#it’s so hard being an etho defender out here guys | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

micer2012 · 3 years ago

Text

no cure is coming, you know (LLSMP Fic)

A few months into Last Life, Skizz and Tango are some of the only members to still hold onto their humanity. With Tango the only member on dark green and Skizz on yellow, Skizz is cursed as the Boogeyman at the beginning of their session. He knows that without hesitation, without question Tango will give one of lives to him… and that’s exactly the problem. [3k words] [crossposted on ao3]

just trust in me, my dear… no cure is coming near.

“Skizz! Countdown time!”

Skizz heard Tango’s voice coming from one of the top layers of their castle, their home. He put down the axe he had been using and ran inside the castle, shutting the door behind him.

“Boogey time?” Skizz called. “Boogey time, my brother!” Tango responded, barreling down the stairs to meet Skizz.

And right on cue, as the moon hit the highest point in the sky, the countdown began in their heads. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Silence filled their home.

“Nothing. You good?” “Yeah! Yeah, ob-viously. What, were you worried?”

Tango laughed. “I- I mean a little. I gotta be worried a little. There’s what.. 5 non-reds left?”

“And MY teammate is the only one who’s still on dark green.” Skizz boasted, hand on his chest.

Tango punched him playfully, snickering. “Don’t get so high and mighty! I went from.. What, 11 lives? Down to a measly 4.” “That’s only because you were such a good sport about it, Tango Tops. You coulda kept those for yourself, y’know. Been the schamaze of all time.”

“Ha!. Suppose it would have been. But- but I bet we’d have FAR more enemies. It would not have been a good idea to be on that many people’s bad sides that early…” “I coulda took em.”

Tango laughed again. “Y’think? Etho and Bdubs? Cleo?” “I coulda took em. If they were trying to hurt my best friend.”

Tango smiled sadly at him, before looking down. “I wouldn’t want you to lose any more of your own lives because of My theoretical jerk move.” Skizz just looked at his friend, before sitting down on the floor, gesturing wildly with his hands. “Well, Theoretically, I wouldn’t lose any lives then! I’d just do a super good job, and kill them down to 0.” Tango let out another laugh. “Says the guy who lost his life to a mob!”

Skizz pointed his finger accusatory at Tango, still criss-cross applesauce on the ground. “Hey, it wasn’t a ’’’mob’’’ it was a BABY ZOMBIE. You KNOW how much I hate those Lil’ annoying kids! Those- Those are more dangerous than most of the people on this server. THEY are the ones with the bloodlust, I’m tellin you.”

Tango laughed again. “Heh, suppose you’re right. At least it wasn’t an enderman, right?” Skizz narrowed his eyes. Yellow, but the sclera were still tinted purple from the… events of the previous season. “Tango Tops, if I had lost my first life to an enderman AGAIN, I think I would have just quit the server.” Tango snickered. “True that! True that. Alright, I’m gonna go back to my scouting.” Skizz pushed himself up from the floor. “Of course! I’ll be.. I think I might go caving.” Tango turned back to meet his eyes. “W… Will you be far from the base?”

Skizz paused, and then shook his head, hands up. “No, no! Just like, tunneling nearby. I won’t.. I’m not leaving our base, I’m not leaving you here with the.. With those Swarms.”

Tango nodded. “Of course, of course just.. Just checking. Are.. Are you sure you want to go out alone? The boogeyman just got chosen and- and you’re… one of the 4 victi-”

“Hey, don’t you talk like that. You’re a much higher target than me, and you Know I can take care of myself, right?” Tango looked to him, then looked away. “I’m just.. On- on second thought, you’re sure you don’t want me to come? We can go mining together, better- better to have eachother’s backs.” “Then the castle will be unprotected.” “I don’t care. Better it get raided than us.” “No, this- this is our Last bastion. We CAN’T let this fall, then.. Then we’d have nothin’, Tops!”

Tango’s eyes were soft when he looked back up at Skizz. “If I lose you, then I’ll have nothing.”

Skizz was taken aback. He froze for a few moments, before walking over and putting his black-stained hands onto Tango’s shoulders. “Hey, d-don’t talk like that. I’m not going anywhere! F-FIRST sign of danger, I’m calling you and running back home. Okay, buddy?” Tango nodded. “Yeah.. Yeah. Okay. Be-be careful.” Skizz patted his shoulders, before walking out to leave the base. “Of course, Tops! Nothing bad’s ever gonna happen to your buddy Skizz.”

❤❤❤

You are the boogeyman. You must by any means necessary kill a green or yellow name by direct action to be cured of the curse. If you fail, next session you will become a red name. All loyalties and friendships are removed when you are the boogeyman.

Skizz looked down at the message sent to him on his communicator, hands shaking so much it was hard to read the screen.

But he didn’t need to read the screen, he had heard the message beamed loud and clear into his own head. He- He had lied and Tango had believed it. Tango would believe anything he said. He knew that- He- He knew the second he told Tango he was the boogeyman, his friend would immediately let him take one of his lives and free Skizz from the curse. He probably wouldn’t even be mad that Skizz had lied to him earlier.

Skizz had dug himself a hole in the wall of one of the mountains near their base, 10 deep and covered up. He paced the 3x2 room he had made now, this tomb, ranting to himself. He needed to get his thoughts out SOME way.

“Ok. So.So I-I’ve gotta get SOMEONE. A green or y.. Oh, this WHOLE time too I thought killing one of the reds would be fine- THAT would be too easy huh?? We’ve got HOARDS and hoards of hostile reds trying to hunt us down every moment, targeting us like mobs- but NOO. Nooo, it’s gotta be one of the people who’ve still got humanity, huh? Cruel. CRUEL trick to play on Skizz.”

Hand on his head, he scrolled through the list of names on the communicator. He and Cleo were on yellow, BigB and Lizzie were on green… Tango was on dark green. He scrolled back down, cutting off Tango’s name. No. No, that was off the table.

“T..Tango Tops has got the best chance of winning right now out of all of us. Even- not just Life wise, but he’s sharp. Tango’s a sharp cookie. Right now, he’s got the best shot of winning.”

He kept looking at his communicator, before shoving it back into his pocket and groaning, hand on his face. “GAAAGHH, WHY DOES IT GOTTA BE A GREEN OR YELLOW?? L--Lizzie and BigB and Cleo, they’re still up this long because they’re Set up. They’ve Got an alliance, they- they’re untouchable to the reds. I surely won’t be able to be touching them!! ‘Specially without Tango’s help!!” He gripped his face, growling again, before punching the cobblestone wall to the side of him. “And-And I CAN’T tell Tango this. I’m not bringing him into some.. Into some yellow and green fistfight. He’s gotta stay safe, he’s the biggest target on the server.” Skizz was breathing heavily, adrenaline that had been building up leaving as his hand stood in place in the small crater he had made in the wall. “He..He’s gotta stay safe. He’s got the biggest chance of surviving out of everyone. I..” Skizz withdrew his fist, balling it up and rubbing it with his other hand. It hurt. “I can’t do that to him. I’m not gonna be the one who hinders my buddy’s chance.”

The adrenaline gone, Skizz just stood in his little 2x3 box, the chill of what he had to do running up his spine. He kept running his hand over his other hand. “I...I can’t do that to him.”

❤❤❤

He had memories of being reckless and running into battle. Of- Of the loyalty to his friends and the stab of betrayal overcoming his senses, along.. Along with the drive to kill. The drive to dig his sword through Impulse’s heart, through Grian’s, through Tango’s, it.. It was the worst feeling he had ever felt in his life, and it had completely enveloped him.

He remembered Ren crying out, asking him what he was doing. He had convinced himself he was doing it for their benefit, right? Skizz had screamed, as he ran towards the castle, he was doing it for the Red Army. For the only people who defended him. For the only people who gave him a chance. And that chance he had immediately squandered, leaving the Red Army with 1 man less the coming week and.. And leading to Skizz having to watch his friends run into a battle that all of them knew they weren’t going to be coming out of. Skizz had known that when he surged the Crastle too. This was a death game, only one person could make it out alive, and they were all resigned that they were not gonna be that lucky winner.

Skizz ran his hand over the scars around his mouth. Vertical slits where his face had torn itself open, enderman hostility Not mixing well with his human anatomy. His arms were stained black too, not that he had noticed, taken how often they had been stained with blood.

A voice that sounded like his own was talking in the back of his head, reminding him that He was the boogeyman, and reminding him of what he needed to do. Like he could forget.

❤❤❤

Tango was holding his hand, and the two of them were bolting. A swarm of reds, what used to be the southlanders, was chasing them, and their base was already compromised. There were only a few minutes left of this session, if- if the two of them could just get to safety-

“HERE! TANGO, FOLLOW ME!” Skizz let go of Tango’s hand and started digging into the wall, into the cobblestone he had used to patch up his Vent Hole from earlier today. Tango followed after him, panting, as they dug their way into the wall and closed the opening behind them.

“Th...D’ya think we’re safe here?” Tango managed between breaths. Skizz was breathing heavily too, holding his chest. It sounded like the man was about to pass out, whole body leaning onto the cave wall. “Skizz.. Woah, Skizz buddy, take some breaths. The sessions almost over I- I think we’re good.”

When Tango went to go put his hand onto Skizz’s shoulders, he jolted back, chest still heaving.

“Th.. The sessions almost over?” The words sounded incredibly pained.

“Y-Yeah. Few minutes til midnight.” “Few minutes til midnight…” Skizz stuck on the words, and then slumped down against the wall, falling into a sitting position. He was still holding his chest.

“I don’t think anyone’s been killed by the boogeyman yet, right? All the deaths have been red.”

Skizz, still slumped over, did not react to this news.

“...This’ll be the first week where the killer fails, if something doesn’t happen in the next minute..”

A pained sob was expelled from Skizz, shaking his entire body.

“S-Woah, Skizz? Are you- did you get hit? I have regen potions, are- what’s wrong?”

Skizz was shaking now, trying to not make noise as the tears ran down his face. He was failing.

“Talk to me man, use your words. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.” Tango was kneeling next to him, also on the floor now.

The tears hurt Skizz as they surged down his face.. A kind of singing burn, like his cheeks were being branded. It had been happening ever since 3rd Life ended, a side effect of the whole enderman thing. It was excruciatingly painful when he was crying big, painful, tears like now, but not as painful as his mind was. Not as painful as knowing what he had to do was.

He could hear the countdown in his own mind. Second by second it ticked by, and the letters filled his brain and his vision with large red text. It was screaming at him. He was screaming back at it, desperately trying to get it to shut up. There were other voices in his mind too, screaming and crying and tugging at him. He can’t do this, He has to do this, Why won’t he get it over with and do it already? He’s learned nothing from last season, keeping this in is just gonna make this more painful for both of them, he deserves all this pain for what he put Tango through.

He was gripping himself with both his arms now, shaking. All of his senses were screaming that he had T-60 seconds left to kill a green or yellow name.

“I.. I-” Skizz managed, voice cracking. “Yes?” “I feel like I’m gonna throw up.”

“Oh!” Tango moved away from his best friend slightly. “Uh, Here, I have a bucket. Let me pour out the water.. Here. Here you go, buddy.”

Skizz was holding the bucket now. His darkstained hands were holding on so tight, it looked like the steel might crack. Not just his hands now, it looked.. It looked like his entire arms were turning black in a veinlike pattern. Tango couldn’t see his face.

Skizz kept hold on the bucket. T-50 seconds left. He had to get on with it.

Skizz slowly moved his hands to the buckles of his chestplate, and started undoing them.

“Wh- What are you doing? Are you hot?”

Skizz pulled the chestplate over his head, and set it aside. “I-I uh Drats I just. Poured out the water. Um, I’ve got.. potio-”

“Tango. Look at me.”

Tango turned back and focused his eyes on his friend. The tears were still running down his face leaving burnmarks on his cheeks, his eyes were still covered, his.. His chestplate was off. The blackness in his veins ran across all the space his skin was visible and.. and he was shaking like an egg about to crack.

T-40. “You- you remember what you said about the boogeyman not killing yet, right?” His voice was shaky, like the words hurt to get out.

Tango’s face was frozen, and then dropped.

“Skizz.. No. NO.”

Skizz’s grip on the bucket got tighter. T-35.

“Skizz I- Skizz, you KNOW if you had just told me I would help you get a kill ri- Ok.Ok, No I’m not mad. There’s no time to get mad, I’m not mad at you, I’m just.. Skizz, you know this isn’t going to break our alliance, right? I’ve told you countless times, I trust you.”

Skizz convulsed like he was trying to hold in another sob, eyes still not meeting Tango’s.

“I’m… I’m not mad. I’ve got 4 lives left, I in no way think less of you. This was inevitable.”

T-25. “Here.” Tango took Skizz’s hands, cold and limp in his grip, and placed his Netherite Sword into his hands. They had only had enough to make a sword for Tango- of course, Skizz had found the Netherite first, but insisted it was used on his buddy.

“Do what needs to be done. I won’t think any less of you.”

Tango spread his arms out now, crouched in front of Skizz.

15.

Do what needs to be done. Skizz..Skizz needs to do what needs to be done, alright. It didn’t make it hurt any less, knowing this was what he had to do. It didn’t make him any less scared.

10.

This was the worst case scenario. Tango had the greatest chance out of all of them of living.

Skizz certainly had no chance. And he didn’t want to drag his only friend, his brother down with him. Like he had dragged the Red Army with his own selfishness.

Tango had the best chance of winning out of all of them.

His hands were shaky as he moved the sword into the correct position, inches from his heart.

Skizz was scared.

“DO IT ALREADY!” Tango yelled, arms thrown out and eyes squeezed shut.

Skizz drove the blade through his chest, piercing his heart.

Piercing his heart.

“Wh-” Tango opened his eyes, and screamed. That scream was the last thing Skizz heard before his vision went black.

“N-NO WHAT- WH NO.NONO” Tango was holding his body. “NO, N- I’VE GOT HEALING ITEMS. I’VE GOT POTIONS, OKAY? ST-STAY IN THERE BUDDY-”

Tango was frantically shifting through his inventory, holding Skizz’s corpse in his other hand.

The second his hands found his way upon an apple, lightning was heard outside the cave.

It pierced through everyone’s hearts, a shot in the air heard serverwide.

When Tango looked back to the body it was gone, the only sign left of his brother being a pile of still items.

“No. N-No. No, I- I was at gr.. No, No h..this. This has to be a dream, th- this has to be a nightmare I- I can’t.. I, I can’t……………” Tango’s voice trailed off into incomprehensible quiet sobbing. He was curled up in a pile around the items, holding close the only remainder of his friend. The only thing that he had left period, since the castle had been taken… But he would have took a thousand structures falling to keep his friend. He… He would have done anything to keep his friend. Both Skizz and him knew that.

❤❤❤

Skizz had respawned in the spruce forest. He was leaning against a tree, still weak on his feet. There was a hole in the middle of his chest, and it hadn’t stopped bleeding.

The reds weren’t gonna hurt him now, he had become one of them. A murderer, just like them.

The curse needed a green or a yellow’s life taken to be broken, and he sure had a spare yellow life.

He wasn’t gonna let his own incompetence, his own selfishness doom the fate of his friend again. Tango had the best chance of winning, and he needed to keep all 4 of those lives.

As-as a red he could help too, right? Pick off any other reds that make claims on his friend. Of.. Of course, he couldn’t speak to his friend anymore. He couldn’t see him. He couldn’t even get his stuff.

It was better this way. Tango had the greatest chance of winning, and he was only going to hinder that chance.

He took his communicator out of his pocket, hands still shaking. They were covered in red now, and the communicator’s screen was splattered with red as well.

Skizzleman was killed by Skizzleman using [YOU BET YOUR LIFE]

LDShadowLady> …

Grian> WHAT

SolidarityGaming> ?????

Skizz looked down at the screen.

Tango hadn’t typed anything.

He put the communicator back into his pocket.

This session was ending now. And the next session might be his last. But he didn’t care, his own life didn’t matter, as long as he used his corpse to lift his brother to the win.

He had learned from season 1, hadn’t he?

24 notes · View notes

hermits-that-craft · 4 years ago

Note

show me the techno betrayal please i wanna know 💜

Techno watched as Hels and EX took his little brother away, helping him escape. Techno let his brothers words mull over, guilt eating at him. Did Tommy truely hate him? Did Techno’s stance of allying himself with their older brother and father truely make Tommy despise him?

He had to know. He had to know why Tommy hates him.

So Techno makes his way across the smp silently, his sword in its sheath by his side. He’s waiting, though not watching his back. The hermits, for all their power and danger, are honorable enough not to attack from behind. At least, he hopes so.

“What are you doing here?” Etho asks, and Techno jumps, spinning around. The white haired man lifts an eyebrow, giving Techno a hard look. “This is a bad sneak attack, if thats what you’re doing.”

“I didn’t hear you-”

“Most don’t.” Etho waves him off, sitting on a collapsed wall. “Why are you here?”

“I need to talk to Tommy.” Techno says, his hand resting on his sword.

“You don’t need to do anything.” Etho says, watching Techno carefully, playing with a knife. “You want to talk to Tommy. I could pass on the message, but it’s up to him. From what I heard, you tortured one of my friends and he disowned you.”

“I-”

“Don’t deny it, Stress confirmed you and your brother did it.” Etho tosses the knife in the air, catching it with his other hand. “I’d kill you, but she’d be mad. I’ll tell Tommy that you’re here, see if he gets a kick from it.”

And just like that, Etho disappeared. Techno waits, pulling his cloak around him as the night air gets chillier. He hopes that Tommy will come, he needs to know what he can do to make his little brother see reason, that he’s only doing this to protect him and Tubbo. He loves them - they’re his little brothers. He can’t let them get hurt by a monster.

“Technoblade?” Tommy’s voice is a surprise, Techno not expecting to see him tonight. He expected Xisuma or Eret to arrange a meeting between them, with guards and weapons already drawn. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.” Techno turns, looking at his little brother. Tommy’s horns have buttercups woven around them, and Tommy’s tail is wrapped around his leg. Though his eyes are hard and his sword is drawn. “I wanted - needed - to know if you actually hate me. Us.”

“Techno, you betrayed us. You betrayed Tubbo and I again.” Tommy’s voice breaks, and it takes all of Techno’s will power not to go over to his little brother, not to pull him into a hug. “I thought after Dad came you would be better, that you wouldn’t do something like this again. But Tubbo and I are expendable to you guys, aren’t we? You never thought we were brothers.”

“Tommy no.” Techno gasps, dropping his sword as he rushes over to Tommy. He can hear shouting, bushes rustling as people jump out. “No, it was never like that. I just wanted to protect you - to make sure that you weren’t hurt.”

“You ignored us.” Tommy stutters. “Tubbo told you that Ran isn’t dangerous. I told you that Ran was only seven and was being hunted. And you ignored us. You didn’t care.”

“Tommy, Ran’s dangerous - He’s the one who killed Tubbo’s family.”

“They were hunters.” Tommy spits. “They would have killed him. They would have killed you.” Tommy sticks his finger into Techno’s chest. “You’re a hypocrite Technoblade. Ran was Tubbo’s age, and you want to kill him for defending himself.”

“Tommy-” Techno gasps, trying to wipe away his little brothers tears. “-I don’t want him dead, Dream just wants him to face justice.”

“Dream will kill him.” Tommy pulls away from Techno, anger in his eyes. “I want to believe you Techno. I want to believe that you mean what you’ve said, that you only want to protect us, that you don’t want Ran dead. But you’re actions don’t match your words.”

And Tommy walks away, Xisuma and Eret guiding him as False and Doc watch Techno, their swords drawn. Techno doesn’t follow, just looking at his hands. He knows what he has to do. He knows how to win back Tommy and Tubbo’s trust.

And he starts compiling a book, dropping it off to Etho at the end of every week. Intel, base locations, plans. He’ll win back his younger brothers trust, even at the cost of losing his father and elder brother’s trust.

He won’t let Tommy and Tubbo down.

#Bio and Adopted au #technoblade #tommyinnit #tubbo #ethoslab #falsesymmetry #xisumavoid #docm77 #eret #purple heart anon #im sorry anon this probably isnt what you wanted #dreamon war #damb two drabbles in one day i am IGNORING MY ASSIGNMENTS <3 #Anonymous

74 notes · View notes

pass-the-bechdel · 4 years ago

Text

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nine (25.71% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-six.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

For a movie which is pretty much wall-to-wall fight scenes...I love it. I always start out going ‘maybe I overrate this movie, maybe it’s not as good as I remember’, but by the end, I’m right back in there.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Wanda apologises to Natasha for lying. It’s a close call.

Female characters:

Pepper Potts.

F.R.I.D.A.Y

Gamora.

Mantis.

Wanda Maximoff.

Natasha Romanoff.

Okoye.

Nebula.

Shuri.

Male characters:

Ebony Maw.

Thanos.

Thor.

Loki.

Heimdall.

Bruce Banner.

Stephen Strange.

Wong.

Tony Stark.

Peter Parker.

Ned.

Peter Quill.

Rocket.

Drax.

Groot.

Vision.

Steve Rogers.

Sam Wilson.

The Collector.

Thaddeus Ross.

James Rhodes.

T’Challa.

Bucky Barnes.

Eitri.

Red Skull.

M’Baku.

OTHER NOTES:

Heimdall had proven himself too much of an MVP in previous films to be allowed to live in this one. Bastards.

Heimdall and Loki, both dead before the opening titles. That’s how you know this movie means business, it’s not faking at high stakes.

I also am from space and have come here to steal a necklace from a wizard.

“Mr Stark, it smells like a new car in here!”

“All words are made up.”

Not gonna lie, when I saw this at the cinema and I realised that Captain America had arrived? My heart LEAPT. It was intense.

Depressed Thor is a great touch - after all previous films with Thor had him so bland, and then Ragnarok made him funny but essentially glossed over any of the difficult emotions it was dredging up, I’m glad to finally get something real and meaty from the character. If characters go through all manner of Hell and don’t show any signs of labouring under that weight, you’re doing character development wrong.

Nice callback with Red Skull.

The sacrifice of Gamora on Vormir is a really well-balanced piece; it was asking a lot, to make the emotion of it land despite how little of Thanos we’ve seen before, and without genuine emotion at it’s core it’s just the killing off of a female character for shock value. I feel like they got the pitch just right (most thanks to the music).

As much as I enjoy Thor and Rocket’s bantering, the side-quest for Stormbreaker feels like an unnecessary and over-the-top distraction in an already stuffed-full film. Easily the weakest part of the plot.

The fact that Quill fucks everything up with defeating Thanos on Titan because he can’t keep himself under control for two seconds certainly does not endear him to me in the slightest. Like ok, you’re upset, but if you can’t stop yourself from getting violent that’s on you, that makes you a dangerous person with serious issues, that’s not normal and it’s not ok. Also, literally half of all life in the universe was at stake. So there’s that.

Listen, I’m very susceptible to heroism (and that’s why superhero movies work for me), so every time someone comes to someone else’s rescue, I have feelings.

I had convinced myself that somehow, Thanos wouldn’t succeed with his whole plan in this movie, that he would get all the stones but that he would like, go to a special place or something before enacting his plan, so that the good guys would have a chance to regroup and race to stop him before it was too late, all that jazz. So (even though Thanos had already snapped at that point), when Bucky Barnes disintegrated before our very eyes, I was SHOCKED. That got me like a smack in the face.

Considering I’ve never really been a fan of Tom Holland’s Spider-man, it’s a credit to his work that Peter’s death scene is so effective. That’s acting.

So, what makes this movie work despite being so heavy with bombastic action? The short answer is: it’s because the good guys lose. I’ve made no secret of being a fan of the ‘hour darkest before the dawn’ in storytelling, so this is playing to the sweet spot for me there, but it’s not as simple as just making everything miserable and hopeless. In this case, specifically, the lead-up to that ultimate failure is key; it’s gotta still feel like a superhero extravaganza, even as it takes an increasingly dark turn. The action works because it’s part of what we signed up for (the best camouflage for subversions of the traditional model), and it works because it’s all carrying the story forward - the Infinity War is comprised of multiple battles, and because of the way the pieces of the narrative are separated, the characters don’t know how any of the other battles are turning out; everyone is just trying to fight what’s in front of them and defend the stone in their midst, they don’t have the option to sit around doom-and-glooming and restrategising as news of each defeat comes in. Rather than dragging us wholesale from Point A to B to C in ever-escalating stakes and complications, the writers have had the good sense to spread things out and let things fall apart for our heroes (and the universe) in multiple smaller pieces until they reach a cumulative critical mass. Consequently, instead of feeling as though we’re sitting there watching things go from bad to worse, the audience forms this false sense of security in the action; it’s a superhero movie, after all. We expect them to work it all out in the end, to build toward a moment of apparent hopelessness (a darkest hour before the dawn), and then to rally triumphantly for the big win. As such, we perceive small victories (i.e. the defeat of Thanos’ various ‘children’, the creation of Stormbreaker, the way things draw out in the battle on Titan) as if they are more significant, as if they are signs leading us to that big win; without those small, expected victories, the ultimate failure would not hit as hard, because after two and a half hours of watching the good guys get wrecked without a chance, what surprise would there be in the snap?

Of course, plenty of viewers knew about the snap already or expected an ultimate failure of some sort based on the fact that we pretty much all knew that this was the first half of our grand Avengers finale (my mother, who is not a superhero movie fan, did not know what she was getting into and was...very shocked), so it’s important that the film still works to engage us on a character level so that the good guys losing in the end can hit like a ton of bricks even if you knew it was coming (and even though you no doubt expected to get the big win eventually, once Endgame came out). After all the fighting and the bantering, all the usual stuff we expect to see our heroes go through in the course of an average adventure, having them then watch their beloved friends/allies/whatever literally disintegrate before their eyes in a quiet, drawn out scene of devastation is a magnificent piece of cinema, communicating the shock not only of the event itself, but of the complete disruption to the superhero status quo. It’s not just that good guys don’t lose like this, it’s that they don’t lose with a whimper instead of a a bang. It’s not only that the cost of failure has never been this high; it’s also that they have never been forced to watch it play out with such inevitability; they have never before been rendered so powerless. If the entire film had the tone of the last ten minutes, it wouldn’t work so well, it’d just be a drudge and the audience would be desensitised by the end. By the same token, if the rest of the film had not planted the seeds of the finale so thoroughly in all its smaller losses and smokescreen victories, the ending would not be so horrifically fitting.

Neither, of course, would the ending be so affecting, if we were not as attached to the characters as we are. We have many, many films worth of history with most of them, or at least one solid encounter in which to become attached, and even in a movie chock-full of more characters than any other before, everyone gets a chance to show their personality and remind us why we care if they live or die. I’m not going to argue for this being an incredible character piece (nor is it pretending to be one), but it plays its very large hand very well, putting emphasis where it needs to be without overloading or unbalancing the story. As I noted above, I was particularly impressed with the way Thanos was handled, considering our exposure to him previously was very minimal and it was left up the this film to build his ethos as well as his relationships with his ‘children’ almost from scratch, creating complexity and simplicity without falling into the trap of trying to make the villain sympathetic; Thanos isn’t necessarily relatable (nor does he need to be), but he is understandable in that we’ve all probably encountered at least one person who holds the same limited worldview and is somehow convinced that they could ‘fix’ everything, given the power. Thanos isn’t actually aiming for universal domination in the traditional sense, and it makes him more disturbing and more realistic as a villain, because his evil is not nebulous or purely self-serving; he is a true believer, and his delusions have an all-too-familiar ring about them, so as we watch him lumber and pontificate around the story, we get a clearly-drawn image of someone possessed of such basic and humble flaws that he is - again, without being treated as sympathetic - quite significantly humanised, despite all of the non-human elements that make up both his character, and his situation. Even as it planet-hops and draws upon cosmic magic, the narrative is grounded by a centrepiece of plain, ungodly fallibility.

Now, I recognise that in all of this praise for the way this film was executed, there isn't really anything to be said for it regarding the purpose of this blog; on the female representation front, it's not really doing anything (the fact that it juuust manages to pass the Bechdel and juuust over a quarter of its cast is female does not win it brownie points; its better than not having either of those things, but that's not a genuine achievement). The two female characters who were more prominently positioned in this movie are Gamora and Wanda; Gamora largely in context of her relationship with Thanos, and Wanda as Vision’s significant other and the means of his destruction. Notably, both women’s arcs are accessories to the arcs of male characters, which is not what we’re aiming for in good representation, though it does not exclude the possibility of quality content; Gamora’s role may have a lot to do with Thanos (not least, after he kills her), but it is still distinctly her own story, rich with emotion and coming to a surprising and depressing end which I felt struck the right chords to be compelling rather than an enraging disposal of one of the few female characters around (more on this after Endgame). Wanda’s presence leaves less of an impression, in terms of screen time, plot complication, and audience engagement, but all things considered I don’t think that was a terrible choice; Wanda and Vision’s relationship had been a somewhat sparse subplot in previous films and the chemistry was not strong, so I don’t think it would have been to the film’s benefit to try and expand on that relationship further than they did. As it was, there was enough there to sell the emotion, and nothing extraneous, and as much as I enjoy this movie, I wish I could say better things for its female representation than that. It is stuffed-full, and definitely not perfect, and space could have been made to pump up some of the other female characters’ roles more (the Earthbound characters get the least attention in the movie, and since basically all my faves are there it is a testament to how well this movie works for me that I enjoy it so much anyway, but a little more attention there would not have gone astray, especially since that’s where most of the female cast is). That said...I still really enjoy it, man. As far as popcorn action goes, this is top shelf.

#Marvel Cinematic Universe #Avengers: Infinity War #female representation #Bechdel Test #MCU

4 notes · View notes

anhed-nia · 6 years ago

Text

BLOGTOBER 10/2/2018: THE DEVIL’S REJECTS

The core ethos of Rob Zombie’s movies, if you can say that there is one, is individuality: a certain don’t-give-a-fuckness, a matter of being yourself at all costs, even if that means cutting holes in your pants for your ass to hang out of, not brushing your teeth, and murdering people who piss you off. In the spirit of that level of realness, I must confess that, even though I don’t have a lot of desire to defend it, a part of me really wants to like this messy, self-satisfied movie. Unfortunately, I can’t come clean about why, but that’s because I don’t really know.

It’s worth mentioning that THE DEVIL’S REJECTS is Rob Zombie’s sequel to his first feature, the incomprehensible HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES. This is worth mentioning precisely because it’s worth forgetting. The latter disaster, which to be fair Zombie was forced to make up on the spot in an impromptu pitch meeting, and which was plagued with production problems, amounts to a loose collection of pornographically violent cartoons, motivated by nothing other than the director’s love for his own ideas. It isn’t easy to take, but at least they are his own ideas. Whether or not I find it entertaining, I can find my way to appreciating a filmmaker just mashing up his personal fetishes, when so many movies are boringly predicated on one person’s condescending projection of what all of OUR fetishes are. Ultimately, Ho1KC’s lack of structure and...maybe I wanna say, point...makes all this fantasizing pretty irrelevant to anyone other than the fantasizer. Mercifully, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS finds Zombie squeezing a more carefully curated selection of his obsessions into a plot, with some character arcs and everything.

Ok, so it’s not like a masterpiece of mythology or anything. In fact, the movie’s fatal flaw, in spite of all this new coherence, is that it’s still too hard to tell what the point is. THE DEVIL’S REJECTS rescues the three strongest characters from its predecessor--Otis and Baby of the savage Firefly Clan, and Captain Spaulding, an ambiguous character from the first movie who is outed here as Baby’s father--and makes them over for this new effort. Their transition from being so broad that they might as well be puppets in a children's show, into salt of the earth psychos who you can practically smell, is a natural consequence of the new environment in which DEVIL’S REJECTS finds them. In fact, this sequel is part of a totally different genre than the Ho1KC, which clumsily smooshes together THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and SPIDER BABY and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. The new movie, however blood-drenched, sets out for something more like Sam Peckinpah territory. There’s a brief moment I like at the beginning of the movie, when Spaulding--or Cutter, as he’s more casually called here--peels out to go rescue Baby and Otis from the bloody police raid on the Firefly compound. You see the dusty, dilapidated shack where Cutter lives, fenced off from an apocalyptic-looking wasteland, and then as he swings out into the road, the rich green expanse of an industrial farm. The new world of the Fireflies is utterly mundane, even depressed, a place whose banality is shattered only by the random acts of violence perpetrated by our defacto heroes.

It’s a big relief to not to have a bunch of shrill, spoiled teenagers squirming around, existing only as living opportunities for cartoon villains to demo their personalities. DEVIL’S REJECTS rejects this obligatory horror trope, in an important first step toward Rob Zombie finding his footing as a filmmaker. He not only positions the ostensible bad guys more clearly as heroes, which falls in line with his true feelings, but he populates his movies with grownups. This sounds simple, but in an entertainment landscape dominated by co-eds finding themselves, and 30-somethings acting to the best of their ability like co-eds finding themselves, it’s extremely inviting to see adults in all shapes and sizes with creased faces, aging flesh, and wiry muscles clinging to the bone against the ravages of gravity. Groovy young nubiles are seen only in battered photographs, usually beaten beyond recognition.

Therein lies the rub, though--in the movie’s ambiguous victimology. We know that the media-dubbed Devil’s Rejects are responsible for the torture, rape, murder, and necrophilic violation of a growing mass of apparent innocents in Ruggsville County. In the context of the movie, they do away with a handful of touring country signers, in order to force them to help unearth Otis’ buried arsenal, and to hide out in the group’s hotel room until Cutter catches up with them. Of course there’s plenty of sadistic thrills in the mix, but the question remains: What do the Devil’s Rejects usually do? What I mean is: The Sawyer clan only busts out the chainsaws for trespassers. Jason Voorhees kills violators of a set of stuffy social mores. Freddy Krueger kills primarily for revenge. In HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, the Firefly family seems to kill mainly to punish smug, judgmental tourists. But it’s hard to figure out what the Rejects really want in the present film, and this is pretty hard to ignore when they’re construed as outlaw folk heroes. With all their ferocious family loyalty, swagger and charisma (and what Rob Zombie takes to be sparkling banter, but is mainly just the word “fuck” repeatedly so often that it achieves a zen-like obliteration of meaning), it’s clear that we’re supposed to like these guys. But, if they just kill people for no reason most of the time, and I don’t even see enough of it to get a sense of how everything shook out, then I have to start thinking that maybe they’re just a bunch of assholes. Certainly when they’re degrading and torturing their victims to death at great length in a seedy hotel, the droning HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER-type music communicates to me that I’m supposed to think of this murder as a bad thing, a depressingly unnecessary tragedy perpetrated by...you know, a bunch of assholes. And you don’t go on to play “Freebird” over a majestic slow motion shootout for a bunch of assholes. Do you?

Obviously Rob Zombie is doing something right, because I’ve seen this movie several times before, and I have now written an amount of analysis of it that no normal person would ever want to read. But here I am, grappling with my feelings about the movie’s atmosphere, its look, its genre-bending story. Probably the safest thing for me to say now, in the continued spirit of the movie’s fierce individuality, is that I am actively looking forward to the next movie in the series, THREE FROM HELL. I’m ready to be disappointed, but I’m also ready for Zombie to continue to flesh out what it really means to be a Firefly. Fingers crossed that there turns out to be more of the latter than the former.

#blogtober #rob zombie #sherri moon zombie #sid haig #bill moseley #the devil's rejects #house of 1000 corpses #thriller #action #slasher #road movie #western #sheri moon zombie

17 notes · View notes

deadinsidedressage · 6 years ago

Note

What do you think of TMFCK defending dancing horses so much? Like obviously he’s not advocating for it but defending tying up and whipping/beating a horse in the name of tradition and cultural sensitivity fucks me up. Clinton Anderson relies on abusing horses to pay his bills, and everyone thinks that’s fucked up. so why is it suddenly okay for people in other countries to do that?

I’ll straight up admit that I don’t see the majority of his content and also can’t be bothered to go look at it to confirm what I’m about to say and this is going to be based off the what I saw in his arguments the last time him & dancing horses actually popped up on my dash:It’s sort of like watching someone try to explain the fact that if a black hole ever crashed into the Earth, the Earth would be fine but there would be an exit and entry point (like a bullet wound) but not quite Get It™. (The hyperlink/bad analogy is literally a cool thing I learned about that was NOT caused by a black hole crashing into the Earth but which caused me to learn what that might do theoretically and I wanted to share that).

So here’s the thing--- he’s not wrong about having to look at it in a cultural context. If you’re trying to look at it from an academically minded viewpoint and learn what their rationales for training in that manner is then you absolutely need to get rid of any biases and ethnocentric views. You’d need to learn it from the view of the people doing it. If you’re trying to look at why they’re doing it that way versus why they’ve not adopted another way, then you also have to look from a culturally mindful perspective. Especially if you’re trying to effect change and get them to adopt methods that are not abusive. You simply cannot change adverse cultural practices when coming in from the viewpoint that they’re Wrong and you’re Right (even if ethically that might be true). People shutdown when they’re being attacked, especially so if what they’re being attacked over is ingrained in their culture. Instead of being an attack on the practice, it turns into an attack on the culture. There are plenty of cultures that aren’t Bad that have Bad Practices and we can only change them through learning about them and empowering them with education to make ethical decisions.

A great example of how to effect ethical change in a culture whose traditional practices are abusive practices is the Friends of Marwar/Kathiwari Horse organization and what it’s done to replace harsh, crudely constructed Indian bits with snaffles. They also work overall to educate about horse welfare and proper horse care in India, including being partnered with Flying Anvil Foundation (which focuses on bringing updated farrier techniques to the areas of the world that are still dependent on traditional farming and truly agricultural use of horses). What both organizations have in common is that they are aiming to correct very clear abusive/neglect by approaching it from the standpoint that it exists from a lack of education. They go in, they educate, and people adopt these proper care methods and non-abusive techniques/tools because ultimately these people do care about their horses--- even if they only care about maximizing the usefulness of the horse. That last bit there about the “usefulness of the horse” is also something really key to operating effectively in outreach work aimed at improving the condition of any animal that a culture is subsisting off of. You cannot change cultural views with a snap of your finger, so if you enter into a culture that only views the animal as a tool and not in the same Western concept of a companion--- then you need to implement a strategy that focuses on logos versus pathos. (Quick terminology lessons: Logos, Ethos, & Pathos are rhetoric terms that originated from Aristotle and describe the method by which you’re arguing a thesis ((thesis being used in it’s original context to mean a “point of view” or proposition)). Logos is an appeal to logic. Ethos is an appeal to ethics. Pathos is an appeal to emotion. When operating across cultural lines, you generally do not rely on ethos because what is considered ethical is not standard across cultures. You rely on logos and pathos either solely or interchangeably as necessary.)So, if you’re dealing with people who want to do what’s best for their horse because they also care for the horse as pet--- then you can focus more on pathos and use arguments like “if you use this snaffle instead of this traditional bit, it will be softer and cause your horse less pain which will make him happier and more responsive!”If you’re dealing with people who want to do what’s best for their horse only so long as it maximizes the use of the horse--- then you need to focus more on logos and use arguments like “if you use this snaffle instead of this traditional bit then you won’t cause sores and cuts in the horses mouth, and a if the horse is not in pain then it can work longer and if the horse doesn’t have open wounds then it won’t get infections in those wounds that could kill it or mean it wouldn’t be able to work; so by using this snaffle you can get more use out of your horse.”

However, where I’ve seen TMFCK go “wrong” in his arguments or defenses is that he’s not getting past looking at it from what ethnographers call an “insider’s perspective” and applying an “outsider’s perspective”. By only pointing out the the fact that the training is orally passed down and whatever else about it as a means to explain the why there is the abusive practice is only doing half the work. You need to look at the WHY (insider’s perspective) but also the HOW (outsider’s perspective)--- so let me give you my favorite example from an ethnographer about how to apply looking at it from both perspectives because it’s the most chilling:In Brazil, specifically I think it was the capital, within an extremely impoverished community there was an astronomically high infant mortality rate. Going in and studying why this was happening, an ethnographer discovered this was due to something that she translated roughly as “the breath for life”. When a child was born, the practice within the community was to take the newborn immediately after cutting the umbilical cord and places it in a corner of the room on the floor where they would leave it for something like 3 days. You would not look at the child or feed the child, or cover the child. You’d just leave a newborn crying on the floor for 3 days. Now the cultural explanation for this (WHY/insider’s perspective) was because all children born into the world are reincarnations of souls who’ve already lived. God is apparently very silly and doesn’t keep track of which soul just died very well and you need to wait the 3 days to make sure God didn’t make a mistake. The soul itself needed that much time to alert God that “hey I was just alive!” and needed isolation so that a) God could hear it better and b) to prevent the soul from losing it’s memory of it’s past life (which is what happens to babies so that they don’t have their old memories) so that God could take it back. A baby that lasted the three days was a soul that had “the breath for life” and had spent enough time in Heaven that it was ready to live another human life. So--- from the cultural perspective, they weren’t committing infanticide or doing anything wrong because that’s what was needed to help God out with his bad organizational skills. Now the actual, hard science explanation behind why this was a cultural practice and why people didn’t see anything wrong with it (HOW/outider’s perspective) was that this community was so horrifically impoverished that they could not devote resources to many children at all and couldn’t afford to waste them on infants that wouldn’t survive. The waiting the 3 days before even feeding the child was essentially a form of unintentional eugenics because the infants that would be able to survive it would have strong immune systems and clearly just a strong survival ability. The 3 days thing also mimicked a very real possibility of the children going days without being fed as that was a very real possibility in the community. These children would then be worth devoting precious resources too because it wouldn’t be a waste. Yes, this community was committing infanticide but they were committing infanticide on children that would have likely died anyway and preserving resources that would be valuable in keeping other community members alive. Is it wrong to let a baby die on purpose? Still yes, but at least there was a reasoning behind why that had become a necessary thing.The point is, you need both views of something in order to absolutely fully understand why it is happening. Only with an understanding of it can you remedy it. In the above example you could scream at them to stop leaving babies to die---maybe even get them to stop leaving babies to die, but ultimately those babies still would have died. Knowing that it was a resource problem meant that two viable options to prevent needless baby death would be 1) Give them more resources and/or 2) Introduce them to family planning so we’re only having babies we know we have resources for. Without both aspects of understanding you can’t provide a real solution.

So, I get what he’s saying and he’s not wrong and he does make good points about racism (or at least he did the last time I saw it and I actually chimed in about it too--- and actually the Clinton Anderson thing is a great example of racial bias: people will accept his abuse because it’s in the context of a white culture but condemn the dancing horse abuse because of it’s context in a middle eastern or south american culture. They’re still both abuse and they’re actually both pretty closely related in terms of abuse but it’s important to understand that abuse is abuse even if a white guy is doing it and if you’re only calling it out when NOT a white guy is doing it then you’re not doing it because you care about horse welfare, you’re doing it because you’re racist) BUT at the same time he’s not going far enough in deciphering and breaking down what he’s sharing.

He needs to be able to quantify the abuse without qualifying it.

#dancing horses #hey did you kids want a lesson in ethics and anthropology and how to effect ethical changes in foreign cultures?#too bad that's what you got #Anonymous

18 notes · View notes

mrpinchy · 7 years ago

Text

Jokes and Flirts for Allied Races

Highmountain, Nightborne, Void Elves, Lightforged Draenei

Not everything has been datamined yet and some things are subject to change or removal. **EDIT: female void elf lines added!**

Void Elf (male):

What am I into? Let's just say some of my proclivities can run a bit... dark.

I do my best work in the shadows. Allow me to demonstrate.

The Void has taught me many secrets. Some of them can be most... satisfying.

As a rule, I don't sprout tentacles. But in your case, I'll make an exception.

When studying shadow magic, one learns to be flexible. Very... flexible.

You sate my hunger... and I'll sate yours.

I know what you're thinking... "Oh goody, another elf." Well... I bet you weren't expecting a VOID elf, now were you?

If you're looking for tall dark, and brooding, that's me. Well, dark and brooding, at least.

Say what you will about the tenets of the Void. At least it's an ethos!

Would you believe purple has always been my favorite color? Even before I went void, I mean.

Alleria is my favorite Windrunner sister. Edgier than Vereesa, but slightly less homicidal than the dead one.

The fact that I wield void energies doesn't mean I plan to consume everything I see. After all, I have a figure to maintain.

Old Gods... I mean, really? Some have mouths for eyes, others have eyes for mouths. Talk about a hot mess...

Void Elf (female)

They say the Void hungers. Let’s start off with a bit of nibbling.

Get nice and close. Whispers are kinda my thing.

Are you checking out my void form?

There is a void in my heart. Have you come to fill it?

Who needs the Light? It’s so much more fun in the dark.

You cannot a-void my charms.

The Void isn’t the only thing that’s insatiable.

No, we do not drink blood–that’s the San'layn. Totally different emo elf.

First was high, then blood, and now void. Get the order right.

Who does my hair? You might have heard of my stylist. It’s called THE VOID.

Gloomy? I’m not gloomy. I just dress that way… and talk that way… and act that way.

You think YOU have a dark side? Elf, please.

Well, yes, technically the Void does want to consume the entire cosmos. But I’ll settle for a smaller bite… for now.

No matter how much you plead, I will not sprout tentacles or turn into a giant eyeball. Well, I might. But not because you asked.

Lightforged Draenei (male)

I like it with the lights on. Not that I really have a choice...

Has it gotten brighter in here? Because you just turned me on.

I thought my tattoo said "Light's Defender" in naaru. I found out it actually says "glowing goat".

This world of yours is very strange. Talking bears who practice kung fu? On Argus, we call that a circus.

After being aboard a ship for so long, it is nice to walk on solid ground again. All those hard surfaces were murder on my hooves!

My life for Aiur... <cough> Argus. My life for ARGUS!

Have you ever seen the bunks on the Vindicaar? I can arrange a private tour.

If one more of you natives calls me a walking chandelier, I swear I'll...

Sorry if my tattoos look a little dim. I forgot to charge my battery last night.

Face tentacles?! We do NOT have face tentacles! If we did, that would mean draenei are secretly emissaries of the Void, gaining your trust as we infiltrate your society so that we can bring about its end. And I'm certain you're not implying THAT... are you?

I'm a draenei on the streets... but an eredar in the sheets.

The Vindicaar is a fast ship. You could say it travels at Light speed.

Lightforged Draenei (female)

When in doubt... touch anything that glows.

No, I do not have a glowing stamp above my tail.

Have you met my dog? His name is Barkenon Puppos.

Toes are overrated. Hooves make pedicures go sooooo much faster.

I don't recommend walking barehoof on the Vindicaar. We keep finding tiny shards of crystal that didn't get swept up.

We haven't crashed the Vindicaar yet... but given our track record, it's only a matter of time.

One downside of being Lightforged is that my S.E.L.F.I.E.S. are always overexposed.

Turalyon was the only human I saw for a thousand years. I assumed all of them were grizzled and scarred.

My turn-ons include my eyes, my tattoos, my armor... I mean, what doesn't turn on?

I may be forged in the Light, but I know how to have fun in the dark.

Have you seen Prophet Velen's new dance? He calls it the Mac'Areena.

Nightborne (male)

Your body must be a font of magic, because I'm irresistibly drawn to it.

You must know magic too, because you just made everyone else in the room disappear.

You've found the Arcway to my heart.

Mmmm, I wanna tap that ley line.

I think I've night-fallen for you.

I've got a feeling we were night-born for each other.

The stars have judged you, and found you... smokin' hot.

Were you picked from the Arcan'dor? Because you're the apple of my eye.

To be honest, most of the time something was quite right.

Why does everyone keep asking me to say that? Ughhhhh. Fine. An Illusion. What are you hiding.

My name is Roy, and I'm a mana addict.

It's what I do. I drink arcwine... and I know things.

Back in my day, there was only one kind of elf. ONE.

I don't know why they call it the Court of Stars. I hang out there all the time and I never see anyone famous.

Let's be honest. Keeping a giant, angry dinosaur caged up in a zoo was bound to end badly.

Nightborne (female)

Is that an illusion in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

No illusions here. Everything you see is real... very real.

My Nightwell brings all the boys to the yard.

Animate? Detonate? I suggest we skip straight to replicate.

I'll show you my ley lines if you show me yours.

I've been trapped in a bubble with the same guys for 10,000 years. You could say I'm ready for a little... variety.

There's no area denial in this raid.

An allusion! What are you implying?

Roses are red, our city is fair. Is that a disguise? WHO GOES THERE?

Care for a glass of arcwine? I jumped on the berries myself.

Tyrande still looks good after all these years. Know if she's seeing anyone?

I met this kal'dorei who told me my dress was the pinnacle of fashion... 10,000 years ago. Ouch! Those night elves really know how to throw shade!

Night elves? More like country elves! They live in trees, sleep in dens... sometimes even grow antlers. They're not cut out for life in a REAL city.

You really must attend one of our parties in the Court of Stars. I've never met anyone more in need of a mask.

Highmountain Tauren (male)

Trust me... I have experience at exploring deep places.

My totem thunders. All. Night. Long.

Beware the deep places... of my heart.

Get as rough as you like. I've got a thick hide.

You must be an alchemist, because we've got great chemistry.

Why does that draenei couple keep asking me where Rocky is?

Let's play a game. We take a drink every time a harpy screeches about earth and stone.

I may be a simple tauren from the mountains, but at least I don't dig through worm dung for loot.

Ha! A buddy of mine convinced this epic-geared adventurer to kick fish into the river! Oh wait... that wasn't you, was it?

A tauren, a yaungol, and a taunka walk into a bar. This isn't a joke--it's my family reunion.

What smells worse than a drogbar? Two drogbar. What smells worse than two drogbar? Nobody knows, because the stench will kill you.

Did you just try to hang your hat on my antlers? What do I look like, a coat rack?

Why settle for horns when you could have a rack like this?

I'm forming a group of tauren demon hunters. We're called the Illi-dairy.

Highmountain Tauren (female)

So... wanna knock antlers?

Are you staring at my rack?

It's not the size of the antlers. It's the motion of the totem.

What do you get when you feed cocoa to a Highmountain tauren? Chocolate moose!

Why are the Rivermane always so calm? Because they've learned to go with the flow.

Brrrrr, it's cold in here. In the mood for some ice cream?

Tauren make the best poets. Their verse is so moooooving.

You know the way to a woman's heart? Hoof rubs. Trust me on this one, darling.

He said my eyes were "milky". Talk about a mood killer...

I know Ethel. She's actually a very fast walker. She just thinks it's funny to mess with tourists.

You know, high-altitude living does wonders for one's stamina. Allow me to demonstrate...

You don't need to be from the Skyhorn tribe to join the mile high club.

We are Highmountain. Unless you're leaving. Then we're Goodbye Mountain.

#bfa spoilers #BFA #BOFA #long post #LOOOONG POST #omg #NIGHTBORNE LADIES CONFIRMED GAY

1K notes · View notes

junker-town · 5 years ago

Text

The reason behind Brandon Ingram’s emergence and how Zion Williamson’s return complicates it

What Zion Williamson’s return can tell us about Brandon Ingram’s career year.

Williamson’s injury gave Ingram the spacing and platform to play like a future star. Is that still possible with Williamson coming back?

On Oct. 21, 2019, a 48-word New Orleans Pelicans press release put a mammoth damper on the beginning of the new NBA season. Zion Williamson, the rookie sensation that looked even more exciting than advertised in preseason, would miss 6-8 weeks after knee surgery. Nobody with a pulse was happy with this development.

But as the old adage goes, one man’s misfortune is often another’s gain. Without Williamson, something beautiful has happened: Brandon Ingram is becoming the star he was supposed to be when he entered the league in 2016.

With Williamson out of the lineup, Ingram’s slid up a position to power forward and gobbled up the lion’s share of Williamson’s usage. The results have been spectacular, at least from Ingram’s perspective. He’s averaging more than 25 points, nearly seven rebounds, and almost four assists per game, all while dramatically upping his usage and scoring efficiency. He’s become a reliable No. 1 scorer in crunch time and is playing with a freedom and confidence he’s never displayed.

youtube

Ingram’s emergence is coming at the perfect time, considering his scary past — a blood clot in his shoulder threatened to ruin his career last year — and his lucrative future as the headline restricted free agent of next year’s weak class. Without Williamson’s injury, it’s hard to imagine this happening. Zion’s absence isn’t the only factor in Ingram’s rise, but it sure provided the platform, floor spacing, and featured role Ingram needed to maximize his game.

Williamson’s return is on the horizon, so can Ingram still be his best self when they share the court? The answer has significant implications for the Pelicans and Ingram’s own career arc.

The reality is the current on-court conditions with the Pelicans are built for Ingram to thrive. Without Williamson, coach Alvin Gentry has leaned even further into his high-tempo ethos. Sixty-eight percent of Ingram’s minutes have been at power forward this year, compared to just 18 percent last year with the Lakers. That setup is uniquely built to maximize Ingram’s strengths and minimize his weaknesses. Ingram’s offensive skill, off-the-dribble power, and shaky spot-up shooting (at least before this year) meant he needed to play with the ball in his hands. Give him time and space to build up speed, and he’s always been able to use his core strength, long arms, and point guard-like shake to thrive.

At the same time, his high center of gravity limited the efficient openings he was able to create for himself and others. Without a spread floor, Ingram-centric possessions often looked like this.

Ingram is at his best when he’s able to attack quickly and decisively without having a lot of bodies in his way. He needs teammates to space the floor so he can get downhill more easily, but also requires others to push the ball to get him a running start. On top of that, he also needed ways to go against bigger defenders that lacked his foot speed, rather than smaller wings that could dig into his legs.

That’s a tough environment to engineer while using Ingram as a more traditional wing, but it has suddenly become easier if he’s slides up a position. Without the injured Williamson, New Orleans’ base look now supplies Ingram with three perimeter players that’d be undersized even for shooting guards, plus a role-playing center to set screens and/or dive to the basket. That’s not a great lineup to use if you want to play passable defense, and the Pelicans unsurprisingly stink on that end.

It is, however, perfect for making a guy like Ingram look better. As a 4, Ingram gets the benefit of playing with ball-handlers like Jrue Holiday and Lonzo Ball that can initiate the offense, floor-spacers like J.J. Redick, Josh Hart, and E’Twaun Moore that suck help defenders away, and big men like Derrick Favors and Jaxson Hayes that can lay the wood on Ingram’s primary defender (in Favors’ case) or offer a vertical threat rolling to the rim (in Hayes’).

Those elements combine beautifully in set plays that give Ingram a head start, such as this staggered pick-and-roll.

Or this dribble-handoff sequence — which, by the way, is the exact same one the Pelicans regularly used for Williamson in the preseason.

Pelicans 21 Keep Cut 4 Pitch Action to get Zion downhill. pic.twitter.com/2mkEV2s2NR

— Half Court Hoops (@HalfCourtHoops) October 8, 2019

Or in isolation sequences like this. Ingram’s hesitation to get to the cup is devastating, but he needs the space his teammates provide to set it up properly.

They also help when Ingram attacks in transition, something the Pelicans actively seek out whenever possible. On most missed shots, Ingram advances up a wing, either by himself or after a pitch-ahead pass from the rebounder. When there, he sees blood, attacking the retreating defense using the precious running start his game requires. In these moments, he becomes a poor man’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, which is plenty fearsome in its own right.

Look at how the rest of the Pelicans lurk along the three-point line.

Even if he can’t dunk, Ingram has all the space in the world to flow into New Orleans’ early offense.

The Lakers gave Ingram these opportunities, too, and the Pelicans will even after Williamson returns to the court. But with one less perimeter player to push tempo, run the wings, and/or occupy help defenders along the three-point line, Ingram will have less space to exploit. That means fewer chances to attack and more annoying help defenders nipping at his heels when he does.

Plus, Williamson’s supposedly decent at going coast-to-coast with the ball in his hands, too. The Pelicans might want to explore that skill. Just a thought.

Bottom line: while Williamson’s return is great for the franchise and the NBA, it’ll force Ingram to leave his personal Camelot. Can Williamson and Ingram both live their best lives for the next decade without bumping into each other?

One emphatic reason for optimism is Ingram’s emerging three-point shot, which has been shockingly wet this year after looking ugly in his three Lakers seasons. As of Jan. 7, Ingram is shooting over 40 percent from downtown on nearly six attempts per game, a massive improvement from his 33-percent mark on less than two attempts per contest last year. Incredibly, Ingram is shooting more than 40 percent on above-the-break threes, which puts him in the 87th percentile at his position, according to Cleaning the Glass. I knew Ingram’s jumper was improved and I still did a double take when I saw those numbers.

One must exercise caution when proclaiming a broken jumper fixed based on just half a season of data, but there’s ample evidence that Ingram’s new sharp-shooting is here to stay. He’s nailing off-the-dribble looks when defenders go under ball screens.

He’s splashing wing threes on the move.

He’s even pulling up in defenders’ faces.

His form rising up for his shot has improved dramatically. Notice all the mechanical differences between these two spot-up jumpers from the exact same spot on the left wing. Credit Ingram and the Pelicans’ player development staff for smoothing all those abnormalities out.

If his new jumper is here to stay, he can certainly find ways to score while playing off Williamson. Defenders already open up driving lanes for him by closing out too hard on his shot. He’ll get more chances to make moves like this with Williamson sucking attention away.

Still, I have concerns. Even if Ingram is a more capable spot-up shooter than he was in the past, it’s still a waste of his talent to use him that way. I worry that sliding him down a position will force him to go against more of those quicker defenders that can slide into his low center of gravity.

I also worry about the other end of the floor. Ingram’s body is not built to fight through screens and he’s too easily wedged out of the play as the primary defender on pick-and-rolls and off-ball action. Returning him to the wing will put him in more of those types of actions.

Yet there is one tantalizing possibility that could solve two problems in one: what if Williamson slides up a position so Ingram can stay as a power forward? What if that’s the Pelicans’ frontcourt, traditional center be damned?

Don’t dismiss this idea offhand. As The Ringer’s Jonathan Tjarks noted, Williamson’s skill set could lend itself beautifully to being a small-ball center. He’d be less likely to muck up the Pelicans’ spacing that way on offense, and he did anchor one of the nation’s best defenses at Duke with his combination of speed and length. Meanwhile, Ingram may actually be better off playing more like a big man on defense instead of as a wing. His length could be one hell of an asset on the backside.

An Ingram-Williamson frontcourt with three small guards may not seem like the ideal way to fix New Orleans’ leaky defense, but it can’t get much worse than what it is now, even if Favors’ return has shored things up a bit.

Making Williamson a center to keep Ingram at his best offensive position might be too bold in the short term, but it’s worth considering in the long run. Williamson is the franchise, yet Ingram’s been too brilliant in his absence to scale back his role too much. Embracing small-ball may be the only way to ensure Williamson’s knee surgery remains a blessing in disguise instead of merely a curse.

CLOSEOUT OF THE WEEK

Three-point shooting is essential, yet there’s no good stat that credits defenders for the essential act of preventing a three-pointer from being taken. We must reward these efforts.

Fred VanVleet’s steal at the end of this sequence is nice, but the closeout before it is even more impressive. It’s not humanely possible to be any closer to a shooter without fouling.

REBOUND JOUST OF THE WEEK

Last year, I wrote about the rising trend of teammates fighting each other for defensive rebounds. These moments usually end harmlessly, but occasionally, they can cost a team. Here’s to over-aggression!

This clip is more than a week old, but screw it. Anytime there’s a THREE-MAN REBOUND JOUST, it must be celebrated.

0 notes

theres-an-impulstor-among-us · 3 years ago

Text

Friday Night Stabby best quotes part 27 (23/07/21)

Pearl has replaced Joker for this session. Grian also played for a while despite it being 3am his time.

…

Tango: Mrs T, are you good? Are you good? Mrs Tango: I was talking to people, I’m sorry. What do I need? Impulse: You need to get ready to stab some people in the face.

...

*Grian has altered his outfit and accessories to match Etho’s, complete with blue colour* Grian: I’m also Etho. Brody: It looks like it. Tango: Oooh! Look at that! Etho: Ohh, you’re looking good, actually. Grian: I’m off-brand Etho. Brody: Hold on. *pause* Etho: Oh no, no. Don’t, Brody. Brody, deadpan: What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about. *Brody has also put on Etho’s outfit, making 3 blue-coloured characters with the green alien and lab coat* Grian: Well that’s just copying.

...

(due to technical issues, the crew had to go back to vanilla Among Us. in the process, Grian managed to nab the cyan colour from Etho and now looks exactly like Etho usually does)

*votes are revealed, everyone skipped except Grian who voted for Etho* Grian: *laughs* Etho: Oh come on! What? We were together the entire time, Grian! Grian, still laughing: I know. Etho: Now that’s just spiteful.

...

*Grian runs up to the top reactor panel* Impulse: I got the bottom [reactor panel]. Etho, running down to join him: Etho powers! Oh. Impulse stole it. Okay. Grian: Did you just call me Etho?

...

Grian: Alls I wanna say is Tango was running at me really hard, like- Tango: I was going to weapons. Grian: He had his head down and he was sprinting, saying nothing. He had vengeance in his heart. Tango: Watch as I modify my speed, yes. Grian: Just saying. He didn’t say anything, not a friendly hello. And I know Tango; he is a fan of friendly hellos. I’m just saying, this is really suspicious. Tango: Not when I’m tryina kill you, I’m not gonna give you a hello.

...

(Grian has changed his skin back now to the lighter red with a balloon accessory, Etho is back to normal)

Brody: Did you say Grian intentionally talked to you? Endless: No, he was ignoring me. Brody: Oh well that checks out.

...

*after Impulse framed Endless for Grian’s murder but got voted out the next round* Endless, dead: I hate you for getting away with that, Impulse. Impulse: *laughs* Endless: I hate you for other reasons too but I hate you for that especially. Impulse: I can’t believe they believed me.

...

Grian: *reports Skizz’s body* Grian: So this is pretty clear-cut. Evil, do you wanna- I’ll let you defend yourself before I tell everyone what happened. Evil: I would like to hear what story you’ve got to come up with, Grian. Grian: Alright, well, it’s as simple as I went into electrical and you were walking right out past the body. Pearl: But this happened, like, literally 1-2 seconds ago cuz I just walked away from Skizz. Grian: Yeah, I caught him killing [Skizz]. Impulse: Was he cleaning his knife off, by chance? Grian: He had it in his beak, shaking it side to side. Impulse, laughing: That’ll do it! *pause* Tango: Evil? Defence? Evil: I was… *pause* Grian: …killing someone? *long pause* Evil: You told the story perfectly.

...

Brody: Impulse is laughing. I don’t trust it. Impulse: You shouldn’t :)

...

Grian, whispering: Guys. It was Etho. Brody: Grian thinks it’s you. Grian, whispering: Grian KNOWS it’s you. Brody: KNOWS it’s you. *pause* Etho: That’s fine, you can vote me. See what happens. Impulse: If we vote Etho off, it’s gonna be really fun trying to figure out who it is after, cuz I got sus on nobody other than Etho. Brody: Okay. You said fun and I like fun. *votes* There you go. Impulse: Mmhmm! Let’s go for fun! *pause as everyone starts to vote* Grian: It might be Impulse, guys. Impulse: Yay for fun! Let’s go, Mrs Tango! Yay for fun! Mrs Tango: I did fun. *Etho is unanimously voted out* Brody: Etho! Why did you vote for yourself? Mrs Tango: Peer pressure.

...

Evil: I thought I was safe! I kill and I go to run out and here comes Grian and I’m like “son of a gun…” Astro: He must have a camera in that balloon or something. He can see everything. Impulse: Detective Grian! Check out his second channel.

...

Etho: So what makes you think I came from the left, Grian? Grian: I- Stop gaslighting me! It’s 4am, I might actually be wrong!

...

Endless: Brody’s got too many hats on. Brody: No, this is just the right amount of hats. Endless: It’s too many hats, sir. Brody: Don’t tell me how to live my life. You’re not my real dad.

...

Endless: Miss you, Astro. Evil: Did you miss him with your knife? Endless: I was standing right next to you in electrical!

...

Etho: I’ve got my eye on Balloon Boy a bit. Grian: You’ve always got your eye on Balloon Boy.

...

*everyone skipped except Endless, who voted for Grian* Grian: Endless! Why? Brody, to Etho: You convinced Endless. Impulse: Don’t worry about Endless, sometimes he just… you know.

...

Endless: I’m voting for Grian. Grian: What?! Wait wait wait wait wait, why are you voting for me? *long pause* Endless: You don’t know. Alright, let’s go. Grian: There’s literally nothing! Impulse: Welcome to Endless, Grian. This is Endless; don’t worry about it.

...

(Grian leaves the group)

*body is reported* Tango: Etho, where’d you just come from? *pause* Etho: I dunno. Tango: Mkay.

...

Endless: Pearl mocked me for saying ‘gas’ instead of ‘petrol’ so I’m voting for her.

...

Evil: Etho, are you feeling okay, buddy? Etho: I’m fine. It’s the rest of you that are crazy.

...

Astro: Okay so let’s vote for Mrs Tango because she blatantly came right in, killed Endless, and then jumped in the vent. Etho: Mrs Tango, you got a defence? Mrs Tango: Can you blame me? Etho: Good defence.

...

Brody: Hey, guess what? Endless wasn’t an imposter. Tango: Oh. We should vote him out anyways.

...

Skizz: That was VERY well done, Impulse. Impulse: Not well done enough, apparently. Skizz: No, it wasn’t good enough. But only because you’re not good enough. Impulse: HEY!

...

Astro, chasing Endless round the lobby: I’m sorry, Endless. Sorry, Endless. Endless: No, there’s no sorry! Killed first? We couldn’t just- We couldn’t just go aside and talk about it for a few minutes and then just let me not report you? I would’ve let you have that but you killed me first, dude! Astro: *laughs*

...

Brody: Tango seems like the kind of person who would kill Endless first. Tango: *laughs loudly* Ah, man. I hate you.

...

*Endless is the only person to have not gotten imposter the whole night* Endless: I love each and every one of you but this game is the stupidest game I’ve ever played in my life.

#friday night stabby quotes #friday night stabby #impulsesv #tangotek #skizzleman #etho #pearlescentmoon #grian #theendless #evilnotion #brodyman #astrozoan #mrstango

44 notes · View notes

nothingman · 8 years ago

Link

I’m currently reading Thomas Frank’s One Market Under God, a remarkably prescient book published in 2000 which has a lot of insight into contemporary cultures of technological evangelism. The book is concerned with what Frank sees as a transition in American life from a form of populism predicated on cultural reaction to one grounded in the worship of the market. It’s possible I’m primed to see this analysis as prescient because I’m working my way backwards through his books and One Market Under God contains the seeds of an analysis that he developed over the next sixteen years.

Nonetheless, I think we can learn much about our present circumstances by looking back to this transitional point in the roaring 90s which saw the origin of the rightward turn of social democratic parties, mass digitalisation and the first Silicon Valley gold-rush. What I’m increasingly preoccupied by is how these events were intimately connected. In other words: how do we place the ascendancy of the technology sector in social and economic history? To my surprise, Thomas Frank’s book actually addresses this question more straight-forwardly than any other I can think of apart from Platform Capitalism, though of course many accounts address these issues without systematically investigating them.

Despite the 1990s being hailed as an era of democratisation driven by a booming economy, Frank insists that we recognise that “The booming stock market of the nineties did not democratize wealth; it concentrated wealth” (loc 1973). But this chimera of continually ascending stock prices, grounded in the rampant speculation of the dot com boom, helped license an ideological transition that Frank describes on loc 2027:

both parties came around to this curious notion, imagining that we had somehow wandered into a sort of free-market magic kingdom, where ever-ascending stock prices could be relied upon to solve just about any social problem. Now we could have it all: We could slash away at the welfare state, hobble the unions, downsize the workforce, send the factories to Mexico—and no one would get hurt!

The ideological work involved in maintaining we had entered a new era of perpetual growth, beyond boom and bust, relied upon the mystique of the internet. It heralded the dawn of a new world, the end of old certainties and a constant horizon of possibility to be invoked in the face of those exhibiting an anachronistic scepticism. From loc 1659:

And yet, since the moment the Internet was noticed by the mainstream media in 1995, it has filled a single and exclusive position in political economy: a sort of cosmic affirmation of the principles of market populism. “Think of the Internet as an economic-freedom metaphor for our time,” wrote bull-market economist Lawrence Kudlow in August 1999.45 “The Internet empowers ordinary people and disempowers government.” And we were only too glad to do as Kudlow instructed us, to think of it in precisely this way. In fact, so closely did the Internet and market populism become linked in the public mind that whenever a pundit or journalist mentioned the Web, one braced oneself for some windy pontification about flexibility, or the infinite mobility of capital, or the total and unappealable obsolescence of labor, government, and any other enemy of the free-market enterprise.

Somewhat more prosaically, the companies of Silicon Valley became emblems of a new anti-elitism, with the old formalities of corporate life being replaced by a hierarchical ethos that lionised the entrepreneur for their authentic living, often expressed in ‘working hard and living hard’. The practice of paying stock options in lieu of wages became a cypher for shareholder democracy, an idea which was seized upon as legitimating what were in reality vicious attacks upon the security of labour. However as Frank points out on loc 2063, the reality of this in Silicon Valley was presented misleadingly as a sign of a brave new workplace culture rather than a familiar self-interest:

It may have been fun to imagine what these enchanted options could do in the service of economic democracy, but in point of fact their powers were almost always directed the other way. Options did not bring about some sort of “New Economy” egalitarianism; they were one of the greatest causes of the ever widening income gap. It was options that inflated the take-home pay of CEOs to a staggering 475 times what their average line-worker made; it was options that made downsizing, outsourcing, and union-busting so profitable. When options were given out to employees—a common enough practice in Silicon Valley by decade’s end—they often came in lieu of wages, thus permitting firms to conceal their payroll expenses and artificially inflate the price of their shares, pumping the bubble still further.17 Options were a tool of wealth concentration, a bridge straight to the nineteenth century.

What seems hugely important to me here is the recognition that the vast concentration of wealth that took place in the 1990s was deeply tied up, structurally and culturally, with the first wave of mass digitalisation brought about by the dot com bubble. The nature of that entanglement still isn’t as clear to me as I would like, but I’m increasingly confident in my claim that the analysis of digitalisation needs to be an integral part of the analysis of capitalism from the 1970s onwards.

As important as economic history is though, it’s crucial that we also understand the cultural dimensions to this process. What I really like about Thomas Frank is his commitment to taking business bullshit seriously. From loc 1787:

It is worth examining the way business talk about itself, the fantasies it spins, the role it writes for itself in our lives. It is important to pay attention when CEOs tell the world they would rather surf than pray, show up at work in Speedos rather than suits, hang out in Goa rather than Newport, listen to Stone Temple Pilots rather than Sibelius. It is not important, however, in the way they imagine it is, and for many Americans it is understandably difficult to care very much whether the guy who owns their company is a defender of family values or a rave kid. But culture isn’t set off from life in a realm all its own, and the culture of business in particular has massive consequences for the way the rest of us live.

Our contemporary discourse of ‘disruption’ and ‘innovation’ was nurtured in the business commentary of the late 1990s. By examining its origins, we can see the political context of this way of thinking and speaking about technology much more transparently than is the case if we examine contemporary instances of it. To close with a quote from Peter Schwartz, quoted on loc 1321:

Open, good. Closed, bad. Tattoo it on your forehead. Apply it to technology standards, to business strategies, to philosophies of life. It’s the winning concept for individuals, for nations, for the global community in the years ahead.

via The Sociological Imagination

#IFTTT #Feedly #Nothingman uses feedly

1 note · View note

love-fashionone · 5 years ago

Text

walmart andamazon say tesla solar panels caused

walmart andamazon say tesla solar panels caused fires at their properties I'm not an audiophile but know decent sound when I hear it. At the forum described the threat in similar terms.. For Oklahoma it depends in part on whether the Sooners win their first big non conference game Week 1 against Houston. Spokane Fire Department personnel were able to use an air bag system to lift the SUV from the male and female riders. But writing gets easy after 20 or 25 years of doing it daily. "He has had a very successful career in a tough and competitive business. But those plans were essentially quashed in May when Congress decided not to allocate any money to Attorney General Jeff Sessions' initiative to go after the marijuana states. Dorian remains a Category 2 storm and a Hurricane Watch is in effect for the Northwestern Bahamas. The Winnipeg Police Service Endowment Fund is among those that has provided grants to the group, which today has charitable status and relies on public and private funding.. It has steady enrollment and is near the desired 85% capacity. There no two ways about it. To be effective that means at least an outright ban on bottom trawling and dredging the most destructive ways of fishing and for many sites a complete ban on fishing.. IceRays games are carried live on Sportsradio Corpus Christi (1230 AM/95.1 FM/96.1 FM), HockeyTV and Mixlr. Earlier, Tom Hyslop, a 63 year old resident, checked on a tall drying rack he had constructed from spruce and chicken wire. Moore was subsequently awarded a yellow card. A: Yes. 6. Besides, it is argued that two demographic characteristics (including education and employment status) will affect the level of privacy concern in these three dimensions. However, pursuant to the terms of its subcontract with NEAC, Callahan was also named as an additional insured under NEAC general liability policy that was issued by the defendant Worcester Insurance Company (Worcester). The city of Paris, its streets and landmarks,have held a special role as the artistic centre of the industry since its earliest days, so to restore what has been lost is to preserve its own history.. The above chapter asserts that the researcher uses inductive approach for the present study. We aimed to investigate long term outcomes in psychotic major depression patients compared to schizophrenia and bipolar/manic psychosis patients, in an incidence sample, while accounting for diagnostic change. As its biggest market, generating more than $43 billion in sales in 2017.. The Saints face a Buccaneers defense that has allowed the highest Total QBR in the league this season (66.9) and ranks fourth worst in defensive efficiency.. Was really just about being in the right place at the right time, said Shell. The argumentation is that local market knowledge is inevitable for stable, effective and over all sustainable business success and performance in a country with such culture differences as exist between Asia and Europe or America. Until now, lungs from such patients may have been considered too risky to use. He trained at one of them in Tokyo, opened a branch in Sri Lanka and Chicago before teaming up with Brooke to open Hachiro.It's a sleek, modern space with a communal high top running down the centre. Phillipe 6, D. coach outlet clearance The National Hurricane Center is now forecasting a Category 4 Hurricane hitting the east coast of Florida. Judge Donnabhin suspended the final 12 months on condition he cooperates with the probation services upon his release and attended a drug treatment facility. More coverage Alleged wife killer denies poison pen letter affairs claims 'Hitman' denies telling pack of lies at murder trial 'Hitman's' vital phone evidence 'lost' before murder trial 'Hitman' tells court of 20,000 plot to murder wife Brother of first wife denies involvement in death Son found stepmother's body after school, murder trial hears Neighbour found murder accused cradling wife's lifeless body Wolverhampton murder victim told friend of 'loving' family Wife murder trial hears mystery accomplice could be woman Wolverhampton wife murder trial shown images of ransacked house Husband 'murdered second wife and offered employee 20k to kill first' Asked by Mr David Mason, QC, prosecuting, whether he wanted justice for himself or his wife, Singh said: "For myself and my wife. The first available date, leaving on April 26, is on Delta. Having played just three games, all wins, Tom Terrific is heads above all others to capture the award for the third time in his career.. Great coach outlet online for game day, date night or any time you want to travel light, this classic design goes with anything from jeans and a tee to event ready evening wear. "I hadn't played seniors all year and when Feds got hurt in the last home and away game, I got the call up. The full moon glittered silver on the water as we gazed out to sea from the Santiago shore. Productions rakes in over $9 million a year orchestrating events. Riley, W. We throw them down on the ground. The research offers a definition of culture as the ethos, values, beliefs and relationships that underpin the operations of the school aided by the history and traditions that precede it. That what makes this team different.". Even though in 2013 Veolia disclosed accounting fraud in the US amounting to $120 million during Messier's time there, a Paris court of appeals reduced Messier's sentence to a suspended ten month sentence and a 50,000 ($70,000) fine.. This is play that's taught more often than it's performed mostly because of the logistical difficulties it poses. Like no one will argue that he's a friendly guy to adversaries, what positive trait can we all agree on? Here's one, he did, like the other thousands, train hard, and innovated every way he could in order to win.

0 notes

365footballorg-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Armchair Analyst: Frontrunners, the Pack & all 23 MLS teams by tier

February 28, 20181:17PM EST

With a tip of the cap to the great Zach Lowe, here’s my own version of his “Annual Tiers of the NBA” column, MLS-style. What follows are not hard-and-fast Power Rankings, per se, but rather something a little more loose in terms of talent level, cohesion, chemistry and all the et ceteras that make teams tick (or make them awful).

These teams are mostly in the order I think they’ll finish, but what really matters is the tier designation.

TIER I: COME AT THE KING

Toronto FC

Last year I picked TFC first, talked about how Sebastian Giovinco and Jozy Altidore were the league’s best forward pair, and how Victor Vazquez would provide the third heat in attack to make them damn near unbeatable. I worried a bit about the defense if Drew Moor got hurt, but they survived – even thrived – when he missed a chunk of time early in the season. They managed when Altidore and Michael Bradley were on international duty, and they managed with Giovinco never really playing at more than 75 percent of what he’d been in 2015 and most of 2016.

Everything went right. Alex Bono established himself as a top MLS ‘keeper, and Chris Mavinga was arguably the league’s best center back for the second half of the season. They found depth at both fullback positions, and bring almost all of it back (including what appears to be an on-paper upgrade at right fullback/wingback).

They’re also going to be a touch more flexible with their formation this year. I think it’s safe to say they won the Canadian Championship and Supporters’ Shield playing a 3-5-2, but then clowned Seattle in MLS Cup playing a 4-4-2 diamond. Greg Vanney has proved to be one of the very best coaches in the league at making tactical adjustments based upon both his own personnel and on-field match-ups.

My only worry is if Justin Morrow – who’s 30, and is closing in on 20,000 minutes – gets hurt/goes missing. Last year they had Raheem Edwards, who put up 1g/8a in 1300 minutes across all competitions, which is an insane level of productivity for a left back/wingback (and he did it in big moments, too). But “oh man we no longer have a game-changing reserve left back” is such a first world problem, even in the TAM era, that it’s not worth getting hung up on.

TFC are the favorites by a mile.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: This might get a little squirrelly given their midweek CCL duties. Also, don’t be shocked if they break out the 3-5-2 just to mess with Columbus.

TIER II: TOP CONTENDERS

Seattle Sounders

Was Nicolas Lodeiro the same player in 2017 that he’d been in 2016? Was Osvaldo Alonso? Was Jordan Morris?

The answer across the board was “no,” but Seattle were pretty clearly the best team in the Western Conference anyway. I know they didn’t prove it in the regular season, but come on – there wasn’t much doubt. And then they absolutely waltzed through the playoffs before getting clowned by the Reds.

The fact that they survived those individual drop-offs but still did what they did is indicative of the level of depth this team was able to cobble together. With Ozzie out, Gustav Svensson stepped up. With Morris hurt (and he’ll be hurt again, unfortunately), Will Bruin found the range. Clint Dempsey came back healthy and had a good-if-not-great season, Cristian Roldan continued his evolution into a very complete No. 8, and the fullbacks were constantly productive.

First and foremost, though, this team was about the center back pairing of Chad Marshall and Roman Torres, and I expect that to be the case again. Here’s the problem, though: By mid-season, those guys will be a combined 66 years old, and there still isn’t a high-upside replacement behind either of them. If one or the other goes missing, the Sounders struggle – which they’ve showed in CCL action already. Garth Lagerwey needs to address that in the next few weeks.

EDIT: He addressed that literally as I was writing this column. The Sounders officially signed South Korean international CB Kim Kee-Hee on Tuesday evening. He will, I’m guessing, eventually be a starter.

This team will play mostly a 4-2-3-1 again (though we might see some diamond), and will be mostly very good again. I don’t think they’re too old to challenge at the very top of the league, but it feels very much like the last dance for a group of guys that’s won every domestic title available to the over the previous three seasons.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: As with TFC, this might go a little sideways given the midweek CCL game. Also, bear in mind that I’ve got Magnus Wolff Eikrem out of position here, but this remains my best guess.

New York City FC

At this point you know they’ll build from the back at all costs, you know they’ll play that 4-3-3 almost every time out, and you know that they’re going to press higher and harder than they did when Patrick Vieira first took over in 2016. NYCFC have transformed from an old and slow group to one of the youngest and most athletic teams in the league, but obviously one that prioritizes skill over everything else.

They’ve also gone out and prioritized depth this offseason, which makes sense given how their goalscoring dried up down the stretch as the likes of Jack Harrison and Rodney Wallace faded (I still think Vieira made a mistake by not getting more minutes for Jonathan Lewis). They’re two deep at every spot on the field, and if TFC slip in the regular season – which often happens to defending champs, especially ones determined to make lengthy CCL runs – NYCFC are my pick to pip them in the Shield race.

The one big concern? There is simply no replacing David Vila from what I’ve seen or can imagine. When Giovinco goes down the Reds either slot in Tosaint Ricketts to be a field-stretching striker or bottle up into a 5-4-1, and they’ve won their share of games both ways. When Villa goes down, the Cityzens… lose. They just lose.

Maybe Norwegian international Jo Inge Berget, signed this offseason, can change that. But A) he’s already hurt, and B) isn’t that much of a goalscorer. Villa has to fight off Father Time for one more season.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Expect Rodney Wallace and new Young DP Jesus Medina to swap sides quite a bit.

Atlanta United

In 2017 Atlanta United had the third-best expansion season in league history, behind only the 1998 Chicago Fire and 2009 Seattle Sounders (both of whom won trophies, which is an open-and-shut argument for their superiority). They did so with relentless pressure from front-to-back, dynamic wing play, a much-better-than-I-expected-it-to-be defense, and superhuman finishing from Josef Martinez.

Pretty much all of that is back and has arguably been upgraded. I’ll admit some doubt about Ezequiel Barco being better than Yamil Asad was (ED NOTE: Barco will be out 4-6 weeks after suffering in training Wednesday), but am buying plenty of Franco Escobar stock at right back. I also expect big steps forward from second-year youngsters Andrew Carleton, who was sublime in preseason and at the U-17 World Cup, and Miles Robinson, who could end up giving the backline the dose of athleticism it lacked at times in Year 1.

There is depth and creativity and chemistry and knowhow and, look, I’ve gotta say it: There’s a big old hole in central midfield where Carlos Carmona was. The Chilean vet is gone and in his stead is Darlington Nagbe, who is a much different player. Nagbe will at times make the attack prettier, and along with Barco will be an off-the-dribble weapon the team lacked last season. He brings stuff to the table.

I worry about what he takes off the table, though. Carmona was masterful at making it miserable to receive a pass in midfield, and his distribution was both clean and early. Nagbe is not that kind of defensive presence, and while his distribution is the cleanest in the league it is almost never early. He plays at a different pace, and it showed in preseason. Add in 34-year-old Jeff Larentowicz inching close toward the light, and I’m officially a little bit worried about central midfield for the Five Stripes. They’ll still be good if those guys struggle, but that could/will be the difference between “good” and “great.”

Also, don’t expect Martinez to finish at superhuman rates again. He’s still a good bet for the Golden Boot, but if he slows down to even that lofty level we’ll see Atlanta playing from even or behind more often, and that could give this year a whole different kind of feel.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: I’m not sure that this backline is what I think it is. Tata Martino has been using Larentowicz in Parkhurst’s place, which is… weird.

TIER III: PLAYOFF RACE (AND MAYBE MORE)

I’ve spilled so much ink on this team over the last eight months, so I’ll just say it one more time: What happened last year – the mid-season collapse – was unprecedented in MLS history. Never has such a good team become such a bad team so fast.

Instead of blowing it all up they decided to move out a couple of players, move in a few others, and move up a few more beyond that. Reggie Cannon’s the starter at right back now, and Paxton Pomykal should get meaningful minutes at a couple of midfield spots. Jacori Hayes will as well, and rookie Homegrown Jordan Cano could end up getting some real run. FCD are re-embracing their #PlayYourKids ethos.

At the same time, they went out and spent this winter like they never have before, both on the backline (Reto Ziegler and Anton Nedyalkov) and in attack (DP forward/winger Santiago Mosquera). Add in a healthy-and-balling Mauro Diaz, and a hopefully locked-in Maxi Urruti, and there is, hopefully, enough to pull this talented group back up toward the top of the standings.

But let’s face it: Last year’s collapse wasn’t about talent. It was about chemistry. Something broke inside the Dallas clubhouse, and beyond anything else, fixing that has to be Oscar Pareja’s concern.

My guess is he manages it.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: This is not their first XI, and there’s a chance I’m being too optimistic about Pomykal and Cano in particular. But I just can’t see Pareja going with the starters on short rest in Week 1. Let Diaz ease into the season, keep him healthy, and give the kids a big of run.

Portland Timbers

For the first time in five years the Timbers enter an MLS season with a new head coach, and given Gio Savarese’s credentials it’s probably justifiable for Portlanders to be hyped. The man hasn’t done it in the top flight yet, but he’s won and managed big egos and handled locker room strife and speaks three languages and has played in the CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying meat grinder and and and and…

Savarese’s got impeccable credentials. I think he was a great hire, and the fact that he’s inheriting a team that won the (regular season) Western Conference – then added a bunch of quality-on-paper pieces to that group – suggests Portland should compete at the top of the conference again even if Diego Valeri becomes something less than the MVP. Samuel Armenteros has been especially prolific in preseason, and there’s also young depth (which Savarese will actually be willing to develop and use, if his track record is any indication) pretty much everywhere.

That all makes me high on the Timbers. But not so high that I can overlook two things.

The preferred CB combo is old, slow and injury prone.

What’s the right formation for these guys?

Liam Ridgewell and Larrys Mabiala played well together last season, but how many “together” minutes will they manage in 2018? And while I’ll happily hit “buy” at every other position’s depth chart, I’m giving center back the old side eye until I see what Julio Cascante can really do. And by the by, there’s no longer “Prime Diego Chara” in front of this group to chew up the field protecting them (his age, foot injury and lack of playing time in the preseason worries me).

So they’ve looked vulnerable, for the most part, throughout February. The times they haven’t looked vulnerable have been when swapping out of the tried-and-true 4-2-3-1 that Portland have played for 95 percent of the time since 2013 and into either a 4-4-2 diamond or a 4-1-4-1.

I’m not sure results matter that much in the preseason, but the eye test matters. Especially when you have new players, a new coach and the same old high expectations.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Kiiiinda just making this up to be honest. Only thing I know for sure is there’ll be four at the back.

Columbus Crew SC

Speaking of preseason results maybe not mattering… Columbus are going to desperately hope they in fact do matter, because they looked like a juggernaut over the past six weeks. Federico Higuain was at his “float around the field and control the entire shape of the game” best, the wingers were livewire and occasionally productive, 19-year-old left back Milton Valenzuela is the best young DP in this league that you’ve never heard of, Wil Trapp + Artur = HELL YES, and Gyasi Zardes is out there slotting home tap-ins like it’s 2014.

It is entirely possible that I’m overreacting to their late-season form and playoff run, as well as what they did in preseason. The defense still has the look of a group entirely capable of catastrophe, there’s probably not as much depth at fullback anymore, Higuain’s entering his mid-30s, and Justin Meram is gone. Beyond that it’s just hard to talk yourself into Zardes being as consistently productive as Ola Kamara (also gone) was.

Except… maybe? Kamara’s success was a product of his instincts and skill, but also of the system. Columbus are a big chance-generating juggernaut and have been for four years under Gregg Berhalter, and Zardes has shown an ability in the past to convert those into goals. So much of Crew SC’s potential relies upon him rediscovering that, but I’m a big “system first” guy and thus I’m gonna choose to believe in this Columbus group.

They’re not favorites. They don’t have a good enough defense or enough proven attackers to be that. But they’ve shown repeatedly that they know how to win, and they’ll obviously be playing with some extra motivation in 2018.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: The wings will swap a ton.

Sporting KC

Speaking of “system first,” let’s go back to the banks of the Missouri River. If Columbus are the pre-eminent example of an attacking system in MLS, then SKC are the pre-eminent example of a defensive system in MLS. No matter who they trot out there, no matter how many years in a row, they lead the league in fewest expected goals allowed, fewest chances generated from Zone 14, most turnovers forced in their own attacking third and most misery inflicted upon their opponents.

Sporting play hard and fast and will continue to do so for as long as Peter Vermes draws breath.

The problem is twofold. First is that playing hard and fast every single game out has taken the mickey out of this group come August in each of the last four seasons. Vermes has to either A) become more comfortable rotating the squad to keep his most important pieces fresh, or B) figure out a different way to play from time-to-time (not gonna bet on that happening).

Second is that nobody scores, man. In 2017 they underperformed their expected goals for the fourth straight season, and for the second straight year they did so massively. And instead of bringing in a high-profile center forward, Vermes & Co. decided to roll the dice on Diego Rubio again.

Rubio’s a nice player and the underlying numbers like him, but that’s the point: The underlying numbers have loved SKC the last four years, but they keep coming up short. Add in a high-risk swap of playmakers from Benny Feilhaber to the underwhelming-in-preseason Yohan Croizet, and you’ve got potential for major problems.

The defense should still be good enough, but even that is a risk – will Ike Opara play another full, healthy season? Will age and miles catch up to Matt Besler and Graham Zusi? Cristian Lobato at left back? Really? Gonna do that with a team who had five one-goal wins and 13 draws while getting a blinder of a season from Tim Melia last year?

If not for The System™, I’d have this team two tiers lower than I do. But I’ve got to trust it because it’s worked so well for so long.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Pretty pretty sure that’s gonna be it.

Orlando City SC

Every year there’s at least one team that crawls up from below the playoff line into something approaching “contender” status. Sometimes you see it coming, as with Toronto in 2016. Other times it’s pretty well concocted out of the blue, as with Houston last year.

If it happens for Orlando City, it’ll be more toward the “TFC, 2016” side of the ledger. The Purple Lions have spent up and down the roster, using TAM and GAM, DP slots and the SuperDraft, Homegrowns and NASL and USL and a commitment to kicking over every rock and digging up any/every piece of talent possible, and then (hopefully) making them fit. Even if it doesn’t work out for them I love what they did this offseason because they committed in equal measure to getting guys in their prime, and getting youngsters on the come-up.

So they are now both more experienced and younger than ever before. The kids will have to fight to get on the field, and the veterans will have to fight to keep their spots. It’s pretty much exactly how I would build a team if somebody offered me a GM job.

Could all the bad things happen and Orlando City miss the playoffs? Yes, of course. There’s no guarantee there will be any chemistry with this many new arrivals, there’s no guarantee the kids will be good (though I’m betting heavy on all four of Chris Mueller, Josue Colman, Cam Lindley and Pierre da Silva), injuries have traditionally ravaged this club, I’m slightly worried about their finishing, and they need another CB.

But this was a magnificent job by the Orlando City front office. Jason Kreis, the ball’s now in your court.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: The Lions haven’t been publishing their lineups this preseason, so some of these are guesses. Bear in mind that Sacha Kljestan’s suspended, Dom Dwyer’s hurt and Uri Rosell just stepped off a plane. Once those guys are back they’re the presumptive starters – though given this team’s depth, they’ll have to earn it.

TIER IV: DARK HORSES

New York Red Bulls

I’m maybe being a little bit naive here in that I’m not super concerned about the RBNY defense. Yes, Aurelien Collin is closer to the end than the beginning, but 1) I don’t think he’ll be asked to play every single minute, and 2) I believe in Jesse Marsch’s ability to coach young players up. We’ve seen him do it with young midfielders a bunch, and with young defenders to the on-field and financial benefit of the whole franchise. Can Tommy Redding be the next Aaron Long or even Matt Miazga? Could Fidel Escobar or Michael Amir Murillo or Hassan Ndam? At least one of them will push through, and RBNY will be fine on the backline, fine in goal, and fine (or better, depending upon how Tyler Adams develops) at d-mid.

The question, really, is in attack. RBNY shipped out Sacha Kljestan and for as long as Marsch has been the boss in Harrison his team has been helpless when Kljestan’s been off the field. I get it, though – they replaced Kljestan with Alejandro Romero “Kaku” Gamarra, a 22-year-old, high-priced import from the Argentine Primera. Kaku was legitimately one of the most productive chance creators in that league, and unlike Kljestan he is a goal threat himself. The Red Bulls got younger and, they’re guessing, better. They’ll also likely be more comfortable toggling between the 3-3-3-1 they used to such good effect last year, to the 4-2-3-1 they used in 2015 and 2016, to the 4-2-2-2 they’ve toyed with at times in the past.

If all of the above is the case, if they’re indeed both better and more flexible, they will be one of the best teams in the league. That is a massive “if,” however.

OPENING LINEUP

NOTE: Another bald-faced guess. But I figure they’ve started out the last couple of years in the 4-2-2-2, so why not make it three in a row?

Real Salt Lake

Is it still appropriate to call this team a dark horse? RSL were pretty obviously one of the two best teams in the Western Conference over the last four months, with only a historically bad start to the season keeping them out of the playoffs. They then followed that up with a productive offseason, adding pieces at spots (right back, central midfield and especially center forward) that were occasionally problematic last season, and the trajectory of their kids over the past 18 months suggests that the best is yet to come.

Bear in mind: This can go wrong. We’ve already seen Danny Acosta lose out on the starting LB job to 34-year-old veteran Demar Phillips, which isn’t a great sign, and we saw what happened to the defense last year when Justen Glad wasn’t around. Can he play 2800 minutes or so? He probably needs to.

Phillips, by the way, would only be the third-oldest starter, behind Kyle Beckerman and Nick Rimando. They’re not going to stay young forever. And while a lot of smart folks like new striker Alfredo Ortuño, he’s never really put it together for a full season, has he?

So yeah, it can go wrong. I don’t think it will, though. The RSL team we saw in the second half of 2017 is the one I expect we’ll see in 2018, and if that’s the case they’ll make their way to the top of the West.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: This one looks pretty well locked in at this point. Your move, Danny Acosta.

TIER V: PROVE IT AGAIN

Vancouver Whitecaps

I didn’t have the ‘Caps up near the playoffs ahead of last year. I’m not going to make that same mistake twice, but at the same time I’m not expecting them to spend most of the season in the top three of the West once again. There’s just too much turnover year-to-year, not enough top-end talent and probably not enough diversity in attack. Vancouver were pure bunker-and-counter in 2017 and while that took them to the Western Conference Semifinals, it also led to them putting in one of the most feeble attacking performances over two legs in league history.

Have they gotten better in the offseason? Well, Kei Kamara’s probably not an upgrade over Fredy Montero in terms of raw talent, but he’s a better fit at center forward as long as age doesn’t catch up to him. The other big addition was veteran Mexican international Efrain Juarez, who’s probably spent 85 percent of his career at a defender but will be slotted into central midfield instead (Carl Robinson loves switching up his central midfielders all the time, and I’ll admit I don’t get it).

My big worry? Tim Parker seems to want out and given how many moves Vancouver’s made for young-ish center backs this offseason, it looks like he’ll get it. Parker and Kendall Waston were one of the most solid CB combos in the league over the past two years.

My big hope? Alphonso Davies just starts roasting fools. The 17-year-old was magnificent at last year’s Gold Cup and magnificent in this year’s preseason. If he’s not a Day 1 starter I will riot.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: There was talk about a 3-5-2 in preseason, but it looks like back to the 4-2-3-1 that might be more of a 4-4-1-1. Not sure Aly Ghazal will be available from the start.

San Jose Earthquakes

If not for their California neighbors the Quakes would easily win the “Largest Gap Between Your Ceiling and Your Floor” award, which is pretty much exactly what you’d expect of a team that A) made the playoffs, with B) the 19th-best goal differential (-21) in MLS last year. When they were good they were really pretty good – pinging the ball around, combining nicely through midfield, generating quality chances – and when they were bad they got pounded all to hell and lost 5-0. It was uncanny.

I don’t think this team will have such wild swings in 2018. New head coach Mikael Stahre has a reputation as a solid defensive coach, and he has actual defenders he can use this year (while pushing Florian Jungwirth up to his natural d-mid slot). How those defenders will do is something of a mystery as there will be three new starters on the backline, but it looks like it should work.

The attack should work as well even as Chris Wondolowski heads into his final chapter. Stahre has a couple of goalscoring wingers to call on, Danny Hoesen is an under-the-radar pick for a big year at center forward, and this will finally be Tommy Thompson’s break-out year, I swear it!

I really do think the Quakes will be solid or better. I’m just not super eager to bet my life on it.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: I’ll be surprised if I don’t get this one spot on.

ED. NOTE (BAER): Doyle’s wrong, Shea Salinas is going to start at left back.

Houston Dynamo

If tell me you thought, in 2017, that a backline prominently featuring Leonardo and 400-year-old DaMarcus Beasley would produce a playoff-caliber defense, I’m calling you a liar. Houston snuck on pretty much everybody last year pretty much all over the field. Yes, their attackers got most of the glory – they were fun and fast and attackers always get the glory – and yes, that midfield was way better than you think when they had everybody healthy.

But look at how that defense performed, both by the numbers and the eye test. The Dynamo were very good at the back, never gave up cheap goals, and played deep into November because of it. “First do no harm” was the mantra they lived by and it worked.

Teams across the league have tape of that now, and that worries me at least a little bit. Remember how Colorado overperformed in 2016 then came crashing down to reality in 2017? I don’t it’s going to happen quite so dramatically for the Dynamo, but I’m not emotionally capable of ruling it out.

Houston are, relatively speaking, both old and shallow, and adding “scouted” on top of that has me skeptical of their ability to recapture 2017’s magic in 2018. If they manage it, it’ll be because they’ll have added a new wrinkle – maybe they press high, or Tomas Martinez proves to be an elite chance creator from possession, or maybe something totally from out of left field.

I just don’t know what to expect here.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Martinez is suspended for the opener.

Chicago Fire

Chicago finally climbed their way into the playoffs – and all the way up to third place in the Supporters’ Shield standings – after years of dormancy. It was a very nice and long-awaited bounce-back for a franchise that’s mostly had a miserable decade.

They’ve followed that up with a strangely quiet offseason. The biggest news was the egress of David Accam, who was traded to Philly for a sack of GAM and TAM. It makes sense, then, that the biggest acquisition of the offseason was a winger, Serb Aleksandar Katai. He’s not Accam’s direct replacement (Accam is an inverted left winger, while Katai is an inverted right winger), but he’ll theoretically serve the same purpose once the ball is kicked: lots of goals and a little bit of playmaking.

As it stands now, though, it looks like the Fire are betting large on a cadre of youngsters. Homegrown rookie Grant Lillard maybe has the inside track on the starting job at left center back, and draft pick Jon Bakero, the 2017 Hermann Award winner, is maybe probably perhaps gonna be the playmaker this team’s fans have wanted for nearly a decade? Both guys are excellent. I love Bakero and if you like pretty soccer, you should too. But it’s a weird gamble for a team whose most important players (Bastian Schweinsteiger, Nemanja Nikolic and Dax McCarty) are all over 30.

If Lillard and Bakero and Daniel Johnson are as good as I think they can be, Chicago will have improved. If they’re not – and bear in mind I’ve been wrong maybe twice before in my entire life, so it’s possible here – they’re in trouble.

OPENING LINEUP

NOTE: Maybe Christian Dean instead of Lillard since Lillard’s nursing a slight knock? Also, the Fire don’t play their first game until Week 2, so things can change a little bit.

TIER VI: OPEN QUESTIONS

D.C. United

The big question heading into 2017 for D.C. was “Was that real?” with “that” being the 3-month buzzsaw of an attack they generated at the tail end of the 2016 season. United scored more than two-and-a-half goals per game, pushed their way up to third place in the standings, and looked for all the world like a young(ish) team on the come up.

Then Patrick Mullins got hurt, Patrick Nyarko got hurt, and Marcelo Sarvas and Lloyd Sam got old. D.C. got shutout 17 times in 34 games. In the final three months (13 games) of 2016, they scored 33 goals. In all of 2017, they scored 31.

Mullins is back, battling with Darren Mattocks for the starting No. 9 job, but the rest of those guys are gone as the United braintrust have looked for younger and hopefully more durable players. Head coach Ben Olsen has a surfeit of attacking midfielders and wingers to pick from, and most of them are proven internationally, proven in MLS, or both. Add in an 18-year-old potential stud of a d-mid in Chris Durkin, and there’s reason to think this team can become something close to what they were 18 months ago.

There is worry at the back, though. Last year’s defense was as bad as the attack, and their one saving grace – Bill Hamid – is gone. David Ousted is an above-average MLS ‘keeper, but he’s no Hamid. The guys in front of him (most notably Steve Birnbaum) need to be better than they were last year, and they have to become so while playing 14 of their first 16 on the road.

It feels like this team should be bad. But it felt that way in the middle of 2016 as well, and we know what happened then.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Lucho Acosta is suspended for the opener. When he’s back, expect Ben Olsen to toy around with a 4-1-4-1 if either Canouse or Moreno show they can handle the job of being a lone d-mid.

It feels like this team should be good. But it felt that way – at least a little bit – at the start of 2017, and we know what happened then. LA had the worst year in franchise history, people lost their jobs, the locker room atmosphere was reportedly poisonous and suddenly there was a crisis in Carson.

The offseason has been mostly wonderful, though. Sigi Schmid took care of most of the family business, jettisoning (most of the) bad contracts and bringing in what appear to be quality players at a number of important spots. Ola Kamara gets goals, right? Perry Kitchen protects the backline, ok? David Bingham can recapture the form that had him on the periphery of the USMNT, maybe? All of this makes sense, and even if these guys are poor, that’s still a major step up from what the Galaxy had at those three positions last season.

But woof, I will admit some worry as to this team’s ability to defend based upon what I saw this preseason. Jonathan dos Santos looked like he was running in mud when trying to track Tommy Thompson, and just look at how poor Michael Ciani’s reaction is here. Those two guys have struggled a ton in preseason, and new presumptive starting right back Rolf Feltscher hasn’t inspired confidence, either.

Schmid might have to do some early-season damage control before this team, which is talented as hell, gets pointed in the right direction. And as we saw last year, sometimes damage control isn’t enough.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Why yes, I too would attack the right side of that defense.

Montreal Impact

The Impact finally decided to get younger, which is something the fans have been waiting on for a while. They could end up with as many as seven starters aged 25 or younger, and two of them – box-to-box midfielder Saphir Taïder and attacking midfielder Jeisson Vargas – are supposed to be legitimate stars. There’s also a distinctly Canadian flair to this group, with Raheem Edwards, Samuel Piette, Michael Petrasso and Anthony Jackson-Hamel all expected to play big roles.

So that makes this a season unlike almost any other in Impact history. This team’s been addicted to, let’s call it “experience” since Day 1, and now they’ve turned that page. And that, of course, makes them hard to predict.

There are also the elephant in the room: Ignacio Piatti’s age. The league’s best winger for three years running just turned 33, and while that’s not the very end he’s clearly operating on a different timeline than the bulk of this roster. If this were any other league in almost any other sport, there’d be serious talk about flipping him to a top-tier contender in exchange for a collection of other assets (money, younger players, Homegrown rights, etc.).

Business-wise, MLS hasn’t really grown into that sort of league just yet. But new manager Remi Garde was happy enough to trade Laurent Ciman (and then land a few verbal jabs on him) this offseason, so it’s not out of the question that the same could happen with Piatti. What if, say, the Fire offer up all their Accam cash and a good young player sometime in the next month? Garde doesn’t slam the phone down, right?

It’s something to think about here.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: I don’t think Vargas is going to start in Week 1, but what do I know, really?

ED. NOTE (BAER): Expect to see Raitala at center back and Daniel Lovitz at left back with Zakaria Diallo out.

New England Revolution

Based upon preseason, here’s one thing that appears to have definitely changed for the Revs: They will not be taking plays off. This very gifted group of technical players have had a habit, over the years, or tuning out for big chunks of matches. Sometimes that came in the beginning of games, and sometimes in the middle. Last year, however, it more and more took place at the end, and thus New England were probably the league’s most disappointing second half team in 2017.

I don’t think that will be the case this year. New head coach Brad Friedel has them getting “stuck in,” for lack of a better term, from minutes 1-through-90. It’s bordered on vicious at times, which is something the Revs really haven’t been for most of this decade.

Now, “hard tackling” is not an adequate substitute for “well coached” or “tactically astute” or even “prepared.” I don’t know if the Revs will be any of those things, and the Lee Nguyen saga virtually guarantees they will be a less dangerous team moving forward than they’ve been for the last five seasons unless – say it with me, now – this is the year that Juan Agudelofinally breaks through. There are a million-and-one questions, which is rare for a team that’s brought so many pieces back.

So I don’t know what to tell you here. New England’s a big old mystery.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Kind of throwing a dart for my pick at right wing. The rest of it I’m pretty sure of.

Colorado Rapids

I’ve spilled a lot of ink on this already, but I’ll say it one more time here: In this league, pretty much everyone has started to look to Latin America and to within, via academies, for their roster needs. We saw it all offseason as everyone from Orlando to Vancouver, from LA to Montreal and pretty much every stop in between raided leagues south of the border – and mostly south of the Panama Canal – with suitcases of TAM and GAM and DP slot.

They zigged. The Rapids zagged.

Everyone else is getting more Hispanic while Colorado have decided to get more northern European. They brought in Englishman Anthony Hudson as head coach, signed players out of the Championship and Scottish Premier League and Sweden and Germany, and are pretty obviously building a “stout at the back, kill ’em on the counter” group.

It’s not what I’d do, but at least it’s a plan. At least it’s a system and an ethos, with the idea that “Part A will function in this way because we want Parts B and C to function in these other ways.” I’m not sure that Colorado have really had that since 2013.

Who will be their best player? Ask again later. Who’s going to be their leading scorer? Honestly, you’ve got me there. Can they make the altitude work to their advantage? Let to tell you, I’m stumped. Will any of the young guys improve? No idea. Does Tim Howard have anything left in the tank? Um… I don’t want to answer that one.

I don’t expect much from the Rapids except no-frills, solid defense. As they showed in 2016, sometimes that’s enough. (But usually it’s not).

OPENER LINEUP

NOTE: Maybe the only predominantly 5-3-2 team in the league this year?

Philadelphia Union

The Philadelphia Union have been promising two things over the past several years: A true No. 10 and a youth movement. They’ve more or less failed to deliver on both promises, but – my goodness, my goodness – it looks like 2018 is the year that they’re going to deliver.

The Union signed Borek Dockal on Wednesday morning, the 29-year-old Czech international playmaker who seems destined to wear the No. 10 shirt. Dockal doesn’t have the world’s most impressive resume, but he’s been a very good player in the Czech league and in the Europa league for a long time, and he’s banged home meaningful goals against the likes of Turkey, the Netherlands and Iceland in international competition. Without having seen him play I’m going to lay money on him clearing the “Better than Roland Alberg” bar.

Him, and Accam and C.J. Sapong and a healthy Fabian Herbers/Fafa Picault platoon is not going to be the best attack in the league. But they will not have to work as hard just to create middling chances as they did the past few years. There is balance, experience, speed and creativity there.

My worry this year is on the other side of the field, at least in part because of the youth movement. Auston Trusty looks locked in as a starter at center back, and there just aren’t a ton of 19-year-old center backs who’ve ever played well in MLS. Matthew Real, another Homegrown, could end up playing lots of minutes at left back. He’s 18. If Haris Medunjanin continues to be as poor as he was in preseason, 20-year-old Derrick Jones could be the d-mid. Jack Elliott, all of 22-year-old and in his second year as a pro, is the grizzled vet in front of Andre Blake.

I’ll go ahead and admit that I love this. Let Philly be the Ajax of MLS as far as I’m concerned. I think the fans will live with a couple years of non-Ajax-like results as long as they see the ethos they were promised.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: I think Homegrown 18-year-old Anthony Fontana will get the start in Week 1 before Dockal takes over for good. I’ve also got Keegan Rosenberry pipping Raymon Gaddis at right back.

Minnesota United FC

I’m struggling with how to be gentle here, so I’ve decided to just go ahead and rip the bandaid off instead of easing into it. So here goes: I think there’s a decent chance Minnesota United will be worse in Year 2 than they were in Year 1.

Above and beyond everything else, there were three things that really worked for the Loons last year:

Sam Cronin solidified that central midfield, making them tough to break down

The Brent Kallman+Francisco Calvo CB combo worked pretty well

Christian Ramirez banged in goals at a DP-level

Well, Cronin’s been sidelined for unknown reasons (he missed a chunk of last year due to concussions), it looks like Michael Boxall – who wasn’t great – is preferred to Kallman or rookie Wyatt Omsberg (who will likely sign before the opener), and there’s a sneaking suspicion around the Twin Cities that Ramirez will be benched in favor of Abu Danladi.

So I’m just not sure that the things that worked in 2017 will be improved upon in 2018, and so in a lot of ways that makes this feel like a second straight expansion year. Obviously the scattershot way the front office has gone about collecting talent hasn’t helped even a little, but I think it’s fair to worry some about Adrian Heath’s decisions on the sideline as well.

The good news? Everybody in this league needs wingers, and MNUFC have a million of ’em. So if they need to swing another springtime trade like the one that netted them Cronin last year, they have the pieces to do so.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Bear in mind that I may be waaaaay off on this.

In terms of top-end talent, I think it’s fair to put LAFC in the same neighborhood as where Atlanta United last season. Carlos Vela was a roughly Giovinco-level player in Europe, and Diego Rossi is one of the biggest young (19) stars in Uruguay’s always bright attacking pipeline. Add in Portuguese playmaker Andre Horta (if they get him, and I think they will) and Colombian d-mid Eduard Atuesta – at age 20 one of the better d-mids in his native league – and it feels Five Stripes-ish, right?

In terms of filling out the rest of the roster, I think it’s fair to put LAFC in the same neighborhood as MNUFC last season. It’s taken them forever to even get up to 20 roster slots, the midfield is a mess (from the outside looking in, mind you), and I’ll admit a whole lot of “you know, I just don’t think that’s quite gonna work” about the backline.

More to the point, though, is that they simply don’t have the depth they need if things go wrong. What if Walker Zimmerman or Laurent Ciman continue with last year’s form, or if Benny Feilhaber hits the wall? Vela just pulled up lame; what now?

Atlanta had answers to these questions. LAFC don’t, that I can see.

Beyond that, it seems pretty clear they intend to play out of everything, and to use Feilhaber as a regista, a deep-lying playmaker who orchestrates more than creates. I love the idea behind it, but also let’s all just admit that the degree of difficulty for this gambit is damn near off the charts.

Of course, the rewards would be as well. It’s LA, so you’ve gotta go big or go home. Either way it should be entertaining as hell.

WEEK 1 LINEUP

NOTE: Some injuries, some uncertainty. What the hell, man, let’s just roll the ball out and see what happens!

@media screen and (max-width: 730px) { } @media screen and (min-width: 731px) and (max-width: 1120px) { .lineup-graphic {width:65%;margin:0 auto;} } @media screen and (min-width: 1121px) { .lineup-graphic {width:55%;margin:0 auto;} }

#block-block-188 {padding:0;} #stay-connected {border-top:1px solid #ebebeb;margin:20px 0;} #stay-connected p {margin:0;color:#4d4d4d;line-height:1.5em;} @media screen and (max-width: 730px) { #stay-connected {padding:8px 6px 0 6px;width:100%;} } @media screen and (min-width: 731px) and (max-width: 1120px) { #stay-connected {padding:8px 6px 0 6px;width:100%;} } @media screen and (min-width: 1121px) { #stay-connected {padding:8px 6px 0 6px;width:708px;} }

MLSsoccer.com News

Armchair Analyst: Frontrunners, the Pack & all 23 MLS teams by tier was originally published on 365 Football

#Analyst #Armchair #frontrunners #pack #teams #tier

0 notes