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davidmann95 · 4 years ago

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Got a 2020 Superman State of the Union assessment?

Not the most overtly monumental of years for big blue - a lot of the biggest news for Superman this year was about stuff we’ll see next year, which I’ll get into further below - but on the whole definitely a net positive!

Really, the only things I’d say counted ‘against’ this year were the back half of Rucka and Perkins’ Lois Lane and how badly that went off the rails - which for my money was more than counterbalanced by the conclusion to Fraction and Lieber’s Jimmy Olsen - and Romita Jr. turning in shoddy work on Action Comics. Otherwise? Bendis played out the consequences of Truth in fun ways and closed out his tenure on the main titles with a pair of artful final issues, we got Waid’s return to the character alongside Francis Manapul for a great short story, the last issue of the instantly iconic Superman Smashes The Klan, and several excellent installments in DC’s digital Man of Tomorrow series, while Commanders in Crisis introduced the Superman analogue to beat for the 2020s in Prizefighter. And in mass-media Routh’s Superman got a nice fly-by sendoff at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, there were two animated features in Red Son and Man of Tomorrow (the former of which I haven’t seen but the latter of which is probably the best official Superman movie, even if that says more about other Superman movies than anything else), and we naaaaarowly avoided the Superman logo being codified as fascist iconography for a generation. Oh and the comics industry did not in fact end due to Covid. So all-in-all a win.

Anonymous said: It’s almost New Year’s, what’s your predictions for Superman in 2021? (I guess you can do Batman too if you want)

So here’s what we do know officially for Superman in 2021:

* Superman & Lois will debut on the CW, the first Superman TV show (without substantial qualifiers) in 20+ years.

* Future State will feature Jon Kent taking on the mantle in Superman of Metropolis, Justice League, and Superman/Wonder Woman, while a now spacefaring Clark is in Worlds of War, Imperious Lex, Batman/Superman, and House of El. Meanwhile Kara graduates from Supergirl to Superwoman in her own two-parter as well as featuring in Superman of Metropolis, and Conner Kent appears to be acting as some kind of Superman in Suicide Squad.

* Phillip Kennedy Johnson takes over Action Comics and Superman in March, beginning with a two-part crossover The Golden Age illustrated by Phil Hester. After that Action Comics will be drawn by Daniel Sampere through around September, at which point Mikel Janin will be illustrating an event-scale arc for the book. Meanwhile Scott Godlewski will be the artist on Superman, but around the time of Janin’s arc on Action an entirely new, as yet unknown creative team will take over Superman while PKJ remains on Action. Both books will also have backup features spotlighting various Superman/Metropolis-adjacent characters as there’s little space for them in the cosmic direction the main story will be tilting towards for the time being.

* Superman: Red & Blue will debut in March as a counterpart to the various Batman: Black & White series over the years.

* Outside the main Superman books, Clark will star in Brian Bendis and David Marquez’s Justice League, as well as Gene Yang and Ivan Reis’s incredibly rad-looking dimension-hopping new take on Batman/Superman. Bendis is indicating we’ll be seeing the long-delayed Event Leviathan: Checkmate this year as well, which features Lois as one of the main characters.

* Not strictly Superman news, but apparently we’ll be seeing Netflix’s adaptation of Mark Millar and Frank Quitely’s Jupiter’s Legacy next year, which centers around the multi-generational drama of the family of Superman analogue Utopian.

* Zack Snyder’s Justice League, its hour come round at last, slouches towards HBO Max to be born.

As for predictions? Well for starters, pretty much everyone takes as a given that Mark Waid is putting together some long-form Superman project now that he’s working with DC again, and I expect to see something come of that next year; Tom King has also soft-announced he’s working on a Superman project since he’s done with scripting his three current DC minis, but I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing directly came of that until 2022. I’d also speculate that Scott Snyder has something in mind: he’s repeatedly said he’s planning on a major out-of-continuity project, and he’s made clear he’s done with Batman for the time being, I imagine he’s done whatever he wanted to for Wonder Woman with Death Metal, and anything he did with the JSA right now would be extremely in-continuity; I doubt he’s playing with anything less than the icons anytime soon and he definitely seems more engaged with Superman now than he was when he wrote Unchained (hell, the end of Last Knight on Earth can basically only be read as ‘I wanna write Superman now’). Again though, dunno that I’d put money on that being next year.

Outside the theoretical prestige stuff, everything we’re hearing about Future State, Infinite Frontier, and PKJ’s barely-veiled discussion of his run seems to suggest Jon will end up sharing the Superman name in the present and probably taking over that book alongside the new creative team. If Batman: Urban Legends takes off then I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a Superman anthology given DC’s apparent current priorities of consolidating, testing a new publishing model, and putting the biggest names first. And maybe something will finally come of the back-and-forth over whether or not Cavill’s sticking around in the movies - if he is my first guess would be an appearance in DuVernay and King’s New Gods (which is still in progress per DuVernay as of this month) - but we can all I think be pretty sure he’s still not getting a video game anytime soon.

As for what we know for certain of Batman’s 2021:

* Future State has a whole slate of Batman-related books, but Tim Fox takes over the cape and cowl to fight the police state that’s taken over Gotham in John Ridley and Nick Derington/Laura Braga’s The Next Batman, while a resourceless Bruce on the run stars in Mariko Takaki and Dan Mora’s Dark Detective.

* James Tynion and Jorge Jimenez are solidified as the creative team on the now-monthly Batman, while Tamaki and Mora take Detective Comics, with a Damian backup by Joshua Williamson and Gleb Melnikov running through the first issues of each and apparently leading to something, probably a Robin book. Elsewhere Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo take over Nightwing, Chip Zdarsky and Eddy Barrows spearhead the new anthology title Batman: Urban Legends, and Tynion and Gullem March launch a Joker ongoing, while Bruce also stars in the aforementioned Justice League and Batman/Superman.

* The Gotham Knights game is scheduled to drop next year.

Aside from the Infinite Frontier cover suggesting Tim Fox will take on a role in the present before long as (a) Batman same as Jon Kent as Superman, hopefully with Ridley and Derington coming back, it doesn’t feel like there’s a ton of big Batman stuff to speculate on? Aside from the inevitable unannounced Black Label stuff - including probably Scott Snyder’s Nightwing book - we know the basic shape of things. The Batman is inching closer, Tynion/Jimenez are probably on Batman through at least the end of the year, Mora I don’t think stays on Detective because he’s committed to Once & Future but Tamaki presumably does, Taylor/Redondo Nightwing is immediately going to be a fandom favorite, and Gotham Knights is probably gonna suck because boy that doesn’t look very good. We know the broad strokes of where he’s headed for the time being across all media. If I had to take a whack at a big guess, I’d say I’m a touch skeptical about that HBO GCPD show or the Batmobile cartoon reaching fruition, the former because that’s an incredibly charged premise that has to act perfectly in sync with another mass-media project in another medium AND we know there’s already been behind-the-scenes drama, and the latter because that sounds incredibly stupid.

EDIT: Forgot, Bendis said in 2019 he was working on a Black Label Batman book, so wouldn’t be surprised to see that too this year.

#Superman #Batman #Opinion

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tomeandflickcorner · 4 years ago

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Episode Review- The Real Ghostbusters: Janine Melnitz, Ghostbuster

Awesome! We got a Janine centric episode! And it really gives her a chance to shine!

There’s apparently been a huge spike in paranormal activity within the city, and the Ghostbusters are struggling to keep up with their mounting workload. Each day, they have to head out to take on a number of busts and when they come back, they’re greeted with a pile of new additions to their worksheet. Needless to say, they’re really exhausted. Peter asks Egon what could be causing this rising amount of ghosts appearing in the city, but Egon doesn’t have any answers. And when he takes out his PKE Meter, it immediately overloads, further illustrating how serious things are.

When Winston and Ray head down to the basement to unload the new batch of captured ghosts into the Containment Unit, with Ray saying they’ll have to add another Klein Bottle to the machine to prevent it from going over max capacity, Janine approaches Egon and Peter. She basically says ‘hey, I know you guys are super busy and all, but my apartment is haunted. Can you please do something about that?’ But Peter and Egon tell her they can’t address her problem until after they resolve the supernatural crisis. And yeah, I can see both sides of the issue here. Janine is clearly not the only one dealing with a ghost problem right now, and it probably should be an issue of first come, first served. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. At the same time, Janine is on the Ghostbusters’ payroll, too. You’d think there would be some sort of office perk to that.

Anyway, Janine ends up returning to her apartment after clocking out for the day. When she arrives, she is aggravated to discover that the ghosts haunting her apartment have moved all of her furniture up onto the ceiling. In frustration, she yells at the ghosts to get out, but the ghosts all just laugh. Though they do unstick all her furniture, which all falls to the ground, forcing poor Janine to put everything back in place. The next morning, Janine wakes up to find her bed is floating in midair. And when she gets into the shower, no water comes out of the showerhead. Instead, the shower quickly fills up with frogs. As one might expect, this is the final straw for Janine. So when she returns to the Firehouse, she is fully prepared to demand the Ghostbusters help her out. But when she arrives, she is greeted only by Slimer, who informs her the Ghostbusters had already headed out to deal with other calls. So Janine decides to take matters into her own hands, borrowing one of Peter’s spare uniforms and taking an extra Proton Pack and Ghost Trap. She returns to her apartment to catch the ghosts herself, with Slimer tagging along. When they get there, the apartment seems to be deserted. And for a brief moment, Janine wonders if the ghosts had simply gotten bored and left on their own. But then the lights suddenly turn off, and the ghosts begin throwing random objects at Janine while Slimer hides in a nearby cabinet. (Janine is particularly angry that a vase her mother had given her gets smashed against the wall.) Despite Janine’s best efforts, the ghosts quickly get the better of her, wrapping her up in a blanket and taking away the Proton Pack she was carrying. Fortunately, Slimer eventually decided to quit cowering in the corner and actually help out. While the other ghosts were distracted in tormenting Janine, Slimer carefully pushed the discarded Ghost Trap into position and triggered it, making sure to hold onto a fixed object in order to keep himself from being pulled into the trap as well. So the ghosts haunting Janine’s apartment are soon trapped. And Janine thanks Slimer for coming to her rescue.

Meanwhile, the Ghostbusters were still hard at work catching all the other ghosts plaguing the city. Including a group of thug-like ghosts who were actually wielding real guns. I have no idea why I found this so hilariously shocking. After all, it’s not the first time we’ve seen guns depicted in this show. Maybe it’s the fact that the guns are being held by these small ghosts as if it was no big deal. Sometimes I forget that the 80s were a different time. Anyway, as the Ghostbusters start to head off to their next assignment, Winston remarks how the last time ghosts were crawling out of the woodwork like this, it was when Gozer was around. Peter briefly wonders if it was possible that Gozer was somehow coming back, but Egon says this wasn’t the case, as none of the readings suggest such a thing. However, he does take note that the ghosts they’ve been catching all have a common spectrography. Which suggests that there’s a single source for all the ghostly activity. Unfortunately, there’s too much spectral static for him to pinpoint the exact location of that singular source. Peter tries to put a positive spin on things by reminding his teammates of how much money they’re making. Winston counters this silver lining by reminding Peter that they’ve been too busy to make much use of that extra money.

As the Ghostbusters head off to Gracie Manor, which is being haunted by a Class 9 Free Roaming Vapor, that statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center suddenly comes to life, scaring off all the ice skaters in the process. (So I’m guessing this episode takes place during the winter months.) The Atlas Statue ends up throwing the globe it was carrying, which just narrowly misses the Ecto-1 as it drives by. The Ghostbusters try to shoot the Atlas Statue with their Proton Packs, but it proves to be completely ineffective, since the stature was infused with so much ectonic energy, it could resist the force of the Proton Streams. So the Ghostbusters have no choice but to run. They try to get creative and slow the Atlas Statue down by using the Proton Packs to melt the ice beneath it as the Atlas Statue sets foot onto the ice skating rink, but this doesn’t work as the Atlas Statue is able to jump back out of the hole in the ice. The Atlas Statue then fires of a beam of light emanating from its finger at the Ghostbusters. In a flash of light, the Ghostbusters all vanish from sight, much to the shocked dismay of the onlookers and news reporters.

Elsewhere, Janine and Slimer return to the Firehose after capturing the ghosts that had been haunting Janine’s apartment. When they see the Ghostbusters haven’t retuned yet, they decide to wait for them to get back. As they wait, Janine pulls out a TV set. This results in her seeing the news report announcing that the Ghostbusters disappeared while fighting the Atlas Statue. So Janine and Slimer hurry back out to try and figure out what happened to the Ghostbusters. When they arrive at Rockefeller Center, Janine pulls out the PKE Meter she’d brought with her, but quickly admits to Slimer that she has no idea what she’s doing. She can’t even properly analyze the readings on the PKE Meter.

Janine and Slimer begin to wander along the city streets, at a loss as to what to do. But that’s when Janine realizes something. Remembering how the Ghostbusters seemed to disappear as if they got pulled into a Ghost Trap, she gets the idea of getting information from some of the ghosts that have recently been caught. After all, maybe they might know what happened to the Ghostbusters. While she admits it’s a long shot, it’s the only possible lead they have. Of course, Janine can’t enter into the Containment Unit herself as she’s alive. (And she probably can’t use that special suit Egon used to enter into the Containment Unit back in X-Mas Marks the Spot as I imagine she’d need someone who knew what they were doing manning the control panel.) So she recruits Slimer to go into the Containment Unit instead. Slimer is not exactly on board with the idea, but Janine doesn’t give him much of a choice. Upon being put inside the Containment Unit, Slimer wanders around for a bit before he manages to locate the Thug Ghosts that the Ghostbusters had recently caught. Slimer eavesdrops on their conversation, overhearing them gloating how they won’t be there for long as Proteus will see that they’re released soon enough. And that Proteus already has the Ghostbusters in the Erie.

Okay, hold on a minute here. First off, how do these Thug Ghosts know what happened to the Ghostbusters? From what we saw, these ghosts were captured before the Ghostbusters encountered the Atlas Statue. How would the ghosts in the Containment Unit know what’s going on in the outside world? And come to think of it, when did the Thug Ghosts get put into the Containment Unit in the first place? They were just captured earlier this very same day. Did the Ghostbusters swing by the Firehouse between capturing the Thug Ghosts and starting to head off to Gracie Mansion? Because I didn’t get the impression they had the time to do that. Talk about a plot hole.

Getting back to the episode, Slimer’s presence is discovered before he can get the chance to hear anything more, so he has to make a run for it when the captured ghosts begin chasing after him. Slimer manages to make it safely back to the entrance/exit port of the Containment Unit, and Janine is able to pull him out in the nick of time while preventing any other ghost from escaping. Now that she’s armed with the information Slimer was able to gather up, Janine does some research and locates the only Erie building listed in Manhattan. After making a remark about how there’s never any thirteenth floor listed on the elevator buttons due to how superstitious people can be, Janine ventures up to the top floor of the building. But she notices the PKE Meter is going off as they pass by the 14th floor. As a result, Janine is able to discover this building has an unmarked 13th floor, and she is able to reach it by hitting the emergency stop button and blasting the elevator doors open. She finds herself in some sort of other-worldly office building, complete with a demonic receptionist. After brushing past the Demon Receptionist, Janine forces her way through a large doorway, ending up in a room that appears to be filled with mirrors. These mirrors are soon revealed to be some sort of prison cells, with the Ghostbusters all imprisoned within one of the mirrors. Which gives Janine the opportunity to make a Lewis Carol joke. Egon instructs Janine to get out of there since she doesn’t know what she’s up against. Ray backs up Egon’s statement by explaining that Proteus was a primal god like Gozer.

At that moment, Proteus himself appears. And he somehow knows Janine’s name. (Yeah, I suppose he might have overheard the Ghostbusters calling her Janine, but that doesn’t explain how Proteus knew her full name.) Janine attempts to shoot Proteus with the Proton Pack, but to no avail as Proteus is much too strong. Slimer, showing some courage, ends up charging at Proteus and keeping him distracted. While Slimer is distracting Proteus, Janine turns and fires at the mirror prison holding the Ghostbusters captive. This not only results in the mirror breaking, freeing the Ghostbusters in the process, but the light reflecting off the mirror surface apparently momentarily blinds Proteus. The blinded Proteus ended up firing off one of his finger beams randomly, with the finger beam bouncing off the other mirrors. This resulted in the finger beam overloading, causing the place to begin to fall apart. Thankfully, the Ghostbusters, Janine and Slimer are able to make it out of there safely before the 13th floor blows up, clearly taking Proteus out in the process.

Upon returning to the Firehouse, Egon remarks that Janine showed real bravery to come after them like that. The other Ghostbusters then notice the phones are no longer ringing off the hook, and Ray concludes that, with Proteus gone, the paranormal activity in New York will probably return to normal. Peter then tells Janine that she’s pretty handy with a Proton Pack, so Janine suggests that she should try to go into business for herself. Peter offers an alternative suggestion- she stay on as their secretary, but with a raise in salary. Janine accepts this, on the condition that they continue to make sure her apartment remains ghost-free. With the exception of Slimer, of course.

As someone who likes Janine as a character, this was one episode I’d recommend to anyone who was interested in giving the show a chance. Obviously, Janine doesn’t have the experience and knowledge that the actual Ghostbusters have, but she still is able to hold her own when the situation calls for it. She even managed to defeat Proteus, a literal god. Sure, Slimer did help keep Proteus distracted for a little while there, so she didn’t do it alone. But the fact remains that Proteus was defeated because of Janine. And she also helped save the Ghostbusters in the process. That’s not just an impressive feat for a secretary with no real Ghostbuster training, it’s impressive for anyone. Though I do find it a bit strange that Peter seemed surprised how good Janine was with a Proton Pack, as this isn’t the first time she’d wielded one. Even if you don’t include that time in Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream (since that was technically Dream Janine), she did get the chance to wield a Proton Pack in Janine’s Genie.

There’s one other thing I want to comment on for this episode. In the opening scene, we can see the Ghostbusters heading out to what I think was either a library or a bookstore. I couldn’t tell which. But the ghosts they were catching were clearly Captain Ahab, the Frankenstein Monster and one other ghost that was apparently supposed to be Mr. Hyde, though I didn’t get a good enough look at him to properly identify him. I wanna know the story behind this haunting! Are they suggesting these characters were actual people, the way Ebenezer Scrooge was shown as an actual person in X-Mas Marks the Spot? Or were the ghosts haunting that location simply taking up the form of famous literary characters? Because that would have made for an interesting episode. Especially since it could have potentially gotten kids watching the show interested enough to actually read the actual novels, the way the movie Pagemaster was trying to do. (Although, I’ve been told that with the book Moby Dick, every other chapter in that novel takes a break from the actual narrative to discuss the whole history of whaling. I imagine kids might get bored rather quickly if they tried to read that one.)

(Click here for more Ghostbusters reviews)

#the real ghostbusters #rgb episode review #ghostbusters franchise

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americangecko · 5 years ago

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COVID = Increased Availibility

For those interested, there’s a TL;DR at the bottom of this gigantic thing.

So, COVID, amiright?

Anyways, as I’m sure is the case with most of the world, Florida has been put under a “self-isolation quarantine”, and we’re having to practice the now infamous social distancing when we go out. Before that took place, my and my wife’s employer (a very famous Mouse) told us they were closing for the foreseeable future until the sitch with COVID-19 improves (unfortunately, neither of our jobs can be done remotely, but we still have them, thankfully—we’re actually still being paid through the 18th of this month, and will be furloughed after that until the Mouse deems it safe to reopen). As a result, the wife and I have been staying home almost constantly lately. If it weren’t for FaceTime and Zoom, we’d probably be going out of our minds with the lack of social interaction.

BUUUUT......On the bright side, that means I have a lot more free time to work on the creative projects that I’ve had little time for the past few months. There are a lot of them, but I wanted to cover some of the highlights here:

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My Kim Possible fanfiction universe, Plausible Possibilities, over at fanfiction.net/~americangecko

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Don’t worry about this ongoing project—it is FAR from dead. I simply haven’t had the time lately to work on it. Not to mention that almost everything I had as far as notes, drawings, and other notable materials pertaining to it, has been trapped on a jump drive that I can’t access due to my wife’s laptop not wanting to charge anymore. (If you’re confused, I actually have an iPad now, and am currently working on my projects on it for the foreseeable future—that’s actually where I’m typing this journal up at the moment.). However, I’ve been working on remembering as much as I can about where I wanted this stuff to go, and so far I’ve been remembering far more than I expected to. Hopefully that means I can have an update out in the very near future.

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Kim Possible fanart for DA for my fanfiction and other miscellaneous

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Again, still in the pipes, but also mostly stuck on the aforementioned jump drive. However, this might be slightly more difficult to produce in the near future, due to the previously mentioned computer problems. I’ve been trying to find a decent drawing app for the iPad, but seeing as I can’t exactly afford an Apple Pencil—big shock there, I know—I’ve been struggling with them since most have a feature of touch sensitivity that I can’t access. Or, you know, they cost money I can’t afford (damn, I hate being broke). But either way, I’m doing my best to add to my meager KP gallery

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Personal manga 1 – Working Title: Wolf Maiden Tsukiko

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Soooo…for those that don’t know me, I’ve always had this unusual fascination with werewolves/lycanthropes. And unfortunately, to my dismay, most of the time they are depicted as the bad guys or sidekicks to the heroes. And 9/10 times, when it’s werewolves vs. vampires, the vampires are the good guys while the werewolves are the villains. Hell, even things like the Underworld series (with the exception of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) or the Twilight series cast werewolves in secondary or villainous roles

Well, I’m doing something about that. For many years, I’ve been toying with the idea of creating my own comic/manga/graphic novel where the werewolves are the protectors of humanity. And with the recent uptick in my free time due to the quarantine, that old train of thought has been rolling more and more on this idea. I’ve even started mapping out characters and story ideas for it, as well as the beginnings of layouts. So far, I’ve got Point A, Point B, Point C, Point D, etc., partially established, and now I just have to figure out how to get there. But at least the train isn’t stalled on the tracks anymore.

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Personal manga 2 – Working Title: HYBRIDS

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Blame my fascination with werewolves, but for the past few years I’ve become more interested in anthro-style comics and animations. You could also point the finger at Disney’s Zootopia, Dreamworks Kung Fu Panda series, or any number of “anthro-animal” cartoons I saw as a kid (proud fan of ‘80’s TMNT, Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures, etc.). I’ve also started re-watching one of my favorite classic anime, s-CRY-ed, as well as Netflix’s new Beastars (I absolutely love Legoshi, Haru, and Louis). Anyway, a few years back, when I first heard that Disney was working on the movie about Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, it jogged something from my brain.

When I was younger, I’d developed an idea for a cartoon that was a sort of hybridization (pun not intended, unfortunately) of s-CRY-ed and Marvel’s X-Men series, but featuring human/animal hybrids. I’d developed it to the point that I had determined it would follow twin brothers, both of whom could transform into the same hybrid (I originally thought wolves—blame the werewolf addiction), and who were recruited into a special law-enforcement-style group composed of other hybrid characters and worked to take down hybrid criminals and other threats. I even came up with a few of the villain groups, and determined that the brothers would have different experiences and thus reactions to their environment and those around them.

Now, also thanks to the quarantine, that train has also gained a little bit of coal in the furnace and started moving on the tracks again.

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A few…ahem…stories/novels of a Mature nature

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I don’t know if they’ll ever see the light of day here or over at DA, but I’ve been working on several written stories of a more…Mature nature for several years now. I may even eventually create another DA account to feature them, but that’s a colossally gigantic ”MAYBE” right now. Lately, however, when I’ve needed a break from one of the other projects I’ve been working on during the quarantine, this is what I find myself working on. These are actually the most developed of my various projects (apart from my Kim Possible fanfiction), and I’ve actually been looking at maybe sending one or two to an adult books publisher. Who knows if I’ll ever actually get one of them complete enough to follow through, but we’ll see what happens.

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Other various projects

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Of course, there are other projects I’ve been working on, but there’s so many that it would take forever to list them. So I’ll just include them here and say that none of them should be considered dead by any means. Life support, maybe, but they all can relate to Not-Dead-Fred (“I’m not dead yet! I feel happy! I feel…HAPPY!”) from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python’s Spamalot fame in that they’re not quite finished yet.

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ANYWHOOOO, that’s the update. So far, both the wife and I have avoided any big or life-altering complications from the COVID crisis, and hopefully this continues to be the case. Meanwhile I’ll continue moving these ideas along during the quarantine, and hopefully finish at least ONE by the time this crazy sitch has passed us all by.

Stay safe, everyone!

~ A.G.

TL;DR

The COVID quarantine, while not yet personally affecting my health, has left me with enough free time that I am resuming work on several of my creative projects.

#art #Kim Possible #Wolf Maiden Tsukiko #HYBRIDS #Mature Stories #Adult Stories #fanfiction #DeviantArt #FF.net #writing #Update

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ainereads · 5 years ago

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Journey-A-Thon TBR

This month I am participating in the Journeyathon readathon. I’m really excited about this one! All book descriptions are from Goodreads.

HAROYELL - READ A FIRST BOOK IN A SERIES

For this prompt, I picked Thirteen by Tom Hoyle.

Born at midnight in London, on the stroke of the new millennium, Adam is the target of a cult that believes boys born on this date must die before the end of their thirteenth year. Twelve boys have been killed so far. Coron, the crazy cult leader, will stop at nothing to bring in his new kingdom. And now he is planning a bombing spectacular across London to celebrate the sacrifice of his final victim: Adam.

DUPRESSA - READ A SHORT BOOK

For this prompt, I robbed one of my sisters books. I went with The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket.

Dear Reader,

I'm sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. Even though they are charming and clever, the Baudelaire siblings lead lives filled with misery and woe. From the very first page of this book when the children are at the beach and receive terrible news, continuing on through the entire story, disaster lurks at their heels. One might say they are magnets for misfortune. In this short book alone, the three youngsters encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast. It is my sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales, but there is nothing stopping you from putting this book down at once and reading something happy, if you prefer that sort of thing.

With all due respect, Lemony Snicket

GARON - READ A BOOK FROM YOUR FAVOURITE GENRE

For this, I went with Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.

I don’t really think this book needs an explanation.

DENASA - READ A BOOK WITH A BLUE SPINE

For this prompt, I picked The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

GRAEVALE - READ A BOOK WITH A BLACK AND WHITE COVER

I picked the Dayrider team, which means I have the ability to use any book for one of the prompts. I decided to go with Gregor And The Marks Of Secret by Suzanne Collins for this one.

Follow Gregor in the fourth enthralling adventure in Suzanne Collins' New York Times bestselling Underland Chronicles -- with gorgeous new cover art coming July 1st! In Book 4 of the bestselling Underland Chronicles, Gregor is drawn ever deeper into a brewing crisis. For generations, rats have run the mice out of whatever lands they've claimed, keeping them constantly on the move. But now the mice are disappearing and the young queen Luxa is determined to find out why. Gregor and Boots join Luxa on a simple fact-finding mission. But when the true fate of the mice is revealed, it is something far more sinister than they had imagined -- and it points the way to the final prophecy Gregor has yet to fulfill. His abilities are put to the test in this suspenseful, action-packed penultimate installment of Suzanne Collins's thrilling Underland Chronicles.

KARONIA - READ A GRAPHIC NOVEL

I went with Heartstopper Vol. 3 by Alice Oseman for this one.

In this volume we’ll see the Heartstopper gang go on a school trip to Paris! Not only are Nick and Charlie navigating a new city, but also telling more people about their relationship AND learning more about the challenges each other are facing in private… Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem… rather close…?

HALLOWGATE - READ A BOOK THAT FEATURES DEATH

For this, I decided to listen to Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix by J. K. Rowling.

I think this is another that doesn’t need an explanation.

NIALAS - READ A 5 STAR PREDICTION

I was kind of suprised by my choice for this, but I’ve decided to go with Clueless: Senior Year by Amber Benson.

Your favorite girls from Beverly Hills are back in an all-new adventure! It’s senior year and Cher, Dionne, and Tai find themselves in a bit of a crisis of self… Where are they meant to go, and what are they meant to DO after high school? Luckily they have all year—and each other’s help—to figure it out!

And that’s my entire TBR for this readathon. I’m so excited to complete it!

#tbr #reading #reader #books #book #readathon #journeyathon #fantasy #ya #bookworm #bookworms

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ralafferty · 5 years ago

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80.11 Archipelago (end)

There is an advantage in very old and mutilated writings: they are improved by the mutilation. It is the first and the last sheepskins that are always lost or worn. There is no story that is not improved by having its first and last pages lost.

I tried to figure out how to wrap this up without using that quote, but ironically it's so deeply woven into the text that I think it's impossible to work through this section, or this novel, or Lafferty himself, without recourse to an aesthetic of mutilation.

Lafferty is a bricoleur, no doubt, but he's not always one just to take the pieces he finds around him; he's continually active in creating new pieces by shredding what went before. Archipelago, at least on the surface level, is not possessed of the gleefully grotesque mutilation that marks works like Space Chantey, but that's not because it's absent, it's just because he's kicked it up a layer or two.

So while the bodies of Finnegan, Dotty, and the assassin Niccolo Crotolus are assuredly mutilated in the final gun battle, we are denied the details of how exactly the bullets tore into flesh, where the damage was and how deep: information he rarely stints on elsewhere. This may in part be because of an aversion to combat in this "war novel with the war removed," but it also directs our attention to other aspects of the scene and setting.

Here we are given the elements of a blaze-of-glory shootout: a protagonist, his old flame, and an antagonist after the former who will not hesitate to go through the latter. But Lafferty has already ripped up the script before the action starts. Our hero, Finnegan, is not armed and does not return fire; he goes down from the first shot and stays down. Instead, it is the old flame who retorts, who acts as the protector rather than the protected. Even the antagonist is detached from the encounter: he's a hired gun, but one who is oddly drawn to Finn and who makes every effort to ensure that his murder will be accomplished with the victim in a state of grace. (As a side note, anyone know the source of Lafferty's distinction between the "piccolo vendetta" and the "grande vendetta," the revenge unto salvation or unto damnation? The latter is one of his more chilling concepts, though then again Lafferty's own ideas of hell were surprising and complex.)

There is, as often in Lafferty, an overload of imagery and association here, heaped up to the point of confusion. We get here an inverted Garden of Eden, with the serpent (played by Nick the Sidewinder) striking to make sure that the man in question is saved rather than damned, while the woman is completely guiltless. And we end also in a sort of frustrated Pietà, with the Christ figure felled, and Mary unable to cradle his body because she is too busy shooting and being shot.

Meanwhile the book, which started on an island on the Thursday of the creation week just prior to the appearance of man, now concludes on an island on the Wednesday, "the same as the Fourth Morning of the World when God had already made the ocean and let it roll all night and now was ready to place the sun in its course. And He hung it fifteen degrees up in the sky and let it start from there, just above the morning cloud bank. ... Now it was just as it had been in the beginning." Thanks to this chronology, Archipelago loops back on itself just like Devil Is Dead and More Than Melchisedech, just in a more subtle way. And it serves as a reminder that to tell stories is to mutilate time, to break a continuity into discrete units and rearrange those pieces into new and sometimes ungainly configurations.

But it's not just the single timeline of Archipelago that is structurally endangered; the barriers between all the fictions are breaking down. Finnegan, as X will say elsewhere, is the funnel between the worlds of Archipelago and The Devil Is Dead; he is also one of the foci of the world created by Melchisedech Duffey, and characters of that world determine their positions within it with respect to him.

Back from Chapter 7: "Was Finnegan a simple schizo in his living several lives? No. He was a complex schizo. His travels ended only with his life, though X (who claimed to have later congress with him) said they did not end even then. The apocryphal of the Finnegan adventures cannot be separated from the canonical. They raise the question: are there simultaneous worlds and simultaneous people?" As his body is mutilated here, so also are the people he knows and the worlds he inhabits; the two timelines only barely kept separated in Archipelago and The Devil Is Dead bleed fully into one another, and their weird mirroring becomes finally apparent. Many of the characters in Devil are already doubles, but here (in a work written earlier, but perhaps substantially revised after? the textual history is very difficult to unravel) they are revealed as parallel selves to people we have already met in Archipelago. And while we can say that all of us are many people at once and lead potentially many lives across many timelines, that doesn't make it any less confusing for the reader or for the characters themselves—or, we might say, for Lafferty as well. It's telling that Finnegan only realizes this when sketching out the people of his acquaintance, making one last use of his prodigious artistic talent. Inasmuch as Lafferty uses Finnegan's artistic talent as a surrogate for his own (and along with that, his anxieties over squandering that talent), it's tempting to read the early years of his career as an attempt to not become a Finnegan, to have something to point to when the Master demanded an account.

But even if that sort of a crisis (in its original sense of "judgment") is in view, the narration explicitly denies this to the characters involved: "In a crisis there should be a change of attitude. The attitudes of none of them were going to be changed by the shooting." Had Finnegan's attitude changed already? Had Lafferty's? Are there simultaneous worlds, and simultaneous people? It's a difficult set of questions, even beyond the basic impossibility of having a definitive answer for any one of them. Certainly the climax here gives way to anticlimax, as so often with this author who delights in the shaggiest of dogs. And whatever validity we grant to the claims of X—a notorious and renowned liar—this is certainly not the last time we will encounter Finnegan in this life, or in the one to come.

So that's Archipelago: possibly the oldest novel of Lafferty's to be published, and certainly one of the best, even if it took several decades and ultimately immense efforts by Rick Norwood to make it happen even in the limited release it got. If you find a print copy, snap it up! And if not, fortunately, digital copies are now readily available.

One last question about this section, before I move on at long last to Dotty: why Cuba? The action of the book, of course, is in the late 1940s and early 1950s, so this is pre-Revolución. And certainly the bulk of the writing is done before that point. But all the revisions for this novel happen after that point, and in particular after the debacle at the Bay of Pigs, another happening on a Cuban beach. (Albeit one not walkable from Havana, as the scene of the final showdown here.) For Lafferty, Communism was never a red herring, though it might only be one head of a larger hydra. And the book's most persistent subplot centers around Communism: Casey falling away from the Church into its only coherent ideological rival, and subsequently being restored. Not something I have an answer to yet, but I will loop back to it when taking up the later In a Green Tree volumes. Any other questions must be assumed lost in the mutilation in this manuscript.

#novel #bestof #nongenre #argo #cuba

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bisexualstokes-archive · 6 years ago

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Jack + Identity Crisis + Murdoc (1/?)

Chapter (1/?): Who’s Jack? Rating: Teen+ Summary: "I don't know, me? I'm method. When I go undercover, I become that person."

After having suffered a serious head injury, a brainwashed Jack Dalton assumes the life of CSI Nick Stokes, both for his protection and Nick’s. Murdoc gets wind of this and takes a trip down to Vegas to “play” with Jack in an attempt to lure Macgyver out of hiding. Meanwhile, the real Nick Stokes is abducted and tortured by people who think he's Jack Dalton.

Macgyver/CSI crossover, based on this AU gifset I made

Read it on A03

Nick Stokes loosened his tie as he walked through the parking garage of the San Diego Crime Lab. A long day of phone calls, paperwork, and having to resist the urge to just glove up and go investigate crime scenes instead of talking to the press made his feet drag on the ground as he opened the trunk to his car.

“Nick Stokes?” a voice called behind him. A female one, maybe another reporter?

“Listen, ma’am, I have no further comments on the matter,” Nick began to say, turning to face the woman but he quickly found that she wasn’t alone, and wasn’t unarmed. He tried to memorize as many details about the pair as he could, the female’s hair was tied up in a ponytail, she was wearing a Iron Maiden sleeveless shirt, a gas mask covering her face. She was armed with a can of spray, but it wasn't pepper spray. The man next to her was dark-skinned, also wearing a gas mask, holding a black piece of fabric in one hand and zipties in the other.

He immediately reached for his gun secured to his waist holster, but suddenly his vision was clouded and the whole world fell dark.

“He really does look like him,” the woman says, her voice almost...sad?

“Yeah, it’s kind of creepy. And we thought having one Jack running around was bad enough,” the man replied.

Jack? Who’s Jack?

-------------------------------------------------

Visions of a never-ending desert swirl in front of him, explosions causing miniature sandstorms to spike up all over the landscape. The air is filled with sand and smoke, which constricts his breathing. Ringing and screaming in his eardrums, so loud, he wonders how he’s still able to hear anything. He’s surrounded by people, some of them close to him, and some of them complete strangers, and yet, he has never felt so alone.

Alone...he was alone when that stupid plan he agreed to out of desperation went up in the same smoke that now fills his lungs. The right side of his head throbs, stings, his vision is blurred, he can feel a small stream of blood slide down his cheek. The screaming is now his own, he feels like he’s never been in so much pain in his entire life.

He feels like he’s levitating in the air, rising up, then moving forward, slowly. His body feels like it’s on fire, particularly at his feet. He forces his eyes open, expecting to see the source of the stench of burning wood that invades his nostrils.

But instead, he opens his eyes and sees glass walls, holding back dirt. A fan whirs next to him, a gun lays on his chest. He had a dream like this once...but he died in that dream, was he going to die now?

“No...no no no no no no…” he mutters.

A hand touches his shoulder, gently shaking his body. The pain in his head fades, the last scream escapes his body.

“Nicky?”

Nicky? Who’s Nicky?

“Nick,” the voice is feminine, soft, but firm. He doesn’t recognize the voice, but there’s something motherly about it, trustworthy.

A different trustworthy voice, another feminine voice, screaming at him in his head, asking him, “What is your name?” over and over again...His name...his name is...

“Nick!”

Nick sits up, his body shivering from the the cold sweat on his skin. He breathes heavily, observing the surroundings in front of him. He’s laying on a couch, staring directly at a vending machine. His eyes begin to dart all over the room, searching for entry and exit points, out of some instinct he can’t seem to explain. He’s taken aback by the woman who is kneeling next to him, staring at him with wide, worried eyes. He didn’t recognize her voice, but now, he recognizes the face.

“C-Catherine?” he whispers. She nods, he notices her lips quivering slightly. “Cath, what--where am I?”

“Vegas. You’re in the Vegas Crime Lab,”

“Vegas? But...but I was in San Diego…”

Or was he in Los Angeles?

“You transferred back after you heard about Finlay’s...passing.”

“F-Finn? She--?” tears began to sting in his eyes, he rubs his hands over his face. He takes sharp breath of air into his body, and a shake exhale soon leaves. As he composes himself, questions swirl in his head. He feels like he’s missing out on something, the facts in his head are not quite matching up with the picture in front of him.

“Where’s D.B?” he asks. “I thought you were working with the FBI? Where’s Sara?”

“D.B transferred out, Sara’s out venturing around the world with Grissom, and I’m...well, I’m the crime lab director.”

She gestures to her badge on her chest, and Nick suddenly became aware of his own badge, clipped to his shirt pocket. The title on his badge reads “Night Shift Supervisor.”

Catherine’s cell phone rings, and she gives Nick a sad smile as he continues to examine the ring on his finger, the wristband on his left hand, and watch on his left.

“Speaking of which, duty calls. Hang tight, I’ll be right back.”

Just as soon as Catherine leaves the room, another man runs in. His hair is flat, unlike the picture in in his head, but it doesn’t make him look any less attractive. His eyes are just as wide in concern as Catherine’s were, looking as if he had seen a ghost.

“Jesus, man, your head…” the man mutters. Nick tries to hide his surprise as he touches his hand to his head, feeling the fabric of a cloth bandage wrapped around his forehead, almost like a headband.

“Good to see you too, Greg...Listen, bro, my memory’s a bit hazy...what, uh, what happened?”

“Car accident. Your first night back, didn’t even clock in and they found you on the side of the road. Paramedics said you were mostly okay, just needed a bit of rest.”

Nick nods, then chuckles.

“First night back in Vegas and I’m already causing trouble, huh?”

His smile is contagious, the concern on Greg’s face turns to shared amusement at the absurd situation.

“Hey, you want some coffee or something? You still seem a bit tired,”

“Nah, man, I hate that stuff,” Nick mutters, getting up and grabbing a bottle of water from the mini-fridge. Greg glares at him, his face furrowed in concentration. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but before he can, he gets a page on his cell phone and leaves the room.

-------------------------------------------------

“You sure this is going to work?” the Texan in the passenger’s seat asks for the umpteenth time since they left the Phoenix. Angus Macgyver rolls his eyes, starting to get annoyed with the question that he doesn’t quite have an answer for himself.

“Listen, man, if you guys really do send him back to Vegas, my friends are going to figure it out in a heartbeat,” the man continues. Macgyver keeps his eyes on the road in front of him. “They’re going to start to ask questions, and if your boy is as messed up in the head right now as he looked to be in that hospital room, he’s not going to be able to answer those questions.”

“He’ll be okay. He’s a highly trained CIA operative, he’s been undercover before,” Macgyver responds shortly.

“Well, if he’s that good at becoming me, then he’s also going to realize something ain’t right.”

“You two are more alike than you think,” Macgyver remarks at the familiar doubts lingering in the air between them.

The two sit in silence for the remainder of the ride. When they finally arrive to the safehouse hidden in the mountains, Macgyver finally breaks the silence.

“There’s no going back now.” He says it out loud, more to himself than to the man standing in front of him, clutching two duffel bags in each hand. He finally looks at the man directly, his heart sinks as he sees the face of his best friend, his partner, but it’s not him. The man in front of him doesn’t stand up with his back straightened, there’s a different sort of haunted aura in the lines on his face, his eyes are the same color, but a different light shines behind them. The man seems to be facing his own internal struggle with the situation behind a poker face that Macgyver has only seen on his friend when he is trying not to give into whatever torture is being inflicted on him.

This man is not Jack Dalton, but Macgyver can’t fight the urge as they say their goodbyes to extend out his fist.

“This will work,” Macgyver sighs, finally answering the question from earlier.

“And if it doesn’t?”

Macgyver meets the man’s eyes once more, before turning away from the man who used to be Nick Stokes, and walking silently back to his car.

#macgyver #csi cbs #macgyver fic #csi fan fic #jack dalton #nick stokes #macgyver csi crossover #my fic #oh boy here we go

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kjaneway115 · 6 years ago

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Star Trek Voyager: Night

Episode 5.1 “Night”

Stardate 52081.2

Harry and Tom are playing a Captain Proton program on the holodeck. The Doc enters, frustrated that Tom has gone three minutes into his holodeck time. There’s a power surge to the hologrid. Chakotay is on the bridge alone. There are no star systems within 2500 lightyears. They’ve been crossing the expanse for two months, and they have another two years to go. Seven tells Chakotay and asks if she should inform the captain. “No,” he says, “I’ll tell her.”

Chakotay says it’s been 53 days since they entered the desolate region. They are creating energy reserves. Chakotay calls the senior staff in for a briefing. B’Elanna says there’s nothing new to report. Everyone is going stir crazy. Neelix suggests adding a third holodeck and rotating crew assignments. Neelix, Tom and the others ask about the captain. “Rumor has it she never leaves her quarters,” Tom says. Chakotay defends her, “She can run the ship from wherever the hell she wants.”

Tom and B’Elanna are at each others’ throats. Neelix gets angry at them and tells them they are supposed to be setting an example for the rest of the crew, then Neelix starts to have an anxiety attack.

Seven suggests to Tuvok that he try Borg regeneration instead of meditation because it’s more efficient. They detect theta radiation.

Chakotay tells Janeway about the theta radiation. He tries to convince her to join him for a few rounds of Velocity. “What if I told you I’m not leaving until you join me?” he asks. He tells her she’s packed a bad time to isolate herself from the crew. She says she’d give anything for a little distraction. “No time to stop and think about how we got stranded in the Delta Quadrant.” He tells her the story of how they were stranded, “we decided to stay.” No, she disagrees, “I decided to stay.” “Kathryn…” Chakotay tells her their mission has been a success. She says she made an error in judgment. “It was shortsighted and it was selfish, and now all of us are paying for my mistake.” She says to tell the crew that the captain sends her regards.

Harry occupies himself playing his clarinet. Tom shows Seven the Captain Proton program, but she doesn’t understand how to play along.

The ship suddenly drops out of warp, a blackout. Seven and Tom are in the holodeck. Harry and Tuvok are on the bridge. Chakotay finds Neelix having another anxiety attack. There are intruders aboard the ship. Janeway reappears, the crisis having gotten her out of her quarters. They bring the warp core back on line. Janeway and Chakotay work seamlessly together. The alien vessels are chased away by another alien vessel, a Maalon freighter.

The Maalon captain beams aboard to talk to Janeway and Chakotay. He suggests that Voyager turns around; there are more of the intruders ahead. Janeway says they can’t go back. The Maalon captain says there’s a spatial vortex a few light years away that leads to the other side of the expanse. He asks for the remaining intruder aboard their ship. Janeway asks what’s going on, but he won’t tell her. He says that she can either cooperate or stay behind. Janeway says they need to hear the other side of the story. They go to talk to the intruder who is in sickbay. The doctor reveals that the alien is dying of theta radiation. The alien tells Janeway that the Maalon are poisoning their space. Janeway stays with the alien and sends Chakotay to the bridge. “Finally something to put in my log book,” she says.

Chakotay goes to Tuvok for advice (“a first” Tuvok quips). Chakotay says he’s always respected Tuvok’s judgment and right now he could use some Vulcan clarity. Tuvok notes “guilt has been her constant companion”. Chakotay asks if he’s seem him like this before. Tuvok tells a story about her in her first year as a commander aboard the USS Billings where an away team she ordered was injured and she returned to finish the work alone. She wanted the crew to know that their suffering had not been in vain and he tells Chakotay she could have been killed. Chakotay knows they have to be prepared for her to do something like that again. Tuvok lets Chakotay know he has his support.

The alien tells Janeway that they need Voyager’s help to close the vortex so that the Maalon can’t get into their space anymore. Janeway confronts the Maalon and offers to help them purify their waste if they show Voyager through the vortex. The Maalon captain tells B’Elanna and Chakotay that their technology is great, but that it would put him out of a job. B’Elanna gets angry, but Chakotay tries to be diplomatic. J&C go through the options. Chakotay says they can go through the vortex on their own and then approach Maalon authorities. Janeway says they could collapse the vortex, but they have to do it from this side. That would add two years onto their journey; Janeway says she can’t make the same mistake twice. Janeway tells Chakotay, “There’s no one I trust more than you,” and “you’re a fine first officer.” She asks if he’s ready to captain the ship and tells him to assemble the crew.

Janeway enters the bridge for the first time in two months. The whole senior staff is there. She gives them orders to proceed to the vortex and tells them she’ll take a shuttle. B’Elanna shuts down the conversation right away, and everyone refuses to cooperate. She looks at Chakotay for a long time. Tuvok tells Janeway, “As you can see, you’re not the only one who’s had time to evaluate the past.” Janeway tells them they could all be hanged for mutiny. Chakotay has an idea. Janeway’s spirits are boosted. “You told them. They knew coming in,” Janeway says, sitting down in her chair. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t be a fine first officer if I hadn’t,” he replies. Just in the nick of time, the other aliens come in and help Voyager distract the Maalon. They manage to ride the shockwave through the vortex and collapse it. They are not quite out of the void. Then they see other stars and planets and are finally out of the void. It is beautiful. “Harry, what do you see out there?” Janeway asks, holding back the emotion in her voice. Kathryn tries not to cry and says, “Full speed ahead.” Janeway never deals with the fallout of this episode.

Original Airdate: October 14, 1998

Production Number: 195

Episode Tags: J/C, Journey Home, Character Backstory

Notable First Appearances: Captain Proton

Meanwhile, back in the Alpha Quadrant...

Starfleet has decided to stop fighting a defensive war. Admiral Ross asks Sisko to plan the invasion of Cardassia. Sisko finds a weak spot in Cardassia’s defenses. Meanwhile, Weyoun argues with Damar about leaving a weak spot in their defenses. Damar reveals that they have new automated weapons platforms. Dukat reappears unexpectedly. Dukat reveals that he believes Sisko caused Ziyal’s death, not Damar, and that he wants to take revenge on Sisko. Dukat says he now exists in a state of complete clarity that he wishes to share with the universe. Dukat says he wants an artifact that will make it possible for Dominion reinforcements to come through the wormhole and destroy the Federation. Sisko tries to convince the Romulans to join in the invasion, but they fight with Martok. The Cardassian defensive grid is not activated yet, and this prompts the Romulans to join the invasion. Sisko has a vision from the Prophets, and they tell him not to go to Cardassia. Ross gets mad at Sisko when he tells him, and says he has to choose between being the Emissary and a Starfleet captain. Sisko chooses Starfleet. Dukat arrives with an artifact. He chants an invocation and releases the Pah’wraith which then inhabits his body. Sisko leaves Dax in charge of the station. Dax and Worf are trying to have a child. Worf goes on the Defiant, leaving Dax behind. The battle isn’t going well for the allies. Dax goes to the Bajoran shrine to pray for a child when Dukat appears. He attacks Dax and then puts the Pah’wraith into the orb. At the same moment, Sisko realizes something is wrong. The crew of the Defiant manages to disable the generator for the Cardassian weapons platforms, and the allies land ground troops in Cardassian space. Dukat reveals that the wormhole is gone and that the Bajorans are cut off from the Prophets completely. Weyoun is angry, but Dukat tells him it’s not a problem. Sisko arrives back on DS9, and the Bajorans tell him he has to ask the Prophets to return because all the orbs are dark. Jadzia dies although Bashir is able to save the Dax symbiant. Sisko stands over Jadzia’s coffin and tells her he has failed as the Emissary and as a captain. He tells her he has to get away and figure out how to make things right again. Sisko takes a leave of absence, leaving Kira in charge of the station. Sisko goes home to New Orleans.

#star trek #star trek voyager #episode #episode guide #kathryn janeway #janeway x chakotay #captain janeway #kj115's episode guides #night #s05e01 #chakotay #voyager

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no-moremusic · 3 years ago

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babe. that response was amazing; i love the rambling.

ever since i was young and found out that Vikings gave each other swords as wedding gifts i’ve wanted to do that at my wedding and now i’m convinced that when henren redo their vows karen’s gonna force them to give each other swords (that they made themselves at another one of their funky dates of course)

they would definitely obsess over ofmd and i can totally see buck joining in + becoming besties with karen over it and they have a mutual crush-type situation on ed that they always talk about while hen (and eventually eddie-) sulks in the background

(i’m also convinced that hen and eddie both watched heartstopper and obsess over it just as much as karen + buck obsess over ofmd but they refuse to admit it/only talk about it in private because they have “reputations to uphold” lol)

wait i LOVE that!! henren exchanging vows and swords in front of all their friends and family and everyone is kind of looking at them like they’ve gone crazy bc what. swords. at a wedding. meanwhile buck who was already pretty teary is full blown sobbing

(and while we’re on the topic… stede and ed giving each other their swords when they get married as well!!! bc the only thing keeping me going rn is a season 2 co captain reunion.. and eventually a wedding;)

bucks about to strap eddie to the couch and force feed him ofmd. and eddie’s gonna pretend to hate it but secretly love it!! so when we get pining eddie and buck and karen are going crazy over ed we can totally get eddie being miserable about buck liking some vicious pirate and hen comforting him. like “it’s alright you’ll get used to it. good thing he’s about 300 years dead and also was realistically not that endearing.” i think eddie’s favorite character will be olu. i also think he’ll be secretly using twitter to monitor if ofmd has been renewed yet. hen tells him to download ig so he can watch taika’s dads on tour and he does. if he and hen start using peace signs and everyone looks at them weird that’s no one’s business but theirs. i’m projecting

OHHHH YEAAAA there’s no way we get a queer eddie who HASNT watched heartstopper omg. hen senses a gay crisis from eddie and recommends it to him once he gets back from texas. and eddie’s like… ok. and yea he’s gonna sob the whole way through. nicks speech to imogen about his real self being buried? nick researching and taking am i gay quizzes? nick struggling to accept himself and be with charlie publicly? nick learning to embrace himself and coming out to his mom? you’re never hearing from eddie again he’s too busy mourning the teenager he was and the person he could have been, like nick, if he wasn’t forced to be someone else. i’m. i’m gonna get emo over this

i love love that we have this little world where all our favorite gay people are in one place!! our minds rn are off the walls

#having an insanley good time connecting all our faves #wife in law anon #anon my beloved #crossover of the century

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alteredphoenix · 3 years ago

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Some chapter/scene ideas for That Fic Where Shionne Becomes Buddies With A Ram Via Cuteness Proximity (ToArise)(WIP)

- Durango’s character can be summed up as the Grim Patron card from Hearthstone - “EVERYONE, GET IN HERE!” It’s pretty much the basis of all of Shionne’s headaches to come. - Opening chapter where Durango - not yet named - shows up on the farm that fateful day and makes merry with everyone except Shionne because she’s a posh git; she’s too proud to be friends with a goat (”Sheep,” Dohalim corrects her.) - Rinwell giving Durango his name; “Why Durango?” they ask, and she shrugs. “He kinda just looks like a Durango.” - One night where they’re all having dinner, Alphen makes a stunning realization: “What if Durango has a family?” Everyone is aghast. Shionne especially, poor girl damn near gags herself on the spoon. Meanwhile the others express sympathy for Durango (who’s just vacuuming up his box of munchies) and give him headpats - Various attempts at Shionne displacing Durango from eating her white grapes she grows on her Side of the Goddamn Farm, because they’re just That Good - Alphen OTOH grows very delicious strawberries, so much to Shionne’s chagrin he’s followed by Durango when he goes to her Side of the Farm to pick white grapes and make fruit salads for him. She would much rather have Alphen as sole company than the goat (”Sheep!”), but he’s still a Danan, but he’s better than nothing. - Durango has to get sheared because his coat’s so thick, so Alphen has to wrestle him to the ground. Law gets giddy and makes a comment about the size of Durango’s “durangos” while he’s shearing him. Shionne, OTOH, chooses this moment to get smug and rub it in Durango’s face about “the view” on the ground and being brought to heel at long last. Karma rewards her with a headbutt up the ass the moment Alphen sets Durango back on his feet. - Shionne nicks a Renan chopper (bike) on a narrow road only to find Durango blocking the way. She burns gas and tells him to "MOVE, GODDAMMIT!” Naturally, Durango bleats and bashes his skull against the bike. Said bike breaks. - Durango scents another sheep in heat; Shionne happens upon him and just. Watches him stare off into space. Cue much poking and prodding at him when he doesn’t move after a few minutes. She gets a headbutt for it. - He does come across a wild ewe and gets it on, to which Kisara must cover Rinwell’s eyes to maintain her purity. Shionne has an existential crisis and hyperventilates over a future with little Durangos running around. - Alphen and Law play fetch with Durango. They even use him for sparring practice. Law is on the receiving end of multiple roshambos - Dohalim is particularly fond of Durango and calls him “Ser”, but he has to remind him that “books are not food”. Most of the time he escorts him out of his Side of the Farm - right toward Shionne’s, because Durango goes toward that way the most. Shionne is Not Happy. - Durango really likes Kisara’s shield, but her Side of the Farm is on a plot of land where there’s plenty of water for her to fish, so he settles on grazing on grass and being her tanking buddy. - Law tries to train Durango to be a mountable war beast. Durango responds in the Only Way he knows how: that’s right, a headbutt up the ass! - Hootle is tossed around like a soccer ball on multiple occasions; Rinwell takes it upon herself to learn how to wrestle Durango by the horns to defend Hootle’s good honor. (It doesn’t work.) - To keep Durango off her Side of the Goddamn Farm, Shionne sets up trap-laced foxholes and turrets all over the perimeter. This doesn’t stop him - not in the slightest. - Eventually Shionne desires nothing more than to do away with Durango - by going to the Arise version of the Fresh Mutton Guy and asking for goat meat and the various ways to cook it. He tells her she meant sheep meat, and that “for a bright-eyes, you’re a funny lady!” She gets a book on mutton recipes for her troubles. (Note: Apparently “goat mutton” and “mutton” are used to mean “goat meat” in South Asian and Carribean cuisine, so this could be reworked as the guy simply humoring her because she doesn’t know any better and is just hamming it up.) - The first sign of her warming up to Durango is when she indulges a not-so ladylike whim of pouring sheep nuts in the back of Law’s pants pockets and takes glee in watching him get chased all over the farm; of course, no one’s watching her, so it didn’t happen - Rinwell catches Shionne in the act of one of these episodes and won’t let her Live It Down - It gets to the point where Durango has become part of the team so when a Renan strike force tries to assault the farm he’s right there with them to push them back

I’ll wait for the game to come out in full so I can have a better understanding as to which direction I should take this story in.

#toarise #fanfiction #mywriting #preview #can you guys tell i had fun with these ideas?#this still doesn't have a title so it's going to be called That Fic Where Shionne Becomes Buddies With A Ram

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thefeministherald · 7 years ago

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Created by Joe Casey and Nick Dragotta, Ms. America Chavez is a queer Latina superhero who won the hearts of fans after being prominently featured in Kieron Gillean and Jamie McKelvie’s “Young Avengers” series. Now, America Chavez will have her first ongoing solo series published in 2017. Titled “America”, the series will have a creative team that includes lesbian Latina writer Gabby Rivera and artist Joe Quesada.

America Chavez made her first appearance in the 2011 limited series “Vengeance” as a member of the Teen Brigade. In addition to being a Young Avenger, America Chavez has gone on to become a member of “A-Force” and part of the recent line-up of “The Ultimates.” For those unfamiliar with her past exploits, here are 15 things you should know about America Chavez.

15. SHE’S GOT THE POWER

Some superheroes have standard powers while others have more unique ones. Ms. America Chavez has a little bit of both, giving her a power set that is formidable and impressive. She has super strength, can fly and is also invulnerable. However, her most important power is the ability to open and close doors between dimensions. In the past, she has literally kicked open doors between realities by creating a star-shaped portal and then kicking her foot through it.

She has also beaten many villains by using her strength and no-nonsense backbone. Although she’s a teenager, many heroes and villains have marveled (pun intended) over America Chavez’s super abilities. Loki even called her “a superwoman who could throw tanks to the moon,” while Monica Rambeau (Spectrum, formerly Captain Marvel) was stunned that Chavez could keep up with her at light speed. While the full extent of America Chavez’s powers has yet to be explored, she has proven to be one of the most powerful superheroes around today.

14. SHE IS AMONG MARVEL’S HEAVIEST HITTERS

There is a reason that many fans of America Chavez associate her with the phrase, “She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face.” America Chavez prefers punching her way through enemies and has done so many times throughout her tenure as a hero. One notable instance is when America punched Loki through a window after he suggested that she kill Wiccan. In addition to punching people, she has also kicked and thrown people and things that get on her bad side.

One of her most memorable feats came during the “Secret Wars” event, when she threw a giant shark across the shield of Battleworld in order to protect her teammates. She has also kicked her ex-boyfriend, Ultimate Nullifier, in the crotch after he temporarily took her powers during battle. During the recent events of “Civil War II,” America Chavez threw a chair at Captain Marvel after refusing to take her side. Through these displays of strength and fierceness, America Chavez has shown that she is not a superhero to be trifled with (but one who is always entertaining to watch).

13. SHE’S A TEAM PLAYER

To date, Ms. America Chavez has been on four superhero teams in the Marvel Universe. Originally starting out in the Teen Brigade, she was co-leader of the group alongside team member/ significant other, Ultimate Nullifier. She would later leave the group due to “musical differences” and be approached by Loki, who tried to persuade her to kill Wiccan for the sake of the Multi-verse. As we noted earlier, she refused and decided to secretly protect Wiccan.

Following a series of incidents, she became a Young Avenger in order to keep protecting Wiccan and help defeat the inter-dimensional parasite called Mother. When the multiverse collapsed, she ended up living on Battleworld, like most of the other heroes. There, she would join the group of heroines known as A-Force, until she threw that giant shark and was arrested. Once the multiverse was restored, thanks to the machinations of Mister Fantastic and the Molecule Man, the hero Blue Marvel invited her to become a member of The Ultimates. After the events of “Civil War II,” America Chavez became the leader of The Ultimates and took up a new mantle, which we’ll discuss later.

12. SHE’S FROM ANOTHER REALITY

America Chavez is originally a princess from a dimension called the Utopian Parallel, which existed in the presence of the cosmic entity known as the Demiurge. It is assumed that America’s powers are the result of being around the Demiurge. The Utopian Parallel was essentially the perfect paradise until America was six years old. By that time, the dimension was in danger of being destroyed when black holes appeared and threatened to pull Utopia into Marvel’s multiverse.

In order to save Utopia, America’s parents sacrificed themselves and their particles were smeared across all reality. Inspired by their courage, America decided to leave her home and become a hero like them. After traveling across different dimensions, she eventually decided to call herself Ms. America. Although her time between leaving the Utopian Parallel and joining the Teen Brigade is currently unaccounted for, America’s determination would give her experience that put her ahead of many heroes and serve her well in future adventures.

11. SHE HAS TWO MOMS

Besides their heroism, a notable aspect about America’s parents is that they are both mothers. This is rare not only in the Marvel Universe, but also in the comic book universe in general. America is never bothered by this and loved them very much as a child. When she is informed that her parents saved Utopia, she is proud of them and is distraught to learn of their deaths.

Despite being with America for a short amount of time, they managed to impact her in a way that would stay with her long after their passing. Their brief appearance in the Young Avengers comics show them to be the strong, imposing superheroes that their daughter would come to look up to. Due to their noble sacrifice, America would strive to become a hero across multiple realities and protect the one destined to become the Demiurge. If America’s parents could see what their daughter became, they would undoubtedly be proud of her.

10. SHE IS GAY

By the end of the Young Avengers series, America Chavez has come out as one of the few LGBT superheroes of color in the Marvel Universe. Prior to doing so, she informed her ex-boyfriend and former teammate, Ultimate Nullifer, that their relationship had just been an experiment and that she wasn’t on any definition of his team. Meanwhile, America Chavez flirted with fellow Young Avenger member Kate Bishop by occasionally calling her “Princess.”

By the time she became a member of The Ultimates, she had started dating an EMT named Lisa, who would mostly keep in touch with America by phone, but find her way into America’s thoughts during times of crisis. During one adventure with The Ultimates, she pushed herself too hard and experienced a hallucination that involved meeting with Lisa. Acting as a sort of conscious, Lisa would tell America that it is okay to ask for help from her teammates and that she doesn’t have to pretend that she is fine or try to handle things by herself. Ultimately, this makes America an even better hero.

9. SHE HAS A STRONG MORAL COMPASS

Due to her advanced experience as a hero, America Chavez developed morals that involved trying to do the right thing and not letting innocent people suffer. When Loki asked her to kill Wiccan for the good of the multiverse, she flat-out refused because she knew Wiccan didn’t know what he was capable of. A similar circumstance would occur when Wiccan would attempt suicide in order to break the spell that inadvertently released the inter-dimensional parasite, Mother. Although she knew that Wiccan dying would break the spell, she let Loki lie to him and tell him it wouldn’t work in order to spare his life.

Her resolve was recently tested during the “Civil War II” event involving Iron Man and Captain Marvel. While Captain Marvel wanted to use Ulysses Cain to predict crimes before they occured, Iron Man did not. As the heroes were forced to choose sides, America Chavez decided to go against Captain Marvel because she had seen realities where crime prediction didn’t work out, and actually made things much, much worse.

8. SHE HAS A SOFTER SIDE

Although America Chavez has a direct manner that is intimidating to some, she also has a soft, sentimental side. As a Young Avenger, she was moved to tears seeing Wiccan and Hulking kiss and unlock the power they desperately needed to save the world. Loki was disgusted, stating “Ugh, is love really going to save us all?” America replied, “Of course it is. Anyone who says otherwise gets stomped into paste.” America would later have a similar moment just before joining The Ultimates.

Channeling her inter-dimensional powers through the movement of her feet, she danced with her girlfriend Lisa to close a hole in the universe. Even though they are in a really long-distance relationship in different parts of the universe, the two managed to keep in touch via cellphone and have a moment together to save the day. In addition to feeling deeply about love, she also grieves with great depth when losing a teammate. When War Machine was killed during Civil War II, America felt so guilty and desolate that she had to text Lisa to feel better.

7. SHE IS THE FIRST QUEER POC TO LEAD A MARVEL ONGOING

Before America Chavez, the only openly gay characters at Marvel that had their own series were the X-Men character Northstar and cowboy outlaw, Rawhide Kid . In 1992, Northstar was the first high-profile comic book character to come out, with Rawhide Kid following suit in 2003 via a mini-series that was aimed at a mature audience. Lasting five issues and published collectively as “Rawhide Kid Vol. 3,” it contained enough innuendo to make the comic controversial enough to receive a Parental Advisory warning.

In contrast, Northstar’s sexuality wasn’t mentioned in his miniseries at all. However, Northstar would make history again in 2012 after marrying his long-time partner Kyle Jinadu in the first same-sex wedding in mainstream comics. Iceman, another openly gay X-men character, will also helm his own ongoing series later this Spring. Since America is currently Marvel’s only openly gay female character with a solo series, maybe her series will make other queer female characters of color open for the same treatment.

6. HER BEST FRIEND/LOVE INTEREST IS HAWKEYE

Since America Chavez met Kate Bishop during their shared stint as Young Avengers, the two have become great friends. Yet, throughout their time together, there has been a sense of something more between them. After America was sentenced to work at The Shield of Battleworld, she met another version of Kate Bishop named Lady Katherine of Bishop and battled foes that included Ultron, the Fury and of course, Zombies. After introducing themselves, Lady Katherine even called America a “cross-starred lover,” seeing the white stars America had on her clothes.

Sometime after America joined The Ultimates, she caught up with Kate Bishop over dinner and dancing and encouraged her to take some time away from her mentor Clint Barton. In turn, Kate Bishop would comfort America after War Machine’s death during Civil War II. America showed her many realities where War Machine didn’t die while stating that she hated that she couldn’t save this version of him. When Kate questioned America further, America stated that she admired that this version of War Machine died fighting as a hero.

5. SHE CAN’T BE TRICKED

America might have brawn, but she has brains too. Her experience as a superhero and an inter-dimensional traveler has made her resourceful enough to see through people that seem suspect. The most notable case of this involves the trickster god Loki attempting to manipulate her for his own schemes. America didn’t buy it and kept a close eye on Loki from that moment on, threatening to end him if he got out of line.

As a result, America Chavez struck fear into the heart of Loki and he tried his best not to get on her bad side again. America’s resourcefulness has also gotten her out of sticky situations through the use of her powers. When she refused to take Carol Danvers’ side during “Civil War II,” Carol ordered Monica Rambeau to take America down. Monica Rambeau transformed into her light form and attempted to incapacitate America by flying into her eyes, but America created a tiny portal in her eyes that sent Monica into a different dimension. Smart play.

4. HER BANTER IS WITTY

Every superhero has mastered the art of heroic banter and America is no exception. Foul-mouthed, clever and gusty, America has delivered many lines that show off her demanding attitude and hard-earned wisdom. When Kate Bishop asked who she was, she stated, “Your ticket to the multiverse Princess.” While fighting enemies in a dimension, fellow Young Avengers team-mate Prodigy tried to warn her not to cross their continuity streams. She deftly took them out and replied, “The laws of physics can kiss my ass.”

In addition to creating great quips, America Chavez has moments where she knows the right words to say to keep herself and others from breaking down. One such instance occurred with Lady Katherine of Bishop as the Shield of Battleworld was about to collapse. When Lady Katherine tried to pretend she wasn’t scared, America said, “Take it down a gear. No shame in being afraid. Being brave isn’t the same thing as being scared.” True words from a true hero.

3. SHE ISN’T THE FIRST MISS AMERICA

America Chavez shares the title of Miss America with many other female comic book superheroes. The very first Miss America, Joan Dale, was created by the company Quality Comics in the early 1940s. Then Timely Comics, the company that would become Marvel, published an issue of “Marvel Mystery Comics” in 1943, which featured Madeline Joyce, a character who would become Miss America. In the ’50s, Quality Comics gave their Miss America to DC Comics after they were bought.

Besides the Golden Age comic versions of Miss America and America Chavez, there are also other modern day versions of Miss America. One of them includes Wonder Woman, who took the moniker of Miss America for a short time in the comic “Wonder Woman Vol. 2” (specifically issues #184-185). Shortly before America Chavez’s solo comic was announced, her creators revealed that a similar character named America Vasquez would be having her own solo series published by Image Comics in 2017.

2. SHE IS DESTINED TO BE CAPTAIN AMERICA

In “Hawkeye Volume 2,” we get a glimpse into America’s future 30 years from now. Not only do we see that she has become the new Captain America, but she is also an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. As a result of certain events, she comes to the aid of the older versions of Clint Barton and Kate Bishop: the Hawkeyes. Given America’s desire to be a hero, it is possible that she might decide to take up the shield one day.

If she does end up doing so, then she will be one of two women who have become Captain America in the future. The other is another Latina named Roberta Mendez, who not only took up the shield, but also became the leader of a future version of the Avengers. Whether America Chavez will lead her own team as Captain America is yet to be seen, but her previous leadership and field experience makes her more than suited for the job.

1. SHE IS A HERALD OF GALACTUS

As a current member of The Ultimates, America Chavez has punched evil alien dictators, opened portals for the team’s inter-dimensional travels and gone against her teammates in a civil war. Now, Galactus — former world-eater turned Lifebringer — has chosen America and her teammates as his heralds, in order to discover who has imprisoned the cosmic entity Eternity. On top of that, America Chavez is now the leader of The Ultimates and will be taking the team into the field in order to accomplish Galactus’s mission.

Given how the team broke up and reluctantly got back together, America certainly has her work cut out for her. The aftermath of “Civil War II” has put a strain on the team, especially those who sided against their fellow teammate, Captain Marvel. Since America Chavez is among that number, it will take all the brawn, brain and experience she has in order for her and the team to work through their differences and come together for the sake of the multiverse.

VOLUME 1 ( COLLECTING: AMERICA 1-6 ) OF AMERICA NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON America written by Latin-American LGBTQ novelist Gabby Rivera

#ms. america #young avengers #women in comics #representation #comics #feminism #marvel #representación #america chavez #america #lgbt #lesbian #lgbtqa

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-how-dr-seuss-explains-bidens-big-win-on-covid-bill/

Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill

That stress on cultural complaints reflects the shifting source of motivation inside the GOP coalition, with fewer voters responding to the warnings against “big government” once central to the party’s appeal and more viscerally responding to alarms that Democrats intend to transform “our country,” as former President Donald Trump often calls it, into something culturally unrecognizable.

Rahm Emanuel lived through both of those earlier fights as a top White House side to Clinton and Obama’s chief of staff. Compared with the gyrations required to pass those economic plans, he told me, the changes that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other moderates demanded this time were “a nip and tuck. It’s not even plastic surgery.” The modest changes, he says, shows that compared with those earlier periods, the Democratic congressional caucus today is “much more ideologically cohesive.”

Some Democratic strategists warn that the cumulative price tag of the Biden agenda might still trigger a backlash, particularly if interest rates and/or inflation rise, as some economists warn. But for now it’s clear that Democratic moderates are displaying less fear of being tagged with the “big government” label from the right than their counterparts did during the early months of the Clinton and Obama presidencies. That could help Biden consolidate his party for another expensive proposal he’s likely to unveil soon: a broader, infrastructure-centered, economic recovery plan whose price tag will also likely reach the trillion-dollar level.

“I think it’s very clear that on economic issues, the voters … want them to pass stuff and take action, and there’s not a lot of opposition out there,” says Democratic pollster Nick Gourevitch. “So Biden’s got running room.”

Why it’s different this time

As in the famous Sherlock Holmes story, the most revealing dynamic in the legislative debate over the Covid plan may have been “the dog that didn’t bark”: in this case, the absence of a grassroots conservative uprising against the plan, even though its price tag vastly exceeded the Clinton and Obama proposals that ignited more resistance. Polls have consistently found significant majorities of Americans support the Covid relief plan, with Gourevitch’s firm releasing one survey last week that showed it winning support from more than two-thirds of adults, including a plurality of Republicans.

Democratic Rep. Ron Kind, who represents a rural-flavored western Wisconsin district that Trump carried by almost 5 percentage points last November, told me he felt no hesitation about backing the Covid bill. Calls coming into his office, Kind told me, have been “10 to one positive. … The reaction has been amazing: overwhelming support.”

Likewise, Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, who also holds a seat in a blue-collar district Trump won by more than 4 points, says that among his colleagues in swing districts, “Teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, pearl-clutching: All of those were absent in this.”

Changed circumstances partly explain the GOP’s inability to stir serious resistance to the plan. Obama’s economic recovery package was buffeted by the broader public anger over financial institutions’ role in triggering the 2008 housing crisis and severe recession. This time, despite Trump’s frequent efforts to blame the virus on China, Americans seem much more inclined to view the outbreak as a kind of natural disaster that demands a collective response.

“In ’09 there was so much anger in the air, the big fat cats being bailed out … and people were looking for blood and who do we hold accountable,” Kind says. “And that’s not as easy to do when you’ve got a global pandemic.”

Different, too, is the breadth of the pain the virus has inflicted. Clinton’s economic plan followed a relatively mild recession; and while Obama’s responded to a much more serious downturn, the housing crisis still spared most homeowners while crushing others. The small-government “tea party” movement that helped power the huge GOP gains in the 2010 election began with a television rant by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli, who asked, “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

By contrast, the coronavirus outbreak has touched virtually all Americans: Even those who haven’t faced illness in their families, or disruption to their incomes, have seen the routines of daily life disintegrate.

In his central Pennsylvania district, Cartwright says, “you would struggle to find somebody who wasn’t affected by this pandemic negatively in some way.”

That includes local Republican officials in cities and towns, Kind notes, who are eager for the bill’s assistance — despite congressional Republican attempts to tag its aid for local governments as a bailout to poorly run Democratic cities and states. “The [congressional] Republicans are overplaying their hand by trying to make this more partisan than it is back home,” he says. One Republican police chief in his district, Kind says, even told him that by opposing the local aid, Republicans “are the ones who are really defunding law enforcement and our first responders.”

Yet just as important as the changed circumstances may be the evolving priorities of the GOP voter base.

“Donald Trump may have shifted the GOP coalition to a more economically populist position or revealed that there’s just less appetite for spending discipline on the right than there was before,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson told me in an email.

If anything, questions about whether to increase or shrink government are now more likely to divide than unite Republican voters, notes Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. Though Republican partisans still generally recoil at higher taxes and oppose programs they view as transfer payments for the poor, a recent poll of Trump voters that Olsen supervised, for instance, found substantial support among them for spending on Social Security and Medicare (entitlements that benefit the predominantly White senior population).

“I think it’s pretty clear that in the modern Republican Party, spending control for its own sake is a minority taste, not a majority taste, and that partly explains why there hasn’t been this massive uprising at a $1.9 trillion bill,” Olsen says.

GOP anxiety about way of life widespread

As concerns about big government recede, anxiety about America’s changing identity in an era of growing racial and religious diversity has emerged as the core unifying principle of the GOP coalition. A February poll from Echelon Insights, Anderson’s firm, offers one measure of that shift. Asked their top priorities, Republican voters identified illegal immigration, lack of support for the police, liberal bias in media and general moral decline among their top five concerns; high taxes was the sole economic issue that cracked the list.

Olsen’s national survey of Trump voters, conducted in January, found them crackling with the sense that they are culturally and demographically besieged. In that poll, roughly 9 in 10 Trump voters agreed with a series of stark propositions: that America is losing faith in the ideas that make the country great, that Christianity is under attack in the US and that discrimination against Whites “will increase a lot” in years ahead. Overwhelming majorities rejected the idea that Whites have any intrinsic advantage in American society or that Hispanic and Asian immigrants face discrimination. In the recent national American Enterprise Institute survey supervised by Cox, three-fourths of Republicans asserted that discrimination against Whites was as big a problem as bias against minorities.

Olsen argues that racial resentment is overstated as a unifying principle for Trump supporters, instead portraying the common thread as a more general “sense that the American way of life is under attack.” Cox, along with many other political scientists and opinion analysts, disagrees: They argue the claim that Whites face discrimination has been the best predictor of not only support for Trump but also of the belief that the “American way of life” is under such threat that anti-democratic means, including violence, are justified to protect it.

Either way, whether these cultural anxieties are motivated primarily by racial resentment or not, what’s clear is they are burning brighter for GOP voters now than hostility to “big government.” “As conservative White Protestants moved from operating at the periphery of Republican politics to becoming the most critical part of the GOP base, their manifest cultural concerns, which have always incredibly important to these voters, have overshadowed the GOP’s traditional economic agenda,” says Cox.

House Republicans effectively acknowledged that shift by devoting so much attention to the controversy over Dr. Seuss — the National Republican Congressional Committee offered copies of his books to donors — while Democrats were passing a spending bill that towered over anything they had approved under Clinton or Obama. Other Republicans, meanwhile, tried to portray Biden’s use of the word “Neanderthal” to criticize GOP governor rollbacks of Covid restrictions as a slur on Republican voters, like Hillary Clinton’s description of some Trump backers as “deplorables.” While congressional Republicans called the Covid plan “socialist” or charged it was stuffed with Democratic pet projects, they hardly pressed that case with as much enthusiasm as these cultural attacks: “It doesn’t seem like they are even really trying” to discredit the package, says Gourevitch, in a verdict privately echoed by some Republicans.

Next up: Big spending on infrastructure

That half-hearted resistance seems likely to encourage Democrats to go big on the next stage of Biden’s economic agenda: the “Build Back Better” long-term growth proposal that will include a substantial infrastructure investment. Though the White House has not decided when to introduce the proposal, it will almost certainly include infrastructure spending in the range of about $300 billion annually, for a cumulative price tag over 10 years in the trillions.

Yet both inside the White House and Congress, Democrats are showing little hesitation about proposing that much new spending immediately after a package this big. Both Kind and Cartwright, holding districts that stretch deep into Trump country, say they would enthusiastically support a big infrastructure plan.

“I’d be very comfortable with it,” Cartwright says. “I have been serving in the US House since January 2013 and the whole time I have been saying out loud we need a big, big infrastructure package. It’s not just that the folks around here who build things for a living will benefit, it’s that the entire American economy will benefit.”

Steve Ricchetti, the White House counselor to Biden, told me the administration expects broad support for the infrastructure package when the President eventually unveils it.

“I believe there will be wide, deep bipartisan support for infrastructure because the need is so great,” he says. “I believe there’s a prospect for securing bipartisan support in Congress for this, but I am certain there will be bipartisan support throughout the country for this: governors, mayors, local officials whose economies are dependent on infrastructure investment, digital, energy, transportation, water. The business community will be enormously supportive of this; it’s an engine for the recovery.”

The open question for Biden, as he finalizes his next proposals, is whether there’s a cumulative weight of proposed spending that awakens the slumbering conservative recoil against “big government.” Both Clinton and Obama saw the grassroots backlashes against their agendas intensify when they followed their initial economic plans with other expensive proposals, particularly their efforts to overhaul the health care system. Each of those dynamics culminated in crushing losses for them in the first midterm after their election.

Compared with the Clinton or Obama experience, Democrats unquestionably feel they have more runway to advance new programs today, largely because the GOP coalition no longer seems as energized by opposition to spending. But if the political limits on new spending seem relaxed, that doesn’t ensure they have been eliminated. It’s possible Americans will accept trillions in spending beyond the Covid plan, but it’s also possible Biden and fellow Democrats might trigger a circuit breaker in public opinion if they go too far — particularly if inflation and interest rates rise from all the economic stimulus as even some Democratic economists have warned. Demands from moderates such as Manchin to find offsetting tax revenues for some or all of the infrastructure plan could also stir more conservative opposition.

The problem is that both the cost of the federal response and the underlying disruption to society from the pandemic are so unprecedented that no one can confidently predict how much more spending Biden can add to his tab without provoking the backlash he has conspicuously avoided so far. Even Emanuel, who rarely expresses doubt, acknowledges, “I’m not even sure I can give you an educated guess on that.”

The safest bet is that so long as the GOP remains fixated on cultural and racial grievance, Democrats will feel confident pushing forward the most aggressive expansion of government’s role in the economy since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society during the 1960s.

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shirtlesssammy · 7 years ago

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4x20: The Rapture

Then:

This happened. And Sam’s sucking demon blood.

Now:

I always say that the fireworks scene in Dark Side of the Moon is my favorite moment in the series, but man, I really love this scene as well. I love this shot of Dean and Cas especially. Dean’s enjoying a moment of peace in his dreams. Cas visits him and hands him a piece of paper with a location of where he wants Dean to meet him.

Dean awakens, and the brothers head out in the dead of night to find Castiel. They explore a warehouse on the unlucky end of some kind of cosmic fight. They find an angel banishing sigil on the wall, and an unconscious Cas on the floor. Only, it’s not Cas, it’s Jimmy. “Where the hell is Castiel?” Dean asking the important questions. Cas is gone.

Sam and Dean take Jimmy to a motel and buy him some food. He ravenously tears into the food while Dean watches in disgusted awe.

Jimmy doesn’t really remember anything from being possessed or what happened in that warehouse. He does remember his life before his time as an angel vessel. He recounts his story to the brothers: He’s Jimmy Novak. He’s from Pontiac, IL. And he’s a devout man with a wife and young daughter.

About a year ago, Cas first made contact with Jimmy through his television. (Of course he did.)

The brothers confer outside. Dean wants to send the man home to his family. Sam wonders if there’s a possibility he knows more, and just needs a little prompting to remember. Sam ultimately wins with the realistic conclusion. “If we want to question the guy, you can damn well bet the demons do too.”

Jimmy is less than amenable to the idea of not going home. He’s done. He gave his time and now he wants out. Listen, when a bright, shining, charismatic angel of a man is cast to play you, you just have to face the reality that you’re going to be sticking around. No measly 3 episode guest-arc for you.

Later that night, for science:

Sam heads out in secret to get a hit of demon blood. Jimmy, pretending to sleep, also heads out when he thinks the coast is clear. Meanwhile, Dean sleeps like a baby.

Jimmy escapes on the bus, and we get more of his backstory with Castiel. It seems that Cas continued to connect with Jimmy via media wavelengths. This time, Jimmy listens to him by putting his arm in a boiling pot of water, and much to his wife’s surprise, no harm comes to him.

While driving, the brothers get a surprise visit from Anna.

Anna calls Dean out for his awkward flirting and Sam out on his drinking problem. She tells them that Cas got sent back home and “that’s a very bad thing. Painfully, awfully bad.” Cas bby.

Jimmy arrives home, and sees Claire inside. He remembers the time before, when he was completely convinced his devotion to the angels was what God wanted. Amelia just wanted him to take his meds. I had a hard time concentrating during this scene. Damn Jimmy and your stupid gray t-shirt and weird spiky hair and not-Cas voice. Amelia tells him that if he won’t get help, she’s taking Claire to her mother’s in the morning. So Jimmy dons the, now iconic, trench coat, and prays to Castiel for guidance.

He then allows Castiel to possess him with the understanding that his family will be ok (sure, Jan). Claire finds the newly possessed Jimmy and implores, “Daddy?” Cas turns to her, confused, and as he walks away says, “I am not your father.” This transformation always slays me. How he can look like Jimmy one second and Cas the next with one messy tie change is amazing. (This also sets up a lifetime of anger issues for Claire.)

Present day, JImmy rings the doorbell, and Amelia answers. She’s shocked. He’s dead. They thought he was dead. He apologizes, and later they sit in the living room and talk. Jimmy regrets his actions. He was wrong. “Heaven, hell, none of that matters. The only thing that's important to me is you and Claire.” He just wants to come home. Amelia isn’t sure she can do that, but dinner would be a small start.

On their way to find Jimmy the Winchesters stop at a truck stop for fuel. Sam leaves hissed voicemails on Ruby’s phone telling her that he needs MOAR BLOOD.

Back with Jimmy he finally gets to hug Claire. Amelia puts together a quick meal of sandwiches and they all sit to eat. Jimmy grabs the food right away and when Claire asks him if he’s going to say grace he says, “No honey, I don’t think I am.” He cries into his sandwich. And...my heart just BREAKS thinking about his crisis of faith, all he’s lost, all he’s regained...and all he’s about to lose again.

Dinner is quickly interrupted by the next door neighbor, Roger. He saw Jimmy get back and wants to get in some bro catch-up time. Jimmy’s relieved that his long ordeal is over when Roger’s eyes flick black and he says, “I’m gonna gut your daughter while you watch.” Jimmy snatches up an impromptu weapon and bashes Roger over the head with it while yelling at Amelia about demons. Amelia is super assured of his sanity now.

Jimmy herds his family into the pantry to try and protect them with salt but they break out of there. Roger captures Claire and holds her at knife point while another demon captures Jimmy. They’re all rescued just in time by the Winchesters and their handy dandy demon blade. Sam tries to use his demon mojo to exorcise one of the demons but his power sputters out. They all flee in the Impala.

Cut to the Impala parked in some remote parking lot while the Winchesters convince Jimmy that he has to leave his family behind. (They dangle the spectre of vivisection over him if he gets caught. Really? That seems like some major conjecture. It’s not like vessels are NEW or anything.) Also… Man, you can really hear the ridiculously low voice of Dean and Sam when Misha’s all up in the show talking in his normal voice.

Jimmy decides that he’s going to send Amelia and Claire away while he goes into hiding. Sam hotwires Amelia a car and Jimmy says his goodbyes. Well, at least Amelia and Claire are safe, right? After the Impala drives away Amelia slaps Claire and her eyes turn black. ARGH

Later, Jimmy’s sleeping off his super stressful day in the back seat of the Impala while Dean asks Sam what the deal is with his mojo. He wasn’t strong enough to pick off a low level demon… Why’s he so low power?

Jimmy gets a call from Amelia. It’s...not good news. Later, they pull up outside of an abandoned warehouse where the demon possessing Amelia is holding Jimmy’s family hostage. Jimmy stalks off and starts shout-praying to Cas. “I gave you everything you asked me to give. I gave you more.” Castiel promised to take care of his family...and Jimmy begs him for help.

When he gets no answer he storms inside to find Amelia standing guard over Claire. He begs her to let his wife and child go.

Dean and Sam get nabbed by more demons and brought into the room. Amelia pulls out a gun, trains it briefly on the Winchesters, and then shoots Jimmy right in the gut. One of the other demons heads for Claire with a knife and Jimmy watches in despair as he bleeds on the floor. Claire rises up at the last minute and stops the demon with preternatural strength. It’s Castiel! Yay?

The Winchesters fight with the other demons and Sam nicks one of the demons with his blade. He gets a whiff of blood. Mmmm blood. Sam leans right down and drinks it while Castiel!Claire wanders calmly around the room and burns demons from their vessels.

Dean is 100% okay with Sam drinking demon blood.

Sam, now juiced up, exorcises the demon from Amelia. Castiel!Claire kneels by Jimmy who’s painfully dying on the floor. He tells Jimmy that it’s time for him to die. He’s earned his rest, his reward. Jimmy looks at his possessed daughter and begs Castiel to take him instead.

“As you wish,” Castiel replies (fucking me right up since I’ve only recently been on a Princess Bride bender). Cas jumps from Claire to Jimmy.

Cas then coldly stands up, leaving Claire and Amelia weeping on the floor. He starts to wander off.

Dean stops him. “What were you going to tell me?”

Cas looks at him with a cold ass stare and tells Dean that he learned his lesson while he was away. He serves Heaven, not humanity - and not Dean.

Later in the car Sam tries to get a rise out of Dean on the blood drinking thing. Dean tells Sam that he doesn’t care. He’s tired. He’s done with it all. Bobby calls. He needs some help so the Winchesters head for Bobby’s house.

Bobby and Dean trick Sam into getting into the safe room and lock him in there tight. Let the detoxing party begin!

Natasha: Full disclosure I forgot to do any note-taking the first time I watched this for this very recap. And then, watching it again, I almost did the same thing. I just...love this episode so much. Jimmy’s journey is intensely riveting to me. And while I know the story of Jimmy’s possession was written to give more dramatic weight to Jimmy’s choices I just love the idea of Cas wooing his vessel through tests of faith. It’s something no other angel does on the show and I love to think that this is yet another way that Castiel is unique among the Host.

Quotestiel:

Where the hell is Castiel?

More private? We’re inside my head.

It’s easy to act chivalrous when your wonder girl powers aren’t working.

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn rewatch #spn picspam #spn 4x20 #the rapture #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #cas #jimmy novak #claire novak #amelia novak #supernatural season 4 #wayward sisters

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wsmith215 · 5 years ago

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Coronavirus limitations to hit elite boxers hardest according to promoters

3:28 AM ET

Nick Parkinson

Close•Reports on boxing for ESPN.co.uk, as well as several national newspapers •Has been reporting on British boxing for over 15 years •Appears on BoxNation’s Boxing Matters show

Elite boxers will be hit harder than lower level fighters due to the limitations on sports events caused by the coronavirus pandemic, MTK Global vice-president Jamie Conlan has said.

As restrictions are being lifted in some parts of the world, boxers are weighing up whether to box sooner for less money without crowds or wait for a bigger pay day when crowds are allowed back.

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Some boxers don’t have a choice and face more months of inactivity before it will be possible for them to box again due to government restrictions on public gatherings.

Professional boxing events without crowds will be limited to five bouts per show and are expected to be staged in the United Kingdom (UK) from July after the sport was shut down in March due to the coronavirus crisis.

However, Conlan says it is the top names who could potentially lose out when boxing resumes again.

“I think the elite fighters will be in a worse position then the lower level fighters,” Conlan told ESPN.

MTK Global vice-president Jamie Conlan is concerned about the impact the coronavirus pandemic is going to have on the top performers. Photo by Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images

“The top guys rely on ticket deals, but now you are going to have to rely on a purse [without any crowds]. With the big names the money they were being guaranteed before is going to be skimmed down for these behind closed doors shows.”

MTK is planning behind-closed-doors events in July and August, held at venues around the UK.

Former two division world champion Carl Frampton, now operating at junior lightweight, and featherweight contender Michael Conlan — brother of Jamie — are being lined up to box on the same bill in non-title bouts, against British or Irish opponents, in August.

Josh Taylor, the WBA-IBF super lightweight champion, is another MTK-managed boxer and Conlan hopes he will box again in August or September.

Both Frampton and Conlan had been hoping for WBO world title shots this summer, but now face keep-busy fights next.

“We are looking to get out on ESPN+ in July, maybe on mainland UK or in Belfast, and then again in August in Belfast,” Conlan added.

Carl Frampton is looking to make history by becoming the first Irish boxer to win world titles in three divisions. Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images

“Michael, Carl and Josh all need to get out as part of their Top Rank deals. We are still waiting for government guidelines before we say we can go here or there for sure but we are looking at kicking off in July and then another one after that.

“All three of them need to get out at this stage of their careers. It’s calculated risks for all three.”

Conlan says some boxers may walk away from the sport after potentially losing out on a year’s income.

“It could potentially push some out of the sport,” Conlan said.

“They might be living fight by fight with purses and have a second job to get by. If you are 28 or 29, your mind might be willing but your body might be saying otherwise when things return to normal.

“It’s going to be vital to get the boxing circuit alive again after this and it all rides on how the next four or five months go and how we integrate into this new boxing normal. The longevity of boxing depends on how we adjust, and if boxing promoters can come together.”

While promoters like Eddie Hearn are planning on resuming boxing in July without crowds at events staged in the garden of Matchroom Sport’s headquarters in Essex, those promoters without a television income cannot say for sure when they will be back in business.

Steve Wood, a small hall boxing promoter and manager based in the north of England, says some of his stable have concerns over the future.

“It’s just started to worry a few of them now,” Wood told ESPN.

Michael Conlan is one of the boxers being lined up for a non-title bout in August. Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images

“Boxers are used to bot boxing, not getting an income for two or three months at a time so it wasn’t a concern for them when all this started because they were used to gaps. But now that gap period is going on and on and they asking me if they are going to fight this year. I can’t answer that at the moment.

“No small promoter can afford to do a show behind closed doors. I used to lose money even when there was a gate.”

Wood manages the likes of IBF world featherweight champion Josh Warrington, who was scheduled to box China’s Can Xu in a world title unification fight in Leeds, England, this summer.

Now Warrington has no idea when, or if, that fight will take place and Wood says the opposite end of the scale — the journeymen and prospects — will also be impacted.

“Kids who are in the early stage of development will not be on these initial TV shows of five fights, they will be 50-50 fights because there will be a lot of fighters putting their hands up for it,” Wood added.

“While boxing will be these five-fight shows behind closed doors, the journeymen will suffer because there will be no need for them. The broadcasters and top promoters will want reasonable fights, good opposition.

“The elite level will also suffer because unless they do pay-per-view, it doesn’t make sense what so ever doing big fights. Would you take a risk with an elite fighter getting cut or injured in one of these fights, and if he does he then loses out on a big pay day later down the line.

A future featherweight title unification fight against Shakur Stevenson could be a major coup for Josh Warrington. Dave Thompson/PA via AP

“I don’t think it will work for the elite level either so it’s the ones in the middle who are coming through and getting ready for title fights who will be fighting first.

“We’re not sure yet what it will be like when crowds do come back. I think everyone is going to reassess what they are doing. Are people going to be willing to come to shows like they were before? We don’t know at the moment.”

Conlan agrees that younger boxers will also suffer while there are restrictions on crowds attending boxing, while others are seeing this period as an opportunity to progress their careers.

“You might see 50-50 fights more and the prospects could be pushed back in their progress because of this,” Conlan said.

“You have five fights on these shows in the UK, and you have to put on your best fights to get the television audiences. There’s no room for building fights on a bill like that. That guy who is 10-0 will have to take a big risk if he wants to fight soon.

“But some fighters could look at this opportunistically, the ones who are not main event fighters who are perhaps 8-0, 9-0, 10-0, and they have a chance to get themselves out there. That’s what we are looking at in the UK right now. We will be asked, ‘is so-and-so willing to take a risk against our guy?’ We have 160 boxers on our books and some guys are looking at it glass half full, others glass half empty.

“People are looking at it with their age in mind too — maybe they need to take that leap, or others who are 22 or 23 will feel they are willing to sit out five or six months and meanwhile develop themselves in the gym.”

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