#like clearly modeled for the previous decade

[originalaccountname]

(nodding and taking notes on what Old World apparently looks like)

[luimagines]

Android Au Warrior

Another commission!

They asked for Warrior this time, helping Reader after a nightmare and realizing his purpose for being there after all. It's... not exactly that. But I thought I did a well enough job on it. :)

Masterlist

Content under the cut!

The house in which he was stationed was... strange, to say the least.

The WARLKN model was used for higher security and working with a team of other like-minded WARLNK models who all had the same purpose. 

Given that this house only held one human, he failed to see why his specific role was needed. The human in question already had other androids in their service. One was a child WNDLNK model and the other happened to be a repurposed SKYLNK model for general upkeep around the house.

His charge was also… strange, to say the least.

This whole situation was illogical.

While he could understand the need for multiple androids, it wasn’t as if the human was in need of his specific security skills.

He had been given to you through a friend. It was likely the same friend who had given you the same SKYLNK model and had continuously done maintenance to keep the outdated WNDLNK model functioning despite its decades-old parts. 

You called affectionately called him Warrior, after the first incident when you had encountered a bug and had all but lost it. He charged into the room to defend you from any threats that may have broken into your home but calmly took the poor creature outside to be released onto the nearest tree.

Given a new designation was no easy thing to assimilate into his programming. There was no space in his code for any personalization or any domestic nomenclature. He was built and designed for professionalism and maximized security risks. The lack of any nefarious activity in his current protectorate was grating on his nerofibers, the very biocomponents to be likened to stainless steel mesh.

But never let it be said that the WARLNK model as a whole was known for their flexibility and ability to work beyond the parameters of their mission.

And right now?

There were a lot of things beyond his mission that ‘Warrior’ found himself needing to learn to adapt to his current assignment.

The beginning challenges were nothing short of brain-breaking, such as getting used to his new name. Not to mention getting used to the names of the other androids within the premises.

In his previous deployment, he was supposed to refer to each and every model by their serial number and post. However, seeing that he was the only android in charge of security, that was no longer an option. Not that they seemed to know what their serial number was, to begin with.

‘Warrior’ couldn’t get over how… lax the procedures seemed to be in this two-bedroom studio apartment. There was no set morning shift, no set time off- actually, retract that earlier statement. There weren’t any shifts at all.

Not that he expected much from a busted-up domestic android and what was clearly a child’s sentimental attachment to an out-of-style, breaking down, obsolete droid that was working well enough beyond its years. ‘Warrior’ didn’t expect those two to be able to stop a break-in from happening should the issue arise. This meant that any and all security would have to be left up to him to take into account and hold up the standards his protocol deemed necessary.

As an android, this wasn’t a problem.

The problem was that his chief and commander seemed to be purposefully getting his way from doing his job!

It didn’t matter what he did or at what time. The chief always had something to say about the execution of his protocol. He was constantly being called ‘overbearing’, ‘dramatic,’ and what was more insulting- ‘extra’.

He was not extra! 

Nor was he overbearing!

Granted, his model had the tendency to overindulge in performance and to exaggerate in the more comical sense for the sake of a human’s nerves, so perhaps by definition he was ‘dramatic.’ Not that he was ever going to agree with the charges, but ‘Warrior’ was well-versed enough in his model to know better than to open his mouth in that regard.

His commander and chief had made it abundantly clear that ‘Warrior’ was not needed. They refused to rehouse or relocate him to be put to better use, but they didn’t hesitate to outwardly tell him that he had no purpose within the apartment.

‘Warrior’ had half the mind to agree, as damaging to his code and sense of accomplishment that would be. The parameters where he worked were small enough as it was, and he was mostly confined to the inside of the apartment. Checking the perimeter was an easy and fruitless endeavor when he could have done a quick scan with his visual biocomponents and gotten the same results.

The neighborhood was quiet and there were mostly elderly living in the complex. The streets hardly had anyone on them at any given point in time and the most activity ‘Warrior’ could say that he witnessed was when the mailmen would come to drop off the archaic paper mail still in circulation. 

There was that one time that a dog had escaped one of the apartments through a door with a faulty lock and began to chase after the mailman. ‘Warrior’ had acted quickly to defend the droid and had returned the dog to its proper place. If it was within his programming, he would have deemed it humorous to think that a tiny cocker spaniel had attempted to defend its home from an LGNLNK model droid.

That was the first time ‘Warrior’ had completed any sort of security task outside of the house.

It was after that event that multiple elders had gone to his commander and chief, thanking them for his presence. The elderly had felt more at ease knowing that a capable droid, designed to serve and protect was nearby on the off chance should anything happen to the neighbors. ‘Warrior’ felt his biomechanical component swell with the closest thing to pride that he was able to duplicate.

After that, he was given permission and the privilege to expand his duties from apartment 231 to the entire complex on Baker Street.

“Back already?” The commander and chief chirped when he had finished his rounds around the apartment complex. He had gone around the perimeter three times and had checked every individual floor for any suspicious activity before returning to his duties within his docking suite.

The commander hadn’t even turned to see him enter the apartment. They were too busy finishing a marathon of horror games that they had started by the time he left.

“Yes,” He nodded toward them. “I have returned. Everything is in the clear and in working order. The grass appears to have grown a millimeter taller already. I planned to contact management and inform them to call a set of TWILNK models to do the landscaping of the complex.”

“Yeah, yeah- that’s great.” They said, eyes glued to the screen. “I already had dinner so need to wait up.”

He nodded.

He was made of metal and silicone substrates. Unlike them, he had no need to consume energy. Even if they seemed to forget that more often than any of the other models seemed to mention. ‘Warrior’ wasn’t about to go out of his way to remind them though.

He entered further into the apartment and saluted the SKYLNK model who smiled in that awkward still-learning phase that most non-adjusted android tend to do when they’ve been socially stunted. ‘Warrior’ passes the WNDLNK model next.

“Hi, Warrior!” His voice is strained and the speaker will need to be replaced soon if he’s not careful with his volume.

“Hello… Wind.” ‘Warrior’ says pleasantly. The nomenclature was foreign but he found that it rolled off his artificial easier and easier than before. His own voice was new and undamaged. It was designed to be pleasant to the human ear if he ever needed to placate or seduce, depending on the mission he had been given. “Have you behaved yourself today?”

“I did my homework and now Sky says that he’s going to let me make dessert.” ‘Wind’ cheered. ‘Warrior’ smiled at his enthusiasm. Whoever had programmed him had done extensive research on the behaviors and mannerisms of children because it was uncanny how his programming reacted to the smaller android in front of him.

The urge to protect and defend until his ‘dying breath’ was a core part of his ultimate purpose.

“Don’t burn down the kitchen,” ‘Warrior’ told him in jest. The smaller droid laughed and ran off to join the chief and commander in front of the television to backseat game during their marathon.

With his duties and obligations done for the day, ‘Warrior’ retreated to his post next to the coat closet, beside the front door, where he could watch all points of entry to the apartment and keep an eye on all the individuals under his care.

A small blue dot appeared on the side of his vision, an icon meant to inform him that he was in need of a proper recharge if he intended to continue with his duties and shift.

The idea sets him on edge.

‘Warrior’ knew better than to ignore the necessary protocols on his upkeep, but he was in charge of all safety measurements and was the only one capable of carrying them out. In order to fully recharge his energy banks, he’d need to be offline for a total of seven hours, 46 minutes, and 12 seconds and counting. 

He ran the numbers of the off chance of intrusion or structural collapse. He knew the building was up to code with the current safety measures that the modern age could offer. The apartment was high enough in the complex and furthest from all entry points so an intruder wouldn’t likely come inside without serious intervention. Chances of a fire or any medical emergency were unlikely but possible. However, in such cases, ‘Sky’ was equipped to deal with first responders and likely had the appropriate coding to assist the commanding chief in a practical sense. ‘Wind’ was likely to be more of a moral support player to keep them calm enough for ‘Sky’ to handle it if such an event were to occur.

With that in mind, ‘Warrior’ moved from his post by the door and went into the docking room. It was a space that he and the other androids had shared. There was only one bed, but it had been agreed upon by the droids that ‘Wind’ should receive it, seeing that the other two had no need for such concepts whatsoever.

He walked over to the furthest wall and stood by the charging dock. Unlocking a latch in the palm of his synthetic skin, he steps onto the platform and presses his hand to the exposed outlet. It’s always felt a bit strange to be charged this way. The sensation was cold and he was never able to stay online continuously while he charged.

It was one of the many reasons he was discharged from his original post.

They called him faulty.

Still, as his body and circuitry began to settle and go into sleep mode, he didn’t feel the usual concern with losing consciousness. ‘Wind’ and ‘Sky’ could be heard in the kitchen, using multiple power tools for whatever food they were trying out this time. The Commander was in the living room and he could hear the muffled curses and shouts of concern for whatever game they had decided to play this time.

He found it in himself to smile and his mind turned off.

After the needed time had come and gone for him to fully recharge his energy bank, ‘Warrior’ came to consciousness in a dark and silent house. It was jarring. The silence wouldn’t have been unwarranted if it hadn’t been for the noise he had fallen into sleep mode with.

He undocks from the charging station, fixing the panel on his palm and stepping away from the wall. ‘Sky’ had stepped into the second change station beside him, likely also in sleep mode given the lack of reaction and closed eyes from his fellow android. ‘Wind’ was lying down in the bed, likewise also being charged for the next day. He had a cord that had to be plugged into an outlet that connected to the back of his head, hidden from human eyes with his synthetic hair.

Unlike him, they had the option to be offline while charging. They claimed that it helped the time go by faster while The Commander was sleeping. They claimed that it helped them feel more human.

‘Warrior’ had no need to feel human. He wasn’t one. And he wasn’t going to pretend now.

However, despite knowing this ‘Warrior’ had half the mind to be annoyed with them.

He had trusted them with the safety of the Commander. And they abandon their posts with such ease.

He steps out of the room post haste.

A single glance at a nearby clock informs him that the hour is promptly 4:30 am. A rather unfortunate time for him to return online. His charging had taken him longer than the timer had told him. Something he would have to mention to The Doctor next time she visits. His meticulous examination of the apartment started at once, checking for anything suspicious or faulty that might have taken place while he was offline.

It was in the middle of this inspection there a sudden scream from The Commander’s room that captured his attention at once.

He rushed to the room with no time to waste. Without knocking, he opens the door with a hand on his utility belt to reach for his mandated baton. 

…There was nobody in the room.

Aside from the commander and chief.

‘Warrior’ however, took pride in his work ethic and quickly did a scan of the room regardless. His sudden bulldozing of the door hadn’t gone unnoticed by you. You had nearly screamed again when he entered.

The sight of him was enough to get you to calm down. ‘Warrior’ noticed it, but didn’t call attention to it. The last thing he needed was The Commander thinking that he didn’t trust their judgment. 

Nothing.

There was no appearance of even a bug in the room like the last time this had happened.

Satisfied with the lack of results but confused with the need for intervention, ‘Warrior’ turned to you. You were obviously shaken. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have screamed the way you did. The sheer terror in your voice had never been heard before.

Moving slowly to not startle you further, ‘Warrior’ stepped closer to your bed and sat on the far edge. “Are you alright?”

You were shaking and breathing heavier than the normal pace that would be considered normal for a human. A quick scan told him that your heart rate was higher than normal as well, not to mention the subtle sweat that lined your brow and neck.

Panic.

Pure unadulterated panic.

You couldn’t even answer him. You were too focused on the nightmare still lingering in your mind.

‘Warrior’, not about to leave you to your horrors, scooted closer and pulled you close to his body. Surprisingly, you latched on without a second thought. You shuddered and began to cry quietly on his shoulder.

“Warrior.” You whimpered. “There- There were so many of them. They were all chasing me- I couldn’t run fast enough-”

“Shhh…” He says softly. “My job is to protect you. To protect this family. I won’t let anything hurt you. They have to go through me first.”

You gulped but didn’t refute his claim.

The silence stretched for a moment before he decided to run his hand through your hair. “I’m not the type to give orders to my Commander but don’t play those games so late into the day. No more horror games after dark.”

“...They’re in the shadows…” You whispered. “They’re everywhere.”

‘Warrior’ didn’t know what they were, but he wasn’t about to let a threat enter this apartment or your mind. “Show me,” He says firmly, leaving no room for argument. “Point them out, Chief. I’ll take care of it.”

You shook your head and took in a shuddering breath. The sound ricocheted through the room, breaking the delicate silence behind the force of his words. 

“You can’t fight these demons, Warrior Mine.” You shook your head.

“Watch me,” He challenged. He hugged you a little tighter. “I’ll protect you. That’s my purpose. That’s why I’m here.”

You fall silent.

‘Warrior’ kept running his hand over your head, using the other one to rub soothing circles onto your back. “I’ll protect you,” He repeated. “You don’t have to be afraid. Nothing is going to get to you while I’m here. I’ve always done my job. And I’m very good at my job. I will protect you.”

You nodded and eventually relaxed in his arms.

‘Warrior’ had assumed that was the cue to let go of you and return to his surveillance, but at the very instant he lessened the pressure on you, you had latched back on. You whimpered again, burying your face deeper into the crook of his neck. “Don’t. Don’t leave.”

“I won’t,” He said at once. “Never. I’ll stay all night if I have to.”

Another small beat of silence on your part.

“...Promise?”

“It is my duty and purpose to ensure your safety.” He said again. “Do you trust me to do my job?”

You didn’t lift your head. Your voice was a wisp of a whisper against his audio receptors. “Yes… You’re borderline obsessive with your protocols.”

“They are to ensure your well-being and safety-”

“Yes, yes, yes…” You cut him off, relaxing once more in his arms. “...Stay anyway? Just until I fall asleep?”

“I will stay by your side until you wake up again, Chief.” He says softly, adjusting your position o rest more comfortably against him. “I will fight for you. Forever and always.”

“I named you appropriately.” You mumbled. 

“I am Warrior after all.”

[murdercide626]

Regarding Gerald in Sonic 3

(SPOILERS!!)

I've been thinking about how Gerald Robotnik was depicted in the third Sonic movie, and I have some observations.

I'm sure some fans have been comparing Gerald as shown in the film versus the games and taken note of not only how much sillier he is in the movie, but also how he's depicted as being considerably more villainous.

There are a couple things to consider though. In the games (especially since Shadow Generations) the majority of what we see of Gerald is from before the tragedy on the ARK and losing Maria, and we only get brief bits of him after he lost his sanity.

However in the movie it's the exact opposite situation. Almost everything we see of Gerald in the film is after Maria's death and he's clearly lost his sanity. Not only that, but because Gerald in the film never got executed, he spent many decades in a prison cell, stewing in his despair and rage, becoming more and more bitter and deranged while also extending his lifespan to an unnatural length by dosing himself with chaos energy from Shadow's quill.

But you might say, "Gerald in the movie only saw Shadow as a tool and didn't love him." While there's evidence of that being true in the present day, there's little to suggest that's the case in the very brief bit we see of Gerald in the flashback he's shown in before Maria's death. I personally think Gerald did have a fondness for Shadow before the tragedy, likely through observing Maria's close friendship with him. When Gerald retrieves Maria and Shadow to flea the facility he refers to them both collectively as "children", meaning he possibly had a similar fondness for both of them. I think that after Maria's death though, Gerald's slipping sanity, disillusionment with humanity, and obsession with avenging Maria's death, probably made him lose sight of the love he once had for Shadow.

And there is even evidence of the same thing happening in the games, with Gerald treating Shadow as little more than a tool for his posthumous plan for genocidal vengeance, which would have ended with Shadow's death too. Gerald even tampered with Shadow's memories of Maria to ensure he'd carry out his plans.

There's also evidence in the games of Gerald having an ego similar to Eggman's, shown by him modeling the ARK to resemble his face. Gerald even sheepishly confessed in his journal he was being self indulgent when designing the ARK. So it would seem in the games Gerald does possess at least some of the negative traits shared with his grandson, though he's self aware of these flaws and tries to suppress them. Gerald in the movie however is at a point where he's way past caring, since he's already decided to destroy the earth and everyone on it, so he's just letting his freak flag fly. lol

So if Gerald hadn't been executed in the games, who knows how he might have turned out. Gerald being executed was probably a mercy, really...

And it should also be noted that Sega themselves even considered resurrecting Gerald as a villainous character in the early production of Shadow's solo game.

That actually brings me to another thing I was thinking about while watching the movie. In Sonic 3, they repeatedly emphasize how similar Eggman and Gerald are in appearance, quirks, skills, and even wearing near identical outfits at the end. Sonic even collectively refers to them both as "Eggmen".

This stood out to me because it reminded me of the Rush games where Eggman teamed up with Eggman Nega, a character that was near identical to Eggman, but having a greying mustache and a darker, more twisted personality.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've had a theory that the scrapped plot point of resurrecting Gerald as a villain is what led to the creation of the Eggman Nega character. So seeing Gerald as depicted in the movie was like seeing it all come full circle. lol

But anyway, yeah, this has been another stream of consciousness rant from me. Maybe you got something out of this, or maybe not. Oh well. lol

And just to make myself clear, I am NOT trying to argue that Gerald is a bad person in the games (at least before Maria died). If what I said came across like that, then I'm sorry, but that was definitely not my intention.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

OK FINISHED YUKIS!! This is 5-9 also I’m realizing the overall title of the yuki section is “O Lord” and the first chapter’s title is actually “Honest” but forgot to fix that earlier in the summary oops. But enjoy!!! Gonna start working on Barou’s now

-Karasu anon

5 - The Peak of Happiness

When Kenyu entered high school, his life had been even more fulfilling than it ever was before. With his characteristic dribbling abilities and power to charge on, he became a regular even as a first year. He gained the name “The 1-on-1 Emperor” and became a the center of attention within the prefecture, a new member whom people expected much out of. Through hard work he produced results, and those results give him confidence in himself. His self confidence made him sparkle more and more. Somehow, that very aura had caught the eye of a photographer for a fashion magazine. Kenyu and his friends had traveled to Tokyo, in the process stopping by Harajuku.

“Hey you! Wanna be a model?”

“Huh?”

“What do you say you come join our agency? You’ve got this great aura.”

He has a nice appearance and has a glowing aura. Thanks to his beautician mother, his refined looks had caused him to stand out in the area. Kenyu politely refused

“Sorry, I’m just out here shopping with my friends. I don’t really have any interest in doing something like that.”

“Well, what if I just take one picture of you! Is that alright?”

Kenyu wasn’t sure what that “well” implied, but the photographer seemed really pushy.

“Sorry I can’t. Next month is the Japanese Nationals Championship. I’m afraid something like that would impede a bit.”

“Seriously!? You’re that incredible!? I’ve found a golden egg!” The photographer had let his ramblings slip, clearly getting even more hyped up. Kenyu’s friends came around to ask what was going on, wondering if their friend had just been scouted. He was originally planning on turning the photographer down, but since both his friends were so enthusiastic about it, he got caught up in the excitement. The photographer asked for his name, to which Kenyu gave him. Just like that, Kenyu was swept away into doing a photoshoot right then and there. Photographer asked what his future plans were to which he replied that he was trying to go pro and wanted to become the number one striker in the world. To Kenyu’s unwavering conviction, the photographer matched his enthusiasm. “That’s amazing! If anyone can do it, it’s you!” It wasn’t just lip service. Despite his initial impression, the photographer was also quite pure of heart. He certainly had the aura that made Kenyu think so.

A handsome soccer player egg. The pics of Kenyu were featured in a magazine geared towards the current decade’s male fashion scene. It seems it was widely well received. Next month, the editor and photographer purposely came all the way out to Miyazaki for a photoshoot. Kenyu had come to regularly appear in the magazine. The talent agency had reached out to him, leading him to ask his parents for advice. In the end, he signed with the agency. This time, he was shooting as a full body model and would be published on a full page of the magazine issue. Receiving praise for his looks and his athleticism, his previous popularity that was limited to his prefecture had expanded to the entire nation. After one look at him, girls would flock to his games from other prefectures bearing fan service handheld fans, forming their own military force to cheer him on. Receiving their support, Kenyu was honestly happy. They call him strong and amazing while he plays soccer and cool and handsome during his model activities.

Everyday was fun. And from those days, he established a core value: I’m, undoubtedly, one of the chosen ones. He’s made it this far in life, having been constantly watched over and chosen. If he lives honestly, following his heart, people will gather and connect. Thus, he will be blessed by the people. There isn’t anything he’s afraid of. He’ll live as he is, purely as himself. For now, all he needs to do is keep trying his best in soccer. Then, someday, he’ll be on the National team, win the World Cup, and become the world’s number 1 striker. Not once had he thought that this dream was overambitious. All he needs to do is believe. As long as he keeps living honestly, this dream, too, will surely come true. To be chosen, and to be watched over. God is watching over me. That’s what Kenyu believed from the bottom of his heart, without a hint of doubt. It was only after two years time that he had realized that was the happiest era of his life, in the season where the cherry blossoms scatter once again.

6- A Lifetime’s Worth of Tears

It was the spring of his third year in high school. Yukimiya Kenyu was the ace of Soranin High School, the year that would be their ticket to Nationals, Kenyu’s last year of high school. In his first and second year, he was a regular on the team. Both times they made it to Nationals, but lost after one match. But this year will be different. As ace and captain, he’ll definitely lead the team to victory. If they have the power of the 1-on-1 Emperor on their side, they can achieve it. He’s been waiting to be scouted to go pro too. If they win, they’ll definitely catch the recruiters’ eyes! To Kenyu, it was a future he didn’t have to worry about. After practice, he walked home with his teammates. Just in case it was to rain, practice was held inside the gym, though it didn’t make it any less grueling. His teammates noticed that Kenyu had paused, asking him what was wrong.

“Sorry…my eyes..it’s just…they’re kinda blurry.”

In front of him were his two friends, holding onto their umbrellas. The rain narrowed his field of view and the sky was already gloomy. But there was a darkness, different from that of the sky, that was blotting his vision. No, his field of vision was being eaten away by a black haze. His friends asked if he was okay, to which he tried to focus on their faces, but to no avail. They still remained hazy, and he couldn’t see them clearly. He thought a good night’s sleep would have it fixed by morning, but by the next day, his vision was still out of sorts. Kenyu’s vision had never been good, but it seems like lately, it’s been deteriorating a lot more. Just in case, he decided to visit an eye doctor at a large hospital. Surgery to fix vision does exist, so Kenyu wonders if that’s something he needs to consider if he wants to go pro. That’s about as far as he thought, but his diagnosis was something he never would’ve imagined.

“When you’re tired, your field of vision narrows and blind spots appear. You have optic neuropathy.”

He’s an old doctor, well known and reputable in the region, but with a kind tone of voice, he had straightforwardly informed Kenyu of his diagnosis.

“The progression of the disease cannot be stopped, accompanied by headaches and nausea, and in the worst cases…complete blindness.”

In the worst cases, complete blindness.

“But with proper treatment, we can slow its progression. For the most part, you don’t need to worry about going completely blind. You can continue living your everyday life and your model activities without any issues.”

The examination room was quiet. Even with the doctor’s kind tone and the slow speed he spoke, Kenyu was unable to process the information immediately. Blindness. Model. Everyday life. Kenyu had felt feelings he had never felt before. As if his legs had been crushed, it was a chilling feeling that sent shivers down his spine. For the first time in his life, he felt fear.

Pushing away his fears, he asked the doctor, “Um…what about soccer…..?”

The doctor remained silent for a moment, then proceeded to answer carefully, not letting is kind tone waver.

“You’ll be able to play it as a hobby…but if you continue playing as you have now while the disease progresses….honestly I think it may be a bit difficult…”

Kenyu’s legs shook and his hands turned cold.

“Unfortunately, I can’t say that the path to becoming pro would be extremely hard..”

The doctor’s kind voice. The cruel verdict.

Why…why me…

The shaking in his body had spread as his body ran cold.

“Doctor…I haven’t…done anything bad before..”, Kenyu had squeezed out in a wavering voice. He’d never done anything to make God hate him. All he did was try his best in soccer. He hadn’t done anything unfair or unjust. He just immersed himself in soccer, honestly and purely.

Why is it being taken…away from me…

Like a whining child, his voice was shaken with tears.

“I wanted to become number 1 in soccer…it’s not right…this situation….I don’t accept it…”

Holding his shaking body, he lets his tears fall. Once after the other, they poured like down his face as he collapsed onto the bed.

“Give me…back my dream…” I don’t care about anything else. He couldn’t bring himself to say those last words. The real Kenyu is shy and stoic. He’s a small boy who doesn’t talk to friends and sits quietly at his seat. He took up everything he had to lead that Kenyu to where he is now. He couldn’t believe that God would do something so cruel. The joy when he bought his first soccer ball. The day he played soccer with Cannavaro. The times he’d laugh with his teammates at soccer school. And up until just yesterday, when he had been trying with all his might to win the National Championship. To get on the Japanese National team, win the World Cup, and become the world’s number one striker, the version of himself he believed in just up until this very moment. It felt like everything was a distant lie. In despair, he doesn’t want to lose anything. His tears continue to fall with no end.

“Why…why..no…I still…”

Crying a lifetime’s worth of tears, he couldn’t stop sobbing.

“I know..Yukimiya.”

The doctor gets on his knees and places his hands on Kenyu’s shoulders.

“We’ll do everything we can. I’ll support your journey in becoming pro all I can. But your condition will progress. The time in which you’ll be able to showcase your skills is limited. Even with all that, do you still want to follow your dream..?”

Finally, Kenyu raised his head. He shouldn’t give up on his dream. It’s still possible.

“….Yes.” His tears had dried as he grabbed onto the small glimmer of hope.

God had once again….looked after me…

7-In my heart

From then on, Kenyu devoted himself to soccer more than he ever had before, because someday, he wouldn’t be able to play anymore. So in the limited time he had before his eyes fully deteriorated, he wanted to go all in. He couldn’t waste his time scrolling away on his phone or hanging out with friends. When he had free time, he spent it all running around or studying soccer tactics. I’ve gotta be more efficient, gotta perfect it, gotta do more….

It was very in character for one-track minded Kenyu. His stoicism, honesty, and determination all came together to realize the ultimate short-period training boot camp regimen. I don’t have time. To me…time….

“Hey, hasn’t Yukki been kinda scary lately?”, a teammate had commented while Kenyu wasn’t in the room. He had quickly gone home right after practice had ended. “I know what you mean. If you make even a small mistake, he gets pissed. It is our fault for causing slip ups though..”, a teammate, who got yelled at by Kenyu today to stay focused, shrugged in response.

“No that’s not what I meant….er how should I put this…he gets so angry it’s like he’s about to cry.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

A bystander who had heard their conversation interjected, expressing his agreement in Kenyu’s recent behavior.

“It seems like Yukki’s really in a rush, almost like he’s being chased by something”, the newcomer had said. He had been always honest and stoic, but now it seems he’s not as much so. In the past, he would walk home with his friends, chatting about pointless things. He’d even wave at his fangirls waiting at the school gates. Now, he didn’t talk to anyone unless needed, and he blatantly ignored his fans. He had no leeway in his life, and it was like he couldn’t see anything but soccer.

“What could he be running from? He’s been blessed with everything.”

Kenyu hadn’t talked to anyone but his parents about his eye condition, so no one knew about it. Talent, appearance, popularity, physicality. He had it all, so his teammates were couldn’t understand what was going on.

If I don’t hurry and show results….I’ve gotta find the fastest route to joining the National team..!…damn it…!….damn it….!!

When Kenyu got home, he reflected on today’s practice in the shower. His ideal play that would lead the team to championship victory, he couldn’t afford to have his teammates’ mistakes. Filled with frustration and haste, his body grew hot, but he knew this anger shouldn’t be poured all out onto his teammates.

Calm down…this..isn’t like me.

He reflected on the missed moves and took a deep breath.

I don’t know how many years I have left, but if I just live honestly, God will certainly watch over me. That’s why definitely…..” Definitely? Suddenly, Kenyu was scared. His dream of the World Cup felt too far. If someday his disease takes a turn for the worst, he might not be able to play soccer anymore. Hadn’t it seemed like God had casted his dream, his dream of achieving everything he could ever wish for, right into the pits of hell. But Kenyu had been discovered, chosen, and watched after. So surely, that couldn’t be the case. After he fulfills his dream, he would even be okay with quitting soccer. He lives now for the sake of that one moment of joy. But try as hard as he might, he wondered why he felt like he was falling deeper into a hopeless abyss. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to go pro with his own strength. And even if he manages to go pro, if he doesn’t play in the World Cup, then it’ll all be over. Maybe his hard work is all in vain. Maybe he should just quit while he’s ahead. If he gives up on soccer now, he could become a full time model. The staff at the agency had already tried to persuade him several times. He isn’t bound by just one path to the future. No….but….that’s not what he really wants to do. He wants to play soccer. He wants to be the world’s number one soccer player. Kenyu shook his head. Don’t hesitate. After all, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s put his all into doing my best. It’d be strange if there were no payout. He’ll fulfill his dream, surely, if he doesn’t give up now….but that was just a convenient delusion, some dreams do get destroyed. There aren’t any guarantees. He calmly told himself that, let the thoughts run around his head, and once again became rather scared. As if he’d been sprinting with all his might, alone, along the edge of a cliff, he was terrified. He was shaken, and tears welled up in his eyes. He couldn’t sleep. He was haunted by a horror-filled night. As if he were just clinging on, he watched heart-warming movies and listened to happy music to try and soothe himself. Even if the future stole soccer from him, “Soccer isn’t all there is to life”, is what he thought to himself. He reaffirmed is weak, insecure self with that reasoning, by hearing that that was okay, and then proceeded to look for uplifting music. The movies and music worked like a tranquilizer, calming him down, helping Kenyu somehow make it through day by day.

8- Story:

The preliminaries that would determine the prefecture’s representatives thus began.

“As expected of the 1-on-1 emperor!” “Yukki! Yukki! Yukki!” The fans, who knew nothing about his eye condition, yelled out their supporting chants as their team won their first match without a hitch. Before, Kenyu would smile back at the supporters, but now he didn’t have the time to spare to do so. If they lose, it’s all over. As that sentiment lingered in his mind, he was unable to sleep. The road from qualifiers to the national championship was a long one. His heart raced at the thought. But lack of sleep would accelerate his disease, so he wanted to get a full 8 hours of sleep. As his anxiety continued, he was still unable to fall asleep. The days where he was unable to fall asleep, awake until the sun rose, continued. One day, he thought to look for some white noise. He blearily picked up his phone and began to search and found the perfect playlist. Whispering vocals played along with a heartwarming melody. He had never heard this song before. Closing his eyes and listening to the music, he finally fell into slumber. He woke up the next morning feeling refreshed. From the song his listened to last night, one phrase remained in his mind. “God doesn’t give us trials we can’t overcome.” He didn’t know whose song this was. He doesn’t know if he really heard it or if he was dreaming, but that phrased became his crutch. Trials that we can overcome…he repeated those words over and over in his mind. To himself, that was crying, terrified at the thought of his eye disease. To himself, who hadn’t given up on soccer. The versions of himself that had seemed so scattered had come together and become one. “As I thought, God has been watching over me. God will never give me trials that I can’t overcome..” Both his weak self and his hardworking self had been acknowledged. It’ll be okay, he’ll overcome his trials. Kenyu had gained his confidence, stronger than ever before.

“How is it, Doctor…?” It was the day of his scheduled visit to the eye doctor. He was getting new glasses made and needed to get his prescription checked.

“They look good on you.

These are a pair of new glasses to commemorate how smoothly your treatment is going. It’s a good thing, maintaining it your condition. It’s by no means cured, but it hasn’t gotten worse…I think it’s safe to say you can continue carrying on comfortably and easily”, the doctor replied with a thumbs up. Kenyu was relieved. Everytime, he had been on the verge of tears, so scared to find out the results of his medical exam. This time, it was different though.

“Doctor…I’ve finally come to terms with my condition.”

“Is that so? That’s good.”

His heart had calmed. The doctor spoke in his kind tone, just as he always had.

“‘God never gives us trials we can’t overcome.’ That’s what I said, right? I was given this trial, and that’s why it must be destiny that I’ll overcome it.” As long as he doesn’t give up, he’ll surely fulfill his dreams. That’s what he believes. That’s his story.

From then one, he team steadily advanced. With his deadly plays, Kenyu lead the team through consecutive overwhelming victories. He completely overwhelmed other schools’ teams, ultimately qualifying for nationals.

Yes! First step complete. Perhaps because he had overcome his doubts, he was able to properly express his gratitude to the enthusiastic fans with a bow. He was able to share his joy with his cheering teammates.

But the real battle begins now. Winning Nationals, getting scouted, getting on the National team, winning the World Cup. If he takes them on step by step, he’ll definitely get closer to his dream. Though his time is limited, he can still see it. He can still fight! He can still…!

The next day, a letter from the JFU had arrived at Kenyu’s house. “You’ve been specially selected by the Japanese Football Union” it read. Yes, he got it….! His thoughts had become his conviction, and a refreshing smile appeared on Kenyu’s face. As long as he keeps pushing forward honestly, God with surely watch over him. Surely.

….God….no, Ego Jinpachi had been watching over him. To Kenyu, he couldn’t tell if this man was a god or a devil. The answer lies in Blue Lock. We’re still in the middle of Kenyu’s story. Just go, honestly, straightforwardly, with all your might. Believe in your dream of becoming the world’s best striker. Yukimiya Kenyu, with his unbreakable hope in his heart, smiling without a doubt, continued onwards towards the prison. What he didn’t know, was that within the confines of Blue Lock awaited an egoist (Isagi Yoichi) that he had never met before.

kenyu yukimiya ily 🥹 GET MY MAN OFF THE BENCH 🗣️ because i already loved him sm but reading these is making me just want to give him a hug 😭😭😭 my baby

[hologramcowboy]

🤣🤣🤣 I have never laughed so hard in my life, whoever wrote this is a mindless "journalist".

Danneel is no longer recognizable as Rachel Gatina and people bafely recognize Jensen's wife when he is out with her. Also, mentioning work she did decades ago is not the flex they think it is. There is a reason actors keep their resume update and always remove old roles. Danneel has aged out of the highschool bracket aaaages ago and no longer matches that type. She already looked 40 compared to the rest of her cast mates even back then. "Iconic role"? 🤣 No one remembers stripper girl, which, let's face it was her main role in just about every movie or series. Rachel does not have a fanbase because she was not a beloved character and her acting was horrible. There are just a few Jensen obsessed stans who push Rachel still because they worship Jensen. She is not known on her own, she is known for sleeping with Jensen.

What "paved the way" for her appearances in Harold & Kumar were her scantilly clad photoshoots and easy behavior. They needed a woman that was believable as weed smoking, slutty counterpart. Again, same role she plays over and over again and that she has aged out of so, if you are branding smart, stop mentioning her trashy past.

When her roles dried up( there's only so many times you can play "stripper girl" and "the other woman" when you have zero talent and presence), Jensen proceeded to ensure she was cast by nepotism in SPN. Where her role was clearly written to try to rebrand her image. Epic fail, Sister Jo was the lamest, most useless, senseless character on SPN and her acting was not even remotely credible and all she was playing was a ditzy goldigger who preyed on people just like in real life.

She did not form anything with her huband. He was offered Chaos Productions and negotiated her into the deal (nepotism again). After epic failing with their TW they betrayed the studio who had given them that production company and moved on with Amazon. Danneel proved she has no production knowledge whatsoever and did not deserve her title even remotely. She also wasted seed money on book rights for projects that were rejected by the previous studio

She did not executive produce anything, she had a VANITY title, just like her husband. Meaning her name was used to promote the project and her title was just a publicity stunt. No one, I repeat, no one in the industry will ever take her seriously as a producer and Jensen lost major credibility by putting a woman with Danneel's image (see above paragraphs about her roles) at the "forefront" of his project.

Danneel never was nor ever will be at the helm to develop television and future projects. That is not how Amazon works and,aside from this, Danneel has zero skill and talent.

She is trying really hard to rebrand her image by selling herself as a successful well known producer now. 🤣🤣🤣 What success? The movie rights of projects that were all rejected? the Winchesters which as an embarassing flop that ruined the SPN legacy? Her stripper roles who required no acting skill whatsoever? Her shady modeling gigs? What are we even talking about? That bio wants to make her seem like a woman she will never, ever be. You are trying to sell her as a "leader" when she can barely spell on her social media 🤣 As a producer when the only thing she "produces"( Jensen's words not mine I could never speak so creeepily about a woman) is children. We all know why too. 🤣 There are so many actual rolemodels, actually authentic women to support and yet stick is being put on an "actress" who made her way thanks to the casting couch and then continued to make her way thanks to who she is sleeping with. Danneel Ackles is merely a gold digger, that is her main career. Outside of that she just puts on smokes and mirrors and only people who don't do their research fall for such antics. Whoever wrote that bio was clearly trying to shift her image through full on lies. This might anger Amazon who might pull the plug on their collaboration.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ryan Burge

Published: May 15, 2023

The last forty years of politics and religion has been focused squarely on the ascendancy of the Religious Right. I must admit that I’ve probably contributed my fair share to that discourse, as well.

A motley crew of white evangelicals and traditional Catholics locked arms on some social issues, started voting in large numbers for Republican candidates, and changed American politics forever.

But I think that era of religion and politics is rapidly coming to a close. The Religious Right is no longer a primarily religious movement - it’s one about cultural conservativism and nearly blind support for the GOP with few trappings of any real religiosity behind it.

Here’s what I believe to be the emerging narrative of the next several decades: the rise of atheism and their unbelievably high level of political engagement in recent electoral politics. Let me put it plainly: atheists are the most politically active group in American politics today and the Democrats (and some Republicans) ignore them at their own peril.

The data is clear and unequivocal on this point - no one gets involved in the political process to the level of the average atheist.

The Cooperative Election Study always asks a nice little battery of questions about political engagement. It’s phrased simply as: have you done any of the following activities in the previous month? Because the CES is fielded in the height of election season, if someone was going to get politically active, they would be doing so in October or November of an election year.

The group that is most likely to contact a public official? Atheists.

The group that puts up political signs at the highest rates? Atheists.

HALF of atheists report giving to a candidate or campaign in the 2020 presidential election cycle.

And while they don’t lead the pack when it comes to attending a local political meeting, they only trail Hindus by four percentage points.

For those curious, here’s a link to the 2022 results - they are bit muddier because it’s an off-year election. But the same general consensus is there: atheists do a lot of political stuff in an average year.

To simplify this analysis, I added all six activities into a single index. In this case, a six represents the highest level of engagement, while a zero represents someone who was not involved in politics at all surrounding the 2020 election.

Same conclusion as before: atheists take part in plenty of political actions - 1.52 to be exact. The overall average in the entire sample was .91 activities. The average atheist is about 65% more politically engaged than the average American.

Of course, political activity does not merely derive from religious affiliation (or lack thereof). There are myriad factors that make one more or less inclined to participate in the democratic process. For instance, giving to a candidate or campaign requires having some disposable income. Attending a local school board meeting is difficult for someone who works a night shift.

Atheists typically score very high on a number of SES factors including education and income, so maybe this is just a product of having lots of disposable income and free time. To test that I put together a simple regression model with a number of control variables that could potentially impact political participation. The dependent variable was total number of political activities over the previous month.

The results here are clear and unambiguous - atheists are more likely to engage in political activities at every level of education compared to Protestants, Catholics or Jews. For instance, an atheist with a high school diploma reports .7 activities, that’s at least .2 higher than any other religious group.

Political engagement is clearly related to education, though. The more educated one is, the more likely they are to be politically active. But at every step of the education scale, atheists lead the way. Sometimes those gaps are incredibly large. A college educated atheist engages in 1.7 activities, it’s only 1.05 activities for a college educated evangelical.

That’s the point I want to drive home in this post - people seem to believe that evangelicals are incredibly politically active. Their pastors are preaching sermons about which candidates to vote for, their churches have voter registration drives in the lobby, they encourage their members to attend pro-life protests and lobby legislators to pass anti-trans bills. And, they absolutely do that, but not nearly at the level that atheists are involved in the political process.

Just look at the gap in political donations in every election year between 2012 and 2022. There is no year in which the donation level of white evangelicals comes even close to that of the typical atheist. In fact, in an average election year, an atheist is twice as likely to donate money to a candidate or campaign compared to a white evangelical.

Of course, there’s something unspoken that may explain this discussion: white evangelicals are way more prevalent in the United States. According to the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, about 18% of adults in the United States are white evangelicals, while just over 6% identify as atheists. So, atheists would have to punch way above their weight to have the same impact in electoral politics.

But - here’s the thing: they clearly are. Here’s what I mean:

In the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, 4.7% of the entire sample were white evangelicals who reported donating to a candidate or campaign in the previous month. In comparison, 3.1% of the sample were atheists who made political donations. That gap is probably a lot smaller than many people would have guessed.

Assuming that atheists continue to give at a rate that is twice that of white evangelicals, here’s a very likely scenario going forward: atheists inch up by two or three percentage points, while white evangelical drop by two or three points. If that happens, then the number of atheists who give to candidates will be the same as the number of white evangelicals.

Of course, this doesn’t even consider agnostics, who also give at high rates and are at least six percent of the population, too. But it also leaves other conservative religious folks out of the conversation like White Catholics and Orthodox Jews.

The point remains however: atheists are a growing force in electoral politics. The days of white evangelical dominance are fading as the nones continue to rise. This shift will fundamentally change American religion and politics. And very few people seem to be paying attention.

[ Via: https://archive.today/WG9cR ]

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — Dianne Feinstein, the long-serving Jewish senator from California who rose to national prominence when she appeared before cameras with her hands stained with the blood of a murdered colleague, has died.

Feinstein, who had recently faced criticism for remaining in the Senate despite clearly failing health, was 90 years old. She died Thursday night, major news organizations are reporting.

Feinstein had served in the Senate for more than three decades as its longest-serving woman.

Feinstein became a national figure in 1978 when she was the president of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco and found the body of fellow supervisor Harvey Milk. 

Milk, who was Jewish, was the first openly gay elected official in the city’s history and was assassinated by a former colleague, Dan White. White also killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.

Feinstein announced the murders while her hands were still stained with Milk’s blood. She soon stepped in to replace Moscone, serving two terms as mayor.

“I remember it, actually, as if it was yesterday,” she recalled in 2008. “And it was one of the hardest moments, if not the hardest moment, of my life. It was a devastating moment. For San Francisco, it was a day of infamy.”

Feinstein’s father was a Jewish physician and her mother was a model who was born to an ethnically Jewish family but raised in the Russian Orthodox church. Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933, in San Francisco, attended a Roman Catholic school and said, when she was running for governor in 1990, that her parents left it up to her to decide which faith suited her. 

When she was 20, she picked Judaism, she said, “because I liked its simplicity and directness.” She was twice widowed and once divorced; all three of her husbands were Jewish.

The trauma of the double murder propelled her to become an outspoken advocate for gun control, a cause she took with her into the Senate, when she won a special election in 1992 to replace Sen. Pete Wilson, a Republican who had defeated Feinstein in the 1990 election for governor. 

That election cycle became known as the Year of the Woman. Feinstein and three other newly elected women senators tripled the number of women in the Senate from two to six. One was Barbara Boxer, who, like Feinstein, was a Jewish Democrat from California. 

Record numbers of women ran for office, spurred in part by the humiliating treatment Anita Hill got in the Senate the year previous when she testified about the sexual harassment she allegedly endured while employed with Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court nominee. 

Hill’s treatment helped galvanize Feinstein’s decision to run for the Senate. During the 2018 hearings for another Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual wrongdoing, Brett Kavanaugh, Feinstein recalled coming across a crowd of people watching the Thomas hearings at a TV in an airport in 1991, a year before her election. 

Not a lot had changed, she lamented. “How women are treated in the United States, with this kind of concern, is really wanting a lot of reform,” she said during the Kavanaugh hearings.

With Boxer and Feinstein, California had a two-Jewish women representation in the body until 2017, and the effects of the Year of the Women were long lasting. 

“I would be proud to carry on just a portion of their legacy,” Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has signaled his intention to run for Feinstein’s seat, said in February when Feinstein announced she would not run for another term, regarding Feinstein and Boxer. Referring to a traditional Jewish imperative to repair the world, he added, “I would love to bring that passion for tikkun olam with me to the U.S. Senate.”

Laws long on the liberal wish list were suddenly ripe for passage, among them an assault weapons ban that Feinstein took the lead in passing in 1994. It lapsed after 10 years, and Feinstein since 2004 persistently, and unsuccessfully, sought to reinstate the ban.

Also in 1994, Feinstein joined then-Sen. Joe Biden in passing the Violence Against Women Act. When it lapsed in 2019, Feinstein led the charge to reauthorize it, but faced conservative resistance because the reauthorization bill added protections for LGBTQ partners and sought to close the  “boyfriend loophole,” extending restrictions on gun ownership to people who had abused partners to whom they were not married.

It took until 2022 for Feinstein to overcome resistance and reauthorize the Act. It was a compromise: The LGBTQ protections remained in, but the boyfriend loophole was out; Feinstein was unable to overcome gun lobby resistance.

“This is a major advancement for protecting women from domestic violence and sexual assault – a tragedy faced by one in three women in this country,” Feinstein said then in a statement. President Biden, its original author, signed the reauthorization into law.

Feinstein stood apart from her liberal cohort in some respects. Her best known split with liberals was her championing the death penalty until 2018, when she said during her campaign for reelection that its unfair application had finally changed her mind.  

Her enthusiasm for law and order was triggered when a far left group, the New World Liberation Front, detonated a bomb planted in a flower box outside her home in 1976, when she was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, part of a terrorist campaign targeting city leaders.

As outraged as she was at the easy access to guns that brought about the murder of Milk and Moscone, she was also furious that White got away with a manslaughter conviction by claiming he had been depressed. The tactic became known as the “Twinkie defense,” as a defense psychiatrist testified that junk food had contributed to White’s depression.

“Yes, I support the death penalty,” she said in 1990 when she was running for California governor, earning boos at a Democratic convention. “It is an issue that cannot be fudged or hedged.” She won the primary but lost to Wilson. 

The episode displayed her political chops: She used footage of the boos in political ads in the general election for governor, reinforcing her image as a moderate and helping to propel her to the Senate in 1992. She managed to preserve the seat in 1994, her first full term election, a year that was otherwise disastrous for Democrats.

In 2004, she feuded with Kamala Harris, then the San Francisco District Attorney and now the vice president, when she learned at the funeral of a slain police officer that Harris opposed the death penalty for his killer. Feinstein said then she would not have endorsed Harris for the district attorney job had she known of her opposition to the death penalty. (The feud didn’t last; Feinstein and Boxer endorsed Harris in her 2016 Senate run to replace Boxer, key nods that helped propel Harris to victory.)

Feinstein was for years a centrist on Israel, allied with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, although she was a sharp critic of the country’s treatment of non-Orthodox Jews. In 1986, as mayor, she expanded commercial ties with San Francisco’s sister city, Haifa. It was  her revulsion with deadly weapons that nudged her toward questioning Israel: She was appalled at Israel’s use of cluster bombs in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“What gives rise, in part, to my bill are recent developments in Lebanon over alleged use of cluster bombs by Israel,” she said in 2007, introducing legislation to restrict the sale of the weapons. 

Remarkably, Feinstein chose to promote her proposed cluster bomb ban that year at the Arab American Institute, an organization frequently at odds with the mainstream pro-Israel community. “We will get this job done,” she said at the time to applause.

Within a few years she was departing from pro-Israel orthodoxy in other areas: She opposed proposed Iran sanctions in 2014 because she feared the underlying legislation would draw the United States into a war on Israel’s behalf.

“Let me acknowledge Israel’s real, well-founded concerns that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten its very existence,” she said then on the Senate floor. “While I recognize and share Israel’s concern, we cannot let Israel determine when and where the U.S. goes to war.”

More recently, she championed renewed aid to the Palestinians, slashed to almost nothing by Trump and Republicans in Congress hostile to a Palestinian leadership they depict as bloodthirsty.

“Denying funding for clean water, health care and schools in the West Bank and Gaza won’t make us safer,” she said in 2019. “Instead it only emboldens extremist groups like Hamas and pushes peace further out of reach.”

Feinstein, who was the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 to 2017, also differed from her colleagues — particularly Ron Wyden, the Jewish Democrat from Oregon — in defending the intelligence community even after a welter of leaks toward the end of the 2000s revealed its abuses. 

She defended the intelligence agencies’ collection of American citizens’ metadata, the wealth of information that can track where a person is with whom they communicate and for how long, among other details. “It’s called protecting America,” Feinstein said in 2013, claiming the practice was routine.

As her party moved left, however, so did she; In 2014, as committee chairwoman, Feinstein declassified a report on the CIA’s use of torture after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, over the objections of President Barack Obama. In 2017, she said her decision in 2002 to be one of just five Senate Democrats to authorize the Iraq War would haunt her, in part because she bought into the false claims the intelligence community was peddling.

“It is the decision I regret most and I have to live with it,” she told author Gail Sheehy.

One factor nudging her to the left was the election in 2016 of Donald Trump as president. Her deep experience in matters of intelligence helped spur her outrage with the new president as she uncovered evidence ahead of the election that Russia was interfering.

“Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election,” she and Adam Schiff, a House California Jewish Democrat who is now running to replace her in the Senate, said in a headline-making statement just weeks before election day.

“At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election,” the statement said. “We can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians.”

Republican obfuscation about Russia’s interference helped push her over the edge, a close friend, Orville Schell, told Sheehy in 2017. “Trump injects an entirely new level of outrage,” he said. “Dianne is like the canary in the mine shaft. The last bastion of bridge building in the Senate may be giving up.”

On one issue LGBTQ rights, Feinstein always tracked to the left of her party; in the 1990s she was one of just 14 Democrats to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. She became a leader of a years-long effort to repeal the Act, which was successful in 2022.

In 2020, as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Feinstein drew outrage from fellow Democrats for her friendly questioning of Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court nominee Republicans rushed through to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal Jewish icon who had died just before an election that returned Democrats to the Senate majority. It didn’t help that she hugged the committee chairman, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, after the hearing.

That along with signs that Feinstein’s mental acuity was diminishing led her to step down as the top Democrat on the key committee. Reporting described her as engaged during meetings and telephone calls, and then, hours and even minutes later, not remembering the exchanges. In early 2023, she announced that she would not run again for election in 2024.

Feinstein is survived by her daughter, Katherine Anne Feinstein, a former judge, and a granddaughter.

[thribby]

Endless Ocean Luminous

I wrote this as a review on backloggd.com, and I figured I may as well post it here too.

It would take a lot of work to convince me that this game was not a hit piece to prove that smaller and older franchises are not viable.

I wrote some shit down below that I'm sure has been said elsewhere and better, but I already wrote it so I'm not deleting it. I'm gonna talk about something else that I'm speculating on.

Did they want this game to be good? Let's think about this. The Endless Ocean franchise hasn't had a game since 2009, then all of a sudden (13 years later) we hear there's gonna be a new game in a few months. That's exciting and surprising for fans of the series, like me. Can't wait (although, background alarm bells were already ringing for me [I never trusted the "roguelite map," Thanatos' model looks so bad, and I think the look of the characters is so much lamer than what we had in the last games, and all of that was shown in the first trailer]).

So next the game comes out, and it's got less features and mechanics than the previous games. How come? Were we running low on development time? I hope not, it'd already been over a decade since the last game, you may as well take your time with this one. Was it a problem with the budget? I REALLY hope not, as if that's true you are charging $50 for a game you didn't quite finish (also, Endless Ocean Blue World cost $30 back when it released in the US in 2010).

Alright, so I've given them the benefit of the doubt that the game did not run out of time or money to make sure Endless Ocean 3 had all of the bells and whistles from the first two games. Which leads me to the conclusion that they had simply never planned on making Endless Ocean Luminous as complex of a game as Endless Ocean 1 or 2. They had always planned on making less and selling it at a higher price.

Ok, why would they do that? Corporate greed following the general trend of seeking higher profits for less effort? Yeah, sure. But I also think that they wanted this game to do badly. Or at the very least, they don't particularly mind if it does.

So there's a simple way to group the people who play Endless Ocean Luminous into 2 categories: people who have played previous Endless Ocean games and people who are new to Endless Ocean games. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that people who have played previous Endless Ocean games are gonna be disappointed with this one more often than not. The Endless Ocean games are cult classics and here comes this new entry that doesn't even do as much. The aforementioned "cult" of these "cult classics" will not like that. Which means that the group of people who were most likely to buy this game is now a lot smaller.

As for the new players, you just need to win them over with the fun and engaging gameplay loop! But, oh wait. There are three things to do in this game. And you must do them hundreds of times. But, who knows, maybe enough of the new players will like the game anyway.

Ok, so really, how can I believe any of this? I think this game was sort of a test. If it was popular, cool, that means "less effort with higher price tags" can work and the executives can take that idea and run with it. If it fails, the execs get to go "ahh, we should've known! these old video game franchises are so risky, it's probably best that we just stick a couple of proven franchises and non-franchise IP's." And instead of a big variety of games being produced, we see less and less of these smaller franchises, and more individual games that get shuttered after one game, because "we tried doing sequels and reboots of games once before and everybody said it sucked!" Like how Netflix cancels shows ASAP.

I really just struggle to imagine that this game was made in good faith as an Endless Ocean game when it clearly does not compare well to the other Endless Ocean games.

Here's that shit I wrote back before I decided to just write my little conspiracy theory instead:

The first Endless Ocean in 14 years and it's so much less than either of its prequels (except for the price!). No more hub world in between dives. No more walking on small islands or beaches, or even poking your head above the water, because all of that would require designing and programming an entirely different kind of gameplay, and that's a whole lot of work so why bother? No more specifically and intentionally put together maps, now it's just generated! <-that's where I got fed up with talking about the lack of content and made my pivot

tumblr exclusive thoughts:

Yeah sure, it's just a chill lofi game to relax and swim to now, and it is good that we're not treating sharks as inherently dangerous. but like, how good of a defense is that when 1: the only thing keeping the evil killer shark thanatos from attacking you is the magic sea's water which makes him a pacifist and 2: we're already in a suspension of disbelief with how marine life works in general on account of all of these freshwater and arctic aquatic lifeforms congregating in the fucking tropics of the pacific ocean (not to mention the extinct animals)

It is nice to see some of the models got better but then they also made thanatos look so bad like so so bad oh my god why is he so lumpy why are his eyes bulging out like that????

what were we thinking?? why did we do this to him?

[popblank]

Lempicka at the Longacre Theatre, Part 2 (the recap/commentary continues, covering Act II; Part 1 is here):

Going into intermission, at my first viewing I was feeling a little uneasy that the critical reviews were more accurate than I had hoped. Yet it is hard for me to remember that feeling now, because on my second viewing all of the things that bothered me largely faded from notice. It makes me think maybe the information delivered in Act I was a little dense, and seeing the show again just made it all easier to process.

Once again, all of the spoilers:

There is a brief instrumental intro that brings us back from intermission and then the scene jumps directly to Tamara showing La Belle Rafaela to the Baron and Baroness for the first time. Both of them are awed and the Baroness (who has been a little snarky about Tamara’s work in her previous appearances) very sincerely praises the painting’s expression of “a woman’s eye, a woman’s desire” (at this, Tamara glances away) and asks, “who is she?”

“Oh, she’s just a model,” Tamara replies, too casually. The Baroness chooses to let that go but pointedly warns her of the dangers of being an outsider (specifically: being Jewish, and an unconventional woman) in the current political climate.

Marinetti saunters in to explain to the audience how “Pari Will Always Be Pari,” the city stubbornly holding onto its comforts and illusions even as the world goes through more disruptions and the shadow of the Great War lingers. The song’s timeline covers roughly 1927 (the year of La Belle Rafaela) to 1933 (the Reichstag fire and Nazis winning a plurality of votes and forming a majority governing coalition in Germany). Tamara’s career is moving quickly and after showing La Musicienne to a gallery owner, she wrangles her first solo show. In order to get enough pieces to do so, she paints furiously in a cocaine-fueled frenzy (courtesy of Suzy, who is meanwhile opening her own place and commissions a portrait). The Baroness’s warning—and Tamara’s past experience with political upheaval—has clearly stuck with her because even as she is driving toward this big career milestone, there is a undercurrent of anxiety and she’s making backup plans (“Paintings can be turned to money/Money can be turned to jewelry/In case we have to leave in the middle of the night/In case, in case, in case, in case”). I really like how the song represents this block of time, interspersed with fragmented moments of Kizette offering her coffee several times (and obliquely revealing that Tadeusz is having an affair), the Baron and Baroness discussing Hitler’s rise to power, and her continuing relationship with Rafaela.

Leading into Tamara’s solo show, Marinetti pulls out a copy of Die Dame with the cover image of Tamara in a Green Bugatti. He narrates what sounds like a press-release version of Tamara’s rising-star status in the art world (visually suggested in some points to be directly from the magazine copy, though I can’t verify this) as Tamara strides out and takes a central place among the “new women” of Paris, right where she sang of wanting to be years before. I will note that Tamara’s outfits now are slightly more assertive– she spends most of Act I in conservative blue wrap dresses, but in Act II switches to mostly dark skirts/pants and low-cut blouses that tend to suggest “businesswoman formal with a dash of style.” The angular green top that she wears for her solo show is the loudest thing she wears (other than the Old Tamara coat); I’m not sure if I liked it, but congrats to Eden Espinosa for wearing it well.

At the show, Marinetti is quite impressed with Tamara’s work (especially Four Nudes, because he's kind of a lech) but makes a comment speculating about decadence before the fall, which seems to make Tamara uncomfortable and she takes her leave. As usual he is there to puncture our illusions and I think the implication is that in this case Tamara feels that fall coming but doesn’t want to see it. (If this is actually meant to be 1933 or so, then the Great Depression should be having an impact on Europe and its politics, even on the people who are wealthy enough to buy art. People who are afraid of losing what they have can go to extreme measures to try to keep it.)

Marinetti steps forward to deliver the final section of “Pari Will Always Be Pari” which seems like the hard-realist culmination of what he began singing about in “Perfection”—the background projections show images of industrial and military mobilization, with masses of ground vehicles, planes, and marching soldiers. (I seem to remember this was what was shown in the La Jolla production during the last minute or so of “Perfection”—“the skies filling up with machines”—but I could be mistaken.) 

I suspect this song in particular was the one the critics at Vulture had in mind when they shouted out George Abud in their faux-Tonys article. It changed a little bit from what I remember in La Jolla (there was one refrain of “we’ve come through the Great War'' that I think Tamara sang that is no longer there, and the miming is basically covered by Marinetti and the ensemble), but overall I think it’s very effective and works better to set the scene and tone in Act 2 than “Our Time” did in Act 1.

After the success of her show, Tamara is right back to work (on Adam and Eve) in her new apartment on the Rue Méchain. She’s wearing a half-untucked, oversized white shirt in flowing satin-y fabric, which seems like an impractical outfit for painting in (but hey that’s what I thought about painting in her wedding dress too). Tadeusz comes in late at night (a bit drunk again), and they jab at each other about gender roles and their respective affairs with women after Tamara spots lipstick on his face. She asks how it is any different if she sleeps with another woman vs. if he does, and he has no answer to that—and they both laugh together ironically, as they are on relatively even footing here with each other and they recognize it. He says he has an offer for a meaningful job in Poland and seems really excited at the opportunity for them both to get out of Paris. As the audience, we heard her decide at least a decade ago (during “Paris”) that this was the city for her, suggesting that even though they have been together so long, he really doesn't understand what she wants, especially now with her own new opportunities on the horizon. Yet it’s remarkably normal from a modern perspective that despite everything that they’ve gone through together, the thing that really drives the wedge between them is their incompatible career goals. (It also didn’t occur to me until afterward, but being an ethnically Jewish, non-heterosexual woman in Poland in the 1930s would be extremely not good, even if she could reasonably pass.) They reaffirm their loyalty to each other, but the underlying conflict has not been resolved at all.

The version of this song from La Jolla didn’t make much of an impression on me (probably because I thought Tadeusz was boring), but I found Tamara and Tadeusz and their relationship way more interesting in this production and think the show was stronger for it. The show is still pretty emotionally shaded in favor of Tamara/Rafaela, but I feel like I got a much better understanding of why Tamara and Tadeusz do (and don’t) work as a couple in this version. They are both rather possessive of each other but have very different career and life goals. 

Another thing that’s interesting to me in "New Woman" is the way they talk about Tamara’s relationship with Rafaela – not in terms of religion-based morality or disgust, which is what I am more accustomed to hearing in the United States. Instead it’s more about a woman “who wants to be a man,” “taking a man’s place in the world” – essentially, rigidly gendered ideas about what a woman can and can’t do and how that plays into status and power. Sexism and homophobia, two sides of the same coin (of course it’s not that hard to cover up one form of bigotry with another more socially-acceptable one).

So after “New Woman” Tamara is again back to work on Adam and Eve, and is considering the apple when Rafaela struts in (eating an apple) and implores Tamara to get dressed for whatever they’re doing next. She is wearing a striking greenish-gold gown and looks like a mythological goddess. The scene quickly changes over to Le Monocle, Suzy’s new underground lesbian club where she (and others) can be queerly outrageous and outrageously queer to their hearts’ content. She sings “Women” and we meet a few real-life figures (including the Duchess de la Salle and Nancy Cunard) and Tamara is treated as quite a celebrity when she arrives. There was a fun Variety interview with Amber Iman and Eden Espinosa where toward the end Eden says she loves being in “Women” because they are there with Natalie Joy Johnson and the ensemble but are not really the center of attention. From what I remember they spend the latter part of the song standing around holding each other, singing backing vocals, and/or making out in the background. This was a number where I found the costumes a little bit of a distraction without clear purpose; the ensemble are mostly in their corsets and whatnot, except for a few like the Duchess who are in more masculine-styled clothing. There is a moment as the song is ending when Nancy and Frank/Francine put on long coats over their regular costumes and suddenly they are just a rich, elegant, yet extremely stylized couple that look like they could have stepped out of one of Tamara's paintings. I would have liked to see a little more of that.

After “Women” they go back to Tamara’s studio and Rafaela talks about wanting to go to Tamara’s next art exhibition, but for the first time in the show Tamara is openly concerned that any public acknowledgment that Rafaela even exists would raise questions about their relationship and harm her career (recall her priorities). I assume we’re supposed to think that this has been brewing at least since the Baroness first brought it up years ago, but it still seems a little abrupt to me. I get that her fear is real and realistic, but within the show it doesn’t feel like she’s been very careful at all until now; the Baroness (who granted is more perceptive than most) saw right through her with one look at La Belle Rafaela. Anyway, Tamara assures Rafaela that she can take care of her and keep her safe. Rafaela takes off her fancy gown, picks up a white shirt that has been discarded on the bed and puts it on as she says doubtfully, “you sound like a man.” I believe it is supposed to be Tamara’s shirt that she was wearing in the “New Woman” scene before she had to change into her Monocle outfit. So even as Rafaela is expressing this skepticism she is doing this very couple-y thing. Rafaela draws Tamara into a discussion about Tamara's bracelets which is a little bit of a tease and a little bit of a test from Rafaela’s side, but which Tamara takes very seriously, advising her on how best to sell the stones to survive and telling Rafaela that she loves her. Rafaela is taken aback by this earnestness and starts thinking she might “Stay” after all. I really liked the setup of “Stay” a lot — it starts with both Rafaela and Tamara together and while Rafaela sings out loud to her at first (with Tamara gazing adoringly while kneeling at her feet, gazing adoringly from the bed, gazing adoringly standing next to her, etc.) it turns into a introspective moment and a private expression of her inner thoughts even while Tamara is still present in the scene (I think Tamara exits the stage around the time Rafaela sings “the way you look at me”).

Rafaela is still sitting on the bed when Kizette appears, looking weird and intense and oddly not seeming that much older than she was in Act I. Kizette is clearly jealous that Tamara’s attention has turned from her to Rafaela and Rafaela reacts with understandable skepticism to her peculiar attempts at making conversation, but it seems like Kizette does successfully plant the seed that Tamara may be manipulating Rafaela for her own ends.

After we have seen her obsessively work on the details over multiple songs, Tamara finally proclaims her painting Adam and Eve before the 1937 International Exposition. The triumphant moment where she sings, “I am Adam, face buried in her hair/I am Eve, leaning into his arm/I am the apple in her hand,” etc. really works for me. Since it’s an interstitial not connected to any complete songs, it may not be the sort of thing that would get included in a cast recording, but I kind of wish it would be. There is a neat video that Amber Iman posted where this part is audible in the background while she leaps off a moving platform in the dark for the quick change into her Exposition outfit.

The stage opens up again at the International Exposition, with Rafaela in a full-length bright pink coat. It is not normally what one would consider something to wear when going incognito, except that amusingly, the background lighting for the Exposition is also a glowing shade of pink. So when Kizette drags her father to the expo, he ends up being this slash of gray against a wall of pink which kind of makes him look washed-out. Rafaela and Tadeusz meet for the first time in front of Adam and Eve and sing “What She Sees,” which was fantastic. Amber Iman and Andrew Samonsky have perfected their mutually antagonistic energy and I could not look away. And as before, they sound amazing together. With her Rafaela hair and heels, Amber Iman ends up being nearly the same height as Andrew Samonsky so they also look physically well-matched as they face off. In the song Rafaela points out that she makes Tamara feel alive, while Tadeusz points out that Tamara will do what she needs to for survival – and they are both correct.

Then Kizette pulls in her mother, having successfully manipulated all of the players into place (“Don’t act so surprised, little snake!” says Rafaela). Tamara is in a near-panic about Rafaela’s presence when the Baron and Baroness walk in but she quickly puts up a pleasant façade. After some painfully dull rich-person banter, Rafaela interjects (and rescues all of us from a discussion about French tailoring), but even this awkward moment is interrupted by Marinetti. Suddenly the social situation pales in significance compared to the looming threats of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Fascist Italy (personified by Marinetti himself) at the show. Marinetti notes the similarities between the monumental, grandiose art of the Nazis and Soviets but here also draws the comparison to aristocracy, specifically Tamara’s outsized depictions of humanity. Aristocrats weren’t part of Marinetti’s line in La Jolla and I think it lands better without it, but it is interesting to suggest Tamara’s perspective is complicit with those movements. It’s sort of a callback to the Baroness’s question from the first group show in Act I about whether new forms of avant-garde art can lead to dehumanization. But in this case, the use of highly idealized human forms reflects a movement toward dehumanization where anything that doesn’t match the ideal can be discarded or destroyed. Is Tamara unintentionally or unconsciously buying into that?

Their business is unfinished but the others make hasty exits. Rafaela at first seems contrite, saying “I don’t know what came over me,” but Tamara interrupts with “not now, I’ll see you tonight.” It’s a small thing in a stressful situation, but this unthinking dismissal comes at the end of a whole string of events where it seems like Tamara just wants Rafaela to disappear. The way Amber Iman delivers the line, “Oh, you think so?” is subtle, but you can feel the turn in their relationship happening in that moment. Marinetti then tells Tamara flat-out that he can see her ambition to create a lasting legacy—“I know you want it. It’s all over your face”—and tells her that she’ll never get the recognition she hungers for if people know about her and Rafaela (and people do already know about them).

Now Tamara’s mind is spinning in all directions as she tries to figure out what to do next while the shadows everywhere seem to be full of lurking Fascists. In “Here It Comes” she’s alternately trying to plot out how to use her bracelets to get papers for herself and her family to escape, or how to fight back, or denying anything bad could happen, then getting out with Rafaela, and there are scattered musical quotes from earlier songs. Meanwhile the word “Lebensraum” (in a giant Germanic font) repeatedly scrolls down the projected background. I think I see what they were going for – it’s messy and disjointed to reflect her state of mind, and shows the pressure she’s under going into “Speed.” But it was hard for me to appreciate because I couldn't tell how much of that disjointedness was intentional, and the song contains some of my least favorite lyrics in the score (one particular line that just clanks to me is “here it is, here it comes/staring down the barrel of a gun”). Overall I wasn't a big fan of this song though it does have some good moments, especially Tamara’s bracelet-centric contingency plans.

From there we go to “Speed.” Part 1 is Tamara and Tadeusz in the apartment, and finally, finally their unresolved conflicts are brought into the open. They don’t want the same things, don’t understand what the other person wants, and to Tamara’s utter shock, he wants to leave her for someone else. “Your hypocrisy is BREATHTAKING,” he says, which is fair. Tamara plays her last, most devastating card, revealing what she did to get him out of prison (and she is fierce in doing so) - his response is anguished, including a big “NOOOOOOOOO” which is both very impressive because Andrew Samonsky sounds terrific, but also slightly funny for its sheer drama. But at this point, it seems like there can be no going back for the two of them. I don’t know if Tamara thought telling him this would spur him to make a similarly self-sacrificing choice, but he has not seemed like that type of person thus far in the show. So in the end it seems like it can only cause a pain and guilt that makes it harder for them to be together.

Next Tamara runs to find Rafaela, but Rafaela seems to have been spending this time seriously reconsidering whether anything in their relationship was real, or if she was "just a model," a pretty thing for Tamara to display when she felt like it and hide when she didn’t. Like Kizette, Rafaela wonders if Tamara ever truly saw her, and everything Tamara tries to explain or offer from her privileged and rather materialistic perspective just makes things worse. Tamara is just about beside herself with the fear that she is losing Rafaela, but even in the face of Rafaela’s pleas to “give back my heart, give back my soul,” and to be with her openly, Tamara is steadfastly and regretfully unwilling to give up any more of herself to be with Rafaela. It’s an interesting contrast with Tamara's argument with Tadeusz. That conversation seemed more like: I need you to do this – I did this for you – you need to do this for me. With Rafaela it seems like, I feel too much for you – why can’t you feel this way for me? Amber Iman plays this scene so well – she has to move from frustration and anger to heartbreak to hope and back, and she somehow brings the audience along with her so they understand at every step, and it doesn't seem forced or over-performed.

The scene expands to include Marinetti and both Rafaela and Tadeusz. The song is briefly a quartet as Tamara is caught in between as both of them decide that they can’t continue in their relationships (Rafaela calls Tamara a coward, Tadeusz says it’s over), and as she is absorbing this set of emotional blows in the foreground and slowly sinking to the ground in despair, Marinetti and his gang of thugs deliver an ultimatum to Suzy at Le Monocle, where they proceed to raid the club and attack the patrons in a slow-motion cascade of violence, to the music of “Perfection.” Tamara is now on the ground facing away from the audience and seems to be watching the best parts of her life collapsing into ruins. There is a moment here where one of the attackers flips the mirrored Monocle sign to reveal a broken, shattered version, and as it rotates it catches the stage lighting, sending beams of light into parts of the audience, mostly off to house right. I don’t know if that was intentional but it was still a striking visual.

As the destruction fades to black the Baroness suddenly cuts in singing, “It’s the end of time!” sounding like a trumpet of the apocalypse. She has arrived for a scheduled portrait sitting, but Tamara is still listlessly sitting on the ground and her left wrist is now wrapped in a bandage. (Presumably she did this while turned away from the audience, though I wonder where she got the bandage. Maybe it was hidden in her blouse?) The Baroness notices this in the way that she notices many things, and Tamara only makes a halfhearted attempt to lie before answering honestly about her attempt at suicide.

I didn’t really understand what this song was trying to do in La Jolla, but after seeing this production it makes much more sense to me. I originally thought it depended on the audience having an emotional investment in the Baroness herself (though I do like her in this production), but the song is as much about Tamara finding a way to go on with her life as it is about the Baroness wanting a last portrait for her husband to remember her “Just This Way” before she dies of her unspecified illness. And the Baroness manages to do this in an impressively effective way: first she’s directive, firmly telling Tamara to get off the floor and paint; then she turns to the sort of details Tamara is comfortable and familiar with, like the light, the pose, the form, and the artist’s perspective; and then she essentially reminds Tamara of her remaining strong social ties and corrals Tamara into fulfilling the obligation the Baroness has just laid upon her to take the Baron out of Paris. At the end of the song, the Baroness exits the stage, walking by the Baron in passing and giving him a brief, familiar touch in acknowledgement. 

Tamara has to start over once again, this time “In The Blasted California Sun.”  She puts on her Old Tamara coat and builds a life with the Baron, but the vitality has gone out of her. The people, the colors, the sky, the light – none of it can compare to what she once had. Eventually the Baron dies as well (and Kizette is nowhere to be seen). Her work – forgotten, her people – gone. At the end, she sits on the bench next to her easel, alone. It is again Los Angeles, 1975.

Alone, Tamara asks, what happened to you? A vision of Rafaela appears (wearing the original outfit from “Don’t Bet Your Heart”) but physically she only leans on the bench and doesn’t really converse face to face, so it is clearer that she is Tamara’s vision rather than a corporeal figure. It is a small thing that makes the scene more understandable than it was in La Jolla. But her answer to Tamara’s question is inconclusive, and Tamara has to live with the regret of her choices and the uncertainty of never knowing. Rafaela: “That’s what it means to be haunted.”

But as Tamara starts to descend further into self-recrimination, Rafaela points out that the women of the present are still her women, the ones carrying on her legacy, as we see several women in 1970s clothing posing behind the scrim. Rafaela says they are taking over the world, and they move with power, “like motorcars.”

Tamara starts to tentatively reprise “Woman Is,” when suddenly an auctioneer and art collector enter the stage and images of Tamara’s paintings drop from the rafters. Tamara’s paintings have been rediscovered and are being appreciated and understood by a whole new audience – and yet it is too much, and this new world is moving too fast. She desperately wishes that everything would stop to let her capture the moment. When she says this, it’s Rafaela who stops beside her. This pause with Rafaela once again seems to give her the perspective she needs in order to make sense of everything. The women circle past her as she acknowledges each of them, and they and everyone else in the cast array themselves across the set. Tamara turns to watch as everyone who has mattered in her life sings the finale. At the end, she turns back to the audience with her closing words: “We do not control the world. We control one flat rectangle of canvas at a time.”

Below, a photo from the bows at the Saturday 5/18 evening show:

[mikeywayarchive]

MCR’s Mikey Way: “I hope that we’re the band that get to pass the torch”

My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way tells us about his love for the Fender Jazz bass, how he cut his teeth on Weezer’s Blue Album, and more

by Tamzin Kraftman

June 29, 2023

Full interview under the cut:

“It’s crazy to think about how much time has gone by since the last one!” says Mikey Way, reflecting upon his newest Fender signature Jazz bass which has arrived 11 years after his first foray into signature instruments. “It seems like just two years ago. You don’t realise how quick a decade shoots by.”

The My Chemical Romance and Electric Century bassist knows all too well how much can happen in that timeframe. The breakup of a band; the formation of a new one; reuniting with the old band; a sold-out world tour. Not to mention a global pandemic, a marriage and two children.

Things have also gone a little more upmarket since that silver-finished first signature bass – a Squier Mustang. This time, perhaps reflecting My Chem’s status as emo aristocracy since their surprise 2019 reunion, it’s a full Fender Jazz Bass, which is handy as Way believes his “approach to the signature bass has definitely shifted”, but one thing has clearly stayed the same. He sure does love glitter.

Getting Into Gear

You can just tell sitting across from the computer screen in his Nashville home that Way’s love for the bass and all its technicality, is monumental. After the disbanding of My Chemical Romance in 2013, Way says he found his previous signature Mustang, a “little too confining”, especially due to the short-scale neck. It was an experience that brought him back to the Jazz – an instrument he says solidified his love for the bass back in 2000. “I started checking out what Fender had to offer,” he admits. “My first kind of experience with a real instrument was a Fender Strat, so from that being my jumping on point, it’s why I’m kind of partial to Fender”.

As he explains, this then led to a conversation with Head of Signature Artists at Fender, Michael Shulz, who sent him a Fender Jazz bass, and he “never went back since”.

“The reason I love the Jazz Bass is the neck,” he clarifies. “Especially on my signature model I was very clear that we had a neck that started out thin that got wider as it got to the bottom, a C neck! As far as comfortability and speed, I kind of dig it, it’s just kind of personal preference but I like the thinner neck.

“I think the alder body, I love the way it feels, I love the shape and it’s great in keeping a balanced tone – mids, highs, it covers all of it. Earlier on in my career I’ve tried different basses but it always felt a little alien to me. I always thought, this doesn’t feel right, that doesn’t feel right, but it’s a real testament to Fender. It’s what I’ve always known and loved, and it’s what I’ve always gravitated towards.

“The people at Fender really will build me whatever I want. They have helped me made a couple basses throughout the years, and I’ve been able to share with everyone which doesn’t go unnoticed on me how fortunate I am! When you think about how many bass players there are in the world, being chosen to have a limited edition is a special kind of honour”.

A special kind of honour it certainly is, and Way seems adamant that this collaborative approach is needed when trying to create the specific MCR sound.

“I like something to sound even, but it has to sound big, that’s the hallmark of the MCR tone. It can’t be too clean, can’t be too growly, it’s got to hit you just right, it’s hard to explain it. Which brings me to the signature edition. Using the 70s Jazz Bass pickups, they needed to be in there because that’s as close as I could probably get to the MCR tone”.

However, it is clearly not just the guitar that has allowed him to develop and hone this “big” sound over the years. Instead, he gives much of the credit to Rob Cavallo, American record producer whose large repertoire includes the likes of Green Day’s American Idiot, Goo Goo Dolls’ Dizzy Up The Girl, and of course My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade. It was when the band were recording their third album, Danger Days, that Cavello encouraged the bassist to use a Klon Centaur in his tih.

“I tried it and from that moment on, it kind of puts this tone and a veil on your instrument where it’s kind of an overdrive, kind of a compressor. It creates a nice basis for a tone and then you can go to your head and tweak it.”

“James Bowman from Against Me! has a pedal company called Bowman Audio Endeavours, and he makes this Bowman and it’s pretty close to the Centaur [The Bowman Overdrive – Ed],” he continues. “That’s also a favourite pedal of mine, because I don’t always want to bring the Centaur on the road with me because it is rare and expensive, and James’ is just as good for my purposes. He has a tonne of different pedals that my bass tech Joe tries to incorporate into my rig sometimes, we tweak everything together. However, the Overdrive is probably my favourite.”

The Foundations of Way

My Chemical Romance was, and still is a band that has carved out an individual path. Despite the Way brothers being known for realising their passion while watching the Smashing Pumpkins headline Madison Square Garden in the mid 90s, MCR has made one thing clear: they are a sound you have never heard before, and never will again.

“I think our sound was really developed when we thought about a band that we wish existed,” says Way. “We took everything we loved about our favourite stuff and without aping anything we just tried to make it our own. I feel like that’s how we ended up with the sound of MCR.

“You know from ground zero it was like, what if Morrissey sang for Iron Maiden? We kind of dreamt up a sound and I feel like we nailed the sound that we set out to create,” he continues, “and I think it ended up unique, and I don’t think you can listen to MCR and think ‘oh they’re just ripping off x, y or z’. I think we’ve incorporated all our inspirations into our DNA, and we’re able to have an organic natural sound.”

Regardless of MCR’s authenticity as a band, Way is not shy in admitting who the icons are that allowed him to find his passion in music. Aside from the Pumpkins, of course, he notes Paul Di’Anno from Iron Maiden, and New Order’s Peter Hook among those who inspired him to pick up the bass.

“I still am a big Weezer fan, Matt Sharp especially,” the bassist says. “I love Micky Welsh, but Matt Sharp was very important to me when I was younger. When I was younger and first playing the bass guitar, for me, Weezer was so prominent, especially with the Blue Album. I loved how he played, and I love how much fun he had up there. He owned it and I respect that so much.”

There’s clearly quite a dichotomy between the world of Mikey Way, who has a deep love for alt-rock, and the “aggressive poppy punk with hints of hardcore” of My Chemical Romance.

“I cut my teeth on that album,” he bluntly says. “Once I joined MCR it was this different world. The New Jersey scene around me, it was a lot faster and a lot more aggressive so I had to follow suit and for someone who came from the world of trying to play like you’re in The Smashing Pumpkins, and then you’re going into this world where you’re playing with American Nightmare and the Get Up Kids, so I think that’s why my bass playing is like it is, because I went from this alt-rock world, to this punk world. It gave me a good range.”

Finding the Power to Inspire

Despite being admittedly “shy by nature”, Way is determined to show younger bassists how to get to his position, just like The Smashing Pumpkins did for him.

“I think everyone in the world starts out aping something,” the bassist admits. “You look at the legends, The Beatles. They were copying their favourite R&B bands and doo wap. It’s the same thing with Rock n Roll, you’re aping and then eventually those training wheels fall off.

“I remember nudging my brother, during the Smashing Pumpkins concert at Madison Square Garden, and saying this is what we’re going to be doing when we’re older, we’re going to be playing this place especially, but this is what we’re going to be doing. He said to me “maybe you’re right”. It’s just this thing where we’ve had this realisation and I feel like that’s what music does to people, it possesses you almost.

“For me there are bands that got me to pick up an instrument,” he continues, “and I hope that we’re the band that get to pass the torch. I want to inspire kids to say, “that’s what I want to do for a living. It’s a cool power to have.”

[jcmarchi]

The Sequence Radar #516: NVIDIA’s AI Hardware and Software Synergies are Getting Scary Good

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-sequence-radar-516-nvidias-ai-hardware-and-software-synergies-are-getting-scary-good/

The Sequence Radar #516: NVIDIA’s AI Hardware and Software Synergies are Getting Scary Good

The announcements at GTC showcased covered both AI chips and models.

Created Using Midjourney

Next Week in The Sequence:

We do a summary of our series about RAG. The opinion edition discusses whether NVIDIA is the best VC in AI. The engineering installement explores a new AI framework. The research edition explores the amazing Search-R1 model.

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📝 Editorial: NVIDIA’s AI Hardware and Software Synergies are Getting Scary Good

NVIDIA’s GTC never disappoints. This year’s announcements covered everything from powerhouse GPUs to sleek open-source software, forming a two-pronged strategy that’s all about speed, scale, and smarter AI. With hardware like Blackwell Ultra and Rubin, and tools like Llama Nemotron and Dynamo, NVIDIA is rewriting what’s possible for AI development.

Let’s start with the hardware. The Blackwell Ultra AI Factory Platform is NVIDIA’s latest rack-scale beast, packing 72 Blackwell Ultra GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs. It’s 1.5x faster than the previous gen and tailor-made for agentic AI workloads—think AI agents doing real reasoning, not just autocomplete.

Then there’s the long game. Jensen Huang introduced the upcoming Rubin Ultra NVL576 platform, coming in late 2027, which will link up 576 Rubin GPUs using HBM4 memory and the next-gen NVLink interconnect. Before that, in late 2026, we’ll see the Vera Rubin NVL144 platform, with 144 Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs hitting 3.6 exaflops of FP4 inference—over 3x faster than Blackwell Ultra. NVIDIA’s clearly gearing up for the huge compute demands of next-gen reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1.

On the software side, NVIDIA launched the Llama Nemotron family—open-source reasoning models designed to be way more accurate (20% better) and way faster (5x speed boost) than standard Llama models. Whether you’re building math solvers, code generators, or AI copilots, Nemotron comes in Nano, Super, and Ultra versions to fit different needs. Big names are already onboard. Microsoft’s integrating these models into Azure AI Foundry, and SAP’s adding them to its Joule copilot. These aren’t just nice-to-have tools—they’re key to building a workforce of AI agents that can actually solve problems on their own.

Enter Dynamo, NVIDIA’s new open-source inference framework. It’s all about squeezing maximum performance from your GPUs. With smart scheduling and separate prefill/decode stages, Dynamo helps Blackwell hardware handle up to 30x more requests, all while cutting latency and costs.

This is especially important for today’s large-scale reasoning models, which chew through tons of tokens per query. Dynamo makes sure all that GPU horsepower isn’t going to waste. While Blackwell is today’s star, the Rubin architecture is next in line. Launching late 2026, the Vera Rubin GPU and its 88-core Vera CPU are set to deliver 50 petaflops of inference—2.5x Blackwell’s output. Rubin Ultra scales that to 576 GPUs per rack.

Looking even further ahead, NVIDIA teased the Feynman architecture (arriving in 2028), which will take things up another notch with photonics-enhanced designs. With a new GPU family dropping every two years, NVIDIA’s not just moving fast—it’s setting the pace.

The real story here is synergy. Blackwell and Rubin bring the power. Nemotron and Dynamo help you use it smartly. This combo is exactly what enterprises need as they move toward AI factories—data centers built from the ground up for AI-driven workflows. GTC 2025 wasn’t just a product showcase—it was a blueprint for the next decade of AI. With open models like Nemotron, deployment tools like Dynamo, and next-gen platforms like Rubin and Feynman, NVIDIA’s making it easier than ever to build smart, scalable AI. The future of computing isn’t just fast—it’s intelligent. And NVIDIA’s making sure everyone—from startups to hyperscalers—has the tools to keep up.

🔎 AI Research

Synthetic Data and Differential Privacy

In the paper“Private prediction for large-scale synthetic text generation“ researchers from Google present an approach for generating differentially private synthetic text using large language models via private prediction. Their method achieves the generation of thousands of high-quality synthetic data points, a significant increase compared to previous work in this paradigm, through improvements in privacy analysis, private selection mechanisms, and a novel use of public predictions.

KBLAM

In the paper “KBLAM: KNOWLEDGE BASE AUGMENTED LANGUAGE MODEL” Microsoft Research propose KBLAM, a new method for augmenting large language models with external knowledge from a knowledge base. KBLAM transforms knowledge triples into continuous key-value vector pairs and integrates them into LLMs using a specialized rectangular attention mechanism, differing from RAG by not requiring a separate retrieval module and offering efficient scaling with the knowledge base size.

Search-R1

In the paper “Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learning” researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign introduce SEARCH-R1, a novel reinforcement learning framework that enables large language models to interleave self-reasoning with real-time search engine interactions. This framework optimizes LLM rollouts with multi-turn search, utilizing retrieved token masking for stable RL training and a simple outcome-based reward function, demonstrating significant performance improvements on various question-answering datasets.

Cosmos-Reason1

In the paper“Cosmos-Reason1: From Physical Common Sense To Embodied Reasoning” researchers from NVIDIA present Cosmos-Reason1, a family of multimodal large language models specialized in understanding and reasoning about the physical world. The development involved defining ontologies for physical common sense and embodied reasoning, creating corresponding benchmarks, and training models through vision pre-training, supervised fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning to enhance their capabilities in intuitive physics and embodied tasks.

Expert Race

This paper,“Expert Race: A Flexible Routing Strategy for Scaling Diffusion Transformer with Mixture of Experts”, presents additional results on the ImageNet 256×256 dataset by researchers who trained a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model called Expert Race, building upon the DiT architecture. The results show that their MoE model achieves better performance and faster convergence compared to a vanilla DiT model with a similar number of activated parameters, using a larger batch size and a specific training protocol.

RL in Small LLMs

In the paper “Reinforcement Learning for Reasoning in Small LLMs: What Works and What Doesn’t” AI researchers investigate the use of reinforcement learning to improve reasoning in a small (1.5 billion parameter) language model under strict computational constraints. By adapting the GRPO algorithm and using a curated mathematical reasoning dataset, they demonstrated significant reasoning gains on benchmarks with minimal data and cost, highlighting the potential of RL for enhancing small LLMs in resource-limited environments.

📶AI Eval of the Weeek

(Courtesy of LayerLens )

Mistral Small 3.1 came out this week with some impressive results. The model seems very strong in programming benchmarks like Human Eval.

Mistral Small 3.1 also outperforms similar size models like Gemma 3.

🤖 AI Tech Releases

Claude Search

Anthropic added search capabilities to Claude.

Mistral Small 3.1

Mistral launched Small 3.1, a multimodal small model with impressive performance.

Model Optimization

Pruna AI open sourced its famout AI optimization framework.

📡AI Radar

NVIDIA acquired synthetic data platform Gretel AI.

Perplexity is raising a new round at $18 billion valuation.

SoftBank announced the acquisition of semiconductor platform Ampere Computing.

Data analytic company Dataminr raised $85 million in new funding.

AI security platform Orion Security emerged from stealth mode with $6 million in funding.

Roblox launched Roblox Cube, a new gen AI system for 3D and 4D assets.

Halliday blockchain-agentic platform raised $20 million in new funding.

ClearGrid raised $10 million to automated debt collection with AI.

Tera AI raised $7.8 million for its robotics navigation platform.

AI presentation platform Present raised $20 million in new funding.

[nickgerlich]

Car And Driver

My father always loved telling stories of his first car. I never understood then why it was such a big deal, but it was very important to him. That 1955 Chevy Bel Air took him and two buddies on a Route 66 road trip from Chicago to LA that year, and by virtue of that, became etched in his memories as much as the trip itself.

Because the two were one.Now that I am older, I have similar feelings toward my first car, although I doubt that car enthusiasts will ever hold it in such high esteem as that Bel Air. It was the summer of 1979. I was home from university and working a summer job at a GM factory in Chicago. My father decided to help subsidize a car, perhaps because he was tiring of sharing the family sedan with me. So off we went to a Toyota dealership in the south suburbs, where one of his former cronies in the car industry sold the tiny Japanese imports.

We settled on a brand new, bare bones Corolla. It didn’t have many features…well, if an FM radio, heater, and rear defogger are features. It had a four-on-the-floor, which now makes me among a dying breed of people who know how to drive a manual transmission. We split the $4000 cost.

The little blue car—just like the one in the picture—became my path to adventure, and boy howdy did I ever. I didn’t sell it until 1984, with the odometer pushing 175K. Routinely getting 35mpg made it affordable and cheap to keep. It’s the stuff of memories now.

Toyota still makes the Corolla, but it has had a slew of style and feature upgrades. Base price today for the Corolla Hybrid Nightshade Edition is just under $27,000, and Toyota just launched a new ad campaign aimed squarely at Gen-Zers and Millennials…people not a whole lot unlike me when I bought my Corolla.

The campaign, dubbed Getaway Driver, features social media influencer King Bach in a 30-second spot just released on YouTube. You’d never know this was the same model I bought 45 years ago. It’s pretty cool looking.

This time around the focus is not just affordability, but also the environment. Toyota has doubled down on hybrids, and thanks to the Prius, has two decades of experience with them. These are both things that are sought after by the target demo, especially given that the average price of a new car in the US today is more than $47,000.

And then there’s the issue that Gen-Zers are not attracted to car culture as much as previous generations. Persons 19 and under represent only one in 25 licensed drivers, while the under-25 crowd comprises just 11%. Toyota may be able to address the cost problem, but getting more folks to drive is going to be more challenging.

I am pretty sure that few saw this coming, that any cohort would begin to shun one of the most defining artifacts of modern culture. Starting more than a century ago, when Henry Ford was churning out Model Ts and Model As, car ownership was a symbol of our freedom, and by virtue of that, we need not rely on mass transit or anyone else to get us around.

But King Bach—who just turned 36—is a huge hit among young adults, with an audience of more than 25 million each on his Insta and TikTok accounts. If anyone can speak to a generation of people reluctant to drive, it could very well be him.

Who knows? Maybe there will be thousands of people who, just like me, forge their first car memories with a Corolla. It is clearly priced to be an entry-level vehicle, even if it is nearly 7X what mine cost. And they would be styling far better than I did, because I’m pretty sure the ladies were embarrassed to be seen in my econo-box ride.

The memories, though, make it worth it all.

Dr “Waxing Nostalgic” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[mccullochconstructionllc]

Transform Your Space The Ultimate Guide to Remodeling Services

Home is where the heart is, and nothing revitalizes your living space quite like a remodeling project. Whether you’re looking to update your kitchen, expand your bathroom, or revamp your entire home, remodeling services offer a way to breathe new life into your surroundings. Here's everything you need to know about remodeling services and how they can transform your space.

Understanding Remodeling Services

Remodeling services encompass a broad spectrum of activities designed to improve, upgrade, and modernize various parts of your home. These services range from simple cosmetic changes like painting and flooring to more extensive projects such as kitchen overhauls, bathroom expansions, and even home additions. The primary goal is to enhance the functionality, aesthetics, and value of your property.

Benefits of Remodeling Your Home

Increased Property Value: One of the most significant advantages of remodeling is the potential increase in property value. Updated kitchens, modern bathrooms, and additional living space can significantly boost your home’s market value.

Enhanced Comfort and Functionality: Remodeling allows you to tailor your home to your specific needs and preferences. This could mean creating a more efficient kitchen layout, adding a home office, or expanding your living areas to accommodate a growing family.

Energy Efficiency: Modern remodeling often includes upgrading insulation, windows, and appliances to more energy-efficient models. These improvements can reduce your utility bills and make your home more environmentally friendly.

Updated Style: Trends in home design evolve, and what was fashionable a decade ago might now seem outdated. Remodeling can refresh your home’s appearance, making it more stylish and contemporary.

Key Remodeling Services

Kitchen Remodeling: The kitchen is often considered the heart of the home. Remodeling this space can include installing new countertops, cabinets, and appliances, as well as reconfiguring the layout to improve workflow.

Bathroom Remodeling: Upgrading a bathroom can involve adding new fixtures, such as a modern shower or bathtub, updating tiles, and improving storage solutions. A well-designed bathroom enhances both comfort and luxury.

Basement and Attic Conversions: These underutilized spaces can be transformed into functional areas like guest rooms, home offices, or entertainment centers. Finishing a basement or attic can add valuable square footage to your home.

Home Additions: If you need more space but love your current location, a home addition might be the solution. This could involve adding an extra bedroom, a sunroom, or even an entire second story.

Exterior Remodeling: Enhancing your home’s curb appeal can be as crucial as interior updates. Exterior remodeling includes projects like siding replacement, roof repairs, landscaping, and adding outdoor living spaces such as decks and patios.

Choosing the Right Remodeling Contractor

Selecting a reliable and skilled remodeling contractor is crucial for the success of your project. Here are a few tips to help you make the right choice:

Research and Reviews: Look for contractors with positive reviews and a solid reputation. Ask for recommendations from friends and family.

Portfolio: Review the contractor’s previous projects to ensure their style aligns with your vision.

Licensing and Insurance: Verify that the contractor is licensed and insured to protect yourself from potential liabilities.

Clear Communication: Choose a contractor who communicates clearly and is transparent about costs, timelines, and potential challenges.

Remodeling your home is an exciting journey that can greatly improve your living environment and enhance your property’s value. Whether it’s a simple update or a complete overhaul, professional remodeling services can help you achieve the home of your dreams. By understanding the benefits and key services, and by choosing the right contractor, you’ll be well on your way to transforming your space into one that perfectly suits your needs and lifestyle.

For more info:-

bathroom remodeling in des moines

McCulloch Construction

[forgottenyear]

[this is kind of an open message to a friend in need. i have not been sure how to word this for a direct message]

--

I have a memory of my old therapist telling us to think about the ex-fiancée in human terms. We were still working from the old models inherited from the parents, and I suppose we were doing what the mother does about the father to this day – mythologizing them into some form of perfection.

The ex-fiancée told us we were abusive. (This is probably another reason I fear the previous parts.) I cannot argue if we were or not. But being first to accuse the other does not absolve the accuser. It was clearly a toxic relationship, and we were both wounded and ill-equipped from childhood.

Only a year or more passed before I became front. Things came to a head over the next decade, and I was accused of being abusive by my current partner. This time, however, exposed that my partner was taking advantage of my familiarity with the role of scapegoat.

It was around this time that I began saying to friends that if I was still being abused, after a decade, it had more to do with my choices than my partner’s. Something changed then. I could still look at myself and self-correct, but I think I finally accepted that I am not guilty of everything I am accused to be. I came out of this period with more people recognizing that I am a good person than not. It was an awkward time, and it has continued to be awkward for me.

This recent hospital visit brought about another change. When people who have only known me for a week at most say that they see me as a good and conscientious person, I have to accept there may be something to it. These were not loyal comrades of old saying these things.

And realizing that I was not the only front at the time of the hospital, I find that Angela was, perhaps, not best described by the ex-fiancée.

I am not sure there can be such redemption for the boy. His time was defined by the parents, the church, and the wider community. It continues to be difficult to separate myself from the labels. I still struggle with acceptance that I am not inherently bad, stupid, and worthless. It feels like an impossibility for them, coming from a reality in which good is bad and bad is good. A reality in which we were bad, and our abusers were good.

I know that we were not a healthy partner for the ex-fiancée. That much is inescapable. But this does not absolve them of anything. They were also unhealthy. We were two wounded children who knew nothing about how to care for one another’s wounds.

If I can rely on recent descriptions of myself, no matter how awkward I feel being described in this way, then I have grown at least a little from that time.

[prokeyslock]

The Ultimate Guide to Car Key Replacement: Dallas, TX Edition

Introduction: Losing or damaging your car keys can be a frustrating experience, especially when you're in a hurry or far from home. Fortunately, in Dallas, TX, there are numerous options available for car key replacement services. In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through everything you need to know about getting your car keys replaced in Dallas, from finding reputable locksmiths to understanding the process and costs involved.

Understanding Your Options:

Local Locksmiths: Dallas boasts a range of professional locksmith services that specialize in car key replacement. These locksmiths are often equipped with the necessary tools and expertise to replace keys for various makes and models.

Dealerships: Many car dealerships in Dallas offer key replacement services, but these can sometimes be more expensive than independent locksmiths. However, dealerships may offer added benefits like programming and warranty assurance.

Mobile Services: Some locksmiths in Dallas offer mobile key replacement services, meaning they can come directly to your location to replace your keys, whether you're stranded on the roadside or at home.

Steps to Take When You've Lost Your Car Keys:

Remain Calm: Losing your car keys can be stressful, but staying calm will help you think clearly and take the necessary steps to get them replaced.

Contact a Professional: As soon as you realize your keys are lost or damaged, reach out to a reputable locksmith or dealership in Dallas to inquire about key replacement services.

Provide Necessary Information: When contacting a locksmith or dealership, be prepared to provide details about your vehicle, such as the make, model, year, and VIN number, to ensure they can create the correct key for your car.

Understanding the Replacement Process:

Key Cutting: The first step in replacing a lost or damaged car key is cutting a new key that matches your vehicle's ignition and door locks.

Transponder Programming: For vehicles equipped with transponder keys, programming is necessary to synchronize the new key with your car's immobilizer system.

Key Fob Replacement: If your car key includes a remote key fob for keyless entry, the replacement process may involve programming the new fob to work with your vehicle.

Factors Affecting Cost:

Type of Key: The type of key your car requires (traditional, transponder, keyless entry, etc.) will impact the cost of replacement.

Make and Model: The make and model of your vehicle can also influence the cost, as some keys are more complex and expensive to replace than others.

Additional Services: Services like key programming, key fob replacement, and mobile locksmith assistance may incur additional charges.

Tips for Choosing a Car Key Replacement Service:

Read Reviews: Before choosing a locksmith or dealership for key replacement, take the time to read reviews and testimonials from previous customers to ensure you're selecting a reputable and reliable service provider.

Verify Credentials: Confirm that the locksmith or dealership you choose is licensed, bonded, and insured to perform key replacement services in Dallas.

Get Quotes: Don't hesitate to request quotes from multiple locksmiths or dealerships to compare prices and find the best deal for your key replacement needs.

Conclusion: When you find yourself in need of car key replacement services in Dallas, TX, knowing where to turn can save you time, money, and stress. By understanding your options, knowing what to expect during the replacement process, and choosing a reputable service provider, you can quickly and efficiently get back on the road with a new set of keys in hand.

Car Key Replacement Service in Dallas, Tx

Are you looking for a reliable car key replacement service in Dallas, TX? At Pro Keys Locksmith Tx, we have been the car key replacement service of choice for over a decade. Over the years, we have provided honest, professional, and highly dependable service to anyone who needed it.

We are a locally owned and operated locksmith service trusted by hundreds of people across the city. Our car key replacement and emergency locksmith services are available 24/7 and 365 days a year. In other words, you can call our highly trained professionals at any time you need help

[icharchivist]

Not to be that person, but I think for all its faults, Gbf still has more body diversity than other Gacha games

One of the reasons I couldn't really get into Genshin Impact for is that they have a total of three body types and one of those looks like small children, which I'm not interested in

All the dudes are total twinks and all the women either come in small tits or big. It's annoying to me, which is why I'm not playing. No judgement on people who do enjoy the game

So imo Gbf is at least passing this bar, even though it is on the floor

And yes, they should do more in terms of muscular women, but at least we get buff men and not twinks exclusively. Or, thinking back to the four dragon knights with their different body types

Until then, Fediel will always have abs in my mind

oh no i agree don't worry about that

it's like, both "Granblue still falls under the trap of not trying more "risky" bodytypes" and "still, Granblue actually makes a lot of effort and care which is appreciated" are things that can coexist.

The comparaisons are with BG3 rn bc the anons brought it up but tbf those are such drastically different games in term of production and medium that it just highlights the general issues with any medium. i think BG3 could more likely be compared to other games of similar genres with what it tries, and doesn't try.

But Granblue should be compared to other gacha on that level and, on that level, Granblue actually probably puts the most efforts i've seen in a gacha game in term of diversity.

it just sucks because it still isn't nearly enough and it still falls into the common trap of some beauty conventions.

But it's still more efforts than a lot of others games.

Genshin's stuff is kind of in its own area for me bc it's stilla 3D game and 3D game requires new models for new bodytypes. Like i said in the previous ask, i still think it should be an effort to be made -- but it's also clearly at a disadvantage compared to games like say, Granblue, Arknights, a3, or stuff like that, who are fully 2D and therefore don't have to rely on any restrictions.

Granblue has a huge cast, and a lot of diverse bodytype. conventionally attractive bodytypes, but still more diversity than not.

in Granblue there's already the different races that already have some bodytype associated to them, which is especially visible with the men, so the bodytypes end up diversified just on this basis. Then, most of the time, at least for men, there is an effort to have the bodytype/the muscles placement to make sense with the era of expertise of those characters. Nehan barely has any flesh on his bones due to decades of abuse. Lancelot's body is slender and not too muscular because everything about him is about being nimble on his feet. Vane is a powerhouse because he's a tank. So on and so forth.

when it comes to women (who aren't Harvins at least), muscles aren't taken into account at all, which is peeving. There's diversities on different level, boob sizes, waist, thighs, all that jazz. It's eyeroll worthy that the diversity for women in Granblue is still fully based on conventionally aesthetic ideals. But at the end of the day it still means you can have many women with different bodytypes. Not *extremely* diverse one, but more than some gacha which have a same body size fit them all.

but there is other levels of diversity in appearance Granblue has an advantage on. while it's not the majority, there are dark skinned characters, from darker shades than some gacha would even dare to explore. There's the trans characters. There's different level of reading to it all.

it could be so much better, of course. Granblue's shortcomings are shared everywhere in the video games industry because of basically beauty ideals.

At the end of the day a Gacha especially is relying on people being willing to spend money for one single character. It makes them more scared to experiment with different type of characters because each character has to be bringing money in some way. It's different than a big AAA game that you buy once, and that shouldn't have to convince you to spend money at every character it introduces.

So the fact Granblue does take some risks is appreciated. It makes it one of the gacha that does try the most.

but it's still trying into a comfortable zone that still doesn't acknowledge """"""less desirable""""" features. Which sucks because it's not even true, and the less they're willing to take risk the less they'll be able to see that.