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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Prince of Wishful Thinking (Tom Retrospective): Tough Love or The True Monster

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Prince of Wishful Thinking, what is usually my look at the life and times of Tom Lucitor but since I NEED to cover the season 3 finale as vital part of Tom’s story, we’re taking one last look at the tragic tale of Meteora Butterfly before the finale sends these two stories hurtling together. You’d THINK this would be the last detour of this already sizeable arc.. and you’d be wrong as i’ll also be covering Kelly’s World, as I feel it’s vital for both “Curse of the Blood Moon” and “A Boy and his hard to remember title”, as it provides extra context for Marco’s anguish in the former.. and provides extra evidence for why a CERTAIN MOMENT in the latter pisses me off to no end.. seriously even when as universe dies and the only people left are Frankllin Richards and Galactus, there will still be a little note reading “Fuck how they treated Kelly” written in all caps so Galactus remembers to yell it.

So sadly that DOES mean it’s been three entries in this retrospective in a row that either haven’t feature Tom at all or in the case of the last episode only had him in short cameos. I mean we did get his love affair for pie but we also got a creepy goblin man forcing his girlfriend and best friend to kiss each other, his best friend being WAY to eager to jump to that conclusion, and neither considering using Marco’s Scissors because the writers only remember he has those half the time in Season 3... and clearly I ddn’t either as I forgot to mention that plot hole, something @jess-the-vampire brought up to me. Sadly I DID forget to consult on this when we talked earlier this week , and she’s not online as I write this so I won’t have her insight for this one.

But if you want some Tom content, i’m happy to share my crossover ship for the boy with you. I’ve been shipping him with Octavia from Helluva Boss lately. Because of course it’s Helluva Boss, i’ve not been at all subtle with my obession with it and much like Letterkenny, X-Men and Dragon Ball Z Abriged it is a love I never plan to be subtle about.

But I just think they compliment each other well: They have contrasting atittudes, and tastes in music, but seem like they’d share hobbies. Like taxidermy.. I could see Tom buying this... demonic combination of a badger, a skunk, a deer and my nightmares Octavia is preciously holding up.

Granted I also feel tom would both animate them with their dead souls.. and then use his new woodland friends of the dammned as a chorus to sing “Can You Picture That” from the Muppet Movie, because that’s what my mind does on a regular day. I think the contrasting attitude creates great chemstiry and it made me also realize I have a thing for ships with directly contrasting home lives. Tom has two loving decent parents who deeply love one another and at worst simply didn’t reign in his worse behavior because it was standard for demon stuff. Octavia in contrast simply has two parents, one who DOES love her and tries his best, but his best includes calling his side piece “My big dicked blitzy” right in front of her and hiring said side piece to guard them, and her mother who clearly thinks so little of her daughter’s emotional well being she hired a cowboy to shoot her daddy dead in the middle of a large crowd. The point is I think they’d be adorable and they both badly need to be happy after being emotionally fucked over by people they care about.

But alas my new ship will have to wait as we marginally important things to get down too.. things that will impact both this season and the next’s endgame and utterly destroy Eclipsa and Moon’s relationship for good. Sound fun? Well if so join me under the cut won’t you?

We open in the Pidgeon Kingdom.. and things aren’t exactly great.. and by that I mean Meteora stomped a hole through it and ravaged the place and Rich demands blood.. and vengance.. and possibly blood vengance. But not Tekken Blood Vengance.. he already has like 5 copies of that on dvd. Still needs it on Blu Ray though, hook him up if you got it.

So Moon and Eclipsa are trying to smooth this over/find out which way did she go George which way did she go, and are angrily dismissed after they try Rich’s patience, not helped by Eclipsa not being familiar with the Pidgeon Kingdom because they hadn’t slaughtered everyone who used to live there yet. Look that’s what happened, Star outright mentions in the Big Book of Spells that htey suddenly sprung up where another kingdom was and no one knows what happens. There was some bird murders up in that place.. or birdur if you will. Some birds drank some human blood. This is what Alfred Hitchock tried to warn us about with his film built on horrifying actress abuse.

The point is with some more pidgeon-led murder stabbings on the cards our heroines are trying to find her since their attempts to convince Rich not to go on an Archer Style Rampage fell on deaf ears.

But it’s clear from the second the two are alone both have diffrent priorties: Eclipsa desperatley wants to find the daughter she lost and talk her down from what sh’es become, help her become better and hopefuly heal from the pain she’s been in. She’s lost her husband, her kingdom and centuries. She can’t loose her baby girl too.

Moon on the other hand... clearly has no intrest in helping Meteora or stopping this peacefully. Her first thought is stopping Meteora. Her living through it is not necessary. It’s also clear her racisim isn’t REMOTELY gone depsite Buff Frog and Star’s best attempts and despite learning just how deeply and horribly Mewni’s engrained racism has hurt eclipsa and destoryed Moon’s own family history. To Moon this is just a big monster to fight.. i’ll dive into this more in a bit.

For now our heroines encounter an angry mob. This time their not here for Homer Simpson, but for Meteora as her rampages have destroyd their towns, livelehoods and given some weird guy a hat. It’s the best bit of the episode and i’m embarassed I forgot it happened.

So with them being no help our queens back out but end up finding some actual help: Eddie! You know the guy from the episode I skipped over... River’s cousin or something like that. He dosen’t have a wiki entry, I do not know why. He’s voiced by Rhys Dharby of Flight of the Conchords Fame whose since made quite the career as a voice actor. No major roles yet that i’m aware of, but a lot of delightful minor ones like this. It’s good to see him he was one of the highlights of that show and not just because he sang this..

youtube

Eddie showed up in the Bog Beast of Boggabah and I honestly forgot he was in this episode.. but again, it’s Rhys Dharby. It’s not like suddenly finding out “Aw god dammit Pauly Shore is in this”. So Eddie agrees to help as he’s been tracknig Meteora.. and we find out something troubling: Meteora is getting BIGGER. Gradually, to the point the bog from said episode Is skipped over is drained because she DRANK IT. We also get a great exchange “I’d hate to see the size of her mother” “Actually her father more than helped with that”

Awwwww.... seriously Esme Blanco is a national treasure and has some great deliveries in this one.. and some heartbreaking ones. But before we can get to that it turns out Meteora sucked the powers out of Eddies family.. who he misses..e xcept one guy> That guy can fuck right off. Seriously Eddie is also a national treasure and I wish he’d shown up in season 4. I mean he couldn’t of HURT it. For one it’s Rhys Dharby and for another that season shot itself in the face, both feet, the groin and then the face again enough that I don’t think anything could hurt it as bad as the writers already did.

But sadly we say farwell to Eddie as he goes out how men have since the begining of time.. deciding to poke a strange creature till it murdered him. Or took his soul out in this case, speaking of which...

Yeah while I couldn’t get Jess in time for this review, she did bring this up in the past: Meteora’s ablility to pull a

Comes right the fuck out of nowhere with no build up and no explination for it. She DID drain personalites and according to this episode youth.. but that was with a big ole machine. It MIGHT have been intended to be one of Globgor’s powers.. but that makes zero sense, as if he COULD do that, as we saw with Toffee last season when he had that power, also out of nowhere but at least it made a touch more sense given his power was draining magical energy anyway at the time, so adding souls to that isn’t a huge stretch, but as we saw that would’ve been game over for the comission, especially since we DO see him fighting them one on three next season. If he had this power, he wouldn’t be in crystal and I think they realized that, but just tried to act as if his daugther COULDN’T do that and assumed everyone would casually forget. And I get not accounting for me writing about this years later, even I wouldn’t of thought that, but not counting on fans both young and old to latch onto a continuity error? Have you met fandoms Disney, have you? It dosen’t bring the story down entirely and I get WHY ti’s there, so she can nonlethally kill people so we’re not down most of the cast for Season 4, but it feels like an easy win button and one she barely uses despite it being eye beam activated. It should be easy enough to pull, boom, soul suck, win, rinse and repeat. It’s okay to have uber powerful tequniques but they have to have a drawback. For instance the Kaioken from DBZ. It’s a really damn cool technique that gives the user a neat red aura and amplifies poewr.. but the more you amplify the more strain it puts on your body and the more likely you’ll die, and Super later creatively explained why it hadn’t been used since Super Sayian was introduced because said form would’ve sped it up so much it’d be too much for a body to take. Here whie Meteora dosen’t use it in EVERY fight, she uses it enough that it makes no sense this isn’t just her first move for every fight she gets into, mental breakdown or not.

That being said Meteora’s current mental state as she talks to her mother, having regressed to talking in only a few words and acting like a child, makes perfect sense. Henious already wasn’t in great mental shape to begin with, having a slow sustained breakdown since Marco overthrew her. and now on top of this she remembers her whole life has been a lie, starts to mutate into her natural state at a rapid and likely unehalthy pace, and then finds out on top of all of this Mewni is rightfully owed to her. Given she ended last episode blowing a guy up for rejecting her, it’s not a stretch that given even more power and no time to process anything, Metora would deteroate further.

Esme and Jessica really knock this scene out of the park as Eclipsa presents Metora with her old doll Bobo and gently trying ot talk to her.. but you also get the fear Eclipsa feels as she tries to awkardly manuver around the fact her daughter is far more unhinged than she was prepared for, even threanting Eclipsa simply because Eclipsa wanted to be called mother instead of mommy. But despite this fear.. Eclipsa wants to help and Walter beautifuly captured metoera as a hulk like tragic figure:a being with low sanity and too much power desperate to be loved by the one person it cares about. And it makes it even more heartbreaking as Eclipsa explains what happened: bad people trapped her , a disfunctoinal society with a racist queen and even more racist subjects has taken hold in her absence... and it’s clear both want opposite things: Meteora wants what sh’es owed, her family back on the throne and Mewni back in her graps, but has lost herself so much to rage, anger and insanity she can’t see it’s not hers to take, while Eclipsa.. just wants her daughter back. She’d be happy just settling down with her and having a LIFE after hers was taken away. Eclipsa just wants a chance to be with what family she has left. It just HURTS to know that despite RIGHTFULLY hating the comission, despite having eveyr reason to take the crown from Moon by force and make the world better by force.. she dosen’t want that. She just wants some peace. It’s selfish... but it’s hard not to be when you havealmost nothing to hold onto. Eclipsa has lost her legacy, her husband and her crown... Meteora is all she has and all she wants and sh’ed of been happy if she just accepted that. If that was enough.

But the real telling part, and the thing that ultimately makes this go as bad as it does.. is Moon’s reactions to all of this. Sh’es CONFUSED by Meteora having a toy as if that’s foreign to her a monster would, and she’s cleaerly livid , if restrianing it, at both Meteora’s deire for the crown and Eclipsa RIGHTFULLY calling out the state of how things are, and mildly at that. Despite seeing how much damage Mewni’s inherent racisim has done, how it lead to her living a lie, ruined Eclipss, Globgore and Metora’s lives, despite how DESPERTLY her daughter struggles to fight against it, despite seeing firsthand that Monsters can have famiies and lives... she can’t let it go. She can’t see monsters as people. SHe dosen’t see a flawed person who was turned into a metpohrical monster by years of brainwashing and abuse and is slowly unravling under the weight of her true self.. she just sees a threat to her kingdom. She dosen’t see her kingdom as racist, just as it should be. And she dosen’t see herself as stepping down like hse damn well should’ve the MOMENT she found out everything. Because at her heart Moon can’t accept the truth and clings to her racisim.

And that my friends.. is what ultimately leads to Tragedy. Not Meteora’s unraveling mental state, not Eclipsa’s naitvite. What happens next is ENITRELY Moon’s fault. Whle Eclipsa was failing to get through to Metora, she was trying her best and might of gotten somewhere.. but Moon was already settling to attack.. and does so, making it look like Eclipsa set her own child up.

A fight ensues, a suprisingly even one... but Eclipsa breaks it up and PROVES her way could’ve worked. In one of Esme’s best performances sshe tearfully tells her daughter she loves her.. that ALL she wants is time with her to make up for what she’s lost.. she dosen’t need a kingdom or her crown or her wand, all things she DESERVES... she just wants her daughter. She just wants to help her baby girl before she goes so far down this path of hatred and vengance she’s alreayd well trod upon there is no point to return to.

It gets through to Meteora, makes her stop... and Moon TAKES ADANTAGE OF THAT. She then restrains metoera with a magical rock barrier and starts palpatineing her to death. It’s a horrifying moment that ultimately shows who Moon really is.. that when given the chance to let Meteora go, let her CHANGE and grow as a person and help the kingdom.. she instead tries to kill her. When she’s no longer a threat, hasn’t seriously hurt her in their fight, and could use her power to RESTORE the damage she’s done, fix what she’s broken and help the kingdom grow and mend the bridges racisim has torn down. But all she can see is a monster, and something to destroy.. not someONE to save.

So Eclipsa does what Moon would do if it were star about to die and saves her daughter, desperatly trying to stop mooon.. and allowing Meteora to get a clear shot and take half of moon’s soul. While Eclipsa is able to stop her from taking the full thing, Moon is left disoreinted and half alive and leaves on insticnt to parts unknown while Meteora escapes. Eclipsa is left alone, devistated and with her daughter truly lost. And the worst is truly yet to come.

Before we get into final thoughts i’d like to talk about how this scene impacts Moon’s betryal later. To me having rewatched this scene.. it only makes it work MORE making it clear Moon simply can’t fahtom racial equality and that she can’t fahtom that eclipsa had very good reason for doing what she did ... to me it comes off as her using Eclipsa betryaing her as a very flimsy justifcation to not validate her rule and to first retire and then try a coup. That “Well she “BETRAYED” me so i’m fine. “ But in truth... she betrayed Eclipsa first. She attacked her daughter TWICE when Eclipsa was close to getting through to her Her reasons are flimsy.. because i’ts not ABOUT eclipsa, but what eclipsa represents: equality with a race Moon dosen’t see as people. It’s about Moon’s racisim coloring everything tills h’es truly blinded and should have lost everything She didn’t because the ending is a fucking disgrace, but we might get to that at some point, the point here is for all that disgrace’s faults... it did get it right here, and Moon was always portrayed as being unable to let go of her racisim no matter what it cost her or how much her daughter despteratly tried to change her. Trust me as someone whose Dad used to argue that gay marriage meant he should be able to marry his cat, and who still argues against trans people using the bathroom of their choice, I get trying desperatley to change someone who don’t wanna. “Sigh”.

Final Thoughts: This episode is truly excellent. The writing is top notch as is the voice acting for all involved and the climax isa true, well led up to tragedy. The animation is also on point, with the characters emotions on perfect display. This is an episode I now realize is one of the series best and worth ar ewatch if you haven’ts een it. Truly amazing stuff that gets me pumped for the finale.. and disapoints me in how the series could reach these highs for one finale.. but would sink to it’s lowest point for next seasons. Next Time on Prince of Wishful Thinking: Star tries depseratly to find her mom, while Marco, Tom and a motely crew of misfits try to take down Meteora and Tom learns the awful truth from the photo booth and wears a zuko ponytail which weirdly looks good on him. That boy can rock anything let me tell you.

If you enjoyed this reviews, please consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As mentioned my 30 dollar stretch goal includes a review of the cluster fuck that is the series final arc, and the goals up to that , me making 20 and 25 dollars a month repectively, have their own nifty rewards: At 20 i’ll review Darkwing Duck once a month, the two remaning Ducktales 87 mini series I have not covered and the Danny Phantom film The Ultimate Enemy. 25 meanwhile gets you reviews of the Proud Family Movie, the theatrical recess movie and the Kim Possible almost finale movie so the drama. And 30 also gets you reviews of every episode of gravity falls season 1 at least one a month till I finish it at some point, so as you can see you get a lot of bang for your buck and these reviews will be public for everybody. Not only that but joining my patreon gets you a review a month if you pitch in 5 dollars and evne if you can’t swing THAT much just 2 bucks gets you access to my discord, a guarnateed pick in my shorts, votes for patreon exclusive reviews, and SAID patreon exclusive reviews. It’s a lot of bang for your buck is what i’m saying so please help me out so I can make a living off this and sign up today. I even JUST ADDED an exclusive and utterly insane scrooge mcduck review, The Great Wig Mystery. So throw in a buck to check that out.

And if your intrested in Tomtavia... please hit me up. I’m really proud of it and until then... i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#star vs the forces of evil #tom lucitor #prince of wishful thinking #meteora butterfly #eclipsa butterfly #moon butterfly #rhys dharby #disney xd #disney channel #disney plus #reviews

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satans-codpiece · 3 years

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Halloween Kills Spoilers

I literally just got back from seeing it so I want to go through some thoughts. Some NSFT content because it’s Michael and I want to fuck him.

First, the bad! Aspects I did not enjoy:

Significant filler; Halloween Kills being split from Halloween Ends is a major flaw-- Halloween Kills has been significantly padded out to make up for the runtime. Some of this filler is fine (Oscar’s mother, for example, I didn’t hate), but the hospital/Trovoli plot and Laurie/Hawkins scene could’ve been compressed significantly. Give us more Michael rampage instead of repetitive cut-up dialogue, you know? Also a real problem because most of the filler is at the start of the movie, making it take a good 15 minutes to get to any content I care about. I think there might have been a way to present this information in a more enjoyable way, but it just felt like lifeless padding to me.

1978 Flashbacks. Fine to include to explain Hawkin’s hatred of Michael, but the retcon of Lonnie Elam’s character is complete filler. Could’ve still left him as-is, have him see Michael, and cut down on unnecessary scene with childhood bullies that don’t really help me enjoy or understand Lonnie’s 2018 personality. I enjoyed that the flashbacks weren’t included in 2018, leaving the viewer to piece together what happened- it isn’t necessary to show your viewer everything.

Supernatural Michael. Listen. It’s only implied by Laurie, who’s already traumatized as fuck and fucked up on pain killers, but having her monologue about him being “more than human” as he shrugs off multiple knife stab wounds, a pitchfork stab, 5 more gunshots, and multiple blunt force hits.......... really does not leave me enthusiastic. I think Halloween 2018 succeeded so well because of the return of “He’s just a Regular Man, but Murderous” Michael Myers. When he’s hurt in 2018 he does grunt and flinch and disappears for a while. It’s why 4-6 doesn’t leave me satisfied but H20 does. I’m really hoping, idk, they’ll have him recuperate somehow between movies to emphasize that he’s human and isn’t actually just immortal.

Reset on Karen’s personality. Karen ends 2018 by finding her will to fight, but at the start of Kills she’s again demoted to “the cops will handle this.” and has to relearn that cops can’t do shit. Sadly her 2018 revelation holds more poignancy than her Kills revelation (using her childhood rifle, a core part of her trauma, in self defense vs failing to save a total stranger from mob justice, then joining in on mob justice).

Not enough Laurie! Most of her screentime is spent building Karen’s or Hawkin’s character arcs, she ended up feeling ornamental, like a celeb cameo instead of a main character. If her mantle of “The Strode We Care About” had been entirely passed to Karen or Allison I would have less of a problem (i.e. have her actually be unconscious most of the movie), but instead she’s around just enough to be like “Karen you’re wrong” and “Hawkins you’re wrong.”

Weird emphasis on knives? This one may change categories as I think about it. I know, I know, knives are Michael’s signature weapon, it’s all his promo art. But it seems like every victim picks up a knife, then fails to use it except Allison. At least three characters I can think of specifically pick up knives to fend off Michael and then fail to even swing them. There might be some symbolism that just isn’t landing right on first watch through (a definite theme is “Michael turns other people into monsters”, with the wielding of knives linking Michael, which I’m not a fan of considering Halloween 2018 opens with that thesis and Laurie immediately rebukes it).

Things I enjoyed!

MICHAEL’s CHARACTERIZATION. I was very, very worried from the trailer that he might be different, but holy shit. JJC really is born to play Michael Myers. He’s completely remorseless, hard to understand, has a weird sense of humor, and what I think is most important:

the mask plays a role for him. In ‘78 he stops attacking Laurie to put his mask back on, in 2018 the only reaction he really shows is when he’s presented with the mask and he even strokes the mask before putting it on. In the novelization, the mask is personified! They keep his consistency by having him stop attacking Allison when she’s takes it off and immediately have him chase Karen when she steals it-- and he puts it on before facing down the mob.

Continuing, his obsession with “coming home.” This really hasn’t been touched on since the original movie and, unfortunately, Resurrection. Loomis himself warns the town that Michael is coming home, and Michael does in the original movie. I’m on the fence about the window scene, it’s edging into “explaining Michael Myers” territory, and I much prefer him as completely mysterious, unexplainable (in canon) and left to the viewer’s interpretation. It’s just open enough to not define him in any way, but I can’t imagine they won’t build on that for Halloween Ends.

Seriously. There’s a huge problem with this movie’s filler but all the Michael content itself is flawless. I cannot over state this. Every scene that shows him has this wonderful camera work, showing him slightly off-screen, off-center, out of focus in this way that makes him so much more intimidating I love it.

The absolute refusal to show his unmasked face clearly is a great move. Revealing JJC’s face would’ve felt cheap, but any time he is maskless he’s out of focus, facing away from the camera, or perfectly out of frame. Maskless Michael in 1978 felt... rewarding, like proof he’s human. The shot is poorly lit and only lasts a moment, and Kills does not sully that.

MICHAEL’S STAGING. To my recollection this is the first time in a Halloween movie we actually see Michael creating his little scenes. He moves bodies in the original and 2018, so more continuity for this timeline-- but without any indications of what he’s thinking we get to see Michael move a victim and stage them! (in ‘78 we see him move Annie but don’t see what he does with her until Laurie finds her).

Michael is more brutal in the 78 flashback. This one comes 100% from my pussy but him killing that cop was hot as fuck and deserve its own bullet point.

All the kills. Seriously. Some were obviously over the top and approaching Resurrection levels of stupid, but overall they concluded in hot as fuck sequences that literally, seriously made me salivate. He lifts a dude up with a fire axe. He stabs a lady in the throat. He leans into a car, crowds up on a woman, and stabs her repeatedly. It’s hot. It’s so hot. I need gifs immediately.

Attention to detail!!! Michael’s injuries from 2018 are clearly present, blood stains from his shoulder wound and damage to the mask from the face shot are visible! I love that shit!!!

Bandaged hand! As a counter point to supernatural Michael, it does clearly show that sometime between his kills he stops and bandages his hand. Still, he’s taken a lot of damage and somehow managed to navigate back to his house and kill Karen without anyone noticing.

Karen. I called this from the moment 2018 ended, and I am glad they did not disappoint on that theme. I wish her death had been a little more graphic since she is a Strode, but having her reenact Judith’s murder is also pretty cool.

Predictions/Desires:

Exploration into Michael’s psyche (derogatory) and his relationship with Judith (derogatory). Why include the window details if not build on it? Why have Sartain be obsessed with his relationship to Judith? why have Michael wake/react to Judith’s name? why recreate her murder with Karen? I don’t want this to be the case, but there’s wayyy too much pointing towards a Judith-centered plot.

#kat talks #halloween kills #halloween kills spoilers #halloween spoilers #spoilers #long post #edited to fix an error

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artificial-ascension · 3 years

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I’ll bite tell me about Ryan

Oh boy oh boy ok.

Aight, so for starters my boy Ryan's real full name is Ryan Taylors II (he was named after his uncle Ryan who died before he was born) and he's one of my Death Note OCs I made for a fic I'm writting. He's a serial killer and I heavily based his case of Jack the Ripper. He kills prostitutes, not because he has anything against them but because he knows the cops don't really care. He does this because he think violently mutilating people is fun. There's something very wrong with him. I tried to emulate every serial killer ever while still making him unique.

He had a shitty childhood. His mom got disowned by her mom for running drugs for the mob and she had to live her shitty boyfriend. He raped her and that's how Ryan came to be. Happened again and that's how he got his little sister. His dad was an abusive dick head and when Ryan was 9 he had enough so he just fucking killed the guy. When he want to court he got of with no punishment because it so insanely obvious that his dad was an abusive rapist qnd Ryan was a little kid so the jurry decided he was innocent. From age 9 to 15 he enjoyed not having a father until his mom got a new bf and he was an ass. Then when Ryan was 16 he officially could not handle it and snapped and killed someone. He enjoyed it like alot and after some moral debating with himself he kept on killing people.

Anyway to backtrack when he was 7 he met a guy named Jessie who's dad owned a bar and they became friends. Jessie had a kid his age (actually it was just a random orphan he found and adopted but still) and that kid was named Jerimiah. Ryan also had a friend named Courtney from school and Ryan, Courtney and Jerimiah all end up going to the same school after awhile and Ryan and Jerimiah date. Ryan also runs track and he's like really fucking good at it. He set records. Ryan also joined a gang when he was 7 because his neighbor was this sweet old Chinese lady who would babysit him and teach him Chinese (Ryan's part Chinese, it's never relevant except for the fact that he joined a gang when he was 7, which is mostly a joke thing) and her grandson was the leader of a biker gang and when they would come over Ryan would hang out with them and at some point they were like "hey your cool wanna join our gang?" And Ryan said yeah so he was in a biker gang when he was 7. They didn't actually do anything they just rode around and looked scary and Ryan doesn't know how to ride a motorcycle nor is he allowed but he's still a member and has his own bandanna all the gang members have. The gang thing is never important it's just a little joke to make Ryan seem tough.

Speaking of which Ryan is constantly trying to look tough. Ryan grew up in Compton in the 90's so he's constantly surrounded by crime so he tried to be as intimidating as possible and he is actually very intimidating. He's 5'11 and 180lbs, super aggressive with the knife skills to back it up and dresses in all black. He's already scary and 100% a true gangster qnd he doesn't need to pretend but he still has issues with intimacy and being nice. He's cold and apathetic all the time. He wishes he wasn't but he has a hard time finding things to be passionate about. The few things that do bring him joy include bread, horror and action movies, Sonic the Hedgehog, Transformers and exploring abandoned buildings. He's very shy about showing when he's actually happy (which is a shame because he has the cutest, sweetest nost amazing and gorgeous smile in the entire fukcing world.) The reason for his apathy is because he's got ASPD from all the abuse. Everyone says he puts the antisocial in antisocial personally disorder and they're right. His symptoms mostly include apathy, violent outbursts, recklessness and self degradation. Pretty much he's quiet and reserved and doesn't like people. He jas very little self confidence and doesn't care much for others unless he really knows them well and actually likes them. If he does consider someone a friend he's very protective and somewhat nice. It takes alot to deal with him but he's really a great friend.

Really he's an amazing guy who went through alot of traumatic shit and had been unfortunately fucked up by his shitty circumstances and has choosen to deal with it in the worst possible way: muder. Ryan absolutely loves to blame his problems on other people and for the most part he's right (it's not his fault he had to go through all that) however him choosing to kill people was 100% his thing and he can't really blame it on his childhood considering there's 100 different ways to deal with that stuff that don't involve killing people HOWEVER Ryan ignores that because he's a fucking seril killer and has no remorse for his victims. He is the epitome of "I love my garbage son who belongs in prison" because he does but he never gets caught.

There's two different ways Ryan's life goes and it depends on the fic I put him in. In the everyone lives one, he marries A and B and joins the mafia with them. He does repent for his crimes but has to live on a short leash (he can't have cash, he has to travel with A or someone qualified to babysit him, he has to keep his ID on him at all time ect.) Because the government doesn't want him to kill people anymore but wants to see if they can actually rehabilitate a fucking serial killer + A knows people *cough cough L* and will be very pissy if they put his boyfriend in prison. Ryan gets therapy and reconnects with his family and also he's set to die at like 87 here.This is the good ending.

In actual cannon, Ryan and B are friends with alot of homoerotic tension. Ryan and B are partners in crime for awhile but after B dies Ryan continues on with his life (Ryan is a massive crime buff and wants to be a forensic pathogist and that happens in both endings) but after awhile he decides life isn't worth living without B and goes on a full rampage through LA before writting an increasingly cryptic suicide note and slitting his own throat. He choose that method because in all his killings, he cut the vocal cords of his victims so they couldn't scream while he mutilated them (witch gave him the nick name the Silent Ripper, though he's more commonly the Los Angeles Ripper) but he'd usually end up slitting their throats in the process, so the most commom death for his victims drowning in their own blood, so he felt its how he should go out. This is clearly the bad ending.

Anyway yeah. There's him. If you want anything spicific please ask ms because once you tell me to write about my OCs suddenly I don't know them.

#my oc ryan

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2ofswords · 4 years

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Since I am so tired of reading „I know Dankovsky sucks and his ending is horrible“, before every comment that defends him, I will now throw myself into the fires of discourse and write an essay about:

Why The P1 Utopian ending does not mean Danko is an asshole

(A bit of swearing and a lot of spoilers under the cut)

Since I already spoke about being tired of disclaiming a lot, here are some of them. Firstly: This is NOT a comparison and I am definitely not saying, that his ending is better than the ending of the Haruspex or the Changeling. That would be ridiculous and I wholeheartedly belief that the other characters have morally better endings. (Though I will make one ending comparison at the end of this essay just to make myself even more of a hypocrite and there will be a comparison of one aspect of all three P1 endings, that is not made to compare their general quality but… well… this specific aspect of the ending.)

Also this essay isn‘t about Dankovsky not being an asshole. This is not a character analysis, I am only talking about the ending and his relationship regarding his path towards it. There are entirely different arguments to be made about his character that I will not talk about. Surprisingly a character is not only defined by the outcome of their story.

And last but not least the weirdest disclaimer of them all: While my arguments try to defend Dankovsky in his ending I totally understand if you still think his ending makes him more of an asshole. Killing a lot of people is always a dick move and the decision is still a horrible one. I do not really want to argue that people are wrong for judging him based of his ending. I just want to explain, why we also do not have to feel ashamed for deciding to not judge him as a complete asshole based on the main outcome of his route and why his motivation isn’t only based on spite or even ruthless calculation. Also, I think that there is a lot to say about his decision, that isn’t really said and that these are interesting aspects. Sorry to say it, but I just wanted to have a catchy title. I just really love this ending and it’s complexity and wanted to discuss it aside of calling it the evil Danko ending.

So. Let’s start with the easy argument that some people are talking about.

Argument 1: Danko completely lost it and holding him accountable due to his rationality defies the point of his route.

This one is… one of the weaker arguments, but I will still elaborate on it. The entirety of his route is built upon loss and failure. While the Haruspex starts with a mob that wants to kill him and works his way up, the dynamic of his route is him seemingly starting on top of everything and slowly loosing his bearings and by the end of the story this man is already driven to madness. Being used as a pawn in politics, getting daily “fuck you”-letters from the Powers that Be, realizing your lives work is already destroyed and all of your colleagues are probably as doomed (and being the one responsible because he was their leader), realizing that Aglaya – who was the one person who seemed to be his ally at the end – used and betrayed him just like everyone else, having the one truly honestly kind person commit suicide at least partly because of his failures, witnessing his own helplessness against the plague (an enemy that should align with his expertise as a doctor), being hated from day one by almost everybody in town, realizing that the political allies are totally bonkers and also preparing to off themselves (Victor! You seemed moderately sane at the beginning. The betrayal!), getting almost beaten to death while trying to help the town while spending all these days in an hostile place that slips into chaos… yeah I think you really aren’t in the headspace for rational thought. It is a miracle that that guy hasn’t completely broken down and day eleven and to some extend day 9 and 10 are showing him as completely unhinged already, only leading up to a decision, that isn’t really made out of spite or coldness but rather desperation and blind tunnel vision. The day eleven mission involves him going on a rampage against a military squad because of a vague hint and he only checks after the killings, if Andrew is even there. That isn’t a calculated action it’s about a man being completely shattered and making everybody suffer because of that. (Which is also horrible, but an entirely different sort of tragedy.) By now he just shouldn’t be the one handling the situation at all but the local powers sure want to wash their hand of any guilt that they haven’t already attracted. Also – and more importantly – the Polyhedron literally is the one good thing happening to this man. After going into it on day 9 he thanks Khan for reminding him of a childhood he has forgotten! He has a shit week, he is completely beaten down (quite literally) and this is the one happy moment he finds in all this chaos. Clinging onto that is surely not rational, but it is human. We all know that the Bachelor has the tendency to survive on willpower alone and here clinging to the tower and its miracles is literally his only motivation to continue his route at all. Of course he is going to protect it at that point, if thinking about any other option bring nothing but utter misery and the acceptance of complete and utter failure. After all Dankovskys route is about the limits of his rational worldview and how it hinders him more that it serves him in a world, that isn’t defined by rational beliefs. Of course he will be out of it by the end and actually loosing his composure is an important part of his suffering and character development in the story. His ending is not a sign of rational thought but the last consequence of being enraptured in a web of circumstances that forbid him from making rational decisions in the first place.

Truth to be told, I don’t really like this as an argument. I love this thought as a peace of characterization. As much as I love his ending and the horrible consequences and the actual failure it imposes, when we look at the other playable characters. But it doesn’t really help us here. It doesn’t change the fact, that Dankovsky destroyed an entire town just for a dream, a man-made building, a promise of utopia that we never witness ourselves. He still destroyed so… so much! But… let’s look a bit deeper into the motivations behind that exchange.

Argument 2: The Trolley problem

“There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?” (Wikipedia)

There is a variation to this question and interestingly enough it is one of the morality questions Aglaya asks in Pathologic 2: Would you push a man down a bridge, to save the children from a train? The curious thing is, that we can see all healers giving the same answer, (even if we have the choice to choose differently, since it is… you know… a dilemma). Necessary sacrifice is a constant of all three routes and every single protagonist has to kill in order to save a larger amount of people. Still, the game never answers moral choices with a simple answer and here with the Utopian ending we can see the darker side of this moral dilemma in full force (to a lesser extend this also applies to the Humble ending, since it also involves the Trolley problem, albeit on a smaller scale.) If we take the Kain’s studies about the focus and the soul seriously and see the Polyhedron as a method to ensure immortality seriously – or if we at least assume that Dankovsky wholeheartedly believes in that concept – than protecting the Polyhedron at the cost of the town suddenly becomes the Trolley problem at a significantly larger scale. The Polyhedron could ensure the survival of humankind but only at the expense of the town and it’s infected inhabitants. After all death is to Dankovsky but an affliction that can be healed just like the plague and consumes far more victims (if not all of them even if one would survive the disease). And that poses the question: When does the Trolley Dilemma stop working? What if there are two million people on the tracks and one million on the other side? What if there are hundred people on one and ninety nine on the other? What about five million vs. four million and nine hundred thousand? Can a human life be counted against the life of several others? If we look at the game itself and the healers answer in their daily life, it seems kind of simple: Yes, it is possible. The effort of saving is worth dirtying your hands after all. Risking at least your own life seems like a fair deal and no route really works without at least some degree of human sacrifice. But on this larger scale… it seems absurd. And… well… it is. But still. If we just try to empathise with the Bachelors mindset. If there is a possibility to cure humanity’s mortality… if there is a sliver of possibility (and since Thanatica is destroyed the Polyhedron seems like the only possibility at this point)… what kind of sacrifice is worth preserving it?

I myself have my own answer to that question. In Germany the Constitution starts with the sentence “Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar” or: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” (This is the official translation though a more direct translation would be “Human dignity is inviolable” which is more of a statement and less of a law) Even if the effect of that sentence in politics is very debatable and it is incredibly vague and not really a usable sentence as a law… I really like it. The human rights as a concept as well as equality can be concluded from the fact, that human dignity is something that cannot – under any circumstance – been taken away and is always a thing that must be considered just by being human. It is… nice. And it also means, that a human being cannot be seen as a mere object and has its own agency. A human being is not quantifiable in their existence by any parameter, be it birth, skin colour, gender, sexuality, religion, interests, talent, job, body, etc… It is incredibly important… and incredibly interesting in our scenario. Because if life isn’t quantifiable at any circumstance… the Trolley Dilemma has a solution. There is no way to tell, if one life can outweigh several others and deciding over their lives is something and judge over the worth of their live is something one should never do. Thus Dankovsky’s choice to save the Polyhedron and outweigh the lives of the infected seems morally wrong.

But… is that the answer the game has? Well… the artbook of Pathologic 2 states that the design of the game is about enforcing ambiguity and I would argue that the first instalment is no different. Firstly: In times of crisis lives become quantifiable. That is part of the tragedy. The healers’ lives are suddenly worth preserving, while others appear as nameless numbers in a daily statistic and caring about the individual dignity seems impossible. As already said the act of killing in order to preserve life is almost mandatory in every single run. So, what about human dignity? Can it even be preserved under such a dilemma? (And there is probably a point to be made about everybody being dolls and thus not even a being with dignity and agency at all… but I digress) Especially doctors have to face this dilemma and they have to make these judgement calls, weather they like it or not. The game doesn’t answer it but makes different variations of the same dilemma that we may judge differently. The Utopian ending is one variation.

What I want to say is, that – if we take the Kains’ believes seriously and see the survival of miracles against the law of nature not only as progress but as a question about human mortality itself – the question if the Polyhedron is worth saving is a very different one. I personally think that the idea of the focus still feels too esoteric to be a real point of interest but on the other hand… it is not like we haven’t some proof when we visit Khan and listen to his testimony. It is not that this place is above it’s miracles, and we know that a lot of the mysticism is grounded in reality, be it by the very real ways of the Kin or the past existence of Simon. So only thinking of the polyhedron as an abstract concept is… well doing it a disservice if we take the other parts as serious. Yeah it is made out of it’s own idea but… you know being like “it cannot exist but it can sure puncture the earth and kill everything” is… a weird way of thinking and it sure is a McGuffin (and even called that in the Artbook) but as we said, the game is about ambiguity and the only way to look at its existence is not only “evil tower of doom”. Is it worth keeping? Eh… I wouldn’t say so myself. I still think the Utopian ending is pretty shit and seeing the tower as salvation for our mortal lives is pretty farfetched. But the question for this essay is: Is it wrong to think, it is worth keeping? And from Dankovsky’s perspective, who sees it as the only possible chance of curing human mortality… Well… the answer at least isn’t as simple anymore. But – and now we are getting somewhere – the argument about the complexity of human value can be also made without even relying on Kain-Bullshit.

Argument 3: The Utopian Ending is the only ending, that completely gets rid of the plague (at least from Dankos point of view)

But wait you say, the other endings also defeat the plague! There even is a cure, something our beloved Bachelor of Medicine never archives. What is this lunacy?

Well here is the catch: A cure does not destroy its disease. Or at least it is an unreliable method. Sure, if everyone is cured and/or the disease helps to build antibodies, then it does help to get rid of it. But the sandpest seems to leave the bodies and not finding these remnants and antibodies is one essential part of the Bachelor’s route. It is the reason Rubin needs a living heart in the first place. The disease doesn’t seem to stay and no antibodies seem to be developed. (And even if I try to avoid material of Pathologic 2 in this analysis since there are differences in the Canon I still at least want to mention, that the Panacea as well as the shmowder do indeed not help against the disease after it is cured and a person can be reinfected. I do not know, if the same is the case in one and if you can test it out.) But if there are no antibodies, the cure could only eradicate the disease if every single infected person is cured at the same time. Good luck with that! That’s not bound to be a complete mess in this town!

This is backed up on day 12 in the Bachelor’s own route. When he is presented with the options the other healers have, he always asks both of them the same question: How does that ensure the future of the town? The Haruspex makes a cure yes. But what if the disease returns? After all the underground water he talks about still exists and there is no telling, if it will ever reemerge. It already happened once… The Haruspex doesn’t answer with “no, that will never happen”. He says that they will have enough cure if this is the case. An optimist, I see. And definitely not a satisfying answer if we consider a scientific perspective. What if the cure runs out? What if they find out too late and the plague spreads outside of town? A cure is not a waterproof system against plague. (You know what works better though? A vaccine.) Daniil’s mission was always to eradicate the disease and this would not do the trick. Having only a cure is risky. And it might not be a permanent solution.

The same applies for the Humble ending. If one asks the Changeling what would happen if the blood of their sacrifice runs out she answers “There will always be people willing to sacrifice themselves” Which is… just great. Constant human sacrifice just doesn’t seem that sustainable. And it also means that there will be constant loss of human life. Something that might even lead to more sacrifice in the long run (although that would be a reaaaaly long run considering how long the sacrifice of the Clara’s bound is supposed to last.) But it sure as hell doesn’t make the plague disappear. What if there are no willing sacrifices? What if Clara is gone and there is no one to perform a miracle? Clara’s ending relies on faith by nature and putting your trust in it is easy from a player’s perspective but even harder when there are lives at stake, the success unsure and these questions to consider.

Dankovsky’s ending is built upon uprooting the plague and eradicating it. The problem is that it is everywhere and not easily destroyed. As Lara very adequately realised: There is no source. His ending is the consequence of that goal and even if it loses in every other aspect, this is the one, where it wins. It actually destroys the problem itself. Building a new town and keeping the tower it cannot reach, actively minimalizes the possibility of the plague reappearing. And a more permanent solution might save more lives than one that sounds more humane at the beginning.

Okay, to defend the Haruspex for a change of pace: In his route he actually does believe that his method eradicates the disease as much as Dankovsky is convinced that his solution does the trick. For him the source is the Polyhedron and the way, it wounds the earth. With it removed the plague will not reappear. But why should Dankovsky share this belief? No one tells him! The inquisitor says that the Polyhedron is the root of evil but there never is any actual proof for that. Even If the Polyhedron is partially responsible and Danko actually does acknowledge this, it is the bloody mess of underground fluids that are in fact the source (which is ironically confirmed by the Haruspex himself). As he tells the inquisitor herself at the last day: The source and the cause can be too different things. It already seeped through Andrey’s spiral to the upper layers. The damage has already been done and in fact the Polyhedron is now the only save place, where nobody is infected. Everything else needs to be destroyed to eradicate the disease but why even destroy the Polyhedron? Wait. Why even destroy the Polyhedron? What good would that even do if we would consider it? What the fuck would Dankovsky even do with the destroyed Polyhedron, how would that save the town?

Argument 4: Dankos ending isn’t about the town vs. the polyhedron at all!(From his perspective. It totally is for the player though!)

I experienced something weird while playing the Bachelor’s route in P1. And with that I mean that I experienced something weird, that I wasn’t already expecting. After hearing so much about the fabled Polyhedron love, assuming that he sacrifices the whole town for its sake and hearing from the inquisitor in Pathologic 2 again and again how obsessed he is, I waited for the revelation. The moment Dankovsky would completely lose it and become utterly and undeniably obsessed with the children’s tower. That moment… never happened. Or well… it happened remarkably late and with less impact than I thought. Until day 9 the tower isn’t even a point of interest to the Bachelor, which is two thirds of his route. But even after you witness the miracles of the Polyhedron yourself, you still can argue against its glory. You can agree with Aglaya on day 10, that it seems dangerous (even if that could also be tactics, but until this point there is not really a reason for that). Hell, you can tell Peter on day 12, that his ideas will always only exist in his mind and blueprints and that the new town they will create will not work out! That is so weird, if the result of his run is, that he sacrifices the town for the Polyhedron! Why is there always an option to speak against the miracle we want to save? Isn’t that completely strange?

If we take the town vs. polyhedron conflict serious then… yeah it is. But is this all, what his end can be about? I would argue against it. Because what finally tips him to his solution and completes his view on the map of the town isn’t the Polyhedrons glory: It is the towns underground water and the Haruspex telling him, that the deeper layers are infected. That is, when he flips his shit and he even has an “oh no, it can’t be!” moment. Weird, isn’t it? If he would be set about destroying the town, why agonizing over this information? But from his point of view it is a nail in the coffin, the realization, that the whole towns ground is seeping with infection and if not eradicated, it will reappear. The Bachelor doesn’t have a cure and the Haruspex, while promising that he has a solution, sure as hell doesn’t explain how that would work and insists on arguing his own case without interference. (Which is completely understandable but doesn’t clear the situation.) The Bachelor has no means on his own to fight the plague outside of destroying the town. This is his only option to call of the bombardment of the Polyhedron and the tower and from his point of view, destroying the tower would archive absolutely nothing. It is free of infection, why destroy it? What would ripping it out do aside from letting even more blood seep out? In his own case, this would be completely useless, thus destroying the Polyhedron does not save the town! When the Bachelor flips the switch and guides the trolley in a different direction, he isn’t guiding it from hitting the Polyhedron to hitting the town. He guides the trolley from hitting the town and the polyhedron to only hitting the town! And by the way to only hit the town which his infected people while everybody else evacuates in the tower. (Which is confirmed by his ending cutscene, where people are actually present. After all it takes the healthy to built the new town). In his own mind, the Bachelor is saving people, not killing them! He does what he can so that the most of them survives and in his case, destroying the town is the only method to ensure victory at all.

If we stick to his own route – as I am doing right now – we have two counterarguments against this theory. The first one: But isn’t that only the failure of finding a better method? And: yes it is. As we already discussed in the first argument, the Bachelors story is about failure and the game itself is about necessary sacrifice, lose-lose situations and making the best out of a desperate hopeless scenario. Which leaves us with the question: Could Dankovsky have found a better solution? And… maybe. If he was more attentive, made different choices, would have been nicer to the Kin… There always are “ifs” but I would argue that the ones in this scenario are… pretty small odds for a change. He does genuinely try to inspect the abattoir and find a solution and ensure it’s safety and is almost punched to death as a result. The Kin regard him with absolute hostility, and for a good reason but it doesn’t help his case. Without Burakh’s knowledge and caste-rights making a cure would be (almost) impossible. He isn’t allowed to do any normal doctoring the one time, he tried to gain some blood from dead people, multiple guards had to die in order to ensure this absolute act of evil to go unnoticed. Thus he has to rely on Rubin’s secret lab. The possibility of Simon and his powers against the plague also aren’t usable… The Bachelor doesn’t even get to see his corpse after all. What choice does he have other than eradicating the cause itself? It’s definitely not the elegant solution that he was hoping for but there is a reason for him switching to inspect everything after ruling out a living plague carrier. These are the desperate means of finding a solution when his own knowledge of medicine has already failed him and the hopes of providing such medicine are already dwindling. Saving the town is simply not an option, the moment itself becomes the source of the plague.

The second counterargument is this one: Why not side with another healer, when they provide a better solution? And this is also a very valid argument. And thus, the moment it becomes an option, we as the Bachelor can choose to do so. If he has the cures that are necessary to ensure another healers victory, it is completely possible to avoid that ending. He doesn’t have to stick with it as well as the other healers do not have to, so judging him based on the other routes being better outcomes becomes obsolete. He has the ability to use these options, but if we lack the cures, his own solution is the only one. (Of course you can also save the other characters bound and then still decide to destroy the town, but using this scenario as his only motivation, when you can totally decide for yourself is a bit harsh, isn’t it?)

Of course, this argument collapses the moment we play any other route and he is trying to convince us to save the Polyhedron and abandon our own plans. However his own route can be considered his own perception of the story and our knowledge, how much he knows about the others paths is pretty limited and dependant of our choices as the player. Also, seeing his character and the changes made with that in mind, we can actually explain, why they appear. Of course, everybody tells Artemy how much the Bachelor is in love with the tower, when we’re not seeing it to that extreme in his route! It is necessary to fulfil his role in the Haruspex route. Of course, both the Bachelor and the Haruspex will appear as demons in Clara’s route. They do offer nothing but destruction from her point of view and both solutions seem destructive and spiteful, if they try to convince her. Everybody seems on board with seeing the characters in her route differently, but I think that the same applies to the Bachelor and the Haruspex in each other’s route, since their roles in the game changes. Or at least the perspective changes based on the others worldview. The Haruspex seems a lot more dangerous and his medicine a whole lot shadier, while the Bachelor seems to be more in love with the tower and ready to abandon everything for it, because it seems that way in comparison to the other persons knowledge of the situation. This is also backed up by the doll ending, where the Bachelor is being called out as the villain most of the time. In other routes he appears more villainous than in his own route, because we do actually have the means of comparison. But this is our perspective and not actual character motivation. We as the player do have the choice to work toward an ending. We can with our knowledge of the game go the extra mile to secure enough cures from the very beginning and help another healer. We are aware of the fact, that Clara and Artemy are other playable characters and we know from the very beginning that their beliefs have to be of value and their solutions will be backed up by their own routes. We know the opposition these characters stand in and while we see the different routes we may judge them for ourselves. And while Clara definitely knows and the other two healers show some sensibility towards this opposition (the “left hand, right hand”-quote comes to mind), at least the male healers are basing their decision upon their beliefs and not some outside point of view (while Clara watches and not-so-silently judges them). They even try to help each other and even provide the key insight to their own plan’s destruction (the Bachelor guides the inquisitor eyes to the Polyhedron and its structure, while Artemy outright tells Daniil of the underground infection). Of course they do not have the full picture! How could they, this entire game is about them not having it and making terrible mistakes! Dankovsky doesn’t have the ability to judge his own solution how the player does. And while judging his ending based on this information is completely valid and sensible, implying that he knows this detriment and still goes through with everything feels… a bit unfair to say the least. The conflict of the town vs. the polyhedron is an important debate in the game. And yes, Dankovsky’s role is being the advocate of the polyhedron, but man, this guy has the tendency to get manipulated into advocating random shit! The town vs. polyhedron debate is as present with him, as it is with the Haruspex. With the Polyhedron being the source in his route, he really has no choice but to remove it. After all, this guy really has no reason, to protect the Polyhedron. Of course he doesn’t! He would never sacrifice the town for the sake of his own ideology!

Argument 5: Let’s talk Nocturnal!

I promised one comparison, didn’t I? Still, we are now diving into abstract talk about the games’ themes and less about character motivation. Consider this more of a bonus and a different thought and less as an argument for Dankovsky himself. Comparing one ending to a different one does not make one of these characters more or less of an asshole. And comparing Pathologic 1 to Pathologic 2 obviously doesn’t tell us anything about the canon of either of those games, since they have vastly different results and we have no idea what the Bachelor’s endings will look like in Parhologic 2 (though I would be surprised if we couldn’t destroy the town and save the Polyhedron. But who knows, in Artemy’s case the army only pisses off.) Still, I think it is very interesting to talk about both of these endings side by side.

And I will begin this comparison by telling you that I love this ending! I am so happy that it exists and I think it is glorious and I think it’s existence is really important. I am so happy that Artemy has a reason to destroy the town. But is this okay? Or – as a comparison – is this a better idea than the one Dankovsky had?

I would argue that these endings have a lot in common. They both preserve their own ideals and establish a radically new order at the cost of the town itself. They both kill a shit ton of people for the miracles they have witnessed along the way. One could even argue that the Nocturnal ending is more horrifying. Firstly, more people die. While the Bachelor saves the uninfected, Artemy saves only those who “live with earths will” which seems to be like… the ten guys chilling in the abattoir and some of the kids. We know that there are only mere hundreds of people left of the kin and since everybody in the termitary doesn’t seem to count… who even gets saved? It’s at least as vague as the question who isn’t infected and can be saved at the Utopian end. But – more importantly – Artemy definitely has a choice in that matter and decides to sacrifice the town for the sake of the past. (If you’re not me. In my playthrough I got the courier note twenty minutes before 22:00 and the game was like “what are you going to do, such a hard choice” and I was like “I literally do not have the time to get this thing to town hall”. And then Aspity was like “you made your own conscious and completely willed decision” while Artemy just awkwardly stared at her…) But even disregarding that, the ending is surprisingly similar. Yet I see no one judging either the Haruspex or his ending for being overly cruel and well… killing a lot. Actually, I only read posts defending it and saying that it is as morally okay as the diurnal ending and could also count as a good end. And… I kind of agree. The sacrifice of the diurnal ending is pretty steep and destroying some species – while the worms, herb brides and albinos definitely show human qualities – is pretty fucked up as well and preserving them can seem worth the cost. (Oh my, do not say we arrived at the problem of human value again!) Still… It is destroying the town for its miracles. That is literally what this ending is about, yet our asshole sense does not tingle at all! Why is that?

I think there are two arguments for this difference between our outlook on the Nocturnal and the Utopian end. The first one is that the Kin and its culture is very endangered and protecting it just seems more morally sound than protecting some rich dudes. Which is very fair and the Kains are very fucked up. Buuuut, it isn’t like there is the termitary quest that preludes the diurnal ending. Finishing the game doesn’t exactly mean that we abandon the Kin. Part of its beliefs and culture, yes. Definitely, and as I said I still think the Diurnal and Nocturnal ending are pretty balanced. But a part of the Kin is assimilated and is coping and while protecting its culture and very real traditions is completely valid, the Nocturnal ending also destroys parts of the Kin (the Termitary part) as ill fitting for living with the earth…. So… hm… It’s not as easy as saying “but you help the Kin in one and some rich dudes in the other”, since the Kin itself are also torn and we are still only allowing a specific way of living. A specific worldview containing the miracles of the town… On the other hand, the polyhedron and its miracles can also be considered endangered and unique. It is a one of a kind structure as is the miracles it can provide. The Stamatins are pretty unable to reproduce it, as the game likes to tell us and destroying it would destroy all hopes of a one in a time event to come to life. Also there are talks about the Utopians being a faction of the entire town with one third of the population agreeing on their beliefs (as it is the case with the other ideologies). And the plans Peter and Maria make do sound interesting, dreamlike and… well unique. Something that can also only happen in this circumstance. But alas… we do not know that much about it and their word is only what we have. And this is the second aspect that makes the Nocturnal ending more relatable: Buildup. We witness first-hand what this Nocturnal world would be (sometimes for better and sometimes for worse), we know the beings and the miracles of the earth. We do not really get in touch which the utopian ideas and only have the rambling of good old Georgji which… yeah that doesn’t help their case! But there are kids calling this new town an “eternal adventure” a miracle that can come to live and I would say, that this thought is quite beautiful. And it certainly is unique, which is the main argument of the Nocturnal ending. Wonders, plague and miracles. Destroy one and the other will vanish. So… what is worth keeping a miracle? The answer now seems even harder to grasp. Maybe even impossible.

But we also do not have every puzzle peace. I still have hope for the two different routes and with them there are the possibilities of new realizations and also new endings. I myself am really curious if we either get an option to save the town or a reason to destroy the Polyhedron as the Bachelor. (And I am very curious as well, if Clara will get a second ending. What would that even be? An all destruction ending to set everyone free???) There also could be more elaboration on the Polyhedron and its inner workings. Maybe we will even understand what the Kains are talking about! There are some allusions to a more concrete Kain worldview. The nut-game while very disturbing makes the entrapment of the soul way more real and gives the focus some context. (It also doesn’t only connect it with the polyhedron since “anything can be a focus. A polyhedron, a room, a nut”.) The same applies to the clocks and their connection to the save system, which makes the miracles of the Kains way more real. And I digress. Only time will tell.

Conclusion:

I think it is clear by now, that this way too long text isn’t really about giving answers and more about perspective. I myself would say that the Bachelor’s choice is terribly misguided most of the time and the only possible method to save anything at best. But I do not think that it is made with its destructive force in mind. What I wanted to show is, that the motives and the narratives surrounding this ending are way more complex and also really, really interesting. (I just wanted to gush about this game!) As are the characters that comment on the situation at hand. And reflecting on how we judge them can say a lot about our own view and the world (this one as well as the Town on Gorkhon).

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #repost because the first didnt show up as a search result

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teamdoesminecraft · 5 years

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I've noticed you really like your lore for MC/TC. Can I ask then, what's the timeline of events? I know when they were created, but like a short timeline, starting when how the world was made to present day, if that makes sense. Thanks!

Ohhh I haven’t thought about @crystalfloe ‘s and my Canon Minecraft Lore in a while, it’s been touched up quite a bit since my last lore post.... I’ll be basically rewriting it as I go !!TL;DR: Sage makes Steve who turns into Herobrine, Sage and his Devs make True/SSundee/Lox/Seto, Herobrine makes Bajan/Husky, Sage makes Jerome to kill Bajan, and Steve/Sage simoultaneously fuck up and make Sky as an overpowered child and nerf him together.-Long ago, the world was a seething mass of untamed code. Some of this code pulled itself together into sentience: an entity named Sage.-Sage began manipulating the code for the first time. He was the first Player to access creative mode. He created:A dimension (grass, stone)Simple mobs (pigs, cows)

-Sage wanted to share his creative-mode capabilities, and so made slightly more advanced mobs. Endermen were simple creatures, capable of basic neutrality and hostility, and could interact with the world by moving one block at a time.-Sage realized that these were not the Players he was trying to make, so he set out to make an actual Creative Mode Player.-Sage made Steve, who lived in the single dimension and was capable of building great things.-Steve wanted to create new mobs, much like Sage did. He created:Creeper (aw man)SpidersThe Ender Dragon-The Ender Dragon destroyed the single-dimension world, leaving it barren, broken into pieces, and yellowed out (the End).-Sage managed to trap the Dragon on a single island. Sage then banished Steve to a second dimension (the Overworld, which had a bedrock layer below it, separating it from the End), and made a new gamemode for him: Survival Mode.-Steve wanted to right his wrongs, and so began searching for a way to get back to the End.-Sage didn’t want Steve back, so continued implementing coding changes:Monsters (creepers, spiders) would appear at night to hunt Steve and hinder his progressZombies and Skeletons, that were only just Steve’s former bodies, to continue to push his progress farther back-Sage attempted to remove Steve’s coding from the game entirely when he got too close-Eventually, Steve was “deleted,” more or less-No he wasn’t. He was a “ghost” of code, able to still grasp some of his prior Creative Mode abilities; to prevent Sage from finding him, he made the third dimension, the Nether (between the Overworld and the End, covered on both sides by bedrock), where Sage would be unable to find him-Sage tried to make two Creative-Mode Players again: the Devs. He created Jeb and Dinnerbone.-The three of them began populating the Overworld, realizing the End was almost unsalvagable. (This is the point where our canons and AUs start splintering, so it might get a little messy)-Sage made TrueMU first. This was the start of most Players being Survival-Mode only: he had no Creative-Mode abilities. -True was more or less on Sage’s side for a while, until, after a series of deaths/respawns, he realized how little Sage cared. True left at this point to escape to the Farlands (an area of the Overworld the Devs hadn’t yet tamed).-A long period of time passed, during which many other Players were created. (for those Yogs fans, Xephos was made very early, and was a pseudo-dev, until he also ran away from Sage to go do strange experiments on his own).-Jeb made SSundee during this time (traumatic backstory tbd)-Dinnerbone started creating more hostile mobs to provide extra challenge to the Players. Jeb started creating more passive mobs to populate the world and make it more interesting for the Players.-Signs of Steve started appearing again, as a half-glitched ghost. To prevent people from siding with Steve, Sage created Villagers. Villagers firmly believe Sage is true and correct all the time, and spread this ‘doctrine.’ They also tell the tale of a murderous entity known only as Herobrine (a name Steve would later whole-heartedly adopt).-Villagers have no hands, so they can’t build or create and potentially turn against Sage. Instead, their arms are conjoined in front of them.

-Some Villagers don’t believe Sage is the best, and break away from society to either form patrols or live in large, communal mansions. These Illagers practice things normally Villagers aren’t supposed to; many of them break their arms into two separate pieces. They hold weapons, build mansions/monuments, and practice magic.-A Player named Seto, originally made by Jeb, somehow found himself subsumed into Illager culture. He was raised in a Woodland Mansion and learned various magic from an Evoker.-Herobrine saw all these players being created. He knew he couldn’t enter the Overworld without being hunted, so he decided to make a Player of his own: Bajan.*Note: Herobrine has made other Players besides Bajan (notably Hypixel and Honeydew)*Double Note: in almost every other set of Lore we have, Bajan was either made or adopted by Xephos (I have no idea why)-Bajan was designed to master combat and, ultimately, defeat the Ender Dragon. His dogtags read HB002, marking him as Herobrine’s second creation. -However, Sage discovered Bajan, and wiped his memories/mission statement to prevent him from reaching the End.-Sage created a “monstrous” Player to hunt Bajan down and prevent him from respawning: Jerome-Naturally, this failed spectacularly, and though they were designed to destroy one another, they’re now best friends. Due to their combatative natures, they enter tournaments like the Survival Games often.-Realizing this approach was flawed, Herobrine took a different approach. The Stronghold he had been building, with a half-finished portal to the End, was underwater. So HB created a Player who could guide people to the Stronghold: Husky. He wasn’t extraordinarily combatative, but it was his job to find Players who could be and bring them to the Stronghold.-Sage did not like this, so had Dinnerbone create the Guardians to deter players from deep-sea exploration.-Herobrine wanted to try something new: he wanted to make his own Dev.*Note: it’s been discussed (but not solidified) that “bad end” Yogscast members, like Israphel/Lalna, are HB’s Devs, created later.-Sage was also developing a new Dev at this time.-Herobrine waited until Sage wasn’t paying attention (all players must be created at the Overworld Spawn to prevent complications), and began interfering with the code.-Sage and Herobrine fought for a while over this new Dev. However, when fully-formed, this Dev went on an uncontrollable creative-mode rampage.-Sage and HB teamed up for the first and only time to stop this Dev. They gave him an amulet (made of endstone and blaze rod) to suppress his powers, and created the Hardcore gamemode just for him. They wiped his memory (they knew what happened if you tried to delete a Dev, as evidenced by Herobrine) and dumped the newly-named Sky in a village.*Note: in at least one AU, Sage made Alex, who was then “used” by HB. After a series of corruptions, Alex’s code was repurposed and turned into Sky ala reincarnation.*fun fact: Sky is the only Player who cannot access his inventory. he’s gotta carry everything with him. always-Around this time, Dinnerbone created Lox (traumatic backstory TBD).-The “Plot” begins when Sky’s amulet becomes separated from his body, and he inadvertently teleports himself and Lox out to the Farlands. They are immediately interrogated by True.-True, knowing how Sky works, decides to initiate the Quest (which he won’t tell them too much about). This Quest has them meeting the various other members of the Team, becoming closer, and just bein real good pals.-No we don’t know how it goes or how it ends-sometimes they kill the Ender Dragon and Sky just resets the entire world with his Dev powers because Sage has gone nuts? -we really genuinely have no idea and we wrote it

#team crafted #minecraft #lore #ask #long post #jadespeedster17

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moviemunchies · 4 years

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There’s a certain subgenre of action movie that goes like this: we have an ordinary(ish) man who wants to go about his business, but then some tragedy happens and his family or loved one gets killed by the mob, or the gang, or the cartel, or the government, or whatever. So he levels up, goes on a rampage and takes out everyone that wronged him or was involved in the murder of his family or loved one in the goriest way possible and it’s glorious.

There has been Discourse about how this works; about how the women in these stories mostly exist for the sole purpose of getting violence enacted upon them (see Stuffed into the Fridge for more). They’re not characters, they’re props to be disposed of, or exist solely for the motivations of a man.

Peppermint kind of gets around that because its protagonist is a woman. And that’s kind of… it when it comes to this movie. I mean it’s The Punisher, right down to the “family gets gunned down close to a merry-go-round,” except the main character is played by Jennifer Garner.

It goes like this: Riley North is a suburban mom whose family is financially struggling when, on her daughter’s birthday, her husband and child are gunned down in drive-by shooting by the cartel. Turns out her husband was offered a job robbing the cartel, and though he declined to take a part in it his name was still noticed by the cartel and they killed him. Making matters worse, the cartel has paid off enough people in the justice system that the men who did it walk free, despite Riley’s testimony. So five years later, Riley’s back for revenge, and goes killing all the men who wronged her.

Let’s get this out of the way: Peppermint is not a particularly smart movie. There’s no explanation as to how Riley North became an absolute badass. The Department of Justice gives a rundown of her buying guns and getting involved in mixed martial arts in her five-year gap, but there’s not a hint as to how she got those skillz. Where did she learn to fight? To shoot? To break into buildings? To recognize explosives? No explanation. A lot of these kinds of movies get around this by having the protagonist be military or ex-special forces, or in the case of Columbiana, trained by a former gangster. Peppermint does no such thing; Riley is explicitly a soccer mom before all of this happened. We get no indication that she’s a badass until we see her in the modern sequences gunning cartel members right and left. Mind you, it’s still awesome, but if you wanted the movie to make more sense than that I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

It’s a pretty straightforward story, and I can’t exactly say there’s much about it that will surprise you. The story goes almost precisely how you expect it will go. There’s only one exception in my case: there was one character I spent the entire movie suspecting was secretly evil, but in the last act of the movie the narrative takes a sharp swerve and it turns out that I was wrong. I don’t know if this is the use of a clever red herring, or just the movie fumbling the writing on this point. Really, with Peppermint, it could be either.

You might get the impression from this review that I’m saying this is a dumb movie. And… yeah, it kind of is. If you want a dumb action movie to fill in your evening, then yeah, Peppermint is going to fill that void. And that’s fine. But I doubt it’s going to be on anyone’s “Top Action Movie” lists and I do think it’s too predictable and poorly-thought out to be a good action movie. Yes I liked it, but objectively speaking there’s not much to it.

#Peppermint #moviemunchies #movies #reviews #Jennifer Garner

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valkylic · 5 years

Text

A Dragon’s Void

Chapter 1//Next

Xisuma has been suddenly changed into a rampaging Ender Dragon-- There was little to no warning, the only the person that knows anything about the void is the problem to begin with-

Will he ever become human again?

“Come on Xisuma, you know I don’t need-- What- how many is this! Like 20 different boxes of wither roses!” Iskall light-heartedly teased the admin, as he shuffled through the mountain of boxes with wither roses provided by X. While Xisuma snickered at the Swed's behavior.

“Well, it’s your fault for not giving me clear instr--”

The sentence was abruptly cut short, followed by a sudden thud. Iskall was still talking on and on about-- Something- He wasn’t sure- His hearing was ringing with pain. He blinked, and the Swedish man was already next to him, his mouth was moving-- but what was he saying? Everything was blending together. X was sure he said he was fine, maybe Iskall didn’t hear it? X spoke again, but still nothing, Iskall was still panicking, now talking into his communicator-- Suddenly, everything started to feel warm- and nothing hurts anymore.

He blacked out.

>Iskall85 was slain by Ender Dragon

>Rendog: Iskall you good bro?

>Iskall85: yeah im fine, just dont know what happened lul

>Docm77: what do you mean

>Iskall85: was talking with x and he suddenly collapsed on me

>Docm77: that has nothing to do with the dragon

>Iskall85: i know right, it's super weird

>Iskall85: anyways, i slept super far away, whos at the shopdis rn?

>Rendog: i am in the medieval district

>Rendog: hold on ill go get your stuff for ya

>Iskall85: thanks my dude

>Rendog: Iskall?

>Iskall85: yeah?

>Rendog: why are some buildings broken in the shopping district?

>Iskall85: wdym it was fine when i was there

>Rendog: some buildings have huge claw marks over it--

>Rendog: oh my god

>Iskall85: ??

>Rendog: is that xis

>Rendog was slain by Ender Dragon

“Alright, um. I definitely thought I was seeing things when it happened. But its apparently real! Good to know.” Iskall breathed out, trying to make it light.

“Iskall. Our fucking admin turned into a bloodthirsty Ender dragon.” The creeper man deadpanned as he sharpened his trident. The three hermits now gathered on top of the Sahara building, taking in the damage that their admin was causing.

“So…. What do we do now?” Ren asked, attempting to break the silence.

“I mean. If he is an Ender dragon now, we should be able to just- kill him, and everything should go back to normal? Respawning always fixes player-related issues.” False suggested while landing on top of the white structure, back from scouting the area.

“Wouldn’t hurt to try I guess--” Ren started, before getting knocked off of Sahara from a kick coming from behind.

“Ren!” Iskall yelled, turning around quickly with his bow, only to see X already turning towards him, this time with a punch. He scrambled out of the way, barely dodging it. The force had knocked a decent dent into the roof of the structure. He shuddered at the thought of taking that punch. False quickly took X’s attention from Iskall and slashed her sword at him. The diamond sword clanged at the purple, amethyst scales on the admin’s arms. A horrible scratching noise erupted from the contact of the two.

The dragon quickly swapped his position, sweeping his tail onto the floor horizontally. Tripping False from her footing. Iskall joined back into the fight, shooting at him with his bow. With the arrows piercing into the British man’s back. While Ren flanked him with his ax. X let out a loud roar, stumbling for a moment, before turning his attention to Ren. Launching himself at the man. Before being interrupted by Doc. The trident stabbed through the armor the other was wearing. Taking a huge chunk off of the admin’s health bar displayed from the screens. False, ran from behind and drove her sword into his back. A roar even more horrible and strained from before erupted from Xisuma-- A wet liquid dropped onto Doc’s trident--

Was that…. Tears?

There was no doubt about it, tears ran from the dragon’s eyes, almost as if pleading for life. The health bar of the Boss was draining away-- Doc quickly let go of his trident, and took out a splash potion of healing and smashed it onto the ground. X suddenly realized he had what little of his strength back, and scrambled off to fly away from the hermits. Still with False’s sword in his back.

“Doc, what are you doing?!” False yelled.

“I-- I don’t think he would respawn from this,” Doc spoke quietly, “If he really is an Ender dragon now. He won’t be able to respawn like us players.” He realized.

The four were silent. Thinking about it- Yeah. X is basically a mob now. And if they did kill him--

No, they won’t kill him, they didn’t kill him.

“Where would he go now?...” Ren said, “We have a lot of lands to cover if we are searching for him…”

The other hermits stared at Doc, who seemed to be thinking of an answer.

“We can regroup at Area 77 for now. We have better equipment there, and we can cover more area with the drones-- Plus, it’ll be the safest place for us.”

“...Whatever you say.”

#hermitcraft #xisumavoid #xisuma #falsesymmetry #docm77 #rendog #ren #doc #false #writings #xisumadragon au #a dragon's void #<< new tag for the au!!#hermitcraft au #8/26/19

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semi-imaginary-place · 4 years

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ah so yesterday I played as a private security company hired to break up a labor protest. DM told us all to play lawful evil characters, but as things tend to it soon devolved into chaos.

first we didn't have a plan outside of maybe kill some people then one of the others (5? 6? total) attacked a guard and it was ride or die. so we killed a lot of people fighting out way to our assassination target. One of the party members (dragonborn 1) escaped with the target and his family and killed them while the hobbit sniped the son and mom and the rest of us had no idea what was going on. (oh and dragonborn 2 lit the building on fire). my character jumped out of a third story building and told the guards it was a dragonborn that killed them. She then fled to collect the party's worth of payment for herself from our employer and fled the city. Dragonborn 2 then decided to rampage and kill anyone in sight and got into a death match with a wizard. Dragonborn 1 fled back into the building and then was pursued on rooftop by a mob which she jumped into and fought through the city streets against, killing dozens until finally subdued. After a long rest in a holding cell, she broke out, fought through and killed a bunch more people before kidnapping the surviving child from the botched assassination and running into the woods to indoctrinate the child into the cult of tiamat.

My character meanwhile got away scot free with 10,000 gold and the good will of the most powerful man in town, as all the witnesses were killed by the other party members who decided to go full chaotic evil and go on killing sprees, and dragonborn 1 misidentified my character before being discovered to be a liar and running as a fugative. oh so our assassination target was the leader of the miner's worker's union so we all dressed in mining uniforms and then dragonborn 1 told everyone it was the mayor that put the hit in (which got be brownie points from our employer) and then incited fights between the guards and workers who originally were on the same side.

a few months later my character is hired to retrieve the kidnapped child. Gets the kid and lights the cabin on fire where dragonborn 1 is. dragonborn misty steps twice while the DM roles under 5 for 30 roles and then starts a long chase sequence until my character catches up on her new horse she just bought with her new wealth and after like 20 rounds finally kills dragonborn 1.

So my character got away with an assassination attempt, cheated the rest of the party out of their money, got a stable job with the most powerful person in the city, started her own small business, and is the only one of the party to have survived. I say this because I fully expected her to die within the first 1/2 hour. her stats are terrible, and while everyone else was level 5, she was level 3. she's a level 3 strength fighter with +1 strength. and everyone else had multi attack except her. for reference dragonborn 1 had 47 hp while my character had 22

#dnd

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commandertheory · 5 years

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War of the Spark Commander Set Review

The Commanders of War of the Spark

In white, there’s not too many ways to build around her. Once you exhaust the suite of self-bouncing creatures you commonly see in Karametra lists (e.g., Kor Skyfisher, Whitemane Lion), the next best cards to run are cheap utility creatures like Stoneforge, Weathered Wayfarer, etc.-- essentially goodstuff.

It’s notable that this card could be very good as part of the 99 in Karametra and Ephara lists. Also, it’s a double striker with a big butt for Doran lists.

I’m not a big fan of commanders that solely care about what your opponents are doing because they don’t give your own deck a lot of direction. If you’ve got a Lord Windgrace deck in your meta, then this might be useful in the 99 of hatebear decks that are good at finding their silver bullets.

The best piece of tech for Fblthp is Proteus Staff. If you run a creatureless Fblthp list, you get to stack your entire deck and then immediately draw two cards, which is great for assembling combos, such as Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal. If you have mana rocks that produce three or more mana, Scepter + Reversal will give you infinite mana and then infinite activations of Proteus Staff so you can draw your deck and find a win condition.

Nexus of Fate is another solid combo piece to stack on top of your deck with Fblthp, as you can keep stacking it to the top with Proteus Staff and Fblthp, provided you have the 10 mana required to do so every turn.

I’m a little skeptical that this strategy is going to be significantly stronger than what was already possible in any Commander deck with access to Proteus Staff. Like, if you’re already in Blue, you’re not going to be starved for card draw, and you could be running a different commander that provides additional benefits (or additional colors) instead of an effect that your color identity could easily do anyway.

Seems like a very strong commander for extra turn effects. As long as you can keep Scroll Racking your Time Warps to the top of your library, you get infinite turns; even if you have to rely on one-shot effects like Brainstorm or whatever, you’ll still be taking a lot of extra turns, which will hopefully be enough for your 4-power evasive commander to eliminate some threats.

This deck naturally runs a ton of sac fodder; Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, and Bloodsoaked Champion are all good here. You may also want to run some efficient token generation, as well. I also think it’s a good idea to run some of Black’s strong sac outlets like Attrition and Mind Slash so that you have the option to control your opponents with your sac fodder instead of just exchanging them for random cards via Bontu’s ETB. These sac outlets can also help you more easily reuse Bontu’s ETB trigger, especially if you sacrifice her in response to the trigger so you’ll immediately redraw her.

The most unique thing about this commander is the ability to sacrifice noncreature permanents. This opens up cards like Ugin’s Nexus and Spine of Ish Sah, which get you value when they die.

One interesting idea I’ve heard was to run Endless Whispers with her so that you get all your opponents’ creatures that die to her ETB trigger. Blink effects seem good here and I’d think about running stuff like Undying Evil, Kaya’s Ghostform, Abnormal Endurance, and Supernatural Stamina to both protect her from removal and reuse her trigger.

It may also be a good idea to run random sac fodder to ensure the ball gets rolling; it’d be a shame if the massacre never got started because the board was full of 2+ toughness creatures.

Sample Decklist

Similar to a regular Krenko, Mob Boss deck, but with power-pumping effects in place of the activated ability synergies and some of the token generation.

With Krenko, it was important to be able to get a ton of dudes onto the battlefield early to maximize his gobbo-doubling power. Krenko 2.0 doesn’t need random gobbo bodies unless they do something useful.

Sample Decklist

Neheb is kind of a sidegrade from his previous incarnation. The card filtering makes it so that you’re not quite as likely to run out of gas, but the fact that his mana generation is limited by the number of cards you discard to his trigger prevents some of the truly absurd plays that Neheb 2.0 was known for-- you’re not going to be hardcasting Eldrazi and Blighsteels nearly as often in this deck.

Extra combat step effects are very good here, as they can potentially net you mana and they give you another chance to rummage for good cards. I like that this deck can run situational cards like Ruination and Blood Moon because there’s no such thing as a dead draw in this list-- Neheb hungers for bad cards to discard.

Mass land destruction is great in this deck because, like the first Neheb, the Champion can provide the mana you need to cast your stuff.

The single best card in this deck is Aggravated Assault, which goes infinite with your commander, provided you have five or more cards in hand that you can discard-- just make sure you’ve got one of the original three legendary Eldrazi so you can shuffle your graveyard back in and prevent yourself from milling out.

I wish there were more good madness cards in Red, or in Commander in general. Neheb 3.0 is the perfect commander for madness since he provides both an outlet and mana to cast stuff, but the only madness cards worth running are like Fiery Temper and maaaaybe Avacyn’s Judgment.

Sample Decklist

This seems like an awesome reward for running fat donks like Blightsteel and Malignus.

Although he doesn’t play nicely with attack triggers, you’re on color for some sweet combat damage triggers like Balefire Dragon, Hellkite Tyrant, Dream Pillager, Rapacious One, Neheb 2.0, Steel Hellkite, and Mordant Dragon. Neheb, the Eternal, while not a combat damage trigger, also works pretty well with Ilharg.

Ilharg has some synergy with echo, since you’ll never have to pay the upkeep cost, so cards like Volcano Hellion and Crater Hellion are much better in this list than they normally are.

Having six toughness and an ability that lets you cheat mana costs means that Wildfire and Destructive Force are very good here, as is mass land destruction in general. Keldon Firebombers seems like a great way to repeatedly limit your opponents’ mana.

In addition to the usual suite of mana accelerants and haste granters, Generator Servant is quite good here, and I’d consider running Seething Song, as well.

Sample Decklist

The creatures that benefit most from Rhonas’s ETB trigger are win conditions in their own right; you don’t need to rely on your commander to make canned armies like Rampaging Baloths, Titania, and Avenger of Zendikar into threats.

Maybe this wants to be an infect deck, since doubling the power of cards like Phyrexian Juggernaut and Phyrexian Hydra makes them one-hit KOs.

Muscle Mutt is just a voltron deck, albeit one that uses an unusual subset of cards. I wouldn’t run most cards that solely put counters on Mowu, but I like cards that put counters on him while generating cards, like Ordeal of Nylea, Ancient Animus, or Implement of Ferocity. I also like some of the repeatable counter-generating effects; Retreat to Kazandu, Armory of Iroas, and Invigorating Boon (cards with cycling) seem good. There are also some lands that can get counters on your commander, such as Oran-Rief, the Vastwood; Forge of Heroes; and Opal Palace. Also, don’t forget your Hardened Scales!

There’s been a little bit of controversy about Yanggu and Mowu lately because Yanggu is able to bring Mowu with his when he planeswalks (which is supposed to be impossible, as Huatli’s tamales illustrate; normally, creatures are summoned to a plane). It would be weird if Yanggu could only do this with Mowu, but my headcanon is that Mowu is able to do it with anyone but has so far only attempted it with his dog (or that if he had previously done it, he forgot about it when he came down with amnesia).

I don’t think it’s worth running random wolves as sorcery-speed kill spells, but I might run wolves that get me value in addition to fighting (e.g., Rot Wolf, Skalla Wolf, Pack Guardian). Wolfir Silverheart is too monstrously large to leave out of this deck.

I’d also run repeatable wolf token generators like Sword of Body and Mind, Wolfcaller’s Howl, Master of the Wild Hunt, Kessig Cagebreakers, and Feed the Pack. You can also run some of the wolf token generators that create a bunch at once (such as Howl of the Night Pack, Predator’s Howl, and Wolfbriar Elemental) to build your own Ezuri’s Predation.

I gotta say that it’s very cute that they gave Voja a title so that he wouldn’t legend rule the tokens made by the old Tolsimir.

We all know that BG has a lot of good creatures that are worth recurring (putting your opponents under the Abyss with Fleshbag variants sounds like a barrel of laughs), but it also has a ton of good planeswalkers, especially when you don’t have to care too much about protecting them. Firing off a Sorin Markov or a Vraska 1.0, letting your opponents dogpile on it, and then getting it back again next turn seems like a great way to control the board and divert aggro away from your face.

I would try to fit in some ways to give your commander haste (Greaves, Hall of the Bandit Lord) and protect him (Yavimaya Hollow) since he’s the engine your deck revolves around.

This guy checks some boxes to make use of mana dorks that are too narrow for most decks: he costs four, he’s got 4+ power for Whisperer of the Wilds, and he’s an Elf for Priest of Titania.

This card does not appear to be designed with Commander in mind. Death triggers don’t work very well in this format, especially when you don’t have access to black and white reanimation engines. If you discount the proliferate (as you should), all that’s left is a pile of stats, which has never been particularly strong in Commander.

If this guy was just ETB double proliferate, he would have been waaay more interesting.

I’ve heard about lists that use clones to farm his death and ETB triggers, but I tried it and it was not… great… Proliferating before you add the new counters is pretty lame, and one-shot proliferation without cards attached to it is not worth a card slot, IMO.

The best Boros commander ever, and it’s not close. This deck draws tons of cards thanks to white and red’s many cheap cantrips, it can protect its commander pretty easily thanks to the million 1CMC instants that give things protection or indestructible, and it has some great combo pieces like Aurelia’s Fury and Blinding Beam to allow you to soft lock your opponents.

Plus, if you’d prefer to eschew the controlling playstyle for something more aggressive, you can run a bunch of Fists of the Anvil and Double Cleave variants to beat the hell out of your opponents.

Sample Decklist

This card just encourages you to run the most powerful multicolored cards, which tend to be hyper-efficient removal spells like Assassin’s Trophy and Anguished Unmaking. The only non-goodstuff cards in the list are a handful of blink spells so you can dodge removal and refill your hand. As far as win conditions go, turning Niv sideways seems to be the best one; Civic Saber, Conqueror’s Flail, and Duelist’s Heritage will cut your clock in half.

Sample Decklist

Card Ratings

In this set review, I’ll be using two five-point rating scales to evaluate the nonlegendary cards, one that measures how many decks a card is playable in (we’ll call that “spread”), and one that measures how powerful it is in those decks (”power”). Here’s a brief rundown of what each rank on the two scales means:

Spread

1: This card is effective in one or two decks, but no more (ex: The Gitrog Monster). 2: This card is effective in one deck archetype (ex: self-mill decks). 3: A lot of decks will be able to use this card effectively (ex: decks with graveyard interactions). 4: This card is effective in most decks in this color. 5: Every deck in this color is able to use this card effectively.

Power

1: This card is always going to be on the chopping block. 2: This card is unlikely to consistently perform well. 3: This card provides good utility but is not a powerhouse. 4: This card is good enough to push you ahead of your opponents. 5: This card has a huge impact on the game.

The Planeswalkers of War of the Spark

Spread: 1

Power: 2

I could imagine running this in Odric, Lunarch Marshal, since it’s a cheap way to give all your guys indestructible and lifelink or vigilance. Otherwise, it’s not worth your time.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Might see a little play in Arcades as a way to produce a pair of beaters and draw a couple cards. It’s nice that you can curve Teyo into Arcades to frontload the mana cost but wait to produce your tokens and get your cards until after your commander comes down. The rate is not insane, though, and I could see this getting cut for a better stats-to-cost ratio in the future.

Spread: 1

Power: 4

This is solely for self-mill decks. It’s less vulnerable to removal than Laboratory Maniac but you can’t get it back with Dread Return or something similar if you mill yourself out. Either way, both Jace and Lab Man are worse than Nexus of Fate.

Spread: 1

Power: 4

I could see running this in a deck with a lot of wheel effects (Nekusar and The Locust God being the obvious ones) to act as a Leovold, making your opponents discard their hands and only drawing one card to replace it.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

Liliana is a bit expensive, but she might have potential in the few decks that can make use of more than one of her abilities. For example, sacrifice-oriented decks are interested in black token generation and getting value when your creatures die, so both her static effect and +1 will be useful there. Also, it’s worth noting that although planeswalkers are generally pretty fragile in Commander, Liliana makes a chump blocker and she’s going to have 7 loyalty when you pass the turn, which can be difficult for your opponents to beat though, especially if you’ve got Savra, Queen of the Golgari or Teysa, Orzhov Scion to control their boards.

Spread: 4

Power: 1

This card is really similar to Chandra, Pyromaster, and that card sees almost no play.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

For the purposes of the Ur-Dragon, it’s two dragons for the price of one and it can potentially deter attacks. I don’t think there’s anyone else that’s really interested in this, though.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

He’s a second copy of Rishkar for green +1/+1 counter decks.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

Omnath, Locus of Mana seems like a natural home for this card. It’s kind of cool that it’s effectively three mana since you can untap a Forest with the +1, but this card is still worse than Vernal Bloom in most ways. Vernal Bloom gets you to the game-winning threshold for mana a lot quicker; you don’t need more than 8 or 9 mana to win a game of Commander so what really matters is hitting that game-winning threshold as early as possible. Casting a turn four Bloom into a turn 5 Tooth and Nail is much stronger than casting a turn 5 Nissa into a turn 6 T&N, especially when you consider the fact that your Vernal Bloom can’t be attacked or Bolted in the intervening turn.

That being said, this is still a powerful card for monogreen ramp.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

I like the surprise factor of the -2; it’s cool that they’re finding ways to improve on abilities we’ve seen a thousand times already. Anyway, this card is not good. If you want two random cards out of your deck, you can get it at a better rate than this.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Overall, this card feels very intro pack-y. The plus ability doesn’t affect the board, the -3 is a pretty bad rate, and the ultimate is not very impactful. This doesn’t seem like a great reason to buy a box (unless the price ends up being super high).

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Every element of this card can be done much better somewhere else in these colors. There is something to be said for the power of choices, but I really don’t think this card is good enough to see play.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

This card looks a lot like Ajani Goldmane, although it’s much better in superfriends decks than Goldmane ever was. It’s also worth noting that Ajani will probably draw less aggro than whatever busted planeswalker you’re bumping up, so he’s less fragile than he looks. However, I still think this effect is not worth a card. There are some solid repeatable proliferators in WAR, and I’d much rather use them than rely on a card type that can get attacked to death.

Spread: 3

Power: 1

I really like CMC-based reanimation and I’d really like to see it on a WB commander one day. Anyway, since you’re on color for both white and black reanimation you can do way better than this. If your deck is trying to recur a lot of weenies you can run Return to the Ranks or Dusk/Dawn, and if you want to get back one big thing, you can run Animate Dead or Reanimate or Necromancy or whatever.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

With a little tweaking, this could be an interesting commander, as it rewards you for playing with a subset of cards that normally doesn’t get played in Commander. In the main deck, however, this card seems pretty underwhelming. Even in lists that naturally have a ton of deathtouchers such as Hapatra, this is a pretty slow, small, and fragile anthem. If she had some way to gain loyalty, the -2 could help the card find its way into decks looking for sac fodder, but two tokens over two turns for four mana is not going to turn a lot of heads.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

There’s currently no UG commander that really rewards lots of large dudes, but I’m hopeful we might see something in the future (maybe a Simic or Temur Divine Visitation effect on a commander?).

Between Kiora, Temur Ascendancy, Garruk's Packleader, Kavu Lair, and Elemental Bond, we are getting very close to a critical mass of this type of card.

Spread: 1

Power: 4

Maybe if you’re running a deck with a ton of Twincast variants, this could serve as a potential win condition/storm enabler. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the combo, you cast a Fork variant copying any spell, then cast another Fork variant copying the original Fork variant. The second Fork resolves, putting a new copy of Fork #1 on the stack, which can then target the original Fork #1. Keep going through this loop and netting Ral triggers until your opponents are dead.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

Young Pyromancer sees play in 6400 decks on EDHREC, many of them in Izzet color identities. I think Saheeli slots into those same lists pretty easily, especially given the potential power offered by her -2 when copying mana rocks or utility creatures.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

What a brutal mana cost. I’d run this in superfriends since it’s almost a planeswalker clone and killing creatures/drawing cards is not terrible in that deck. I think that mana cost and the general meh-ness of PWs in Commander keep him out of most other decks.

Spread: 5

Power: 0 (no sideboards) / 4 (sideboards)

The playability of this guy hinges on whether your playgroup allows you to get cards from outside of the game. The Rules Committee’s stance is that sideboards are not officially supported and have to be house ruled into the format. If your playgroup follows that bit of dogma and Karn can only search your exile zone, then he’s not really worth playing; Null Rod only sees play in the most cutthroat cEDH lists, and while Karn only affects your opponents, I think that’s more than offset by the fact that he costs 4 and can get attacked to death.

Now, if your playgroup DOES let you have a sideboard or just dig through your binder or whatever, Mycosynth Lattice is one of the best things it can do, as it shuts off your opponents’ lands and all of their activated abilities in combination with Karn. Paradox Engine and Bolas’s Citadel are strong cards that don’t require much set up, but if you’re trying to combo off with those cards, you’d probably rather have them in your maindeck, rather than only accessible via a planeswalker. There are some neat artifact combos that you can search for both halves of if you can ensure that Karn lives long enough to activate twice: Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth gets you infinite mana (although again, these cards may be better in your maindeck), and if Painter’s Servant ever gets unbanned, you can use Karn to grab it and Grindstone to mill your opponents out one by one.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

Now, this guy is a Commander-playable planeswalker. I’d run this in any deck currently running Scour from Existence (barring Mizzix), which mostly means colorless, monoblack, and monored decks. The +1 is also solid, offering sacrifice fodder that is likely to be pretty useful in many of the monoblack decks that run it, and colorless cost reduction makes it even more powerful in the colorless decks that run it. I’m a big fan of this card, and I like that it disproportionately helps color identities that were on the weaker side.

It’s great that he’s rare, since I plan on picking up a bunch of these.

Maindeck Cards from War of the Spark

Spread: 3

Power: 3

At low numbers, the ratio of bodies to cost is not great. There are so many good white token generators that I doubt this makes the cut, even though the tokens are better than the ones produced by most of its competitors. Also, you should treat the “10 or more” text on this card like a planeswalker’s ultimate and ignore it.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Seems very good in a Mikaeus, the Lunarch deck and in planeswalker decks that don’t invest heavily in mass removal. It stinks that White got the worst experience counter commanders and never got a poison commander because this card has so much potential, but the support isn’t there.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

This is a lot of mana for a narrow tutor. When you consider the fact that most Superfriends lists are already running Black and have access to cheap unconditional tutors, the Beacon becomes much less appealing.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

It does make a lot of Angels for your Lyra Dawnbringer deck. It’s not worth 8 mana, though.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Hating on multicolor permanents is not that great. Although most commanders are multicolor, most main deck permanents are one or fewer colors. To put this card in perspective, Radiant Purge sees almost no play in Commander.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

I think Diving Reckoning is a fair point of comparison for this card. Divine Reckoning sees a fair amount of play; it’s in almost 6000 decks on EDHREC, most of them Voltron. While Single Combat has a few knobs that distinguish it from Reckoning, it’s probably a safe bet that it’ll see similar amounts of play in similar lists.

That being said, I’m not a huge fan of this card. It guarantees that the biggest threats survive and most of the time I’d rather take out the scariest things on my opponents’ side of the field than protect my own things.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Varina is very interested in making multiple Zombie bodies for less than three mana. I’m gonna save a little space in a very long set review and suggest you apply the previous sentence and ratings to every Amass creature and most Amass spells that cost less than four mana.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

I like this card a lot. I think it’s much stronger than Steady Progress, and about on the power level of Tezzeret’s Gambit, which sees play in 8500 decks on EDHREC.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

Kruphix is very interested in outlets for the absurd amounts of mana he produces, and unlike almost any other commander, he can realistically hit the “10 or more” mode.

Mizzix likes X spells that generate value, so she might also be in the market for this card.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

This card could see play in planeswalker decks as another Inexorable Tide. This could also potentially see play in Mizzix decks as an additional way to bump up your experience count or in Noyan Dar as a way to grow your manlands.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

The additional mana relative to Thrummingbird hurts, and this also misses on some of the bird tribal lists (Kangee) that were interested in that card. Still, I could imagine running this in Atraxa, Ezuri 2.0, and Vorel.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

It’s a cheap Sphinx for Unesh, and it can bounce another Sphinx to your hand so you can get another trigger.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

Unfortunate that it can only target your own creatures and planeswalkers, but it seems strong in superfriends decks and simic +1/+1 counter lists. It’s also quite good in Estrid, Teferi, Temporal Archmage, and Saheeli, the Gifted, since all of those commanders have mana-generating abilities that make the Double free or cheap to cast.

There are also a ton of commanders that this can break wide open. Double Reaper King, double Atraxa, double Zndrsplt… if you’re in Blue and you’re running Helm of the Host, this card seems like a big upgrade.

Spread: 3

Power: 5

This is the new Paradox Engine. If your deck has a lot of card selection and tutors then this ought to be able to win the game all by itself. Some of the better interactions:

Circu, Dimir Lobotomist: This guy was kind of a joke before Citadel got spoiled. His mill effect is really weak and he’s in the bottom half of all Dimir commanders when it comes to popularity. However, he works pretty well with the Citadel because he can mill off excess lands from the top of your library so that you’re less likely to fizzle when comboing off.

Sensei’s Divining Top: Turns the Citadel into a Yawgmoth’s Bargain (thanks to @snarwin for pointing this out).

Mana Severance: Gets rid of all the lands so you won’t fizzle.

Aetherflux Reservoir: Subsidizes the Citadel’s life payments and eventually serves as your win condition.

Spread: 3

Power: 4

It’s interesting that this and Bolas’s Citadel showed up in the same set, since they’re both six mana black rares that offer insane card advantage and mana savings at the cost of a ton of life.

Anyway, I’ve heard people talking about using this in Oloro and other decks that gain life very easily. It could also be good in decks with very low curves so that you’re getting more cards for the life you’re paying.

Interestingly, it deals damage to you rather than makes you lose life, which means that you can prevent the damage, give yourself protection, or give the spell lifelink in order to cheat the life cost.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

The ability to get back noncreature cards is pretty rare in black, and if your deck has a lot of redundancy built into it you can sometimes remove your opponents’ ability to screw you. Plus, there’s a lot to be said for making deals with the opponent in the weakest position to get back the cards that will knock someone else down a peg.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

It provides a steady stream of Skullclamp-compliant sac fodder for decks that need it, as well as a self-recurring threat for Varina Zombie tribal lists.

Spread: 4

Power: 3

This card seems like great value for mopping up small utility creatures. 4 mana to kill some combination of Oracle of Mul Daya, Fauna Shaman, Tymna, Edric, Mentor of the Meek, etc. seems pretty strong. I think the easiest point of comparison is probably Black Sun’s Zenith. Black Sun’s sees play in over 15,000 decks, and it’ll cost you the same amount of mana to kill the same creatures. This one is asymmetrical but won’t get the random collateral damage against your opponents’ other creatures. I think they’re about on the same power level, although it’s worth noting that you could conceivably hit the 12 mana in a monoblack deck with Coffers and a bunch of ways to find it.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

This guy requires you to jump through a ton of hoops. In order for him to do his thing, you have to have:

A way to give him haste and/or a way to protect him until your next turn.

A high density of instants and sorceries

Either an extremely low curve on those instants and sorceries or a way to buff the Arcanist’s power.

I can think of commanders that fulfill some of those requirements, but not all of them.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

X spells are great in Mizzix and she has a ton of great targets to choose from. Seems like an easy inclusion in that list. It could also be good in Zada as a way to re-use your token-generating spells and cantrips.

Neheb, the Eternal is one of the few commanders who can reliably get X to 10 or higher, since that deck is desperate for good mana sinks and it runs a fair number of strong instants and sorceries.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

This card is awesome. Great in Hapatra decks as a way to get a bunch of Hapatra triggers at once and accelerate the death of your opponents’ dudes. Also seems solid in Thelon of Havenwood for spreading spores, nabbing experience with Meren and Ezuri 2.0, pumping the team in Mazirek, and of course, building loyalty among your planeswalkers.

Spread: 4

Power: 4

I don’t think we needed more cards like this, but whatever. The rich get richer. Other cards in Green that accomplish the same thing:

Tooth and Nail

Green Sun’s Zenith

Survival of the Fittest

Finale of Devastation

Chord of Calling

Worldly Tutor

Natural Order

Fauna Shaman

Note that all of the above are Commander staples.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Useful in Sasaya as a way to get more Forests in hand. Also a solid upgrade over Sylvan Scrying in a Nissa, Vastwood Seer deck.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Unfortunately, none of the Green planeswalkers that you can run as your commander have insane ultimates, so I don’t think it’s worth running in those decks as a means to pop em off really quickly.

It is, however, a slightly more expensive Deepglow Skate for Atraxa, Ezuri 2.0, Vorel, Pir & Toothy, and all those other blue/green counter-based decks.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Over 7500 decks on EDHREC run Naturalize, and this is strictly better, even if it’s not a huge upgrade.

Spread: 2

Power: 1

This card suffers from the Immortal Sun effect, where it does several things, but none of them particularly well. +2/+2 isn’t a huge boost for a one-shot effect, and the lack of trample is frustrating. Also, I don’t like that this card is really bad at punishing pillowfort, since their artifacts and enchantments are what’s preventing you from getting it.

If you’re in need of artifact destruction, you’re probably better off running a tutor to find your Bane of Progress. If you’re in need of an Overrun effect, you’re better off running a tutor to find your Craterhoof Behemoth. Might I suggest Finale of Devastation?

Spread: 1

Power: 2

I really don’t like the idea of pumping mana into this in the hopes of getting something relevant. However, I do like running it in decks that can manipulate their top card (Hua Tuo, Honored Physician comes to mind) and in decks that just like its type line and don’t actually care what it does (such as Reki, the History of Kamigawa, who only cares about running the cheapest legendary cards possible).

Spread: 4

Power: 3

I really like Negate and Countersquall, so I’m happy to run this effect as a 5th or 6th counterspell in all my decks with a blue/white color identity.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

I love asymmetrical board wipes. Note that it doesn’t target the creature it bounces so you can still cast it when you have no targets and it can’t be fizzled by removal. This seems like a pretty easy inclusion in most blue/white lists in the market for sweepers.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

This could be really sweet in any GR deck that runs a lot of mass land destruction-- maybe something like Grand Warlord Radha that isn’t totally reliant on its lands to cast its spells and can generate enough mana early in the game to bounce its lands and still cast a Thoughts of Ruin.

It also might be good in Borborygmos Enraged, as it’s a way to get lands back to your hand that is much less painful than Storm Cauldron.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

While the average CMC of Commander decks has crept down over the years, this is probably still very good. It kills all but 4 of the top 21 commanders of all time and while it’s pretty bad at taking care of mana accelerators and cheap draw engines, it’s great at killing the most terrifying threats in the format (such as Paradox Engine, Gods, Praetors, Titans, etc.). Don’t run it over Anguished Unmaking but consider it in a high-CMC metagame.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

I have not played a lot of Decimates, so I can’t fully judge how strong this card is. I thiiink it’s worse than Windgrace’s Judgment because of the rough mana cost, 6>5, sorcery speed.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

Eldritch Evolution sees a surprising amount of play (almost 9000 decks on EDHREC), but Neoform is worse in three ways, so it’s hard to be bullish about this card. I think I like it in Tishana, since she naturally wants a bunch of creatures on the field and morphs into Craterhoof, but I’m not sure there are many other commanders that would be stoked to run this. Maybe in Ezuri 2.0 as a way to trade mana dorks for Sage of Hours?

Spread: 4

Power: 3

This is the cheapest we’ve ever seen this effect and it can be really devastating to an opponent to have their commander permanently stolen. That being said, there are other cards with similar effects that cost only a little more, such as Legerdemain and Switcheroo, see hardly any play in Commander.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Very unfortunate that the red mana in its cost disqualifies it from being used in the two decks that want it most: Doran and Arcades. There are a bunch of Kynaios and Tiro decks running Wave of Reckoning, so there’s potential for it to be run there (although it’s worth mentioning that Wave of Reckoning was included in their precon, so it may not actually be that great in the deck; maybe people were just too lazy to take it out).

Spread: 4

Power: 3

This seems very good in Lord Windgrace since that deck has a ton of mana to pump into it, a slow clock, and many ways to recur it.

Other slow control decks with lots of mana available will probably be happy to run this card, since it’s a difficult-to-answer counter that doesn’t require a deck slot.

Spread: 5

Power: 1

Even with the restriction to creatures, Winding Canyons is much better than this and doesn’t see a whole lot of play, so I’m skeptical that this will accomplish much. Losing a land is a huge downside.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

This is great! Coming into this set I was hoping to see a lot of proliferate attached to staple effects, and there’s nothing more universally useful than lands. It’ll be tricky to run this in Atraxa and five-color superfriends lists because of the heavy color requirements in those decks, but I’m sure planeswalker decks with fewer colors (the nicer Narset builds, for example) and infect aggro, +1/+1 counter decks, -1/-1 counter decks, and experience counter commanders are all going to find room to run this card.

Wrapping Up

Were there any cards I missed? Do you disagree with any of my ratings? Let me know!

#set review #commander #edh #mtg #magic the gathering

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eretzyisrael · 6 years

Link

In this fourth article in the Continuing the Dialog – Take 2 Series, I am dealing with my hate-mailer’s decision – to respond to the assertion that he is apparently mainly a stereotypical Anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. His method this time is to resort to the common tactic of the Israel-hater – fiction. Here, he makes the fictional claim that the Jews are trying to destroy Muslim holy sites. And he does this, while simultaneously depicting the Arabs as the party in the Arab-Israeli conflict who are wonderfully respectful of the holy sites and beliefs of others.

To wit, my hate-mailer’s remarkable retort: “Palestinians couldve destroyed Jewish temples and the holy wall Jewish people have in Jerusalem like what Israel is doing at the moment by digging under al aqsa mosque, but they didn’t, even though Muslims ruled the place for centuries they never hitlered Jews.”

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It is also amazing, that in trying to counter the claim that you are a hateful conspiracy theorist, that you bring up another absurd conspiracy theory – one that has over the years resulted in many Jews being killed – namely the libelous claim that Jews are somehow trying to destroy Al-Aqsa. It is also surreal that you are comparing Israel’s respect for other people’s holy sites and trying to claim that Arabs fare well in comparison.

As a preliminary matter, let’s address your claim that “palestinians couldve destroyed jewish temples and the holy wall.”

First, the idea of a Palestinian people did not even come into existence until the 20th Century. Second, going back over at least the last 500 years (with rare exceptions that do not bode well for Arab respect for Jewish holy sites), Arabs rarely had any control over Jerusalem or any of the holy sites in the land of Israel. Second, the notion that Arabs treated our holy sites with any semblance of respect is laughable. Under the Ottomans from 1517 to 1917, access to the Kotel (Western Wall) was greatly restricted and under Jordanian control (from 1948-67) it was essentially treated like a place for dogs and donkeys to go to the bathroom (and it has never [EVER] been under “Palestinian” control).

That the Arabs and Ottomans, however, never destroyed the Kotel is certainly nothing to brag about considering that the Western Wall is the base wall for the Temple Mount itself and destroying the Western Wall would destroy not only the holiest site in the world to Jews, but also the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock (which were built literally on top of the holiest site in the world to Jews and at the site of the two ancient Jewish Temples in Jerusalem). As an aside, if you ever want to know who are the colonizers and who are the colonized, just look at which party builds their holy sites on top of the others.

As for your claim about Jews trying to destroy Muslim sites by “digging under Al Aqsa Mosque” this claim is part of a very old and hateful Anti-Semitic canard that the Arabs have often deployed in order to gin up hatred against Jews. Sadly, there’s a long history to Arab claims that Jews have threatened (or as you claim, are threatening) Al-Aqsa, dating all the way to at least 1921. These claims have always been proven false, but often not before Jews have been murdered as a result. These claims are mendacious. Part “call to arms,” part conspiracy theory, and ironically, part very obvious psychological projection, due to past actions against Jewish holy sites that fell into Arab control.

The Nazi collaborator, and Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was one of the early adopters of this libel. His claims back in 1928 and 1929 that the Jews were seeking to damage Muslim holy sites, including Al Aqsa, led to numerous Arab riots and massacres, including the massacre in Hebron in 1929 that led to every Jew in Hebron being murdered or ethnically cleansed from the city. These same claims in more modern times – always utterly fake and with no credible evidence behind them – have often served as the basis for more recent violence against Jews, with numerous perpetrators of the stabbing attacks of the last 2 plus years – as part of the “knife intifada” – claiming that they decided to stab a Jew in order to “protect Al Aqsa.”

It is sad, that while these lies are so plainly false and absurd given the way Israel and the Jewish people actually treat all peoples’ holy sites; the Arabs in the region, having been inundated all of their lives with Arab and Islamist Supremacist hate for the other (and in particular, the Jew) so readily believe and act on those lies (often violently).

Let’s look at the reality of how Israel has treated and respected Muslim holy sites. First, right after liberating the Old City of Jerusalem from its Jordanian occupiers, Israel handed control of the Temple Mount to the Islamic Trust, or Waqf, and forbade any Jewish religious rite on the entire Mount (not just in the mosques), a “status quo” it has maintained to this day.

So, after vanquishing in barely 6 days three enemy countries who were promising a war of annihilation against Israel just a few days earlier, and after liberating the Jewish people’s holiest site, Israel proceeded to immediately hand religious control over that site to those same Arabs who had been promising to exterminate us. Can anyone credibly imagine Israel’s enemies being so benevolent?

Second, Israel has not conducted any excavations, archaeological or otherwise, under the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock or Al Aqsa. The only significant excavation in recent times was actually carried out by the Islamic Waqf on the site formerly known as Solomon’s Stables, now the El-Marwani Mosque. And that excavation by the Waqf was a crime against history and archaeology, where the Waqf oversaw the massive destruction of over 3000 years plus of archaeological treasures. So other than in the fantasies of the Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory addled brains of the Israel-haters, there is simply no basis for the claim that Israel is “digging under Al Aqsa.”

Third, Israeli control of the Old City of Jerusalem in the last half century has meant that for the first time in centuries there is absolutely full freedom of worship for all religious beliefs and practices in Jerusalem. Can the same be said in any Arab controlled lands?

As for the other absurd part of your claim that – “palestinians couldve destroyed jewish temples and the holy wall jewish people have in jerusalem like what israel is doing at the moment” – you really need to just do a modicum of research into your claims before you reduce them to writing.

Upon the Jordanian Arab Legion’s capture of the Old City of Jerusalem, after all of the Jewish residents were forcibly expelled, the Jordanians destroyed 58 synagogues, and looted and desecrated their contents. In fact, one of the synagogues which were maliciously destroyed, the famous Hurva synagogue, was where my grandfather had his Bar-Mitzvah in 1913.

The Jewish cemetery in the Mount of Olives, where we Jews have been burying our dead for over 2,500 years, was desecrated, and over 38,000 tombstones were smashed and used for building material, paving stones, or for latrines in Arab Legion Army camps. The Kotel (Western Wall) was turned into a slum area and Jews were not allowed to visit there.

More recently, Palestinian Arabs, when given any semblance of control over Jewish holy sites have resembled more the Taliban blowing up Buddhist cultural treasures and ISIS’s rampage over Christian holy sites than the tolerant pluralistic beings you seem to fantasize about.

On October 7, 2000, after constant attacks by Palestinian mobs since the Palestinian Authority was first given control of the area in 1995, the Jewish holy site of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus (Shechem) was sacked and burned. Five days later, the ancient Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho was sacked and burned too. And the Waqf, as described above, in order to complete new underground mosques under the location of the holiest site in all of Judaism, closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archaeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority, used massive earth moving equipment and dump trucks (when they should have used archaeological tools and tooth brushes) and removed to city garbage dumps some 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount that included countless archaeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods.

Bottom line, any claim that Israelis (or as Mahmoud Abbas recently said “the Jews with their filthy feet”) are desecrating Arab or Muslim holy sites or endangering such sites is based on two things – massive Jew-hatred, which has sadly infected a large part of the Arab controlled world (as viciously as it had gripped large parts of Europe in the first half of the 20th Century) and a classic case of psychological projection. It is hateful and libelous. It is also, as evidenced by the dozens of Jews killed by Arabs motivated to murder and riot by such libels, extremely dangerous. You should be ashamed of yourself for propagating such libels.

Unfortunately, you are probably beyond shame or redemption on these issues. But one can hope. After all, “The Hope” is the name of Israeli national anthem.

#Israel #Har Habayit #Jerusalem #Kotel #Waqf

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iamthekaijuking · 6 years

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Some weird dreams I had recently

1) First it started off as me being a ninja turtle in the zombie apocalypse and there was nobody there except the other three turtles and we were driving around in their modified subway train. I’m guessing the zombie virus slowly made people go mad because there was giant blood red writing everywhere documenting multiple people’s decent into madness but it was all on corn so you had to be at an angle to see it. I remember we had to stop for gas at one point but we had to distract an army of giant rats and make them run off a cliff.

Yeah, apparently there was also a war between reptiles and mammals going on too...

Then we found a town of not zombie people that was like the town in bloodborn if it took place in the country side. Also the buildings were built like they were made for kaiju. At this point I was a normal person again (I think?) and the town held a meeting in the town hall to plan our next attack on the mammals. But unbeknownst to us there was spies underneath the floorboards.

Guess what they were...

FUCKING

MOLE PEOPLE!!!

THEY IMMEDIATELY JUMPED FROM UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS AND THEY ALL SPOKE IN SOME KIND OF ACCENT AND THEN THE FAT MOLE QUEEN POPPED OUT AND STARTED EATING PEOPLE BY SUCKING PEOPLE IN FROM ACROSS THE ROOM LIKE A FUCKING VACCUM CLEANER AND I HAD TO ESCAPE BY CLIMBING TO THE TOP FLOOR AND JUMP OUT THE WINDOW WHICH WAS ACTUALLY A CLOCK AND THERE WAS A KAIJU SIZED NERGIGANTE GLITCHING THROUGH THE WALLS AND THE MOLE QUEEN SUDDENLY BECAME A TINY SHACK ON STILTS THAT WAS STILL MAKING A POWERFUL SUCC BUT SHE COULDN’T LEAVE THE BUILDING SO I STOOD BY THE DOORS AND JUST STARTED NONCHALANTLY CHUCKING ROCKS AT HER AND THERE WAS ALSO A GUY WHO WAS JUST A TORSO ON TOP OF A WAGON AND NOBODY QUESTIONED IT.

2) Okay so this time I was part of a wealthy business family in a futuristic Japan, and the government was called the SSH for some reason (I don’t know what it stood for). So my rich Asian family went on a vacation to a hotel that was elevated on stilts and in the dead of night shin godzilla (specifically kamata-kun) silently made its way into the city and started chilling underneath the building.

But this godzilla was a little different. He was black and had large fleshy horizontal fins sprouting from his back. And the teeth on his top jaws were more like fingers that were underneath a lot of skin. Kinda like how mammals can raise their lips to reveal their teeth, except the flesh was connected to them.

In the morning is when all the chaos began. Every body noticed the giant fucking dinosaur thing underneath the building. Also my wealthy family mentioned how the economy in Japan was failing (big surprise there).

So my family made our way out of the building and the Godzilla started rampaging. There was also gray goo that was connected to godzilla somehow (I think it was dripping off him?) that melted you into gray goo if you touched it. People who got too close to this godzilla died of heat exhaustion because he was so hot.

So then my dream cut to the news and what they had to say. Apparently they were saying that this godzilla was the ultimate being of pollution and that they were unsure if it was the same godzilla that they killed so long ago.

But the government wasn’t going to do anything about it because they were busy trying to fix the economy.

So then my dream cut back to my perspective. This time I was stuck in a building with a couple of people and we were trying to make our way out of the building silently, because we were trying to avoid being detected by a bunch of people who had turned into happy zombies. Eventually a whole mob of them cornered us in a room filled with instruments. Then me and the other not zombies started playing this super insulting song about how life sucks and somehow this cured everyone. So then we all made our way out of the building and when we got outside, the Godzilla burst from the ground and started mutating. But the way it mutated looked like metal heating up and reshaping itself(?).

And that’s it.

3) Had a weird dream about a Chinese demon lord wielding thousands of floating knives. Also there was brick roads and a market place with tiny huts made of the same stuff as a Chinese finger trap.

#dreams #my dreams #my weird dreams #weird dreams #reoccuring dream characters #im weird #dream demons

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multipleservicelisting · 3 years

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Trump Impeached for Inciting Insurrection

WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump on Wednesday became the first American president to be impeached twice, as 10 members of his party joined with Democrats in the House to charge him with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in egging on a violent mob that stormed the Capitol last week.

Reconvening in a building now heavily militarized against threats from pro-Trump activists and adorned with bunting for the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., lawmakers voted 232 to 197 to approve a single impeachment article. It accused Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the government of the United States” in his quest to overturn the election results, and called for him to be removed and disqualified from ever holding public office again.

The vote left another indelible stain on Mr. Trump’s presidency just a week before he is slated to leave office and laid bare the cracks running through the Republican Party. More members of his party voted to charge the president than in any other impeachment.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, declaring the past week one of the darkest chapters in American history, implored colleagues to embrace “a constitutional remedy that will ensure that the republic will be safe from this man who is so resolutely determined to tear down the things that we hold dear and that hold us together.”

A little more than a year after she led a painstaking, three-month process to impeach Mr. Trump the first time for a pressure campaign on Ukraine to incriminate Mr. Biden — a case rejected by the president’s unfailingly loyal Republican supporters — Ms. Pelosi had moved this time with little fanfare to do the same job in only seven days.

“He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love,” the speaker said, adding later, “It gives me no pleasure to say this — it breaks my heart.”

The top House Republican, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, conceded in a pained speech on the floor that Mr. Trump had been to blame for the assault at the Capitol. It had forced the vice president and lawmakers who had gathered to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory to flee for their lives in a deadly rampage.

“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” said Mr. McCarthy, one of the 138 Republicans who returned to the House floor after the mayhem and voted to reject certified electoral votes for Mr. Biden. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”

Outside the House chamber, a surreal tableau offered reminders of the rampage that gave rise to the impeachment, as thousands of armed members of the National Guard in camouflage fatigues surrounded the complex and snaked through its halls, stacking their helmets, backpacks and weapons wherever they went. Their presence gave the proceedings a wartime feel, and evoked images of the 1860s, when the Union Army had quartered in the building.

The House’s action set the stage for the second Senate trial of the president in a year. The precise timing of that proceeding remained in doubt, though, as senators appeared unlikely to convene to sit in judgment before Jan. 20, when Mr. Biden will take the oath of office and Mr. Trump will become a former president.

The last proceeding was a partisan affair. But this time, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, was said to support the effort as a means of purging his party of Mr. Trump, setting up a political and constitutional showdown that could shape the course of American politics.

If a Senate trial resulted in Mr. Trump’s conviction, it held out the prospect, tantalizing for Democrats and many Republicans alike, of barring Mr. Trump from holding office again in the future.

In a measured statement after the vote, Mr. Biden called for the nation to come together after an “unprecedented assault on our democracy.” He was staring down the likelihood that the trial would complicate his first days in office, and said he hoped Senate leadership would “find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation.” That work included cabinet nominations and confronting the coronavirus crisis.

In the House, Democrats and Republicans who supported his ouster made no attempt to hide their fury at Mr. Trump, who was said to have enjoyed watching the attack play out on television as lawmakers pleaded for help. Republicans harangued members of their own party for supporting his mendacious campaign to cling to claim election victory.

Returning to the same chamber where many of them donned gas masks and hid under chairs amid gunfire one week ago, as rioters carrying zip ties and chanting “hang Pence” and “where’s Nancy” overtook the police, lawmakers issued stinging indictments of the president and his party.

“They may have been hunting for Pence and Pelosi to stage their coup,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment prosecutor, “but every one of us in this room right now could have died.”

At least five people did die during the attack, including an officer and a member of the mob who was shot just outside the chamber door.

Lawmakers, on edge about the state of the country, said the threat from Mr. Trump had not subsided.

“He is capable of starting a civil war,” Representative Maxine Waters of California, a veteran liberal, said.

Updated

Jan. 13, 2021, 6:50 p.m. ET

After four years of nearly unquestioning alliance with him, few Republicans defended Mr. Trump’s actions outright. Those who did resorted to a familiar set of false equivalencies, pointing to racial justice protests last summer that turned violent, and accusations that Democrats had mistreated the president and were trying to stifle the 74 million Americans who voted for him.

“It’s always been about getting the president, no matter what,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, shot across the room at Democrats. “It’s an obsession, an obsession that has now broadened. It’s not just about impeachment anymore, it’s about canceling, as I’ve said. Canceling the president and anyone that disagrees with them.”

Overhanging the proceedings was the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which is killing 3,000 Americans a day. A handful of lawmakers were infected, as well, after the chaotic evacuation of the Capitol, as many Republican lawmakers refused to wear masks in the secure rooms where they huddled for safety. Fearful of exposing colleagues or of putting themselves at risk to the dual health and security threats, dozens of lawmakers cast their votes remotely by proxy.

Far from contrite, Mr. Trump insisted in the run-up to the vote that his words to loyalists swarming Washington last week had been appropriate. In the days since, he has repeated bogus lies that the election was stolen from him. He denounced impeachment as part of the yearslong “witch hunt” against him, but had taken no apparent steps to put together a legal team to defend him when he stands trial.

Not long after the vote, Mr. Trump released a video condemning the violence and urging his followers to avoid a repeat in “the coming days both here in Washington and across the country” as federal authorities warned of a nationwide wave of violence surrounding Mr. Biden’s inauguration. But he did not mention his own role in instigating the violence or apologize, nor did he concede or mention Mr. Biden’s name.

The president recorded the video under pressure from aides, who have warned him that he faces potential legal exposure for the riot, which took place after a speech in which he urged supporters to “fight” the results of the election.

It also came after Mr. McConnell had released a note to Republican senators in which he did not deny that he backed the impeachment push. The leader said that he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”

He also issued a separate statement in which he rejected a plea by Democrats to agree to begin the proceeding immediately. After the House vote, Mr. McConnell said there was “simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude” before the inauguration.

“I believe it will best serve our nation if Congress and the executive branch spend the next seven days completely focused on facilitating a safe inauguration and an orderly transfer of power to the incoming Biden administration,” said the Senate Republican leader.

The statement did not mention the merits of the case, but privately, Mr. McConnell was seething at Mr. Trump, whom he has sworn he will not speak to again, and is said to believe he committed impeachable offenses. It would most likely take 17 Republicans joining Democrats to convict Mr. Trump, an exceedingly high bar.

Mr. McConnell’s anger was shared by some Republicans in the House, most prominently Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference and scion of a storied political family.

The other Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump were Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, John Katko of New York, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan, Dan Newhouse of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, David Valadao of California and Tom Rice of South Carolina. Together, they issued some of the sharpest condemnations of Mr. Trump, defying the prevailing view of their party.

“I’m not afraid of losing my job, but I am afraid that my country will fail,” Ms. Herrera Beutler said. “I’m afraid patriots to this country have died in vain. I’m afraid my children won’t grow up in a free country. I’m afraid injustice will prevail.”

Mr. Rice, who represents a safely Republican seat, said that he had “backed this president through thick and thin for four years.”

He added: “I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable.”

A dozen or so other Republicans indicated they might have supported impeachment if Mr. Trump were not on the brink of leaving office or Democrats’ had slowed the process down.

Mr. McCarthy, who had privately mused about calling on Mr. Trump to resign after years of eagerly defending him, spoke out against a “snap impeachment,” warning that it would “further fan the flames of partisan division.” But he also batted down false suggestions from some of his colleagues that Antifa had actually been responsible for the siege, not supporters of Mr. Trump. He proposed censuring the president instead of impeaching him.

But there were strong signs of support for Mr. Trump as well, despite the fact that he has now lost his party the House, the Senate and the White House in the course of two years. Far-right Republicans immediately started a campaign to oust Ms. Cheney from her leadership post, which she said she would not relinquish.

While Ms. Cheney had released a statement on Tuesday announcing her intention to impeach Mr. Trump and denouncing him in scathing terms, she chose not to speak during the impeachment debate. Democrat after Democrat quoted her anyway — despite the party’s longstanding antipathy for Ms. Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney, the former vice president — effectively arguing that her backing signified a broad consensus that Mr. Trump must go.

“As Liz Cheney was saying, there has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. Don’t dismiss that,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader. “As she has taken a stand, I hope others will as well.”

The vote came a little more than a year after the House impeached Mr. Trump for attempting to use the levers of power to pressure the leader of Ukraine into smearing Mr. Biden, then his leading rival for the looming 2020 election. Republicans unanimously opposed the charges then, but the themes at the center of the impeachment and subsequent trial were ultimately the same on debate Wednesday: Mr. Trump’s willingness to put himself above the nation he swore an oath to lead and abuse his power in pursuit of retaining it.

The House’s case was narrow, laid out in a four-page impeachment article that charged the president “threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government.”

Specifically, it said he sowed false claims about election fraud, pressured Georgia election officials to “find” him enough votes to overturn the results and then encouraged a crowd of his most loyal supporters to gather in Washington and confront Congress.

The article referred to the 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War, which prohibits any officeholder involved in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding official office. It also quoted Mr. Trump’s own words at the rally a week ago, when he told supporters, “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

This time, there were no witness interviews, no hearings, no committee debates, and no real additional fact finding beyond the public record and the plain facts of the brutal attack and Mr. Trump’ words.

Emily Cochrane and Luke Broadwater contributed reporting from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York.

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/2XAWr7N

#multiple #service #listing #news #local #business #ads #near #me

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hg47 · 3 years

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47 Reasons Why I Fear Islam - (Reason 44)

-44-Islamic hatred of non-Muslims is often simmering just below the surface, only needing a pretext to flash into violence. We are unclean, detestable scum who are polluting the Earth, THEIR EARTH, with our miserable presence. ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380310980&sr=1-1&keywords=CRUEL+AND+USUAL+PUNISHMENT+by+Nonie+Darwish In CRUEL AND USUAL PUNISHMENT Nonie Darwish is very eloquent in describing how polygamy under Islam has worked against the average Muslim man because he cannot afford the pleasures and sexual options and ego massage his religion allows him. Instead, the average Muslim man becomes an angry sexually repressed victim full of hate, cued-up for mob violence by the local ranting preacher. ++++------- A quote from Robert Spencer: The Jerusalem Post carried a report that a group of Arab villagers in Israel, rejoicing at a wedding celebration, had been heard chanting, “The Arabs will soon be cutting the throats of the Jews.” ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Why-I-Am-Not-Muslim/dp/1591020115/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380655534&sr=1-1&keywords=why+i+am+not+a+muslim From WHY I AM NOT A MUSLIM by Ibn Warraq: “…God could scarcely have been more explicit. He told the Arabs that they had a right to despoil others of their women, children, and land, or indeed that they had a duty to do so: holy war consisted in obeying. Muhammad’s God thus elevated tribal militance and rapaciousness into supreme religious virtues.” ++++------- tweet ~ The slave trade still flourishes in Muslim countries. There are over 500,000 slaves in Mauritania alone, circa 12/23/2013 1:14 PM ~ verify at: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Islamic-Tolerance-Treats-Non-Muslims/dp/1591022495/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380476667&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=MYTH+OF+ISLAMIC+TOLERANCE+%28THE%29+edited+by+Robert+Spencer In MYTH OF ISLAMIC TOLERANCE (THE) Robert Spencer tells about the troubles his publishers and translators had with Muslims over his book ISLAM UNVEILED. The translator and the publisher both received vicious death threats by eMail. “You must be an enemy of Islam! You will die for what you do!” “You must be a Jew! I hope somebody will slit your throat, you dirty Jew pig!” @hg47 says – These events also demonstrate that Muslims are tapped into the power structure. Another way to look at that would be to say that Muslims have spies in French businesses. This is a “moderate” function that “moderate Muslims” can perform; because Muslims are at war with anything that is not Islamic, it is quite proper to glean info about the enemy and then pass that info along to other Muslims willing to take action to “Defend the honor of Islam” by shutting down the truth through intimidation, death threats, and if necessary violence, or even murder. The honor of Islam must be defended! “I am beheading you now—Infidel Scum!—to prove that we are peaceful!” WHACK! My guess is that the issue of “pretext” was also involved here. Possibly the publisher had already published things that irritated Muslims in France and/or possibly the translator had translated something that had irritated Muslims in France. This would put the publisher and/or the translator on a sort of Muslim Watch List where their actions would be tracked. Any dealings at all with Robert Spenser would endanger the publisher and translator. Muslims like to provoke the enemies of Islam into making some sort of aggression against them, so they can call their violent attack a “defense of Islam,” not an attack at all, really, but a defensive action. Working with Robert Spenser would be a sort of last-straw that could be seen as requiring counter-attack! If Muslims cannot actually provoke an aggression on the part of Infidels, a sort of straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back effect occurs. Little irritating Infidel events build up, turning minor irritation into simmering hatred, until any imaginary slight is seen as an attack upon Islam which must be redressed! (By death threats and/or a violent attack!) Two links concerning pretext in Islam: http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2008/08/pretext-for-hostilities-in-islamic.html http://www.inquiryintoislam.com/2010/10/24-islamic-writings-teach-use-of.html ++++------- http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Troubling-views-on-suicide-bombings-78-of-2573956.php An interesting stat from the article: The war in Iraq is wrong, according to 75 percent of the American Muslims surveyed, and only 40 percent believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. ++++------- A quote from Ibn Warraq: …Muslims have not moved away from the literal interpretation of the Koran: all Muslims—not just a group we have called “fundamentalist”—believe that the Koran is literally the word of God… ++++------- A quote from Citizen Warrior: “Islam not only encourages intolerance and violence against Unbelievers, but commands all Muslims to show their devotion to Allah by fighting for Islamic domination over all other governments and nations.” ++++------- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324787004578495711470936512.html?mod=googlenews_wsj CHARLOTTE ALLEN on how when Pope Benedict XVI quoted some words from 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in a 2006 speech; this provoked a fatwa against Pope Benedict in Pakistan, church burnings and bombings in the West Bank and Gaza, threats of jihad from al Qaeda, and the murder of a nun in Somalia. ++++------- http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-syria-crisis-lebanon-idUSBRE91R0OV20130228 Evidence of how the Civil War in Syria may cause Lebanon to implode into Civil War also. ++++------- http://pedestrianinfidel.blogspot.com/2006/11/twenty-things-you-should-know-about.html Islam regards all unbelievers as ritually unclean subhumans to be killed, subjugated, enslaved, exploited, or parasitised. Kafirs are described by the Arabic word ‘najis’ - literally ‘filth’. That’s why Muslim hatred of Kafirs is intrinsic to their ‘religion’. A Kafir doesn’t need to DO anything to offend a Muslim; his very existence is enough of an affront. @hg47 says – Infidels are filth, in the same legal category as piss and poop and (if I remember correctly) dog sweat. How much do Muslims hate us? My Holy Bible is suitable for use as toilet paper by Muslims, according to Islamic law, but if I so much as touch a Koran, I make it unclean. And this puppy calls itself a religion? Preaching hatred and inciting violence toward Infidels is not an accepted religious practice, in my opinion, but rather a hate crime. But what do I know? I’m just another inferior Infidel. The United States tamed the Mormon Church; the United States tamed the KKK; it’s time to tame Islam and the Muslims among us. You don’t get a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD just because you’re a religion. ++++------- http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9277/pub_detail.asp LT. COLONEL JAMES G. ZUMWALT, USMC (RET) on the creeping Islamization of Western societies, partly because most Muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate, and work to impose their own values on the West. ++++------- A quote from AMIL IMANI: Islamic clerics believe it their right to execute people they consider heretics and place bounties on the heads of those their bloody hands cannot reach. Salman Rushdie is one of the widely known cases. ++++------- http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view/2011_0405fired_up_over_nothing_book_burning_neither_illegal_nor_interesting/ Interesting article by Michael Graham on how Muslim death threats are destroying the Western concept of Freedom of Speech. ++++------- tweet ~ 1,250,000 white European Christians were captured and sold into the Muslim slave trade between the 16th and 19th century. ~ verify at: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics ++++------- http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/568093/201104041857/Beheading-Ourselves-Over-Islam.htm Quote from Rashad Hussain, U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference: “I am of the opinion that one of the strongest tools that you can use to counter radicalization and violent extremism is Islam itself, because Islam rejects violent extremism.” After Hussain spoke to the locals in Afghanistan, telling them that the antidote to Islamic violence was Islam itself, the Afghans reacted by murdering a dozen United Nations workers. In the name of Islam. Rashad Hussain’s message plays very well in the West; unfortunately, the only people who agree with him are Infidels, even though many other Muslims are singing the same tune to fool us inferior creatures who must be subdued. ++++------- A quote from Pamela Geller: It needs pointing out that wherever Muslims live in non-Muslim countries, there is a level of agitation, conflict if you will, the level of which is directly tied to the size of the Muslim population. ++++------- http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/02/02/christian-persecution-continues-amid-egypt-turmoil/ Christian Persecution Continues Amid Egypt Turmoil. ++++------- A quote from Terry Kelhawk: Middle Eastern countries should open their eyes to see that the United States is not working on an anti-Islamic agenda in Middle East, but rather is cooperating with their leaders, and in fact is showing restraint… ++++------- http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2009/05/terrifying-brilliance-of-islam.html A quote by Citizen Warrior in this excellent article: The use of pretext means you need only the barest excuse to begin hostilities. It means you’re actually looking for an excuse, and even trying to provoke others into striking the first blow (“starting” the hostilities). @hg47 says – When Muslim mobs go on a rampage on the other side of the world “because” of a cartoon in the West, that’s not what is really happening. It’s pretext in action. Islamic leaders have long lists of Infidel targets they are itching to attack because the presence of Infidels that have not been properly humbled in their midst is an affront to their Muslim “superiority” and dignity. The preachers just need a theme for their next Rave Jihad Paradise Party: a pretext. The best way to fire up an angry Muslim mob is by ranting that Islam is under attack, and Muslims need to defend the honor of Islam, and by the way, there are a bunch of Infidels at the U.N. outpost just down the block, Go There! Also, angry rioting Muslim mobs are the result of a carefully orchestrated plan; not some spontaneous eruption. The official word authorizing the attack comes down from above to many separate preachers, operating from the same script, pointing their crowds at the same designated target. The proximate cause of the violence is never some cartoon or holy book that got burnt. That’s just the excuse to attack NOW. The proximate cause of Muslim mob violence is a high-up Muslim religious leader giving the order to Cut Loose The Dogs, and the many preachers following orders likely ranting from the same script to incite violence against a specific Infidel target. ++++------- KORAN; Sura 47, 4: “When ye encounter the infidels, strike off their heads till ye have made a great slaughter among them…” Keep in mind that Christianity has an interpretive tradition where the violent Old Testament passages are moderated by Christ’s teachings in the New Testament. Also keep in mind, that Islam is the reverse: every last peaceful passage in the Koran about Infidels has been officially abrogated, reduced to meaningless pretty words of nonsense by the intolerant and violent passages about us. ++++------- tweet ~ Africans taken as slaves by Muslims (or killed while being taken) is estimated to be higher than 140,000,000! ~ verify at: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics @hg47 says – Yes, the United States has an awful and terrible history of slavery, in our past. I timidly suggest that before you hate our own culture so much that you love Islam without reservation, check the facts. 140 million African slaves taken or killed by Muslims! If Sharia law triumphs over the U.S. Constitution, here we go again: Slavery without limit! “Tote that bale, Y’all!” ++++------- http://www.jpost.com/home/article.aspx?id=188855 DANIEL PIPES about the erosion of Western Freedom of Speech. Muslims in the West have achieved a privileged status where they are free to insult others, but Muslims may not be insulted. ++++------- http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/249704/islam-and-west-conrad-black From the article by Conrad Black: When a completely unofficial Danish cartoonist produced some relatively innocuous renderings of Muhammad five years ago, Danish embassies were stoned and the whole nationality was anathematized in many Muslim countries. ++++------- A quote by Oskar Freysinger: Kurt Westergaard, a Danish cartoonist, lives in hiding under the threat of a fatwa. Having survived three attacks, he often changes his town and country, never leaves home without armed escort and turned his home into a fortress. This hell has lasted five years. Enough to discourage other practitioners of “misplaced” humor. ++++------- tweet ~ 95% of all suicide bombing attacks conducted worldwide are carried out by Muslims. ~ verify at: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics ++++------- http://blogs.forbes.com/abigailesman/2010/10/12/just-say-nothing-is-the-american-press-afraid-to-talk-about-radical-islam/ From the article, by Abigail R. Esman: So while the Dutch courts try parliamentary leader Geert Wilders on charges of hate speech (or what in another era we’d have called “free speech”), America, it seems, has adopted another approach: Just say nothing. ++++------- http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/former-cia-agent-in-iran-comes-in-from-the-heat/2/ An article which gets into the radicals who control Iran. “We are anti-American and we are America’s enemy,” and “Non-Muslims are animals roaming the planet.” +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +Go-To-45+ +Go-To-Beginning-Of-47-REASONS-WHY-I-FEAR-ISLAM+

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