#impersonating a handicapped person

[ogdeville]

Clone High Theory:

Many of the clones aren't actually who they think they are, and that's why there's clone 'copies' between S1 and S2. Some of the new ones included.

My examples: Topher Bus, The Freida's, Joan of Arc, and Ghengis Kahn.

1) Topher Bus doesn't look much like Christopher Columbus (CC) did at his age, and there's a difference in core personality traits.

At Topher's age CC was actually quite tall for his era at 5'7. With modern medicine, nutrition, etc- he would likely be equally tall as, or taller, than JFK. (but not as tall as Abe)

CC also didn't become a Brunette until later in his life (only to go pure white at 30) with light colored hair in his youth.

What they do have correct is his curly hair, nose, and skin tone. (CC was described as having a 'Ruddy Pallor' and 'burned easily in the sun. Likely he had some kind of Rosacea. They're both cave dwellers.)

The core personality traits that are different between them:

CCs core personality trait was Greed. he was a self serving person who was superficially charming, good in social situations, and had a lust for wealth and extravagance.

They share self serving behavior, elitism, egoism, superiority-inferiority complexes, and nearly all men back then had mommy issues and Topher definitely does.

However Topher completely lacks social skills, any kind of socially acceptable charm, and while he is self serving he isn't as quick to opportunistic risk. He needs more time to weigh things. He COULD have not attempted to save Abe from continually shooting himself in the foot verbally the first time they met. Why? in order to make a new social pariah, or shift focus off of himself. Make a new public enemy #1, be the first to call him out openly and attempt to make himself look good. Instead his first instinct was to try and save Abe from the same fate he suffered. (Suffered being generous; but they are mentally torturing him with asylums and angry possums so I'm giving him a handicap.)

It wasn't until later he felt he could take a risk on Abe. Both in trying to socialize with him, and in blackmailing- sorry, WHITE LEVERAGING- him. He had to be sure it would work rather than sail across the Atlantic.

His choice in aesthetics (Topher being minimalistic and CC being maximalistic) may be part of him actively distancing himself from CC, but there is also that to consider. He seems to enjoy cramped spaces. Topher's core traits are anxiety, and rage which have led to bitterness. Quite frankly, he's a whiner who doesn't actually want to DO anything, just bitch about it unless the effort it takes is truly minimalistic, or if he can remain anonymous.

It's very possible since CCs remains were moved 3 or 4 times, over long distances, since 1509 when they were moved for the first time from Valladolid to the Monasterio de la Cartuja.

2) There are several clone copies but none more dramatic in change and status than Frida. Why would he clone a duplicate that looked so drastically different? Because the first Frida wasn't the right one. This seems fairly simple.

It is possible that the first Frida he cloned was a Frida Kahlo impersonator and being as scattered as he is- he dug up the impersonator by mistake, only to correct it later with the new batch of clones. Just leaving the old Frida frozen like Ghandi and wiping her from their memories.

Frida had to be a copy by time overlap.

(I can picture a scene of Mr. B very unceremoniously saying 'I told you so' while digging up the correct body.)

3) Joan of Arc was burned at stake. There were no actual physical remains to bury or do anything with at all. The heat would have destroyed everything useable even if she hadn't burned to the bone.

There is no way for Joan to be the actual Joan of Arc. Likely there was a chapel that claimed to have a reliquary or lock of hair belonging to Joan of Arc which was counterfeit and likely belonged to a young woman who simply looked like her.

She also WOULD be hearing voices by now that don't come from a retainer. Joan of Arc was very obviously schizophrenic (assuming she believed she was hearing the voice of God and not just claiming it) Joan is currently at/past the age it would have begun to manifest. So far the only emotional or instability she's shown was in response to aggression, and sleep rejection. Why she didn't want to sleep is a mystery still. She seems to have a lot of mind-body problems like Silly Legs, but not hallucinations or voices. So she may have mental issues, but I don't think they are the same. If she started hearing voices for real shed reject all medication so there's no way she's managing it herself. Likely her clonemother had mental problems which led to further belief that whoever they got the DNA from was Joan. Additionally, quite a few people claimed to be Joan of Arc shortly after her death.

[side note: I don't believe they genetically altered the clones in any purposeful way. Abraham Lincolns signature height, lankiness, large nose, and hands/feet were the result of Marfan Syndrome. Since his appearance is unchanged, it stands that he also has Marfan Syndrome. This means JFK has Addison's Disease as well. So I don't think they 'snipped' that part out if it was present.]

4) Ghengis Kahn wasn't a mouth breathing idiot, he was a savvy military leader able to defeat armies far larger than his own. He would have fucking DOMINATED that maze. Not mention just be... Y'know... Smarter in general. Like I feel as if this doesn't need to be said??? That's not him. No way.

Ghengis Kahn asked to be buried without any sign or markings, though it's generally believed to be somewhere near the sacred Burkahn Khaldun in the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia: which are heavily regulated with even the Soviet Union leaving it undisturbed due to the symbolic importance of the site to the natives of Mongolia.

It is more than likely he cloned a falsified artifact, or had to scramble so hard to avoid the authorities that shoot on sight, he took the first large male body he found.

Summary: considering Scudworths self admitted incompetence when it comes to keeping track of DNA samples. He ended up cloning himself over and over again on accident while trying to clone Wesley bc he couldn't even keep the hairs straight.

I have no doubt in my mind that at least half the Clones in Clone High aren't the right person/ not who they think they are. There might even be some mislabelings or mix ups with switched identities. Mr.B wasn't part of the process until after he made his first batch of clones as we saw him holding Joan's test tube, so he wasn't there to keep Scudworth even somewhat organized.

What are your thoughts?

[paradoxcase]

@eye-lantern:

For the white eyes, the coloring doesn't only affect the iris, the entire eye goes white and cloudy, like an eye that was burnt of with advanced cataract. I don't think anyone manufactures cosmetic contacts in BoE, especially not contacts that obscures the vision with a white film. The dye here must have been used for camouflage against the Houses, maybe by disguising as corpses, and would needs to be removable by forceful blinking to avoid handicaping them

Ahh, I see. But I mean, Ianthe didn't seem to think that blinding yourself would work to protect you from Number Seven, so I wouldn't think the Houses were doing this regularly. It does seem like someone is doing it, because there were the white-eyed guys on the Convoy from earlier, so maybe it's related to that?

For the seeing the heralds stuff, Mercymorn looked at them using a telescope and dreamed for hours when the others were not affected. Jod says she should not have looked. They may have a fear aura that permeates but perceiving this "radiation" through the eyes is worse.

That's true, and I think I mentioned earlier that none of the Lyctors running around on the Mithraeum during the fight with Number Seven in Harrow the Ninth were as out of it as Judith is now

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

There may be other more personal reasons that Pash does not want to see or have anything to do with Gideon or Gideon's body, but I don't recall if that is clear yet or not.

I don't think anything like that's been mentioned yet

Palamades seems to me to be the type of person who will start from a positive place of friendship with you unless you give him a reason otherwise. Even in GTN, he showed a great deal of friendliness and respect to Harrow even as she at times tried to give him the cold shoulder, and of course the big hug in HTN.

Well, there were other people in that book he wasn't as friendly with, like Judith (when she proposed teaming up with him, not when she was challenging him for his keys). I'm trying to remember if he interacted with the Eighth House at all, since they seemed utterly impossible to be friendly with, but I don't remember him having any scenes with them, except for maybe objecting when Mayonnaise Uncle took the white key from Cytherea. I wonder if he for some reason felt some kind of kinship with the Ninth House specifically, similarly to how Cytherea told Gideon she'd liked to imagine herself dying romantically as Ninth House nun, except obviously not like that. It seems like Sixth and Ninth have some things in common like having small populations and being generally unassuming and politically insignificant

The fractured ninth house skull at the start of the chapter is I think because of Nona impersonating Harrow. And the previous chapter's fractured third house skull is because of Crown and Ianthe's reunion.

Well, Corona and Ianthe's reunion actually happened in Chapter 20, which has a non-broken First skull, presumably for Ianthe. The broken third skull chapter is where Corona and Pyrrha talk in range of Judith's hidden microphone

Looking back I see that Chapter 19 was the Tomb with the door open and the chain broken. There was a very different Tomb picture on the other chapters where it appears, where it has a stone over the entrance and the chain is unbroken. It looks like the only other broken skull is the broken Second skull on the chapter where Pyrrha makes Palamedes promise not to go rescue the people in the cages (after which she goes out herself to kill them), so yeah, I guess the broken skulls are for people being deceptive in this book? The other odd things that stands out to me are that there are Seventh skulls on two chapters that are primarily about the school, and an Eighth skull on the chapter where the Angel has Nona shot, which is odd, because as far as I'm aware right now there are no Seventh or Eighth House characters in this book at all. I wonder if the Angel or their implant is somehow associated with one or both of those Houses? There's also an image of a tower on the chapter where Nona and Hot Sauce watch the broadcast

[byneddiedingo]

Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Harold Russell, and Cathy O'Donnell in The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

Cast: Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Virginia Mayo, Harold Russell, Cathy O'Donnell, Hoagy Carmichael, Gladys George, Roman Bohnen, Ray Collins, Steve Cochran. Screenplay: Robert E. Sherwood, based on a novel by MacKinlay Kantor. Cinematography: Gregg Toland. Film editing: Daniel Mandell. Music: Hugo Friedhofer.

The Best Years of Our Lives is a very good movie, rich in characters and provocative incidents. It's not a great movie, but it's such a satisfying work of popular moviemaking that I'm surprised in this age of sequels and reboots, especially after the recent enthusiasm for the "Greatest Generation," no one has attempted a follow-up on the lives of its characters, taking them into the era of the Korean War, the nuclear buildup of the Soviet Union, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the civil rights struggle, and so on. Because there is something unfinished about the stories of Al, Fred, and Homer, not to mention Milly, Peggy, Marie, and Wilma, that perhaps director William Wyler and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood couldn't possibly have foreseen in 1946. On the other hand, that's what makes The Best Years of Our Lives such a fascinating and useful document of its times. It's anything but an antiwar film -- although Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) has been mutilated, Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) suffers PTSD nightmares, and Al Stephenson (Fredric March) is well on his way to alcoholism, the film makes no effort to suggest that the war that inflicted these injuries on them was anything but just. The one naysayer, the "America Firster" who tangles with Homer and Fred in the drugstore, gets his just deserts, even if it costs Fred his job. What wins us over most is the performances: Fredric March overacts just a touch, but it won him the best actor Oscar. Harold Russell, the non-actor who received both a supporting actor Oscar and a special award, is engagingly real. And Dana Andrews proves once again that he was one of the best of the forgotten stars of the 1950s, carrying the film through from the beginning in which he seeks a ride home to the end in which he pays a nostalgic visit to the kind of plane from which he used to drop bombs. Neither Andrews nor Myrna Loy ever received an Oscar nomination, but their work in the film exhibits the kind of acting depth that makes showier award-winners look a little silly. Loy makes the most of her part as the wryly patient spouse, Teresa Wright manages to make a role somewhat handicapped by Production Code squeamishness about extramarital affairs convincing, and Virginia Mayo once again demonstrates her skill in "bad-girl" roles.  Wyler was a director much celebrated by the industry, with a record-setting total of 12 nominations, including three wins: for this film, Mrs. Miniver (1942), and Ben-Hur (1959). He's not so much admired by those of us who cling to the idea that a director should provide a central consciousness in his films, being regarded as an impersonal technician. But Best Years is a deeply personal film for Wyler, who had just spent the war serving in the army air force, flying dangerous missions over Germany to make documentary films, during which he suffered serious hearing loss that threatened his postwar directing career. His experiences inform the film, especially the character of Fred Derry. In addition to the best picture Oscar and the ones for Wyler, March, and Russell, Best Years also won for Sherwood's screenplay, Daniel Mandell's film editing, and for Hugo Friedhofer's score. The last, I think, is questionable: Friedhofer seems determined to make sure we don't miss the emotional content of any scene, almost "mickey-mousing" the feelings of the characters with his music. It feels intrusive in some of the film's best moments, such as the beautifully staged reunion of Al and Milly, or the scene in which Homer, fearful that the hooks that replace his hands have destroyed his engagement to Wilma, invites her up to his room to help him get ready for bed, demonstrating the harness that holds his prostheses in place. It's a moment with an oddly erotic tension that doesn't need Friedhofer's strings to tell us what the characters are feeling.

[wilfofficial]

I think maybe Audrey could throw Luna at that Jan person and just watch the baby go ham

Lololol it'd be like a tasmanian devil dust cloud 😂

Jan is ... A complicated figure in Audrey's life. Neither of them like the other very much but while for Audrey it's deeply personal at having been snubbed by her own family when she needed their support most, for Jan it is a coldly impersonal prejudice that she's recently attempted to eat out of practicality (it's not going well). She also has influence over a large number of other werewolves in the region of Georgia/Armenia/Azerbaijan so killing her outright out of a grudge would cause a massive power vacuum, one that Audrey is neither prepared to fill or otherwise deal with (killing a family member without just cause would get her mega blacklisted by most of the clans in that area) and the other options available aren't much better than Jan (Audrey is the most direct heir but all her relations who could fill the position are either made in Jan's image or handicapped like Andrik).

What it means is that Audrey's stuck for actually doing anything about Jan aside from just avoiding her and conveying that unless she wants to deal with major property damage (again) Jan would be wise to do the same. And experience dictates that keeping Luna as far away from that mess as possible until they can really talk about it is a good idea.

[lindajenni]

aug 15

once i was blind but now i see

"leave them; they are blind guides. if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." matt 15:14

helen keller learned to type on a braille typewriter and wrote many books between 1903 and 1941, including:the story of my life, 1903 optimism, 1903 the world i live in, 1908 the song of the stone wall, 1910 out of the dark, 1913 my religion, 1927 midstream, 1930 let us have faith, 1941 the open door, 1957.

helen keller stated:

"i thank God for my handicaps, for, through them, o have found myself, my work, and my God." in the film documentary of her life, the unconquered, helen keller responded to the question, "can you see the world?" "i can see, and that is why i can be so happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. i can see a God-made world, not a man-made world."

on june 26, 1955, regarding reading the bible, helen keller stated: "it gives me a deep comforting sense that 'things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.'"

cultural views of handicapped persons is strikingly different.

the traditional islamic attitude is that a handicapped person is being punished or cursed of allah. "such are the men whom allah has cursed for he has made them deaf and blinded their sight." (qur'an 47:23)

hindu and buddhist attitudes is that a handicapped person is being punished for sins of a supposed past life by an impersonal "bad" karma.

the socialist attitude is that a handicapped person is a burden on the state, being worth less because of their limited capacity to contribute to society.

the jewish attitude of defending the handicapped is in Lev 19:14: "thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord" and Deut 27:18, "cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. and all the people shall say, amen."

the christian attitude was expressed by Jesus, who said: "whatever you have done unto the least of these my brethren you have done unto me."

helen keller stated: "just as all things upon earth represent and image forth all the realities of another world, so the bible is one mighty representative of the whole spiritual life of humanity."

"picture yourself stumbling and groping at noonday as in the night; your work, your independence, gone. in that dark world wouldn't you be glad if a friend took you by the hand and said, 'come with me and i will teach you how to do some of the things you used to do when you could see?' you have heard how through a little word dropped from the fingers of another, a ray of light from another soul touched the darkness of my mind and i found myself, found the world, found God. it is because my teacher learned about me and broke through the dark, silent imprisonment which held me that i am able to work for myself and for others …"

on february 5, 1955, at the age of 74, helen keller typed a message on a conventional typewriter during an interview with newsmen just prior to her 40,000 mile world-wide journey, much of which was by airplane: "it's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. behind me and before me is God and i have no fears."

on june 26, 1955, the day before her 75th birthday, helen keller stated: "self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in the world."

many thanks to william j. federer for his inexhaustible research in this matter.

i wonder if any of us can truly relate to the world of a blind person. it is a darkness that would block out all light. the thing is, we are all walking in that darkness until we let the light of God's love pierce it's cloak.

[the-firebird69]

So he says he seems right up to him standing next to him the guys are twerp and it doesn't move and it just sits there and he can't get it so I posted it here's what you're doing you're dumb plan and the cops have you as a wanted person and looks like they're fighting each other so I think that's what it is outside but for real this is a real lazy Town people people sitting around harm each other all the time. You certainly don't need it to continue when we don't want it to and soon it will be done and the idiots will be gone and it is who traded places are going to be mostly gone and they don't think so and all the stuff but they're very handicapped other people don't like them at all and they're pushing for it cuz they're making huge errors that they repeat every few minutes and it's going down today and tonight there will be a huge conflict and they're filling in a massive area in Mexico and Canada is filling up and they're getting hit again that's way too many people it's a massive threat and they can't let it sit there so these people think that they're the last in line overseas and they probably are so they're going to go until their people are up and they'll be killed by Max and foreigners no one there to defend them and they're morons that's dumb and that's what they're doing and we can't count on them to do anything shortly they'll be out.

Another thing that's fun is den showed up in his iron Man character and he plays a role after BG develops it and BG is missing for time he comes back and goes nuts on them as Derek WildStar and they don't know what to do that's the story and why it's really dan. And it's kind of a really stupid person now cuz you lost half his brain and her son is giving him lines and he goes around and repeats them and he can almost not say stuff without him repeating it so he has him say things in the movie that are very very incriminating of himself and he's arguing things that he usually argues and he shows what he's up to

-there's more things happening today that this is a pain in neck so we're keeping track of it pretty good. Later on today there's going to be a huge influx of people coming from the north and they're coming from the Carolinas and they are going to come in and mow down these losers it's what they're saying cuz they can see what they're doing they're going to advertise it and some of them know what you're talking about these two family don't and they've been cut down so you don't get it.. what else is going on here today is that they have laid off 10% of the government workers plus another roughly 5% almost it will get there shortly and they're chasing them around and it's hell it's horrible, and yes my order of magnitude and they blame the larger clients and they're going after them for what they have and it's takes a kind of the edge off.

-your plan to arrest people for crimes or committing and active crimes has begun and they are going around and resting people for all sorts of things including impersonating police officers and trying to carry out duties of the police as a citizen and harassment all sorts of things that they usually don't get arrested for and including voyeurism and pandering and inciting riot trying to make people who hallucinate by forcing them to buy too much and drink soda all sorts of things that causing problems they're going to go around the rest of them for and they're going to hear the clones and that's what they want they've already started this morning around 9:00 a.m. and it's only 3 hours and they have 4,500 people from punta Gorda in custody and that's about half of John remillard's people here and the other half is going pretty swiftly Dan has about 3,500 people left and they're getting arrested and probably by the end of the day you won't have anyone here and bja is going to run out of people by 4:00 p.m. roughly they're going after all of them with a big Force there's a lot of people it's a huge Force it's a successful program thus far and they will try and beef up and they're going to thin it out a few times as drawing them off the entire planet

-there's several other things that we noted we're going to happen today two of them are that the people annoying him and harassing him we're going to be brought to jail and five of them already are that we're doing it this morning they're going to jail and they are going to be there all day long and they're going to trial for doing it and they're enforcing it too and these people in their stupid plan might not work because they are in a lot of trouble but Tommy f is going to pick it up and force it cuz he wants to force people to fight over it and our son wants people to fight the clones so Tommy f is not smart it's ridiculous they fight each other all the time then they end up fighting the phones some sort of weird cycle

-their auctioning off tons of houses and cars that these people supposedly own and they're getting rid of them meaning they're making sure that they are in someone else's hands and they're doing it Non-Stop it's a huge day for it and then there's a giant number of people watching these people mess around with our son all sorts of s*** they're trying to mess and they're watching them do it because they're cops and they're going to arrest them if we do it the whole time but really there was sending them up with a ton of CIA any type of stuff and getting them hurt and it's really a small Band-Aid for what they should have been doing and it was pushing them towards violence and now they're arresting them and that will have the same effect actually this will have more in effect so the kind of did it right because this was more overt and it's things that they demand people not to enforce and I threat of terrorist act and they're sitting there saying don't have him say this don't let him say that and they don't understand that they're getting hit when they trying to force it and they don't have an unlimited number of people but they're extremely arrogant and they've been doing this for a long time shortly they're going to be out that means you're not long of a Time but it's kind of interesting to see we have a lot of work ahead of us it doesn't mean freedom by any means and it's like a junior Athletics team that we have defeated but using other people too and our mother and father Warner spend all the time these foreigners are pesty nasty and smart and we have planned a lot of it and they are sometimes wise so we have to watch out for it

-there's a giant number of people who are checking out what's happening here and they're figuring out that he's kind of watching out for him and he can't stand these idiots and he hates them very badly because we put them in a bind. But there's a huge number of things happening and one of them is we realize he's under duress so we're taking action but we've been doing that the whole time but now there's way too much happening and we're moving in and building much bigger bases it wasn't put in a gigantic but we need to put huge ones in and we mean it too we need our own territory we're going to coordinate off and we need places this is way too much pressure for him I need troops in now so I'm ordering it there's many more things happening in punta Gorda and it's going to be announced shortly

Thor Freya

I'm here too watching you suffering these people are really mean they're assholes missed screens and psych being around a whole bunch of little stupid kids when I say is if he had the clearance he'd kill all of them no doubt and I would too because that's what everybody would do to these morons when you treat someone like this he says it too we're taking all your stuff you're going to sit here with nothing huge groups of military going after you all over the world it's not enough for you to sit down and shut the hell up and leave me alone it says it all the time they don't get it tonight they'll get it a little tomorrow they'll get it more if they keep pouring in they're going to get it a little earlier than we thought I mean half the countries are emptied practically of these idiots

Hera

You know what the status is it's not the greatest and they've been sending actual numbers here and they have been terminated and they keep sending them and they keep getting terminated fairly soon they won't have any more to send and we mean soon probably a few days

Olympus

[a-typical]

My neighbors paid more rent in the substandard slums of Lawndale than the whites paid for modern apartments in the suburbs. The situation was much the same for consumer goods, purchase prices of homes, and a variety of other services. This exploitation was possible because so many of the residents of the ghetto had no personal means of transportation. It was a vicious circle. You could not get a job because you were poorly educated, and you had to depend on welfare to feed your children; but if you received public aid in Chicago, you could not own property, not even an automobile, so you were condemned to the jobs and shops closest to your home. Once confined to this isolated community, one no longer participated in a free economy, but was subject to price fixing and wholesale robbery by many of the merchants of the area.

Finally, when a man was able to make his way through the maze of handicaps and get just one foot out of the jungle of poverty and exploitation, he was subject to the whims of the political and economic giants of the city, which moved in impersonally to crush the little flower of success that had just begun to bloom.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.

[psalmsofpsychosis]

So.

Before i get into it, i'd like to clarify that any and all points of view expressed here are strictly my own and i in no way am speaking for anyone else's perceptions of star wars characters, nor do i intend to render other people's interpretations as wrong or somehow less valid.

With that said, here is the way i see it: Luke Skywalker in tbobf episode 6 is extremely out of character and inauthentic to the portrayal of his narrative in the original trilogy.

Over the years the creators of Star Wars have had a persisting obsession with making Luke Skywalker in the image of Yoda as a misguided attempt to honor the "Humble Student Grows To Become As Good As His Master" archetype. This is the reason Luke's character in the sequel trilogy grew to become despicable: he's a flat mirror of Yoda as a teacher.  Episode 6 Luke Skywalker almost repeats Yoda's teachings word by word, his entire mannerism is based on Yoda and his supposed wisdom.

The point that these creators consistently miss is, the focal narrative core in the original trilogy revolves around Luke triumphing against evil and hatred and ending the cycle of violence because he is not Yoda and does not do as Yoda would. In fact, he's almost the exact opposite point of Yoda in mentality. Where Yoda was foresight and intellectuality, Luke Skywalker is action and practicality. Where Yoda was the image of calm, levelheadedness and impersonal judgement, Luke Skywalker is hot-tempered, passionate and in favor of subjective, self-driven decisions. He literally saved his father because he said yes when everyone else said no and he said kindness when everyone else said a hand for a hand.

Luke Skywalker comes like his father before him; he's inherently sentimental and idealistic and compassionate and driven by the righteousness of his own whims, and he's by design a stark contrast to the Jedi doctrine like his father was. He is unruly and thickheaded like Anakin Skywalker was and the only thing that sets Luke apart from Anakin is the fact that he used his gift of internal self-inspired guidance to be good, while Anakin was completely handicapped and suffocated by the fear and trauma that haunted his thoughts.

You literally cannot throw a piece of "you're so much like your father" dialogue at me when i look at episode 6 Luke and all i see is a tempered, detached, controlled and theorically methodical jedi. There's nothing of Anakin Skywalker's brand of fiery rebelion in this cardboard man, i simply cannot believe that the character standing here leading by the rules he literally broke in the mandalorian season 2 finale is Luke Skywalker.

Because Luke Skywalker would not make Grogu choose between being a jedi or being loved by a parent. He would not build an unbreakable wall between love and power where you get one and lose the other. Luke Skywalker, the man who didn't choose between the love of his sister and the teachings of his saber, the man who kept both the love of his father and the power of the force, would not think for a second to make grogu pick one over the other.

And he certainly would not mop around and ask for a third opinion on it. He didn't ask for a third person's opinion when he declared he's going to save vader, and he's not going to start now.

[saimotass]

little things in v3 that make me appreciate the game slightly more (spoilers)

the fact that the two incest plotlines can directly be traced back to tsumugi, whose fantasy in her love hotel event deals with her and shuuichi being stepsiblings. the fact that brother-sister incest happens twice within this killing game (with korekiyo & miyadera, and monotaro & monophanie) could be just tsumugi trying to extend her incest fetish to the public.

tsumugi probably named monophanie that way because she knew that she wanted to make kaede the protagonist (at least for the first trial). monophanie sounds like monophony, a term in music that refers to a unified, completely homogenous sound, such as a single instrument in a piece, or every instrument playing the same exact melody.

tsumugi's place in the trial room is exactly where junko's was, right in front of monokuma. she wanted to copy junko's killing game so much that she wanted to take the role of being in her position.

because it's so ambiguous whether tsumugi ever says the truth at all during her entire confrontation, it's almost to the point where she doesn't even have her own identity, and tsumugi shirogane could just be another fictional character she made up for herself. she could have deliberately chosen to raise her voice and have blue hair to pay homage to sayaka, who technically started the killing game in the first place.

the monokubs all have different homages to various former contestants in the killing games. monokid is a guitar player like ibuki and has syo & junko's long tongue. monodam is a robot much like mechamaru, and his name could be a reference to gundam, while his attitude seems pretty similar to twogami's (wanting everyone to get along regardless of whether it's possible or not). monosuke has a gruff attitude similar to mondo, enjoys baseball like leon, and is associated with money like celes and togami. monophanie is sweet and shy but still obedient and cruel, like mikan and touko, and her color scheme brings monomi and chiaki to mind. monotaro has a scarf like gundam, uses throwing stars that bring to mind izayoi from dr3, and has a leadership quality to him like kiyotaka and twogami.

the monokubs have similar color schemes to the warriors of hope, with a few of them having similar traits to them. monotaro and masaru are both the "leaders" and hotheaded, and are orange-red. monophanie and kotoko are both submissive yet still scary, and are pink. monodam and monaca both control their friends and associates and become power hungry because of it, and are both green. monokid and nagisa don't have much at all in common, but are both blue. monosuke and jataro also don't have much in common, but are both associated with neutral tan colors.

tsumugi and the ultimate impostor both show up in this game, but tsumugi is impersonating them, which would probably be her dream -- she's essentially cosplaying a cosplayer who's cosplaying as someone with no identity.

tsumugi doesn't end up contributing a lot because she's an intern for team danganronpa -- she's not used to having a say in major decisions and big meetings, since she's low on the chain of employees.

you never actually see tsumugi's face in the shot of everyone after kaede's execution, probably because she was either smiling or just completely expressionless. she got away with murder by killing another person, and as such would probably be incredulous or ecstatic about the result of the first trial.

when kaede asks tsumugi about her favorite anime, she mentions hers, and her favorite episode of said anime is episode 53. she probably was lying here, and just said that number in a panic. she hadn't probably thought that far into her backstory as tsumugi.

tsumugi probably planned for shuuichi, maki, and himiko to still survive the school being destroyed, since she gave them some of the most emotional moments in the game, killing the people closest to them. shuuichi had the deaths of both kaede and kaito, maki had her breakdown after kaito's death, and himiko lost both angie and tenko within the same trial. it would make sense that she had planned for them to survive through the whole thing, even if kiibo kind of sidestepped her plan a bit.

at the end, before her execution, tsumugi seems actually pretty neutral about her plan failing, even saying that she's proud to have made a perfect copy of the original killing game's plan. this could mean that she intended for the entire thing to fall apart, bringing an audience surrogate, a masterful liar and criminal, and a gifted detective into the same season all together.

kaito's illness was either planned from the beginning, or implemented after tsumugi realized how close he and shuuichi had gotten, and how helpful kaito's been to him. kaede was an easier target because there was a believable reason to execute her in everyone else's eyes. kaito probably would have never killed if he hadn't been battling his illness, since he agrees to help ouma in chapter 5's plan knowing that his time is limited. tsumugi probably instilled a handicap on him, knowing that he was the most hopeful and optimistic of the characters besides kiibo, who she could easily manipulate since he was essentially just a standin for the audience itself.

the inclusion of the remnants of despair as a plot point for part of the game makes sense when tsumugi is revealed to have created the entire season. she's a huge fangirl and wanted to have a nod to the second game. it also would make sense as something that she would just randomly throw in as a means of fanservice to the audience.

the demo's whole gimmick of makoto, hajime, and hagakure being part of the game alongside the new characters is put in a new light after the reveal that the original games were just works of fiction in v3's universe. plus, it's implied that makoto and hajime are actors, which would make sense. technically speaking, everyone in v3 is an actor as well, and with tsumugi cosplaying as a bunch of previous characters in the final trial, chances are that the makoto and hajime actors aren't the original characters, merely portraying them.

tsumugi being the mastermind makes so much sense, and the theme of truth vs. lies makes sense in terms of her constant denial that fiction can't influence reality. as a big fan of danganronpa before becoming part of the games themselves, she's more than likely well aware of the effects that fiction can have on real life, and probably agrees with shuuichi deep down.

the parallels between tsumugi and junko are interesting, but the ways in which they die are the most. they're both crushed to death, and while junko's smiling the entire time (save for the very end, when the crusher stops momentarily, allowing her a bit of confusion as to why it isn't working before she dies), tsumugi is just blank the entire time. it goes to show how even though she got to live her dream and become her idol, she just didn't have the same dedication and devotion to the cause that junko did.

also, kokichi and tsumugi are both crushed, and both were suspected of being the masterminds, also being the representatives of two criminal groups. they're very good antitheses to one another when you start to compare and contrast the two.

i could keep going but honestly we'd be here for a while

[srbachchan]

DAY 4525(i)

CoviD, ward , Hospi                  July 25,  2020                   Sat 9:27 PM

In the darkness of the night and the shiver of the cold room , I sing .. eyes shut in attempted sleep .. there is no one about or around .. and the freedom to be able to do that will extend I know if in the Will of the Almighty there is release .. 

The after care has ever been the deciding and most valuable time on recovery after the incident of medical professional doctoring in the patient life ..

As days pass more and more research jumps upon us in brave waves of new found observing .. and as one goes through the detailed explanations and writings , one is quite astonished by some of the more basic behaviours of the after the discharge ..

There is one note of matter that seems trivial but it is a factor .. the mental conditions and the effects of the disease .. clinically, medically all that is known to be effective , yet very little is known that remains hidden unseen and not visible .. matters of the mind often are not ..

The mental state sparks from the stark reality that the CoViD patient , put in hospitalised isolation , never gets to see another human .. for weeks .. 

There are the nurses and the doctors on visit and medicine care .. but they ever appear in PPE units .. you never get to know who they are , what are their features, expressions because they are forever covered in the units for protection .. all white beings about .. almost robotic in their presence .. they deliver what is prescribed and leave .. leave because longer stay has the fear of contamination .. 

The Doctor under whose guidance the care and mapping and reports are governed by never ever comes near you to give a hand of assurance .. a personal detail of the treatment in the close proximity of an assurance .. they are on the communication vehicle of FaceTime .. its the best under the circumstances .. but it is still impersonal , it cannot physically be possible otherwise .. we are in remote treatment .. does it have an effect psychologically mentally , psychologists say it does .. patients after release are tempered .. they are given to consultation with professional mind talkers .. they are afraid to be in public for fear or apprehension of being treated differently .. treated as one that has carried the disease .. a pariah syndrome .. driving them into deeper depression and in the loneliness that they have just come out of .. 

And even though the disease may have left the system the cases of a low fever pursuing for 3-4 weeks is never ruled out  ..

The long and short of it is this .. the World has not found a fool proof methodology on the disease .. every case is different .. each day a new symptom is under observation and research .. 

Never before has the medical realm been so handicapped .. not just one or two regions .. the entire Universe .. 

Trial and error were never in such great demand than now ..

Amitabh Bachchan

[whitehotharlots]

Previewing the 2024 Democrat Primary

Within a couple weeks of his being sworn in, just about every person on earth will wish Joe Biden was no longer president. Sure, the few surviving John B. Anderson voters will be thrilled to see 4 years of crushing austerity and half-assed attempts at Keynesian stimulus. But most people will begin dreaming about a brighter future.

Good news! The 2024 Democratic primary field is going to contain dozens of options. Bad news! They are all going to be disgusting piles of shit. 

The “top tier”

While it’s too early to do any handicapping, these are the candidates the media will treat as having the most realistic chances of securing the nomination. 

Kamala Harris

Kamala did not win a single primary delegate in 2020. This is because she dropped out before the first primary, and that was because no one likes her. She has no base beyond a few thousand of twitter’s most violent psychos. Her disingenuousness approaches John Edwards levels: any halfway incredulous person can see immediately beyond her bullshit. She has no principles whatsoever, and while that may be par for the course for Democrats, she lacks even the basic politician’s ability to intuit anything that might, hypothetically, constitute a principle. 

Even better: she is an awful public speaker. She sounds like how a talking dog would speak if he were just caught stealing people food off the kitchen table. She communicates in weird grunts and faux sassy squeaks, which is how she imagines real black women sound like, but something about her is unable to sell the bit. She begins her sentences in halfhearted AAVE, stops and panics halfway through as she realizes that maybe this sounds fake and offensive, and then reminds herself oh wait, no, this is okay since I’m black. This doesn’t happen once or twice per speech. This is how every single sentence sounds. 

Kamala is like Nancy Pelosi in that no sketch show will ever impersonate her correctly, because anything that came close to authenticity would be considered far too cruel. This might benefit her in the primaries, as she exists in the minds of Democrats as someone and something she absolutely is not in reality. Nominating her would be like allowing your child’s imaginary friend to attempt to drive you to the store. 

Andrew Cuomo

Easily one of the 50 worst people alive, Cuomo has a solid chance because Democrats, same as Republicans, are unable to differentiate between electability and self-serving ruthlessness. Cuomo used the deadliest public health crisis in American history as a pretext for cutting Medicaid and firing 5,000 MTA workers, and his approval rating increased. New York Dems are little piggies who love eating shit. If we assume that the political media will continue their habit of refusing to discuss the legislative history of right wing Democrats, Cuomo might well cruise to the nomination and then lose to literally any human being the GOP nominates by an historic margin. 

Joe Biden

The party loves him because he is a right wing racist. “Progressives” tolerate him because black primary voters over 40 supported him, and their opinion is supposedly a magic window into god’s truth. Everyone else can tell he is manifestly senile. I don’t put it above the DNC to pick a candidate who is in horrible health, dying, or even dead--whatever the financial sector wants, they’ll get. But I would be shocked if his approval rating is above 39% by mid-2023, and by that point deep fake technology will be advanced enough they’ll put out a very lifelike video in which the Max Headroom version of Joe explains he’s proud of his accomplishments--that budget’s almost balanced already--but, man, I gotta abd--I gotta abdica--, uhh, I gotta, I, uhh, I gotta move down, man. 

Wild Cards

These candidates would have all have a chance if they ran, but they could all much more easily retire to Little Saint James off of kickbacks they’ve gotten from Citibank and I.G. Farben. 

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm is going to receive some hugely influential post in the Biden administration. Let’s say he becomes Secretary of Education. His signature achievement will be replacing all elementary school teachers with Amazon’s Alexa, which saved the taxpayers so much money we were able to quadruple the number of armed police officers we put into high schools. This will give him several thousand positive profiles on network news programs and the near-universal support of the Silicon Valley vampires who will own 99% of the country by the time Biden’s term ends. They will use their fancy mind control devices to convince geriatic primary voters that Rahm’s the one who will bring Decency back to the white house. His candidacy will be the paragon of wokeness, as expressing concern toward the fact that he covered up the police murder of a black guy will get you called a racist. 

Rahm has a bonus in that Jewish men are now Schrodeniger’s PoC. When they are decent human beings, they are basic, cis white men who are stealing attention from disabled trans candidates of color. When they love austerity and apartheid, they become the most vulnerable people of color on earth and criticizing them in any way is genocide. No one will be able to mention a single thing Rahm has ever done or said without opening themselves to accusations of antisemitism, and that gives him a strong edge against the rest of the field. The good news is that an Emmanuel candidacy would result in over 50% of black voters choosing the GOP candidate--which, I guess that’s not really good but it would certainly be funny. 

Gavin Newsom

Newsom is every bit as feckless as Cuomo, but he doesn’t put off the same “bad guy in an early Steven Segal movie” vibes. He will mention climate change 50 times per speech and no one will bother to mention how he keeps signing fracking contracts even though his state is now on fire 11 months of the year. If anything, this will be spun into an argument about how he’s actually the candidate best suited to handle all the water refugees gathering on the southern border. Look for his plan to curb emissions by 10% by the year 2150 to get high marks from Sierra Club nerds. He’s also a celebate librarian’s idea of what constitutes a handsome man, so he’ll have some support from the type of women who claim to hate all men. 

Larry Summers

I mean, why not? Larry, like most members of the Obama administration, has politics that are eerily similar to those of Jordan Peterson. In normal circumstances, this makes a person a dangerous fascist who should not be platformed. But if that person has a D next to their name this makes them a realistic pragmatist who has what it takes to bring suburban bankers into our tent. If current trends in Woke Phrenology continue apace, Larry’s belief that women are inherently bad at STEM will be liberal orthodoxy by 2023, and his dedication to the Laffer Curve could see him rake in massive donations. Seriously, I’m not kidding: cultural liberalism is now fully dedicated to identity essentialism and balanced budgets. Larry is their ideal candidate. If he were black and/or a woman, I’d put him in the very top tier. 

Jay Inslee

Unlike Newsom, Inslee’s attempt to crown himself the King of Global Warming won’t be immediately derailed, since his state is only on fire because of protestors. This, however, poses a different problem. He’s going to be a good test case for the Democrat’s uneasy peace with the ever increasing share of the electorate who become catatonic upon hearing a pronoun. On the one hand, you need to take their votes for granted. On the other hand, they’re not like black people or regular gays: most voters actively, consciously despise wokies, and associating yourself with them will ruin a campaign even in deep blue areas. There’s still gonna be riots in a year. Biden’s gonna announce the sale of all our nation’s potable water to the good folks at Nestle and some trans freak named Sasha-Malia DeBalzac is going to use that as an opportunity to sell their new pamphlet about how it’s fascist to not burn down small businesses. No matter what Inslee does in response, it’ll end his career. 

AOC

I’m not one of those “AOC is a secret conservative” weirdos, but I am aware enough of basic reality to know she has zero chance of coming close to the nomination. The right and the center both regard her as a literal demon. The party is already blaming her for the fact that a handful of faceless Reagan acolytes failed to flip their suburban districts even though they ran on sensible pragmatic proposals like euthanizing the homeless. The recriminations will only get more unhinged when the Dems eat shit in the 2022 midterms. She will be a Russian, she will be white male, she will be a communist, she will be a homophobe: any insult or conspiracy theory you can name, MSNBC will spend hours discussing. Her house seat challenger will receive a record amount of support from the DNC in 2024 and it’ll be all she can do to remain in congress.

Larry Hogan

Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that he’s a Republican. Larry is the DNC’s ideal candidate: a physically repulsive conservative who owes his entire career to appealing to the most spiteful desires of suburban white people. He’s an open racist in a material sense--if you’re old-school enough to think racism is a matter of beliefs and actions, rather than the presence of cultural signifiers--but his is the beloved “never Trump” style of racism that Dems covet. He’s also a Proven Leader who thinks the role of government should be to finance the construction of investment property and give police the resources they need to run successful drug trafficking operations. Few people embody the Democrat worldview more than Larry. 

The Losers Bracket

These people will have at least a small chance due solely to the fact that the Democrats love losing. They have lost in the past, and in the Democrat Mind that makes them especially qualified.

Joe Kennedy

The man looks like a mushroom-human hybrid from a JRPG. Trump proved that physical hideousness need not doom a presidential bid, but a candidate still needs some kind of charm or oratorical abilities or, god forbid, a decent platform. Joe aggressively lacks all of these things. A vanity campaign would be a good way to raise money and perhaps secure an MSNBC gig, so Joe might still run. 

Mayor Pete 

I am 100% convinced that Pete’s 2020 run was a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. I am also 100% aware that Democrats are dumb enough to enthusiastically support a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. If we have some sort of military or terror disaster between now and 2023 the Dems are sure to want a TROOP, and wait wait wait you’re telling me this one is a gay troop? Holy hell there’s no way that could lose!

Stacy Abrams

Never underestimate the power of white guilt. She lost the gubernatorial race to Gomer Pyle’s grandson, and her spiritual guidance of the Dems saw the party lose black voters in Georgia in 2020. Nonetheless, she is regarded as a magic font of fierceness within the DNC. She might stand a chance if she can establish herself as the most conservative non-white candidate in the field, but there’s going to be stiff competition for that honor.

Elizabeth Warren

Liz is probably angry that the party so shamelessly sold her out even after she was a good little girl and sabatoged Bernie’s campaign for them--yet another example of high ranking US government officials reneging on their promises to the Native American community. Smdh. The fact that this woman hasn’t been bankrupted a dozen times over by various Wallet Inspectors genuinely astounds me. So Liz is probably going to run again, and her campaign will be even sadder the second time around. 

It might surprise you to hear this if you don’t work at a college or NGO, but Liz diehards actually do exist. She’ll get even less support this time because there will be no viable leftist in the field for her to spoil, but she’ll still hang in long enough to make sure the very worst possible candidate beats out the second worst possible candidate. Maybe she’ll fabricate a rape accusation against Sherrod Brown. Maybe she’ll spend her entire allotted debate time doing a land acknowledgment. With Liz, anything is possible--so long as it ends in failure. 

Amy Klobuchar 

Amy was the most bloodthirsty of the 2020 also rans. She will double down on the unpopular failures of the Biden administration, explaining that if you weren’t such a selfish idiot you’d love the higher social security retirement age and oh my god are so such a moron you think you shouldn’t go bankrupt to get a COVID vaccine? There’s a non-unsubstantial segment of the Democratic base that’s self-hating enough to find this appealing, but it won’t be enough to make her viable. 

Martha Coakley

She lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a retarded man who was pretending to be even more retarded than he actually was. Then she lost a gubernatorial race to a guy who openly promised Massachusetts voters that he would punish them for electing him. Her record of failure is unparalleled, making her perhaps the ideal Democrat standard bearer for the twenty twenties. 

[tcm]

Spotlight on Adoption Activist Edna Gladney By Kim Luperi

Greer Garson was no stranger to portraying wonder women on screen, both fictional and real; with one glance at her filmography, the names Mrs. Miniver, Marie Curie and Eleanor Roosevelt stand out. But before she played all of those women, there was her role as adoption activist Edna Gladney in 1941’s BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST. (Aside from being her first biopic, BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST was also Garson’s Technicolor debut and her earliest pairing with screen partner Walter Pidgeon.)

Born in Milwaukee in 1886 to 17-year old Minnie Nell, Gladney moved to Fort Worth, Texas, to live with her aunt and uncle at the age of 18. There, she became involved in women’s and social clubs, and she married Sam Gladney in 1906. One of the social causes she championed was the rehabilitation of the Grayson County Poor Farm, which housed needy, ill and handicapped citizens. Gladney played a big role in relocating the kids of the farm to the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society, where she joined the Board of Directors in 1910. In 1927, the board made Gladney the Home’s superintendent, a role she stayed in until 1960. (The agency became The Edna Gladney Home in 1941 and has been known as The Gladney Center for Adoption since 1991.)

Gladney served as a powerful force in modernizing adoption methods, advocating for the rights, care and well-being of mothers and their babies while also placing an astounding 10,000 kids in new homes. She also repeatedly lobbied the Texas government to pass legislation in support of adoptive children and families. Her wins included removing the term “illegitimate” from birth certificates (1936); guaranteeing adoption privacy through the creation of a second birth certificate with the adoptive parents’ information and sealing the original document, only to be opened on court order (1939); and ensuring adopted kids receive the same inheritance rights as biological children (1951). “There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents,” Gladney powerfully proclaimed in the mid-1930s.

A few years later, a fictionalized film account of Gladney’s life debuted in theaters nationwide, prompted by – what else? – an adoption. According to Michael Troyan’s biography A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson, MGM publicist Ralph Wheelwright and his wife adopted a child from Gladney in 1940. Her dedication to the cause moved Wheelwright so much that he wrote a manuscript about her and brought it to MGM head Louis B. Mayer. Mayer handed the script assignment to Anita Loos, and with his blessing Gladney flew to Hollywood to consult on the picture, donating the $5,000 check for her story rights to the Texas Children’s Home.

But BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST was far from the real story. A disclaimer informed viewers that, save for Edna, her husband and the Texas Children’s Home, the events and characters depicted were fictitious. I assume this goes for one of the plot drivers: the discovery that a character is an illegitimate child and their resulting suicide. In real life, Gladney had a half-sister, but it was Edna herself who was born to unwed parents. According to a review of Sherrie S. McLeRoy’s book Texas Adoption Activist Edna Gladney: A Life and Legacy of Love, Gladney agreed to the picture on the condition that her birth background remain a secret.

Despite Gladney’s incredible story, Garson was hesitant about the role – at first. At the time, she wanted to try her hand at comedy again, and the idea of working with many potential scene-stealers (children) brought some apprehension. But when producer Irving Asher informed her that Gladney desired Garson for the role, she “was so flattered, I was speechless,” the actress remarked, as quoted in Troyan’s book. “If the person you are playing is still alive, it is more of an ordeal than to impersonate someone who belongs to history, but that, I found, adds to the challenge.”

And Garson rose to the challenge. In the end, she enjoyed her first biographical role, and Gladney approved of the film. Following a special preview screening, Gladney wrote Mayer praising the “wonderful gem,” especially the respectful way in which they depicted her relationship with husband Sam, which she considered “sacred ground to me.” She also expressed optimism in the movie’s ability to promote awareness of adoption, adding that she was “grateful for the recognition that this picture will give to our cause.” Aside from the lavish premiere at Radio City Music Hall, Gladney, along with many foster parents, attended a special screening held in July 1941 at the Worth Theater in Fort Worth. When asked what she thought of the film afterwards, she replied: “It was all very wonderful. I am so happy and satisfied, but there is still work to be done.”

[transparenttriumphzombie]

Yasmene Jabar (1956 - ) artist, activist, comedienne.Diana was raised in Noxubee County, Mississippi and then on a farm near Salisbury, North Carolina. She found out about transsexuality by buying Harry Benjamin’s book and the Erickson Foundation pamphlets by mail order from Michael Salem who had an ad in Playboy.

"By the time I got my license to drive a car, I was going out dressed as a girl-- just going shopping, to the movies or out to eat. Sometimes I would talk a cousin into going with me so I would not be alone, at first it was scary but I got used to it quickly and to the fact that I passed as female better than I did as male."

She transitioned socially in 1974 taking hormones purchased at a black-market pharmacy. Diana worked at an impersonator club, Orleans, in Charlotte, N.C.

"The club was run by an older woman named Olean who always wore a long blonde wig, and false eyelashes and lots of makeup, who looked more like a drag queen than the real drag queen".

Diana also worked stealth in a massage parlor to save for her operation. She had surgery from Dr Stanley Biber, 1976, at the age of 20.

She married a Syrian man she met at college and became Diana Salameh. They were together seven years, and he gave her the name Yasmene which means ‘desert flower’. However she finally divorced him for philandering. By this time Yasmene had become a Muslim-ah.

She returned to Macon, Mississippi to take care of her handicapped mother. She was then an artist making dolls and Santas with a studio in Macon, where she was declared Business Person of the Year 1994.

Her second husband was a Jordanian living in Germany whom she met on the internet. They had a traditional Muslim wedding in Jordan and lived there for many years.Yasmene set up the web sites Cafe Trans Arabi and the International Transsexual Sisterhood, the first to help trans women in the middle east, and then expanded to help trans women wherever they are. In 2005 she was involved in the Trans Eastern Conference (TEC) in Istanbul.

Personal problems resulted in Yasmene's web sites being discontinued at the end of 2006.

She has returned to living in the US, and has been working a a stand-up comedienne.

She was an early proponents of the concept of Harry Benjamin Syndrome (Yasmene's take) but did not stay with the HBS groups.

Colin Crawford. Uproar at Dancing Rabbit Creek: Battling over Race, Class and the Environment in the New South. Perseus Books, 1996: 75-6

“The Beautiful Sister: An interview with Yasmene Jabar”. Huriyah Freedom: A Magazine for Queer Muslims. Sep 7, 2004. Online at: transdada2.blogspot.com/2004/11/beautiful-sister-interview-with.html.

http://butterfly-sisterhood.tripod.com.

http://yasmenejabar.tripod.com.

www.granny-maes-place.com.

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 141: Your Mother and Mine

”You have it all wrong!”

We already know the story of Rose Quartz. We know she was a rebel who battled for many years against the forces of Pink Diamond. We know that she was “just another quartz soldier, made right here in the dirt” and rose to greatness by rallying fellow Gems to join her cause. We know that she was drawn to Gems that Homeworld shunned, wanting to make sure everyone had a place. We know that she ended the war by shattering Pink Diamond. And we know that after the war, her shield could only save two of her friends. So on paper, an episode that recaps this information is redundant.

But Your Mother and Mind isn’t about Rose Quartz’s history, it’s about her story. And the story is told by a character that can only reach her audience by impersonating the bearer of Pink Diamond’s gem.

Your Mother and Mine is a simple episode made fascinating by its proximity to the truth. It combines all the pieces of Rose’s story that we’ve heard over the course of the series to give us a definitive take on the narrative just in time for it to be undermined. We’re five episodes away from learning that Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond, and the episode after that is about Pearl correcting the version of events we hear right now. Which means that the episode’s major theme of truth versus fiction is something we can’t even comprehend fully without retrospect. Even if you already suspect that Rose is Pink when you watch it for the first time, the fact that it’s not written in stone yet means there’s still a possibility that Garnet’s story is true, and the episode only becomes great when you know for sure that it isn’t.

Garnet is the perfect narrator for the final depiction of Rose as we knew her before A Single Pale Rose. She’s one of the two remaining Crystal Gems that survived the war and isn’t bubbled, and we’ll soon learn that the other is bound to silence, so Garnet is the most capable character to tell this story and believe it. And her introduction in Your Mother and Mine hammers down why she believes it: when she’s excited about a cause that’s close to home, her enthusiasm overwhelms her usual calm. She’s so happy with the idea of misfit Homeworlders escaping oppression that she can’t step back and see that they aren’t handling her praise well until Padparadscha says it outright (for the second time in three episodes, she displays her ability to “predict” the emotions of the recent past on top of the events). And when she really gets going with her story, Garnet shows the exact same level of breathless, blinding glee. It can be hard to look for flaws in something you’re actively rooting for, that you’ve tied your whole identity to, so she doesn’t.

The distortion of truth that defines the episode is established by the Off Colors, who parrot three variants of Homeworld propaganda that mythologize Rose Quartz in the same way Garnet does, albeit for opposite reasons. They can’t even get their own stories straight, adding to the mystery of a figure that Homeworld would do anything to disavow and vilify, but the three main Gems in Steven’s life also have different concepts of Rose. Pearl’s is the most accurate, but she can’t tell anyone. Garnet’s is what she saw with her own three eyes, so she thinks it’s accurate, but she’s missing critical information. And Amethyst only knew Rose from after the war, so like Steven she had to learn about it secondhand. 

And so, a question presents itself: what’s the value of a story that isn’t true? In this episode, Garnet’s false narrative galvanizes the Off Colors in the same way it galvanized her for thousands of years. It gives Steven a version of the shattering that paints Rose’s actions as heroic—Lars, whose first huge character moment with Steven involved insulting his “weird mom,” thinks she’s awesome for doing it. Regardless of the facts, it’s a great story, an honest-to-goodness legend presented gorgeously. So how much does it matter that much of it is wrong?

To Steven and Garnet, it matters quite a bit. But to the Off Colors? They need a confidence boost both in their general lives and in a moment of floating in space with a broken engine, and the story of Rose Quartz concretely helps them. That’s the tricky thing about legendary figures: if you model yourself off a literal interpretation of their actions, as Steven and Garnet do, it can only end in disappointment, but if you just view it as a story, it can do a lot of good. Fiction can be a wonderful thing—Steven Universe is itself an untrue story that has made the world a better place—but it gets rougher when the boundaries between fiction and reality are muddled.

While Rebecca Sugar has many times confirmed that the three lead Gems are based off elements of her personality, Steven is based off her brother, and characteristics of other real people are found throughout the show in the way fiction writers often flesh out their casts, Rose Quartz is different. In an early conversation with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola of all people, she was inspired by Babylonian mythology, especially Ishtar, in developing the show’s backstory, and Era 1 Rose Quartz feels more like an ancient goddess of love and war than a grounded human at this point in the show.

So Garnet tells us a creation myth. She introduces the Diamonds as gods, calling them “unique in their flawlessness” without an ounce of sarcasm, but like most ancient mythological gods, they do indeed have flaws: in this case, according to Garnet, Pink’s cruelty and cowardice. From these gods came Gems in their image, and for an untold sweep of time there was stagnation as all went according to plan, until a disrupting hero shifted this status quo to create the world we know today. Rose Quartz went from questioning her god to arguing with her god to warring with her god to destroying and supplanting her god, but because this is a pantheon, her hubris is punished by the other gods. It’s a story that works as well thousands of years ago as it does today.

And befitting that story, we get the most stylized flashback in the series, expanding heavily from the silhouettes of The Answer. Even if nothing else here worked, this would remain a beautiful episode, with simple but effective techniques to marry narration with aesthetic: transitioning from widescreen to fullscreen as Rose’s worldview expands, using  stained glass backgrounds to keep the focus on characters instead of environment, and reducing colors in the foreground to make those colors pop. Eyes are out of the picture, a major handicap for showing how characters feel, but seasoned pros Katie Mitroff and Paul Villeco can convey emotion through body language and mouths alone.

Estelle certainly helps. Her commanding voice could make any story enthralling, even as she shifts from the fairy tale of her own origin to the legend of Rose. While she largely uses the same techniques here as in The Answer, the one noticeable change speaks volumes about Pink Diamond. When speaking for Blue, a far more personal foe for Garnet, she continues to narrate in her usual tone, and when speaking for Rose, her voice raises a little but it still sounds like Garnet. But when speaking for Pink, Estelle does something new: for the first and only time in the series, she vocally impersonates another character.

This is the second episode in a row featuring Pink Diamond, and the second in a row where she’s voiced by someone who isn’t Pink Diamond. Stevonnie shows the true version (a child), while Garnet shows the legend (a tyrant). And both halves of the Mindful Education duo are great at it! All Estelle needs is a few lines to shift that British accent into full evil aristocrat mode, and the special attention she gives to this voice highlights just how different this take on Pink is from the tantrum AJ Michalka provided. Even before we know the full truth, something is off about this cruel but newly confident version of Pink.

While the whole story gains new meaning when we hear the truth, the most compelling part in retrospect is Garnet’s stance on Pink Diamond calling for help. On top of providing the stunning header image as we pan from revolutionaries up to their oppressors, it’s this brilliant, awful moment where Garnet gets so close to the truth without grasping it, Blue Zircon style. Yes, Pink summoned other Diamonds to Earth, but it was part of her plan to save the planet: to make a big enough fuss that Homeworld would decide her colony wasn’t worth it. Garnet’s take is in line with the Pink we saw in our last episode, immature and seeking approval from her elders, and focusing on it here highlights how these negative traits could be aimed to help others when we see her real motives in Now We’re Only Falling Apart. 

That said, Pink isn’t the only Diamond we see here.

White Diamond is different. She’s the only Diamond who isn’t named until her debut episode, existing only as a suggestion that fills in a massive gap. We’re restricted to her glimpses of her, mere hints of her ominous presence, like a monster in the shadows. The mural on the moon, the distant view of her ship on Homeworld, the actual white diamond that tops the insignia, that’s all we’ve gotten until now.

Here we get three images of her, even if she still goes unmentioned: the first shot of the four Diamonds together, the shot of the remaining three Diamonds after the shattering, and the Corruption. She remains obscured, more an idea than a character, but it’s clearer than ever that she’s the head of the group, and that she’s enormous, even compared to Yellow and Blue. Her absence is as captivating as her presence, as we see more of her than ever but still get the impression that Pink was only able to appeal to the middle sisters. It’s a great hook, a second mystery that overlaps Pink Diamond’s to show the audience that there’s more to this story than we might think, and even when we inevitably unravel Pink’s history, there’s a bigger threat behind the curtain.

The story ends with a brief scene in our regular style, showing that even if everything else was wrong, Rose Quartz did use her shield to save her friends. We return to a downcast ship, but Garnet supplements the power of fiction with the power of truth: that despite all the lies from Homeworld (and the lies from Rose, it turns out), the Crystal Gems and the Off Colors persist. No matter how much authority figures might try to hide it, diversity of lifestyle and identity is everywhere, because queer folks are normal folks. That’s the sort of thing a good story can make clear, especially when society constantly repeats a brutal and bald-faced lie.

And so the Off Colors trilogy of sorts draws to a close, with another call to adventure aboard the Sun Incinerator. But not before Steven and Garnet have a sit-down away from the celebrating crew, and the downside of a good story peeks out. It’s refreshing to see Steven verbalize his theory about Stevonnie’s dream so soon, given the necessary gap between The Trial and Jungle Moon to focus on his immediate concerns, but because Garnet only knows the story instead of the history, she replies with two truths and a lie: that his powers come from empathy, that his differences are something to be celebrated, and that Rose Quartz definitely killed Pink Diamond.

Steven will thus need another push to find the truth, rather than pursuing it on his own. Rose’s story does a lot of good, but it keeps Steven in the dark on his heritage and his inheritance, and makes him doubt the gut that he should be learning to trust by now. Self-doubt is just one of the many issues plaguing him in Steven Universe Future, but it remains a major factor in his identity crisis, and it’s rooted in moments like this: when a loved one who means well repeats a lie that makes him question what he knows in his heart.

The truth can be a dangerous thing, and fiction can comfort and inspire. The truth leads to clarity, and fiction can distort. This isn’t a convenient dichotomy, and Garnet herself will soon be ripped apart by the realization that the story she tells right here was a lie, but she wouldn’t be who she is today without that story, and for better and worse, neither would Steven. I’m not saying it isn’t important to seek the truth, and I’m certainly not saying that this show is telling us that. But I appreciate so much that the value of stories isn’t lost in that message.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Without the upcoming reveal, this is just an episode that I like. Great visuals and a well-told story, but still feels like a recap. But that reveal amps up Your Mother and Mine by both justifying the recap itself and by making the actual point of the episode clear. So up it goes!

Top Twenty-Five

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Jungle Moon

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Lars of the Stars

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Back to the Kindergarten

Steven’s Dream

Kevin Party

When It Rains

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Room for Ruby

Lion 4: Alternate Ending

Doug Out

The Good Lars

Are You My Dad?

I Am My Mom

Stuck Together

The Trial

Off Colors

Lars’s Head

Gemcation

Raising the Barn

Sadie Killer

Your Mother and Mine

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Rocknaldo

Dewey Wins

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

[anarchotolkienist]

I don’t know what the fuck I can do? Just ignore everyone who speaks to me in English untill they switch to Gaelic and alienate like 2/3 of the collage? Run around shouting “Cànan!” at people who speak English? Whatever I do I’m socially fucked and it’s not going to work anyway unless there are a bunch of people who do it. I know I really should be stronger than I am, but I don’t know how, and I’m already pretty close to being the most annoying about speaking Gaelic and Gaelic only at campus. It’s already hard enough for me to make and keep friends with the type of person I am (awkward, abrasive, autistic, and impersonal) without handicapping myself even fucking further

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads MHA 156, Replies part 2

1)“FUCKING TOGA AND TWICE MANAGED TO MAKE A GOOD PLAN”- Keep in mind that, apart from whatever explanations and setups they agreed upon with Shigaraki, prior to joining the Hassaki, every gambit we’ve seen the Part-timers pull off- managing to evade Nemoto’s questioning through instant simultaneous uses of Exact words, decided silently to focus on using Mimic’s anger issues to undermine the Hassaki, switching to relying upon the heroes to take Mimic down and stop his delaying tactics keeping Overhaul from his appointed asskicking of destiny after Toga recognised Deku as being in the line-up to fight him next and figured he was an excellent bet, using the stored Compress to ‘tunnel’ their way to freedom through their own exit and sending him to kidnap Eri as an added confusion into the brewing clusterfuck below- was all their original ideas, came up with on the spot, and with massive amounts of improvisation and luck.

For example, there’s no way Toga would have known ahead of time that Deku and his Classmates were present, but she still had the blood sample she took from him on her, and had just enough of it to pull off a split-second impersonation needed to trick the girls into bailing Deku’s ass out of the fire he was getting himself into with Overhaul on his own- someone once did the math and calculated that Toga got roughly 35 seconds worth of Deku time from the sample, so there was only enough for one shot at her getting Uraraka’s help in saving Deku, yet because the girls were pretty exhausted from still fighting Rikiya non-stop, they weren’t in any state of mind to question how Deku appeared there behind them or how he knew where the fight with Overhaul was happening exactly despite the apparent lack of exits around the crossroad- they only began to catch on once they saw visual proof of Toga’s duplicity, and by then they’re already done what she wanted.

Both Toga and Twice have their issues, there’s no doubt, but it doesn’t make them stupid. It just makes them see things…. A little stranger than the rest, and if their mannerisms make people think they’re dumber than they are, well that suits them just fine- the best betrayals come from those who you don’t think are capable of them in the first place.

2)“In my head he had to measure up someone when he made clones of them, and could only do clones of the most recently measured person.”-Yes and no- amongst the numerous handicaps on Twice’s utility of his Cloning, besides the big one, is that he can only generate clones if he’s had a recent ‘mental image’ of them stored in his head, and regularly needs to update that with new measurements over time as people change, get taller, wear new clothes, lose a pound of flesh or two etc.

However he can somewhat circumvent the necessity of them being nearby for on-hand measuring if he can ‘store’ the measurements in his head, giving him access to one or two league members on hand provided he can keep track of all the fiddly little details about when he last saw them. This means he probably has only Compress ‘stored’ on-hand for his compression abilities utility without the man himself being in danger and monitored by the Hassaki like they were, giving the duo options no-one was aware they had up their sleeves until they decided to reveal them.

 Also, though it’s not really drawn attention to here, but Compress’ ability is ‘way’ more powerful than we’ve seen him use it for before, if he’s capable of compressing large enough chunks of rock big enough to create a decent tunnel straight through solid rock without any visible strain- granted, to compress an entire person in one go he’d need to have them large enough to avoid something like a portal cut if he could only create a bubble large enough to cover part of them, so having the full extent of his power be to create far larger compression bubbles than we’ve seen makes sense, but it’s a reminder that his lack of hand-to-had combat ability is nicely countered with his ability to manipulate hammer space with a flick of his fingers

3)“THEY WANT TO TAKE OVER THE YAKUZA’S OPERATIONS WITH THE QUIRK-ERASING BULLET, AND THAT INCLUDES ERI”-to be honest, I see this are more of an if/or scenario for Twoga at the moment- I don’t know if Overhaul shared the source of his Erasure bullet’s abilities with Shigaraki earlier when he demanded info about them, but given how paranoid he is I’m assuming he didn’t, perhaps out of fear that Shigaraki would decide to try and steal the source form himself, especially since she has an annoying habit of running away on her own without the threat of death to keep her in line, and pretty much anybody else would be a saint compared to Overhaul, even a fellow villain like Shigaraki, who expressed no remorse about trying to kill some young teenagers to spite All Might in his first big outing, so therefore he probably kept the discussion just to the barebones of what the bullet does and what he’s aiming to do with them. 

Therefore, Twoga didn’t know that the source was a kid until they were cut off from telling the rest of the league and weren’t given any explicit instructions by Shigaraki about what to do, as part of his Gambit to bypass Nemoto’s truth quirk, so everything they’re working on achieving right now is something they’ve come up with on their own, changing their objectives and intentions as they discover new information to fit inside their existing agenda.

 1) steal his quirk-erasing bullets, preferably once he’s managed to complete the formula 

2) steal the source he’s making the bullets from especially if the first objective isn’t possible, either because he keeps them close to him, or they get destroyed in the fighting 

3) find a way to take Overhaul down, preferably though making him exhaust his resources and himself without directly exposing either of themselves to danger,

 hence them taking advantage of the surprise raid and working everything to their goals by the seat of their pants and making snap decisions on how best to proceed on a moment to moment basis. Whilst this means they don’t have a grand scheme that requires everything to go perfectly to net them victory, it also means they’re way more flexible and adaptable than somebody like Overhaul, who keeps trying to pull the same stunt of escaping clean away with Eri and the bullets in hand, no matter how many men and resources he has to throw away to achieve that aim, and resorting to blind violence and rage when he repeatedly fails to succeed thanks to the heroes’ efforts. 

In a way, this whole arc is a nice hourglass plot of Overhaul and Shigaraki switching positions, with Shigaraki managed to pull off this whole destabilisation of Overhaul’s gang despite his vastly more limited resources and inferior standing  to the man in the criminal underworld, simply through keeping a calm head and planning around Overhaul’s blind spots of understanding people for maximum effect, whereas as Overhaul continues to lose everything he’s built up he gets more angry and animalistic in his actions, similar to how Shigarkai was when he attacked USJ. 

Regardless, the league’s goal all along was to steal Overhaul’s erasure weapons for themselves, so they’re trying to achieve the best of both worlds by stealing both, but being happy to walk away with just one if things turn out that way, so for now their plans are basically

Step 1: steal the bullets

Step 2: steal the source if that’s not possible

Step 3: set the heroes on Overhaul and see how things turn out

Step 4: try and send in a disposable clone with a custom-made capture quirk to see if he can take advantage of the chaos and swipe the girl

????

Step 6: watch Overhaul get beaten

Step 7: Profit!

4)“GODDAMMIT GUYS, WHAT A FOOL AS I TO BELIEVE THE MURDEROUS VILLAINS WERE GOOD GUYS”-Honestly, even if Shigaraki set out to do his level best to torment and hurt Eri by being the worst captor imaginable, I still think her being with the league would be a step up to being in the Yakuza- at least they have a sense of strong camaraderie amongst themselves, and won’t callously kill each other to make a point like Overhaul would. Besides, they’re currently lacking the kind of equipment they’d need to make the bullets on their own, not to mention lacking Overhaul’s reset ability they can’t proceed haphazardly when taking the necessary resources from Eri, so it’s better for them to have the bullets first and Eri as a Backup if they can’t replicate them- so for a while at least, she’d be better off with them than with Overhaul. 

Dude set the bar so damn low it’s in the earth’s crust.

@thelreads