post

Rep. Tom Rice, a staunch supporter of President Trump from deeply conservative South Carolina, issued a plea as rioters raged through the Capitol last week.

“Where is the president!?” Rice asked. “He must ask people to disperse and restore calm now.”

On Wednesday, exactly one week later, Rice voted with Democrats to impeach Trump, saying, “I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable.”

All told, 10 Republicans voted with the Democrats to impeach Trump on charges of “incitement of insurrection.” Although the group represents a small fraction of the conference, their support gives impeachment bipartisan bona fides that could help it gain traction in the Senate. It also reflects the deep division within the Republican Party about its future and the role the president should play.

The group represents the party’s ideological spectrum, from Rep. Liz Cheney , who holds a leadership position, to moderate Rep. Fred Upton , to Rice.

The others who voted to impeach Trump are Anthony Gonzalez , Jaime Herrera Beutler , John Katko , Adam Kinzinger , Peter Meijer , Dan Newhouse and David Valadao .

In statements, many called their decision of vote of conscience.

Video: Pelosi: House may impeach Trump a second time

Asked whether Trump could remain an effective leader of the party, Jordan said, “Of course, he is.”

mike.debonis@washpost.com

Mcconnell Is Said To Be Pleased About Impeachment Believing It Will Be Easier To Purge Trump From The Gop

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has told associates that he believes President Trump committed impeachable offenses and that he is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the party, according to people familiar with his thinking. The House is voting on Wednesday to formally charge Mr. Trump with inciting violence against the country.

At the same time, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader and one of Mr. Trump’s most steadfast allies in Congress, has asked other Republicans whether he should call on Mr. Trump to resign in the aftermath of the riot at the Capitol last week, according to three Republican officials briefed on the conversations.

While Mr. McCarthy has said he is personally opposed to impeachment, he and other party leaders have decided not to formally lobby Republicans to vote “no,” and an aide to Mr. McCarthy said he was open to a measure censuring Mr. Trump for his conduct. In private, Mr. McCarthy reached out to a leading House Democrat to see if the chamber would be willing to pursue a censure vote, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ruled it out.

Making their task more difficult, Mr. Trump has shown no trace of contrition, telling reporters on Tuesday that his remarks to supporters had been “totally appropriate,” and that it was the specter of his impeachment that was “causing tremendous anger.”

In His First Public Appearance Since The Capitol Siege Trump Expresses No Contrition For Inciting The Mob

President Trump on Tuesday showed no contrition or regret for instigating the mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened the lives of members of Congress and his vice president, saying that his remarks to a rally beforehand were “totally appropriate” and that the effort by Congress to impeach and convict him was “causing tremendous anger.”

Answering questions from reporters for the first time since the violence at the Capitol on Wednesday, Mr. Trump sidestepped questions about his culpability in the deadly riot that shook the nation’s long tradition of peaceful transfers of power.

“People thought what I said was totally appropriate,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, en route to Alamo, Texas, where he was set to visit the wall along the Mexican border. Instead, Mr. Trump claimed that protests against racial injustice over the summer were “a real problem.”

“If you look at what other people have said, politicians at a high level about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places, that was a real problem,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s defiance came despite near universal condemnation of his role in stoking the assault on the Capitol, including from within his own administration and some of his closest allies on Capitol Hill.

We analyzed the alternating perspectives of President Trump at the podium, the lawmakers inside the Capitol and a growing mob’s destruction and violence.

Members Of A Senate Panel Express Skepticism That Bidens Pentagon Pick Should Get A Waiver For The Job

Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday expressed skepticism that Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired four-star Army general who is President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s pick for secretary of defense, should be given a Congressional waiver needed to serve in that role.

The waiver, the subject of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, is required for any Pentagon chief who has been retired from active-duty military service for fewer than seven years. Mr. Austin, who would be the nation’s first Black defense secretary, retired in 2016.

Congress approved a similar measure four years ago for President Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, a retired four-star Marine officer. But many Republicans seem reluctant to grant that to Mr. Biden’s pick, and Democrats, long skeptical of the practice, did not seem uniformly moved by the case to do it again either, in spite of the historic nature of Mr. Austin’s nomination.

“This is a very deep and difficult issue,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine. “General Austin is well qualified,” Mr. King said, “but on the other hand the whole idea of civilian control of the military is a fundamental part of who were are.”

While the outgoing chairman of the committee, Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, has made it clear that he will support the waiver and doesn’t really believe in the requirement, other Republicans seemed unconvinced.

The House Formally Called On Pence To Invoke The 25th Amendment To Strip Trump Of Power He Declined

The House voted on Tuesday night to formally call on Vice President Mike Pence to use the 25th Amendment to strip President Trump of his powers after he incited a mob that attacked the Capitol, as lawmakers warned they would impeach the president on Wednesday if Mr. Pence did not comply.

Lawmakers, escorted by armed guards into a heavily fortified Capitol, adopted the nonbinding measure just before midnight largely along party lines. The final vote was 223 to 205 to implore Mr. Pence to declare Mr. Trump “incapable of executing the duties of his office and to immediately exercise powers as acting president.”

“We’re trying to tell him that the time of a 25th Amendment emergency has arrived,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the author of the resolution, said before the vote. “It has come to our doorstep. It has invaded our chamber.”

Only one Republican, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, voted in favor of the resolution.

The House proceeded even after Mr. Pence rejected the call in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday. “I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our nation or consistent with our Constitution,” he wrote. “I will not now yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political games at a time so serious in the life of our nation.”

Trump Administration Will Release All Vaccine Doses Adopting A Policy Proposed By The Biden Team

The Trump administration will recommend providing a wider distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, just days after aides to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said his administration would make a similar adjustment by using more of the already procured vaccines for initial doses.

Mr. Biden’s team has said it would aim to distribute the doses more quickly at federally run vaccination sites at high school gyms, sports stadiums and mobile units to reach high-risk populations.

The Trump administration plans to release the shots that had been held back and aims to make the vaccine available to everyone over 65 in an attempt to accelerate lagging distribution.

The doses had been held back to ensure that those who receive a first dose had the second and final inoculation available when it was needed. The change means all existing doses will be sent to states to provide initial inoculations. Second doses are to be provided by new waves of manufacturing.

The idea of using existing vaccine supplies for first doses has raised objections from some doctors and researchers, who say studies of the vaccines’ effectiveness proved only that they worked to prevent illness when using two doses.

The agency is expected to announce the new guidelines at a briefing at noon Eastern on Tuesday, according to an official briefed on the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly about the change. Axios earlier reported the new guidelines.

Madison Cawthorn Attacks Dr Fauci: We Want To Prosecute This Guy To The Full Ability Of The Law

David Badash

U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn is attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, saying House Republicans will “prosecute” the esteemed immunologist and director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , as a “pawn of the Chinese Communist Party” and for lying to Congress.

There is no evidence either of those claims are true.

Speaking to former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, the host of “Just the Truth” on the Real America’s Voice website, Cawthorn falsely claimed Dr. Fauci has “directly lied to Congress,” echoing a claim made by Senator Rand Paul on Wednesday. Ellis, who claims to be a “constitutional law attorney,” did not mention to Cawthorn that the House of Representatives does not have the power to criminally prosecute.

“I’ll tell you when we take the majority back in 2022, I’ll make sure consequences are doled out,” Cawthorn promised. “But we want to prosecute this guy to the full ability of the law because I’ll tell you to lie to the American people just to get your name in the news just to see your face on the cover of books just to get fame or fortune, I’ll tell you, Dr. Anthony Fauci does not deserve either fame or fortune.”

On Wednesday Cawthorn told Newsmax, “I think we should indict Jill Biden.”

Watch:

Rep. Madison Cawthorn vows that if the GOP gains control of the House in 2022, he will “make sure that consequences are doled out” to Dr. Anthony Fauci: “We want to prosecute this guy to the full ability of the law.”pic.twitter.com/kFN0rGOCGJ

Jamie Raskin Is Leading The Effort To Impeach Trump While Mourning The Recent Death Of His Son

A day after Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, buried his 25-year-old son, he survived the mob attack on the Capitol. He is now leading the impeachment effort against President Trump for inciting the siege.

Mr. Raskin’s son, Tommy Raskin, a 25-year-old Harvard University law student, social justice activist, animal lover and poet, died by suicide on New Year’s Eve. He left his parents an apology, with instructions: “Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me.”

As he found himself hiding with House colleagues from a violent mob, Mr. Raskin feared for the safety of a surviving daughter who had accompanied him to the Capitol to witness the counting of electoral votes to seal Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

Within hours, Mr. Raskin was at work drafting an article of impeachment with the mob braying in his ear and his son’s final plea on his mind.

“I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to live up to those instructions,” the Maryland Democrat said in an interview on Monday, reading aloud the farewell note as he reflected on his family’s grief and the confluence of events. “But what we are doing this week is looking after our beloved republic.”

The slightly rumpled former constitutional law professor has been preparing his entire life for this moment. That it should come just as he is suffering the most unimaginable loss a parent can bear has touched his colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

Guns For Hire: Gop Governor Accused Of Renting Out South Dakotas National Guard Troops As For

David Badash

It may be called South Dakota but the “Mount Rushmore State” is pretty far up in the northern United States. And yet Governor Kristi Noem, a Trump-loving far right Republican, is sending her National Guard troops to patrol the border: the Southern Border, in Texas.

The capitol of South Dakota, Pierre, is over 1100 miles from Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s capital city of Austin, about a 17 hour drive according to Google, if you don’t stop to eat or sleep.

Gov. Noem is sending her National Guard troops down to the Lone Star State to help out Gov. Abbott with the “ongoing violations of state and federal law by illegal aliens crossing the unsecured border,”she has just announced.

Who’s paying for these soldiers?

In a statement Noem says “private donations,” the source of which she does not disclose. Nor does she say where the funds are going.

“The Biden Administration has failed in the most basic duty of the federal government: keeping the American people safe,” Governor Noem’s statement reads.. “The border is a national security crisis that requires the kind of sustained response only the National Guard can provide.  We should not be making our own communities less safe by sending our police or Highway Patrol to fix a long-term problem President Biden’s Administration seems unable or unwilling to solve.  My message to Texas is this: help is on the way.”

“The deployment will be paid for by a private donation.”

— Amanda Carpenter June 29, 2021

Five House Republicans Back Impeachment As Party Leaders Forgo Formally Lobbying Against It

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, announced on Tuesday that she would vote to impeach President Trump, saying there had “never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States” than Mr. Trump’s incitement of a mob that attacked the Capitol last week.

In a stinging statement that drove a fissure through her party, Ms. Cheney dismissed fellow Republicans arguing that the impeachment was rushed, premature or unwarranted. Her words were unequivocal and likely to give cover to two dozen or so other House Republicans looking to break ranks and join an effort that was also said to have the tacit support of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

“Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough,” said Ms. Cheney, the scion of a storied Republican political family. “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president.”

She added: “The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”

Ms. Cheney’s announcement came a short time after Representative John Katko of New York became the first House Republican to commit to voting to impeach.

Representatives Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, all Republicans, followed them.

Republicans Voted To Impeach Trump 7 Already Facing Challenges For Their Seats In Congress

U.S.Donald TrumpRepublicansGOPCongress

Some of the Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in January are already having their seats challenged and their ability to hold onto their place in Congress may be dependent on the moves the former president makes in the next 18 months.

Ten Republicans joined Democrats in impeaching Trump a historic second time, a move that was quickly met with condemnation back in their home states. They’ve been publicly scolded, pushed to resign and warned that local organizations will mount a strong push to oust them from office in the primary.

“After my last election, I had decided not to run again. But the vote by Congressman Valadao to impeach President Trump with no witnesses, evidence, or without allowing any defense was too much for me to stay on the sidelines,” Chris Mathys, a former Fresno, California, city council member, told Newsweek.

Valadao, who represents California’s 21st district, wasn’t in office during Trump’s first impeachment, as he had been ousted from office in 2018 by Democrat TJ Coxx. In November, Valadao won back his seat from the Democrat who beat him in 2018 by less than a point. The Republican placed blame on Trump for the Capitol riot, saying that his rhetoric was “un-American, abhorrent and absolutely an impeachable offense.”

Senate Republicans Out of Step With Majority on Convicting Donald Trump

Opinionmy Fellow Republicans Please Do The Right Thing And Back An Impeachment Inquiry

On Tuesday, Romney finally had some company. He was joined by the same four colleagues — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — who also joined him in November in acknowledging Joe Biden’s victory and standing steadfast in opposition to outlandish claims that the election was rigged or stolen.

Murkowski denounced Trump for having “perpetrated false rhetoric that the election was stolen and rigged, even after dozens of courts ruled against these claims.” Sasse said Trump didn’t have any evidence to back up his claims of election fraud, “and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.”

Opinionthis Trump Impeachment Defense Falls Apart As Soon As You Read The Constitution

Yet 45 Republican senators voted against taking up the impeachment trial Tuesday. Some want to spend as little time thinking and talking about Trump as possible, but many are still in thrall to his base. Twenty Republican-held Senate seats will be contested in two years, and the current occupants no doubt fear primary challengers from the MAGA right if they show any sign of breaking with Trump. What’s less clear is why, given their rhetoric and behavior over the last four years, they think the country would be any worse off with Trump sycophants in their seats.

Thanks to the impeachment process they’ve been gifted by the Democrats, Senate Republicans have one last chance to break with Trump and the conspiracist authoritarianism he represents. Their opening move Tuesday was a weak one, but they still have time for a course correction when the vote on conviction takes place next month. If they won’t do it for the country, they should at least do it to save their place in the party.

Related:

Twice As Many Republicans Vote To Impeach Trump Than Democrats Voted To Remove Clinton

Newsweek

More Republicans in the House voted for the second impeachment of President Donald Trump on Wednesday than Democrats voted in favor of impeaching President Bill Clinton in 1998.

The House voted to impeach Trump in the aftermath of riots at the U.S. Capitol in January, an event many have said Trump incited, by a vote of 232-197. Four Republican members of the House declined to vote. While a majority of Republicans chose to stand behind Trump and his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, 10 GOP members decided to break ranks with Trump and call for his impeachment.

NBC News

Trump’s second impeachment was seen as the most bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history. Only 5 Democrats broke ranks to vote for impeaching Clinton. During the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868, only 7 Republicans joined with Democrats to vote in favor of Johnson’s impeachment.

A majority of the 10 Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment represent districts that voted for Trump in the 2020 election.

Ohio Republican Representative Anthony Gonzalez announced his support for impeaching Trump on Wednesday.

“When I consider the full scope of events leading up to January 6th including the President’s lack of response as the United States Capitol was under attack,” Gonzalez wrote, “I am compelled to support impeachment.”

Michigan Representative Peter Meijer, who supported a resolution to censure Trump on Tuesday, voted for impeachment on Wednesday.

Related Articles

What Does An Impeachment Vote Mean For A Sitting President And For A Former President

A president can continue governing even after he or she has been impeached by the House of Representatives.

Trump continued to govern after his impeachment in December 2019, and of course, ran for reelection in 2020. After Clinton was impeached on Dec. 19, 1998, he finished out his second term, which ended in January 2001, during which time he was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial. While Clinton continued governing, and the impeachment had no legal or official impact, his legacy is marred by the proceeding.

Gop Leader Mccarthy: Trump ‘bears Responsibility’ For Violence Won’t Vote To Impeach

Some ambitious Republican senators have never been as on board the Trump train as the more feverish GOP members in the House, and the former might be open to convicting Trump. But their ambition cuts two ways — on the one hand, voting to ban Trump opens a lane to carry the Republican mantle in 2024 and be the party’s new standard-bearer, but, on the other, it has the potential to alienate many of the 74 million who voted for Trump, and whose votes they need.

It’s a long shot that Trump would ultimately be convicted, because 17 Republicans would need to join Democrats to get the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction. But it’s growing clearer that a majority of the Senate will vote to convict him, reflecting the number of Americans who are in favor of impeachment, disapproved of the job Trump has done and voted for his opponent in the 2020 presidential election.

Correction Jan. 14, 2021

A previous version of this story incorrectly said Rep. Peter Meijer is a West Point graduate. Meijer attended West Point, but he is a graduate of Columbia University.

Republicans Who Voted To Acquit Trump Used Questions Of Constitutionality As A Cover

Following the vote, McConnell gave a scathing speech condemning Trump’s lies about election fraud as well as his actions on January 6, only moments after he supported acquittal.

That speech was emblematic of how many Republican senators approached the impeachment vote: Although GOP lawmakers were critical of the attack on January 6, they used a process argument about constitutionality in order to evade confronting Trump on his actual actions.

Effectively, because Trump is no longer in office, Republicans say the Senate doesn’t have jurisdiction to convict him of the article of impeachment. As Vox’s Ian Millhiser explained, there’s some debate over that, but most legal scholars maintain that it is constitutional for the Senate to try a former president.

“If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge,” McConnell said. McConnell, however, played an integral role in delaying the start of the trial until after Trump was no longer president.

His statement on Saturday was simply a continuation of how Republicans had previously approached Trump’s presidency: There’s been an overwhelming hesitation to hold him accountable while he was in office, and that still appears to be the case for many lawmakers.

State Department Cancels All Planned Travel By Officials To Ensure Smooth Transition

The State Department is canceling all planned travel by department officials this week, including what would have been Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s last foreign trip to Europe, as part of a departmentwide effort to ensure a smooth transition to the incoming Biden administration, Morgan Ortagus, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The cancellation order would also include a three-day trip to Taiwan planned by Kelly Craft, the ambassador to the United Nations. It would have been the first official visit by an American official after the State Department relaxed restrictions on such meetings — and it would almost certainly have angered the Chinese government, which views Taiwan as its sovereign territory.

Beijing has so far responded with characteristic bluster. The Xinhua state news agency ran an editorial this week calling Mr. Pompeo “the worst secretary of state in history,” while The Global Times, a state-backed tabloid, said he was pushing the Taiwan issue “deeper down the road of no return.”

The abrupt order comes as United States allies are making clear that they believe that Mr. Pompeo and President Trump presided over the most far-reaching damage in decades to America’s traditional role as an exemplar of democracy.

Mr. Pompeo has not acknowledged Mr. Trump’s role in inciting the rioters who laid siege to the Capitol last week. And just weeks before, Mr. Pompeo had suggested that Mr. Trump won an election that he lost.

Democrats Introduce A Measure To Remove Lawmakers Who Tried To Overturn The Election

Progressive House Democrats on Monday introduced legislation that would allow a committee to investigate and potentially expel Republican lawmakers who had participated in efforts to subvert the results of the November election.

The legislation would direct the House ethics committee to “investigate, and issue a report on” lawmakers who had sought to overturn the election, and to determine if they “should face sanction, including removal from the House of Representatives.”

House lawmakers can be expelled from their seats under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies elected officials who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.

Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, began drafting the bill as she and other House lawmakers sheltered in place during the storming of the Capitol last week. The resolution, which has 47 co-sponsors, names Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri as leaders of the effort by 147 Republicans to overturn the results of the election.

Ms. Bush said in an interview that she did not know ultimately how many members of Congress should be expelled, but expected to learn the number from an investigation of the Ethics Committee.

“Even if it’s just a few, we have to make sure the message is clear that you cannot be a sitting Congress member and incite an insurrection and work to overturn an election,” she said.

House Votes To Impeach Trump But Senate Trial Unlikely Before Biden’s Inauguration

9. Rep. John Katko, New York’s 24th: Katko is a moderate from an evenly divided moderate district. A former federal prosecutor, he said of Trump: “It cannot be ignored that President Trump encouraged this insurrection.” He also noted that as the riot was happening, Trump “refused to call it off, putting countless lives in danger.”

10. Rep. David Valadao, California’s 21st: The Southern California congressman represents a majority-Latino district Biden won 54% to 44%. Valadao won election to this seat in 2012 before losing it in 2018 and winning it back in the fall. He’s the rare case of a member of Congress who touts his willingness to work with the other party. Of his vote for impeachment, he said: “President Trump was, without question, a driving force in the catastrophic events that took place on January 6.” He added, “His inciting rhetoric was un-American, abhorrent, and absolutely an impeachable offense.”

Enhanced Security Measures For The Inauguration Are Starting Earlier Than Planned

With the resignation of Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary for the Homeland Security Department, on Monday, the task of coordinating the security of the upcoming inauguration, will now fall to Peter T. Gaynor, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who will replace Mr. Wolf for the remaining days in the Trump administration.

The Secret Service, which falls under the Homeland Security Department, is leading the security operations for the event on Jan. 20, and officials are bracing for heightened threats of violence.

Before his resignation, Mr. Wolf announced that enhanced security measures would begin on Jan. 13 instead of Jan. 19 as initially planned.

Mr. Wolf said he did so “in light of events of the past week and the evolving security landscape leading up to the inauguration.”

On Saturday, the mayor of Washington, Muriel E. Bowser, sent a firmly worded letter to the Department of Homeland Security, asking officials to move up security operations and requesting a disaster declaration, which would free federal funding for the inauguration. President Trump granted the request on Monday night.

Ms. Bowser’s call to action came as law enforcement officers in several states made arrests related to the assault on the Capitol.

The National Guard plans to deploy up to 15,000 troops to the nation’s capital for the inauguration.

Would Impeachment Prevent Trump From Seeking Office In The Future Its Complicated

With just days remaining in his term, House Democrats have introduced an article of impeachment in Congress charging President Trump for a second time with committing “high crimes and misdemeanors,” this time for his role in inciting a mob that stormed the Capitol last week.

Impeaching a president with less than two weeks left in his term presents an extraordinary challenge. But if Mr. Trump is impeached in the House and subsequently convicted by a two-thirds vote in the Senate and removed from office, the Senate could then vote to bar him from ever holding office again.

The Constitution says that the Senate, after voting to convict an impeached president, can consider “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.” This would be determined by a second vote, requiring only a simple majority of senators to successfully disqualify him from holding office in the future. Such a vote could be appealing not just to Democrats but also possibly to many Republicans who have set their sights on the presidency.

Mr. Trump, who is said to be contemplating another run for president in 2024, has just eight days remaining in office, presenting an impeachment timeline for congressional Democrats that is tight, but not impossible. As soon as the House votes to adopt an article of impeachment, it can immediately transmit it to the Senate, which must promptly begin a trial.

[griseovis]

SUPER IMPORTANT PSA.  

I hoped to avoid this, but it appears as if it’s unavoidable.

I don’t want to call this a callout post because the point of this is to prevent others from becoming involved in similar situations with this particular person. So, instead, this is an official cautionary post informing people of the behavior of user tax//idoitis. Although they keep changing their url a lot because they have a notable tendency to do so, you can always discover what it is by looking at the tag pilgri//mbound ( a former url of theirs ). I warned them I’d have no choice but to do this if they kept visiting my blog, and they did precisely that.

I met this individual back in Summer / Fall of last year. They discovered my multimuse blog and approached me. We started writing and everything seemed okay. Until it didn’t. Eventually, odd things started to occur. For instance, another user accused them of stealing their OC’s backstory and they ( the problematic person ) came to me about it. Not knowing I’d find myself in the shoes of the accuser / victim months later, I comforted them but pointed out the fact that they didn’t respond as well as they could have to the accusation by further pestering the accuser. This recent situation has made me 100% sure that accusation was correct, by the way. Anyhow, after that, they then started doing odd things regarding me. For instance, changing their url to resemble mine. When I approached them to address the matter, they even revealed an awareness of the potentiality of me being made uncomfortable by the change prior to making it and after. As is their tendency to do, they “apologized” but tried to justify it. They did end up changing their url to something else, but the conscious creation of the problem and the manner in which they handled it didn’t sit well with me at all. Not too long thereafter, they did something else that basically served as the final straw and I told them we needed to part ways. We did go our separate ways. Or so I thought. It should have ended there.

As you can guess, it didn’t. Someone followed my multi not too long ago and the mun inquired about writing together. As mentioned in my rules, I’m terrible at recognizing people. I always treat the mun of a new blog / a blog I’ve never interacted with before as if they’re a new person / a stranger. Unless they tell me otherwise ( which most usually know to do ) or I just so happen to get lucky and recognize them. So, especially since they ( deliberately ) made themselves seem like someone I’d never interacted with before, I assumed this was someone new. They said they were interested in interacting with my Rey, so I directed them to this blog. Something I now deeply wish I hadn’t done. They followed and for a good amount of time, it was just silence. I hadn’t followed back because they hadn’t approached. When they did, I browsed their blog to try to get a good understanding / awareness of their writing style. I needed to figure out whether our styles were compatible. I noticed something odd that made me backtrack and decide against interacting with this person. Not only were they incorrectly using fundamental words such as its and it’s, but they were using complex words that I use but haven’t seen anyone else us. They were also incorrectly using those words. Like wielding a sword without having had any practice at all or really understanding how to use it. Typically, those who aren’t native English speakers but write in English stick with what they know and they use proper grammar. Their writing is smooth, comprehensible, and tasteful. At least, this is the case with those I’ve written and met. Yes, native and non-native English speakers alike make mistakes. However, there is an enormous difference between the occassional blunder and consistently making the exact same mistakes. Also, combining poor grammar with complex words ( when used incorrectly at that ) is jarring. Something is fundamentally wrong with that, but it’s difficult to sufficiently put it into words. In any case, I politely declined and told them our styles were incompatible. To which, they said they understood. At that point, they could have mentioned I’d written with them in the past, but they didn’t. Why? I strongly believe it’s because they remember I told them in the past we couldn’t interact and were trying to manipulate my perception so that I’d unknowingly write with them again. Unknowing in the sense that I’d be under the impression I was writing with someone else. Anyhow, I thought we were done and that that would be the end of that. I blocked, because what I saw on their blog sent off warning flags in my mind. It was the natural assumption, but I failed to realize there’s nothing natural about this situation or what they’re doing.

Skip ahead several days later and I receive an anonymous message from this same person. Once more, pretending to be someone aside from the roleplayer I’d interacted with in Summer / Fall. Saying they were the same person I told no just days ago from then, they said that ’ while they understand I’d declined due to incompatible writing styles, they were asking if I’d reconsider’. What exactly did they understand? From where I stand, they merely acknowledged that I said ‘no’ but decided to disregard it. This is the point where I should mention that they have nothing against disregarding the wishes of others. They’re not against showing disrespect and justifying it. If that weren’t enough, this same person sent that message on anon because I blocked them. Instead of bothering to respond to a message that would have forced my hand in responding publicly, I made a PSA under a read more. This person deliberately went on to the blog, clicked the read more, read the PSA, and wrote an indirect response to it on their blog that basically treated my post as a callout post, which it wasn’t. Nowhere at all - neither in the post itself or in the tags - was their url mentioned. At that point, I installed a tracker that a good friend here recommended. I mentioned the situation, and guess what happened? Apparently, this person has made 50+ visits to my blog underneath around 12 or more IP addresses over the past week alone. Since I’ve been blocking IP addresses of theirs as they’ve come along, they’d had to somehow make a plethora of IP addresses to bypass the blocks as if they see it all as some game. If that isn’t unsettling and intrusive behavior, I don’t know what is. Since this mess is becoming ridiculously exhausting and tiring, I decided to message them and resolve things civilly. Turns out, they have no shame about sending that pushy message. They tried to justify it. In that same conversation, they made a false accusation about me despite not having a shred of proof at all and then revealed who they were. They only mentioned then that we’d written before. When I suggest parting ways with someone, I don’t mean come back in a number of months and I’ll give you another chance. I mean stay as far away as possible for the sake of my health and happiness. Regardless, they said they’d stop visiting my blog, but then blocked me for some reason.

Guess what they did this morning? Not once, but multiple times under two new IP addresses did they visit before I had to get up and leave for work. I took a moment to politely ask them to stop from a different account, but they blocked. The person is incapable of guilt, shame, and regret.

In summary, this isn’t a traditional callout post, but rather a cautionary post to other people since no one deserves to go through this. I’m not saying don’t interact with them. The decision is yours to make, of course. I just want people to be aware of the kind of trouble they might encounter should they decide to interact with them. Odds are, given their growing track record of stalking my blog, they’ll inevitably seek out this post and read it unfortunately. It’s just a matter of time. Also, this blog of mine isn’t the only one they’ve been “visiting” too much either. 

Here are just some of my receipts. Ironically and unsurprisingly, the problematic person stopped by the blog while I was putting this together. Although it probably doesn’t make much of a difference since they keep inventing new IP addresses, I’ve blocked out the IP addresses. As you can imagine, having to see this each day is infuriating. 

[encounter21]

When the Bodies hit the Floor: PvP and You

Everyone defines PvP differently, but at its core it is players working against other players. I find it one of the most enjoyable aspects of larp, but it is a deeply divisive topic. To a lot of people, PvP is a dirty word, evoking pointless deaths ('toilet muggings', as the UK larp lingo goes), however it can (and does) add alot to certain types of games. It is also important to understand that it encompasses a much wider range of behaviors that stabbing someone up in a dark corner. Having said that, there are some things to think about before including PvP as part of your game, both as a player and a game runner.

What PvP is: I (and thus this blog) define PvP as players working directly against other players. I always split it  into two categories dependent on the methods being used: violent and social. Violent PvP involves stabbing people up, and is by far the most straightforward. It’s worth noting that this violence is almost always intended to be lethal. Social PvP is the act of using non-violent means to work against other players. It encompasses rumors, political cartoons, shouting down, political maneuvering, lying, manipulation, etc. It is by far the most common form, but it easily be just as lethal as direct violence in the right setting (Think Cersei in Game of Thrones. She is never the one holding the knife).

What PvP is not: I am not talking about people who simply go around killing other characters for no reason. Personally I think this is a bit of a strawman anyway; though character motivations are not always obvious, the majority of people still have them. FOIP can often make it hard to find out people's motives, and it’s very easy for hurt feelings to cloud judgment, but it always worth taking a step back from the situation. I personally recommend talking over things at debrief if you still have some negative feelings about it. You might not get closure depending on the game, but it is a good step in reinforcing your IC/OC boundaries. The other thing to remember is that PvP is rarely civil, which is where it differs from conflict. Conflict is when two players disagree, PvP is when they *do* something about it. A discussion is rarely going to be PvP,  A shouting match will almost always be.

Why I dislike systems with blanket PvP bans: I agree that violent PvP doesn’t belong in every system, however I think it must be remembered that UK larp is not a collaborative story telling exercise. It is at its core competitive (in much the way real life is). Everyone has goals. Conflict is 100% necessary for a decent game. Making this kind of conflict unacceptable on an OC level causes problems. For one thing, people all define PvP differently. While it is a term that is used everywhere, I have never found a consensus on its meaning, which means certain actions will be considered as cheating by some people and not others. So let’s say you solve this with a no Violent PvP rule. For some games this is a good approach (so long as it is clearly stated. Never expect your players to read your mind), but not all. I am not advocating for completely lawless systems; consequences are a large part of Larp. However, I larp to escape feeling helpless. I can always be proactive in larp. Sometimes knowing PvP is an option (even if it’s a very dangerous, bad one) is that little extra detail that stops you feeling trapped. Having had a lot of problems with sexism at games, knowing that if things got truly unbearable *I could* address it IC (with horrific consequences of course) was the only thing keeping me sane. Think about what works for your games, but before instituting a blanket ban think about why you are doing so, and what you gain.

Harsh IC consequences are often enough to stop motiveless pvp,but leave options open for people willing to take the risk.    

Bullying, Boundaries and PvP: Unfortunately, PvP can occasionally be used as an excuse to bully people, both in and out of character. By all means, play a dick, but there is an art in knowing just where that line is. Larp is meant to be fun. And while conflict and losing are part of that fun, there are times you need to take a step back and think about both the IC and OC implications of what you are doing. For example, picking on someone who has never larped before is not the same as going after a very experienced roleplayer. Of course, it can be difficult to tell the difference, and I’m not saying you should let new players get away with everything regardless of IC motivation, characterisation etc. But you should be considerate of OC factors. Similarly if you know someone has just had lots of upset with a real-life partner cheating, perhaps don’t rub similar experiences in their face in game. Its legitimate roleplay, but also makes you kind of a dick. PvP can be done in more than one way, and some is much more interesting to interact with (as the victim, or even as a bystander) than others. For example, what to do if there is someone you don’t like in your tent. You could kick them out. This is an acceptable form of social pvp, but it is a short action that has no further interaction. The person you have kicked out is gone. You could alternately let them stay but make lots of snide comments, and make it clear they aren’t welcome. This interaction will last longer thus providing more roleplay for everyone involved and also allows for much more reaction (and retaliation) on their part. While PvP is inherently healthy for most systems, there is more than one way to skin a cat. And the method that involves the most roleplay for the most people is generally the best one. If you are really unsure about boundaries, talk to people OC about them. But be warned, although people often get very upset about PvP, this doesn’t inherently mean you did something wrong; character death is often a very emotional subject. Debriefing with people afterwards is generally a good plan if your game allows for it.

There are no hard and fast rules, but I do suggest thinking about things before you do them. Good questions to ask are: Will this create game? How would I react if this was done to my character? Are there any OC factors I should take into account? Do I have a good IC reason to do this? Am I willing to deal with the (inevitable) retaliation?

Unilateral PvP: If you involve yourself in any form of PvP, you need to be ready for PvP to be aimed back at you. This is not a general statement, it is a fundamental truth. I have run several games where people have indicated they love pvp but also asked never to be targeted. This is an impossible state of affairs for a couple of reasons.

1) Anyone being immune robs all other players involved of their player agency. There must always be a way to fight back.

2) You really should not be dishing things out that you are unwilling to deal with yourself. If you think being on the receiving end of PvP is a terrible thing that will ruin your game, then perhaps you should not be inflicting it on others.

Personally, my best character deaths have all been at the hands of other players, and losing at such conflicts is as much of my definition of PvP as being the one with the dagger (or blackmail information). It is not everyone’s jam. And that’s fine. There is nothing inherently good or bad about liking different sorts of games, but part of player agency is there being consequences to actions. After all, actions are meaningless if they do not have any sort of impact. And in the case of PvP those consequences will almost certainly come in the form of more PvP. You can not play a violent, aggressive character who shouts at everyone and expect no one to take issue.

Knives-out, Knives-in: Group design and PvP: Some people don’t like PvP, and that is perfectly fair. And if people want to avoid PvP in their games that is perfectly legit. When you are designing a group for a game, I recommend having one of two policies: Knives-in (intergroup PvP is legit) or Knives-out (The group are a unit, unless something really dramatic changes in uptime all conflict should be pointed outwards). If you agree your group is Knives-out, you should do what you can to keep it that way. Sometimes characters evolve and change in a way that this becomes impossible (if your IC sister steals your IC girlfriend you don’t need to sit there and take it without comment), but you should never go out of your way to break a knives-out rule. Betrayal is absolutely some people's jam, but other people hate it. If they are in a knives-out group, chances are they hate it. OC communication is really really important for this. My first group concept one of my friends was secretly playing a nightmare cultist the whole time and betrayed me horribly leading to my character’s death. I was 100% cool with this. And it worked because she knew I was down for a knives-in group. However I have friends where something like that would have ruined their entire game. And that’s fair. The important thing is making sure everyone is on the same page. I would state however, having a knives-out group doesn’t mean the rest of your group are obliged to go along with whatever you do. Conflict can still exist. People will still play their characters, you might not all agree on every point. It just means PvP and betrayal will be the nuclear option (Think of it in terms of real world friendships. I don’t agree with everything my friends do. I am happy to tell this to them, but I don’t undermine them, pick fights or put them in bad situations on purpose).

Roundup: As always, the most important things are IC/OC boundaries and Communication. When you are involving yourself in PvP just take a second to think about motives (were you just stabbed in the dark? Ask yourself why someone might want to do that) and make sure conflict stays inside the game. If you get a chance to debrief with people you have pvp (or really any sort of intense RP with) then do so, even if it’s just a chat over messenger.

TL:DR

No one really agrees on what PvP actually is

So it’s best to use a broad definition of: Anytime you are working directly against other PCs

Never dish out anything you aren’t willing to take

Think about what is fun for both parties and how to make PvP inclusive rather than exclusive

OC communication is key, make sure you debreif.

PvP is not a dirty word

[ethelindawrites]

TV Review: BBC Sherlock, Season 4

Heads up, this one is long and chock full of spoilers below the cut. TL;DR – As a long-time BBC Sherlock fan, I am disappointed with Season 4.

I will say upfront that I was able to largely enjoy each episode of Season 4 as I was watching it. The acting was still excellent, and there were certainly scenes and parts of episodes that were fantastic. But once I had seen them all and had a chance to step back and look at the season as a whole, I had more and more problems with it. Ultimately, I am disappointed in the writers for not really living up to their own standards, which they set quite high during the first three seasons.

To be honest, I was worried about this season from the moment that Moffat and Gatiss started making public comments that season 4 was going to be especially “dark.” My worries were not unfounded. Let me see if I can articulate what I mean.

Some stories (whether books, movies, or TV shows) are dark stories. By this, I would generally mean a story where the plot or overall context of the world the story is set in necessitate that bad things are going to happen to many of the characters: some of them may die or be killed; many will suffer violence, possibly very brutal violence, either physical or mental; they may have to make choices or do things that go against their beliefs; a happy ending is not guaranteed.

Season 4 of Sherlock certainly fits this definition. The problem is that, at least for me, the previous three seasons do not set this up. There is nothing in the first nine episodes of the series which necessitates the events of the last three, which is very problematic for the story as a whole.

I would contrast this with a story that is and is meant to be a dark story. I may not have a lot of really good examples here, since I do not myself prefer dark stories and don’t tend to watch/read many of them. From what I know of it, Game of Thrones probably falls into this category. I would categorize much of Anne Bishop’s writing (the Black Jewels series, the Ephemera trilogy) as darker stories, albeit set up so that any happy endings which do occur are earned and make sense in the context of the story. For both of those series, the characters are fighting civilization- or world-destroying levels of evil, and so the fact that a great deal of suffering occurs is expected and makes sense in the context of the story. In the realm of movies, V for Vendetta comes to mind. The characters are fighting a brutal dictatorship, and must become brutal themselves in many ways, in order to survive and accomplish their goals. Here again, the darkness of the story is expected, and fitting.

The Sherlock Holmes stories do not fall into this category.

There are dark moments, and dark things that sometimes happen, in any incarnation of the Sherlock Holmes stories – obviously, since they are detective stories often centered around trying to solve murders. But as a whole, the Sherlock Holmes universe is not a brutally dark universe, and that is not the tone that the stories take.

BBC Sherlock has been, from the beginning, probably a bit darker take on the series than the original stories were (although not by much, from my memory of reading them some years back). It is more realistic, in a way, being set in modern times, and there were certainly dark parts in the first three seasons (again, murders, plus a crazy criminal mastermind). None of that was a problem, because they still felt like Sherlock Holmes stories.

For whatever reason, Moffat and Gatiss decided that that was no longer good enough, and that season 4 needed to be “darker.” I strongly believe that this was a mistake, and indeed will always be a mistake for any story that is not already set up in a darker world or universe.

In order to achieve their goal of “darker,” the writers seem to have decided that the plot of season 4 should be “make John and Sherlock suffer as much as possible, in every way, conceivable or not.” This goal then trumped all other considerations, including (in my opinion): plot, characterization in general, meaningful character interaction in many cases, and proper closure of various storylines. (Here come the spoilers.)

As best I can tell, Mary Watson is killed (in this manner and at this point in the story) for the sole purpose of making John suffer, so that Sherlock has to suffer in order to get John back. John is (in a manner that struck me as extremely out of character) “unfaithful” to Mary by text-flirting with a random lady on the bus (which turns out to be a setup, of course, but that doesn’t change John’s choices). This out-of-character-ness seems to have been done mainly so that John can feel guiltier when Mary dies so that he can be angrier at Sherlock. John has to be angry at Sherlock so that Sherlock is forced to “go to hell” in order to convince John that he needs John’s help and John should come back to save him.

The character of Eurus, similarly, is introduced solely for the purpose of putting Sherlock, John, and Mycroft through hell in the last episode. She has no other presence in the story prior to this season (that I can recall, someone feel free to correct me if I missed something in the earlier seasons, which is possible), and no other purpose in the story at all.

(I should say that I don’t fundamentally have a problem with the introduction of a third Holmes sibling; the original stories do include a brief mention of a third brother, Sherrinford. Since we don’t actually know anything about Sherrinford, obviously the writers have some leeway in making up this third sibling character, and the gender-switch doesn’t particularly matter. ETA: Apparently, I am incorrect about Sherrinford being canon! My mistake. I'm now trying to remember why I did think it was canon.)

But to make her be a complete psychopath that Sherlock has utterly forgotten about? Whom Mycroft is idiotic enough to keep alive for years after it becomes clear that she is a danger to everyone around her? Who was somehow able to set up this twisted game for them to play, resulting in the deaths of yet more people, which Sherlock and Mycroft between them are not smart enough to get out of?

I’m sorry, but my suspension of disbelief only goes so high.

The first two episodes mostly make sense, inasmuch as they are predicated on what I consider to be the unnecessary event of Mary’s death. There are some continuity issues, specifically from the end of the first episode: Molly gives Sherlock a letter that John wrote him, and Sherlock goes to see John’s old therapist. Presumably these events have some kind of importance, but they are never mentioned again, and do not appear to have impacted the story at all. What was the point of those scenes? Still, the immediate plots of each episode can be followed, and the main mysteries are explained.

For me, at least (and I know I am not alone in this), the last episode does not make any sense.

The whole point of the Sherlock Holmes stories is that we are meant to get an explanation at the end; the mystery is meant to be solved. The Final Problem does none of that. How has Sherlock recovered from his addiction so quickly? How do he and Mycroft and John get out of the explosion at Baker Street without any serious injuries? Why does Sherlock (also rather out of character, in my opinion) ignore John’s “Vatican Cameos” warning? If the airplane is a metaphor/fantasy in Eurus’ head, then who is the little girl that Sherlock is actually talking to throughout her “game”? (Obviously there could be an explanation for this, but that explanation is not given to us, the viewers.) When Victor Trevor went missing, why on earth was a proper search not conducted for him, and why did no adult think to check the well? (Sherlock obviously knows where the well is when he goes to rescue John, so it doesn’t seem to have been a secret.) Why the hell is Eurus still being kept alive after all of this?

None of these things are explained, and we are simply meant to accept at the end that Sherlock starts spending time with his sister in spite of all the evil things she has done, and that everything between Sherlock and John is back to business as usual, with no discussion of what has happened between them, or apologies, or anything. We can, perhaps, assume that they had those conversations, but we are not shown them.

Personally, I liked that Sherlock was more emotional during this season (and to a certain extent in season 3). He is older, wiser, and more understanding that emotion is not the handicap that he once believed it was. Since I’m a firm believer that the rationality-emotion dichotomy is a false one, it was gratifying to see a character learn and grow and move away from that. But given that growth in Sherlock’s character, and after everything they have been through both separately and together, I believe we deserved to see an honest conversation between John and Sherlock about how much they care about each other, and what they wanted from life together going forward. We did not get that conversation, and that is deeply disappointing to me.

Overall, I think it is always a mistake to try and make a story “dark” just for the sake of making it dark. When you do that with a story that doesn’t need it, then you are likely to fall back on making your characters suffer just for the hell of it, and in order to make that happen, the rest of your story will necessarily suffer too. Unfortunately, Season 4 of Sherlock turned out to be a clear example of this.

Okay, I will stop there. I’ve been obsessing about this in my head for several weeks now, so I thought it was probably better to get it written down. Some will undoubtedly disagree with me about much of this, and that’s fine, but I needed to get my own thoughts out. I am still a fan of the series, and would certainly recommend the first three seasons and the Christmas special. I will probably watch season 4 again, just to make sure that I wasn’t missing things that would help to explain some of these issues, but after that, I don’t know how much I will be rewatching season 4.

~Ethelinda