#not that the US and Europe don't have a role to play of course

[vacuouslyfalse]

There's a kind of quaint Western chauvinism to all the hand-wringing about how the West is going to stop climate change. The world where the West is the primary player here is dead and buried - it's China's world and we're just living in it.

China electricity consumption in 2023: 9.22 trillion kWh

US: 4.18 trillion kWh

EU: 2.7 trillion kWh

[txttletale]

Can you elaborate on what you think would be the minimal needed changes to fix what you see as an issue in Civ? Civ has done fairly large shifts in some mechanics before, and "civ like" is still an interesting game space that can scratch certain itches

yeah i mean as i said, the baked-in racism arises from a certain set of core assumptions that i think lock it into that position, which are that civ is a

1) symmetrical

2) 4X

game about

3) 'real world civilizations' (deeply loaded terms ofc but that's how civ envisions them)

4) trying to 'win the game'

5) with a global

6) and transhistorical

scope

so, in its role as a symmetrical (1) game with victory conditions (4), civ as a text has to take positions on what constitutes a 'successful civilization'. as a (2) 4X game this definition also has to include some variation on the profoundly loaded eponymous Xs, 'explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate'. furthermore, as a (1) symmetrical game with a global, transhistorical (5, 6) scope, it has to necessarily create a model of what 'a civilization' looks like and apply it to every 'civilization' it wants to include, at all points in their history.

this all kind of naturally leads into civ being a game in which the colonial european imperialist powers are the default 'civilizations' and all other cultures are basically just like them -- a game where technology progresses linearly and innovations are made in the order they were in european imperial history -- a game where all cultures fundamentally work in the same way and hold similar values, a game where all religions are based on christianity (i mean, just look at civ vi's system, where every religion has a 'prophet', 'apostles', 'missionaries' and 'inquisitors'), a game where not only do cultures have teleological overarching 'goals' but where these goals are shared and these goals are fundamentally based on imperialist visions of 'victory'.

to drill into some specific examples: you can't play a game of civilization without founding cities. you will constantly be founding cities. when you're playing as 'the mongols' or 'the cree' or 'scythia', this makes no sense! these were peoples who historically had rich culture, science, arts, and certainly a notable military history, but were (to varying degrees, at varying times in their history, i don't mean to create a new and similarly heterogenous absolutist category here) nomadic!

similarly, to advance in civilization you must invent 'the wheel'. 'the wheel' is necessary to many later innovations, while of course the andean peoples represented by the playable 'inca' never made significant use of the wheel because the lack of suitable pack animals and environmental factors meant that it did not, in fact, prove a suitable tool for transporting large quantities of heavy goods. for an even more glaring example, a lot of early military technology is locked behind 'horses', which is pretty absurd considering that several of the game's playable civilizations, in the real world, developed plenty of military technology despite living on a continent without any horses!

so having established what i mean by 'the issue', which is that the game's core assumptions lock it into imposing a eurocentric, imperialist vision of 'civilization' onto cultures where it doesn't make sense, here's a few different jenga blocks you could pull out to resolve it:

SID MEIER'S EUROPE

the pillar you knock out here is #5. keep the game engine and core assumptions just as founded on eurocentric imperialist societies as they are now, and just make it about european empires doing imperialism. now, i think we can immediately spot some problems in there -- how are we going to represent the rest of the world? after all, this kind of just creates a situation where, either as NPC factions or as outright exclusions, all other cultures in the world are deprived of any meaningful agency in "history". this one just kind of gives you a new problem and also from a gameplay standpoint results in a game that just Has Less Stuff On It. i think this is a bad one

SID MEIER'S ELYSIUM

now here's one you can get if you knock out pillar #3. keep the same assumptions and gameplay and transhistorical global narrative scale, but remove the 'real-world' aspects. you can get real silly with it and add fantasy stuff to it, or you can be a relatively grounded 'our-world-but-to-the-left' situation. now to some extent this already matches a lot of the features already in civ games: after all, unless you specifically load in a 'true start location earth' map, you're usually playing on a strange parallel world with semiplausible but wholly original continents! now, you also need to get some fucking Nerds and Geeks working at your company to build out your fictional world, or you'll just end having pointlessly pallette swapped a bunch of factions that are now just Schmance, Schmina, and the Schoman Schempire, and not really have avoided the issue. but if you do that, and invent a deep and rich fictional history to riff on, then you could create something really cool and incorporate alt-tech or fantasy or retrofuturistic elements or all sorts of cool shit.

the downside of this is that it makes your game less accessible and appealing to a lot of people. a big part of (at least the initial) appeal of civilization is pointing at the screen and saying 'hey i recognize that thing!'. it is instantly more accessible to someone who isn't super invested in strategy or fantasy dork shit to say to them 'you can be BRAZIL and nuke FRANCE while at war with CHINA and allied to BABYLON'.

more importantly than that, i think some parts of the historical theming (because let's be honest, it is ultimately theming, i don't think civ is interested in 'history' in any serious way) serve a pretty load-bearing role in the game's information economy. it's a pretty tall order to ask a player to remember the unique abilities of dozens of factions and unique wonders, and the historical background makes it a lot easier. e.g., it is a lot easier for a player looking at wonders to remember 'the pyramids need to be built on desert' or 'broadway will help me make more culture' than it would be for them to remember the requirements/effects of 'under-eusapia' or the 'wompty dompty dom center'. i think this is one of the number one things that, if subtracted, would meaningfully create something that is no longer 'sid meier's civilization'.

SID MEIER'S ALPHA CENTAURI

now if you cut out #3 and #5 and #6 on the other hand... sid meier's alpha centauri is not technically an entry in the civilization franchise, but i think most people correctly consider it one. it has similar 4X gameplay to the series, and its (very bad) spiritual successor beyond earth was an official entry. instead of 'civilizations', the playable factions are splinters from a colony ship that fell into civil war as soon as it landed, each one representing a distinct ideology. now, y'know, this doesn't mean it's free from Some Problems (the portrayal of the Human Hive in particular is some of the worst apects of 90s orientalism all piled together) but i think they're problems it's not at all locked into by its design!

SID MEIER'S THERMOPILAE

by cutting out #5 and #6 -- making a civ game about a particular time and place in history you could achieve something much more richly detailed in mecahnics while also being able to handwave a lot more homogeny into it. giving the same basic mechanics to, say, every greek city-state in the peloponnesian war is far less ideologically loaded than giving them to every 'historical civilization' someone who watched a few history channel documentaries once can think of. it also lets you get really into the weeds and introduce era-and-place-specific mechanics.

the scale needs to be smaller conceptually but it doesn't really have to be smaller in terms of gameplay -- just make maps and tech trees and building more granular, less large-scale and more local and parochial and specific. this also gives you the advantage of being able to do the opposite of the last two options and really lean hard into the historical theming.

if this sounds like a good idea to you, then good news -- old world does something pretty similar, and it's pretty good! worth checking out.

SID MEIER'S LOVE AND PEACE ON PLANET EARTH

what if we take an axe to #2 and #4? instead of putting all these civilizations into a zero-sum game of violent expansion, make it possible for several civilization to win, for victory goals to not inherently involve 'defeating' or 'beating' other factions. now, that doesn't mean that the game should be a confictless city-builder -- after all, if you've decided to be super niceys and just try and make your society a pleasant place to live, that doesn't mean that the guy next to you isn't going to be going down the militarist-expansionist path. hell, even if all you want to do is provide for your citizens, a finite map with finite resources is going to drive you into conflict of some kind with your neighbours in the long run.

to make this work you'd have to add a bunch of new metrics -- 'quality of life', for example, as a more granular and contextual version of the 'happiness' mechanics a few games have had, or 'equality', game metrics that you could pursue to try to build an egalitarian, economically and socially just society where everyone is provided for. after all, why shouldn't that be a goal to strive for just as much as going to mars or being elected super world president or whatever?

SID MEIER'S DIVERSE HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

ultimately, all cards on the table, if i was made god-empress of The Next Civ Game, this is the option i'd go for: jettison #1 as much as practically possible, introduce as much asymmetry into the game as you can. some civilizations keep the established settler-city model -- others are nomadic, building their units in movable 'camps' -- maybe the 'colonial' civilizations, your USA and Brazil and so on, can be like the alien factions from the alpha centauri DLC, only showing as NPCs at the appropriate point in the timeline when other civs are colonizing other continents, or putting you into an accelerated-forward version of the game if you choose to play as one.

you could combine this with a more interesting version of humankind's civ-choosing system, where you lock certain civilization choices behind specific gameplay events. this would let you do crazy shit with the balancing -- imagine an ostrogothic kindgom civ with crazy strong abilities and units that you could only choose to play as if your capital is overrun by barbarians, or a hungarian civ that requires you to have started as a nomadic civ and invaded somewhere, or a soviet union civ that requires you to lose a revolution, or a usamerican civ that requires you to split off all cities on a foreign continent from your original civ -- you could add so much variety and so many new and bizarre strategies into the game with this!

as for the universal aspects of tech and the narratives of linear progression contained within, there are lots of approaches that already solve this! stuff like stellaris' semi-random branching tech paths, or endless space 2's circular tech web, could allow civilizations to take tech paths that make sense for them, rather than imposing one single model of 'technological progress' on the wole world.

obviously there's limits to this, right -- civilization isn't going to be a detailed historical materialism simulator any time soon. but i think abandoning the idea that every faction has to play fundamentally the same and introducing some severe asymmetry as well as choices that you can make after starting the game would work wonders to wash out some of the racist and colonialist assumptions built into the game's foundation, while also (imo) creating a more fun and interesting game.

[still-searching-for-something]

Today was Yom HaShoah, the day that Jews remember the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the industrialized genocide of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators from 1941-1945.

This is a really simple opening statement, but bear with me--I think it gets a lot more... 'yeah, buts' than most people may realize. And I think a good way of illuminating that is to break down the difference between how gentiles and Jews commemorate and remember it.

In my experience, gentiles seem to view the Holocaust as the ultimate example of mankind's barbarity to mankind. Like, the distillation of evil, the most obvious example of dehumanization and bigotry brought to its horrifying and extreme conclusion. They emphasize Nazi Germany's responsibility, elevate the instances of non-Jewish Frenchmen and Poles and Germans who made efforts to save Jewish lives, and generally view Nazi oppression as a catastrophe of whom Jews were one of many victims. And they emphasize the Allied Powers' role in ending it by liberating the camps and invading Germany. Hence why International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on January 27th, the day Auschwitz was liberated.

But Jews have a different perspective.

We view the Holocaust as the most extreme manifestation of--but far from the conclusion to--mankind's barbarity to Jews. Not to his fellow man, per se, not to some universalized insert minority here slot, but to Jews, particularly and deliberately. The Nazis could never have accomplished their genocide were it not for the two millennia of anti-Jewish hatreds and dehumanization embedded deep in the institutions and political structures of European society. They didn't have to persuade Europe that the Jews were incurably evil, the Europeans already believed that. The Nazis had 99% of their work done before they'd even come to power, work that was done by the the Russian Empire, the Romans, Martin Luther, Christian Passion Plays, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the centuries of blood libels, the Fourth Lateran Council, the New Testament, the Spanish Empire, and on and on and on and on. It's as if some people think Hitler just woke up one day, out of the blue, with a total hatred of Jews and managed to use propaganda to convince the previously 100% tolerant Germans to hate Jews, too. Antisemitism did not begin or end with the Holocaust.

The sole responsibility of Nazi Germany in the Holocaust is also just... not true. Vichy France rounded up 13,152 Jews in the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, with not a single German participant, and sent them off to be murdered in Auschwitz. Vichy passed antisemitic legislation without any outside coercion--French Jews were hiding as much from the French police as they were from the Gestapo. France, of course, was the home of the Dreyfus Affair--antisemitism was and is a deep part of French society. And it isn't just France. Ukrainian nationalists participated in the Lviv pogroms, killing maybe around 8,000 Jews, Poles perpetrated the Jedwabne pogrom, and that doesn't even bring in that countries like the US, Switzerland and Ireland and Britain blocked Jewish emigrants, and I could just keep going on, but I think you get the point. Quite simply, six million Jews interspersed throughout Europe don't get murdered if it isn't without the collaboration of--or at minimum, silent assent and indifference--of all of their neighbors. The Nazis were the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust, of course, but almost all of Europe collaborated on some level, too. And this is a history that gets wiped away in favor of the comforting narrative of the Allied Powers bursting into Auschwitz, killing Nazis, and being horrified by what they've found, and then the poor people in the surrounding towns having NO IDEA about what had been going on. I think this narrative is why gentiles have International Holocaust Remembrance Day when Auschwitz was liberated--when they 'came to the rescue'--and why we have Yom HaShoah on the day in the Jewish calendar that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began--when we died on our own terms in spite of our murderers.

Think of the tiny, unwritten, centuries old minhagim of small Jewish shetls and towns like Trochenbrod, which were entirely annihilated. The end of the burgeoning Yiddish cinema. Yiddish going from 13 million speakers to 600,000 today. See how many entries in this list of shetls end with "town/city survived, but all/most Jews exterminated." Imagine for a moment, the potential rabbis and scholars and actors and scientists and artists who could have lived, had they survived or been born of Jews did. Three and a half million Polish Jews, to around 15,000 to 20,000 Polish Jews today. Imagine if Thessaloniki were still a majority Jewish city. How many Jews worldwide would be alive today had the Holocaust never happened? I've heard estimations of 32 million, compared to the real life 16 million. To kill such a massive number of people from an already tiny minority group--that has real consequences. The cultural loss for the Jewish people is staggering and beyond human comprehension.

And yet, the Nazis deliberate targeting of us is, in many ways, being pushed aside. Magnus Hirschfeld was gay, yes, and advanced the Institute of Sexology way ahead of its time and yeah, the Nazis were homophobic. But they were homophobic for antisemitic reasons. They viewed his work as Jewish perversions BECAUSE Dr. Hirschfeld was Jewish. In fact, they viewed homosexuality as a creation of the Jews. But so many progressive queer people, especially those who run in antizionist circles, seem to be trying to co-opt the Holocaust as being their trauma, downplaying Hirschfeld's Jewishness and holding the Institute up as proof that queer people were the 'real' victims of the Holocaust, entirely shutting out the millions of Jews, Sinti, Roma, and Slavs who were murdered. You can also see this in anti-mask conservatives comparing masking mandates during the pandemic to anti-Jewish legislation in the Holocaust, or the comparisons of the ongoing war against Hamas as being a 'modern day Holocaust.'

This phenomenon, Holocaust universalization, gets so much pushback from Jews for a reason--it downplays the anti-Jewish character of the Holocaust. It's softcore Holocaust denial. And it's so ridiculous we even have to say that, as the whole point of the Holocaust was to be anti-Jewish, to be the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." It's 'All Lives Mattering' the Holocaust. Holocaust universalization, and Holocaust inversion--the phenomenon of talking about Jews, Zionists, or Israelis as perpetrating a 'new Holocaust'--minimizes and trivializes the astounding damage and traumas and death and destruction wrought by the Holocaust. It's a polemical lie, so incendiary and so insulting--imagine telling a sexual assault survivor that they're morally no better than their rapist--that the only thing it can be is antisemitic. It is beyond reprehensible to talk like that, but it's so mainstream and acceptable to do it. Activists who say these things need to examine their own rhetoric, because it's dangerous, antisemitic, and adjacent to Holocaust denial. Not a place I think anyone should want to be.

The Holocaust is not a lesson Jews should have learned, an educational seminar, a 'card' Jews play, a choose your own adventure novel, a philosophical meditation on the nature of mankind's evils, or an empty slate upon which to project modern politics, warfare, or your ideology onto.

The Holocaust is, quite simply, the industrialized genocide of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators from 1941-1945. And today was Yom HaShoah, the day we remember that.

[gentlelass]

Hey there.

I know this isn't mainly a social platform of writing, and if you don't care for reading my long-ass bullshit, you're free to scroll. But I was very eager to post here a summary of my Oc, Marjorie's Ford life since her birth to when she first joined the Marigold Gang, at least for that couple of people who will care enough to bother reading, since I've always left you in the dark about most of her past up until now. I will make a storyboard with actual drawings to make it more interesting to the eye at some point, but it'll take long, so for now, enjoy what I have to offer.

The recurring year is 1894, and yet another baby girl is born under the prosperous (not for too much longer) Kingdom of Italy. But not just any child, falling short of aristocracy in terms of wealth: daughter to the Opera singer Caterina Casiraghi (Ford) and the handsome but opportunist American notary who snatched the Italian beauty as soon as he saw her, Christian C. Ford. Second to nobody in her own home but her older brother, Malcom Ford, Marjorie was still spoiled and pampered from all sides, and for a while, they were happy. 

But of course it was too good to be true, and soon enough Christian's misdeeds came biting back to him, after a life time of biting more than he could chew: the notary and most of his official possessions burnt to ashes in a fire, and although the cause was officially concluded to be an accident, his family knew in their hearts it was nothing but arson: between what remained of the man's belongings, in fact, the wife found multiple letters of a minatory nature coming from some unspecified shady client of the man's, that he had evidently proceeded to ignore. The widow, left on her own with a man to bury and two children to raise,  had no choice but to roll up her sleeves, and the broken family spent the next six years of their lives incessantly hopping from place to place, partially for the matron's role she played in different courts across all Europe as a requested and appreciated soprano, partially to avoid meeting the same early end as the late father and husband may his killers spot them if they stop in a single place too long.

Such circumstances weren't the most normal for the youths to grow up in, and the siblings came out as... not any normal really: while the weight of responsibility hung on the eldest's shoulders, stuck in the role of the "man of the house" and becoming gloomier with each day, the younger could only long to receive that much attention. Daughter unsuitable of inheriting anything, too young to get married to another rich man, and with a voice too small to follow her mother's footsteps into the world of Opera, she soon veered towards theater, her frame, just as small as her voice, nimble and agile, her movements graceful, her scenic presence lovely as she had learnt to emulate from her mother. Still feeling the psychological pressure that was truly only inside her own head from being both female and the younger child, where she couldn't follow her mother's footsteps she instead followed her late father's, soon adopting less-than-savory methods to get ahead in her career, eliminating the competition before it even got the chance to become such.

All prestigious careers however have as much of a raise as they are doomed to have a fall, and in 1914, when the Great War officially broke out, the entertainment business collapsed, specially fields as frivolous as dancing and singing, and the next thing which dropped at dizzingly fast speeds was... the Ford Family's bank account.

The Ford widow, ever the loyal mother and wife, used the last funds she had to send her children to their fatherland America like many other immigrants of the time to seek luck and a better life, and we all can imagine what happened to her, next.

The sole survivors of the Ford Family, at this point aged respectively 21 and 23, were soon separated yet again, however: not any more than a few weeks after they had successfully disembarked in Mexico, in fact, the Italian government spotted them, demanding that Malcom  came immediately back to motherland to fight in the army along all other male, able-bodied Italian citizens of age. The boy, after a lifetime of accepting responsibilities, had it drilled into his very subconscious by this point to always answer the call of duty without question, and so he did one last time, taking leave from his sister and all the money they had left. He wrote his sister letters and send her more money for some time, directing them to Mexico City where he had left her. After a while however he stopped receiving answers from her altogether, an no sibling ever heard from the other ever since.

This is because Marjorie after some months of permanence in Mexico, working some gigs here and there, plus the money she was receiving from her brother, finally saw an opportunity to build a new life all for herself, where she would be the sun, the star of the scene, rather than a mere moon in the backlight of not one, but TWO suns in her case, both mother and brother. Having been a nomad all her life Marjorie never learnt to truly form bonds and emotional attachments to people, always knowing she'd lose them as soon as she had to move yet again; hence the loss of her mother and the betrayal she inflicted on her brother never weighted much on her mind, or so she tells herself. She traveled all the way up to Missouri, where she soon started working as a maid at a certain Maribel Hotel, where a "kind", if sorta odd fella by the name of Asa Sweet welcomed her in his den in exchange of a mere few favors which would cost Marjorie nothing but a constant smell of bleach on her person, due a variety of reasons, and the sanity she had already long lost anyways.

Opportunist sociopath born out of heritage, of circumstances and most importantly of the intrusive thoughts of inferiority inside her own head nobody ever bothered teaching her the strength to fend off, the rest is history.

[centrally-unplanned]

I continue to be amused by discourse that treats the UN as a relevant body to anything, real inertia moment. And to be clear, I don't mean "the UN has never been a world government", we all know that. I mean that in the 1990's, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the UN entered a new phase of political relevance; governments around the world actively wanted it to play a stronger role in global peace & development. Many governments of Europe, Asia, the Americas, and even somewhat the US cared about it. And it failed (as it always was going to imo) - the War in Iraq being the biggest blow, but really a long string of repeated irrelevancies through the last twenty years. Other organizations like NATO for defense, multilateral trade deals for economics, etc, were increased to compensate, and it was set aside as something to pay attention to.

So the governments of France, India, Japan, Brazil, etc, know it doesn't matter and don't care about it. Talking is a free action of course, they have their reps and they do their motions and vote and allocate that aid budget (UN Aid still does relevant relief work, this is about the diplo wing of the org). But they don't care about those outcomes, they don't affect policy. In 2003 whether or not the UN would approve of the War in Iraq was a *big deal* to the governments of the US and France and all that, it shaped foreign policy even if ofc it could not control it. Today it doesn't even come up in the conversation.

[starseneyes]

The Catharsis of Healing - Doctor Who - Doctor 14

It was 2005 and my then-boyfriend and I were studying at the University of Leicester.

During Spring Break, we traveled Europe, including spending some time with various British mates. And one afternoon in Reading, we were readying to go to the pub with our Uni friend and her Dad when a clip played on the tele for Doctor Who.

Before we go any further...

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the 2023 Doctor Who specials and/or want to remain unspoiled, turn back. I won't say much, but what I do say will ruin absolutely everything. So, off with you, if you wish to remain ignorant! If you don't mind spoilers or already know what you're in for, let's continue...

Not understanding the tone of the show, Matthew and I exchanged a shrug. But, somehow, we ended up watching the show, anyway. And that was how we met Doctor #9 portrayed by Christopher Eccleston, and Rose Tyler played by Billie Piper.

Doctor #9 had an edge to him and a lot of darkness brewing within. But, at that point, I was Rose. I was this young, 20-something who was just starting to explore the world.

While Rose traveled the cosmos and timeline in the TARDIS, Matthew and I took the train. A lot less elegant, but no less an adventure. We even visited some of the same places the Doctor would visit! Although, Pompeii wasn’t quite as alive during our trip as it would be when Doctor #10 and Donna popped in.

But as we were discovering Doctor Who, we were still in a point of discovery about ourselves. We were looking to those who had gone before to guide us, to help us along our path.

June 9, 2006, Eccleston left the role and Tennant popped into view for the first time. And as Doctor #10 came into being, so did post-Uni Rachel. I graduated in June of 2006.

And in that way I saw Tennant’s take on The Doctor in a completely different way than I had Eccleston’s. Of course, each actor brings their own flavor to the role. But, I was a newbie and still getting used to that.

So, with Tennant, I found myself relating more to the Doctor than the companions. And so, when he said, "I don't want to go" before he left us, I was utterly devastated.

By the time Tennant returned to the role in 2023, oh, life had taken turns. Now, I've never led a gentle life. I raised both my parents more than they raised me, and I have had my share of abuse.

But the strain of the last few years between the break in, Matthew's nephew dying, Matthew's great-nephew dying at age 5, Matthew's mother's worsening dementia, the medical bills, the fights for my kids' needs at school, the one really abusive client I finally shed, and everything... plus a Pandemic? Illness? Death?

It's been a constant barrage of bad with no time for that most needed thing—healing.

And so when David Tennant returned to the role with a face I remember well from an era of transition in my life, I remembered the weight and strain of my post-uni years and met that with all the strain experienced in the years between.

We are tired. We are broken. We never stopped to say, "What the hell?!" because there simply hasn't been time. And for the Doctor—who seemingly has so much more time than any of us—to be exactly in the same position is reflective of the state of the world.

He needed healing. So do we.

So when Doctor #15 as portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa looks to his younger self and tells him that he is seen, that he is loved, that he has permission to rest, that they will be okay because he puts in the work to heal... It's the permission each and every one of us needs to give ourselves.

Yes, the bigeneration was unprecedented and ruffled feathers. But as I watched Doctor #14 sit at a table surrounded by people who love him, by people who will give him space to heal, by the community he has craved but always lacked in the end as he took off, again, alone... I felt that in my soul.

Sometimes we need a happy ending. I've talked often about Sullivan's Travels (1941)—a film that takes a hard look at why people need to laugh in hard times. It's such a genius film, and I absolutely recommend you check it out if you haven't. Complete classic.

When the world beats us down, we don't need a mirror to remind us how much it sucks. Sometimes, we need a little joy, a little love, and a little space for healing.

So, I don't mind that Doctor #14 is out there while #15 is continuing the mission, taking the journeys, pursuing the future and past. Gatwa will absolutely make it his own, and has already proven he is more than up to the task. What a sensational choice!

But to see Tennant's #14 giving himself permission to heal... it's just what I needed. Because, golly, maybe I still have some healing to do. And that's okay. I can give myself permission to heal and rest.

And so can you. Give yourself permission. It's okay. You've got you.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

KEN BURNS' COMMENCEMENT SPEECH AT BRANDEIS

TCINLA

MAY 29, 2024

Something worthwhile to read and consider at this fraught time.

I am deeply honored and privileged that you have asked me here to say a few words at such a momentous occasion that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day in all of your lives. Thank you for this honor.

Listen, I am in the business of history. It is not always a happy subject on college campuses these days, particularly when forces seem determined to eliminate or water down difficult parts of our past, particularly when the subject may seem to sum an anachronistic and irrelevant pursuit, and particularly with the ferocious urgency this moment seems to exert on us. It is my job, however, to remind people of the power our past also exerts, to help us better understand what's going on now with compelling story, memory, and anecdote. It is my job to try to discern patterns and themes from history to enable us to interpret our dizzying and sometimes dismaying present.

For nearly 50 years now, I have diligently practiced and rigorously tried to maintain a conscious neutrality in my work, avoiding advocacy if I could, trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens. Over those many decades I've come to understand a significant fact, that we are not condemned to repeat, as the saying goes, what we don't remember. That is a beautiful, even poetic phrase, but not true. Nor are there cycles of history as the academic community periodically promotes. The Old Testament, Ecclesiastes to be specific, got it right, I think. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. What those lines suggest is that human nature never changes or almost never changes. We continually superimpose that complex and contradictory human nature over the seemingly random chaos of events, all of our inherent strengths and weaknesses, our greed and generosity, our puritanism and our prurience, our virtue, and our venality parade before our eyes, generation after generation after generation. This often gives us the impression that history repeats itself. It does not. "No event has ever happened twice, it just rhymes," Mark Twain is supposed to have said. I have spent all of my professional life on the lookout for those rhymes, drawn inexorably to that power of history. I am interested in listening to the many varied voices of a true, honest, complicated past that is unafraid of controversy and tragedy, but equally drawn to those stories and moments that suggest an abiding faith in the human spirit, and particularly the unique role this remarkable and sometimes also dysfunctional republic seems to play in the positive progress of mankind.

During the course of my work, I have become acquainted with hundreds if not thousands of those voices. They have inspired, haunted, and followed me over the years. Some of them may be helpful to you as you try to imagine and make sense of the trajectory of your lives today.

Listen, listen. In January of 1838, shortly before his 29th birthday, a tall, thin lawyer prone to bouts of debilitating depression addressed the young men's lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?" He asked his audience, "Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the earth and crush us at a blow?" Then he answered his own question. "Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide." It is a stunning, remarkable statement, one that has animated my own understanding of the American experience since I first read it more than 40 years ago. That young man was of course Abraham Lincoln, and he would go on to preside over the closest this country has ever come to near national suicide, our civil war, and yet embedded in his extraordinary, disturbing, and prescient words is also a fundamental optimism that implicitly acknowledges the geographical forcefield two mighty oceans east and west and two relatively benign neighbors north and south have provided for us since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812 and inspired Francis Scott Key.

Lincoln's words that day suggest what is so great and so good about the people who happen to inhabit this lucky and exquisite country of ours. That's the world you now inherit: our work ethic and our restlessness, our innovation and our improvisation, our communities and our institutions of higher learning, our suspicion of power. The fact that we seem resolutely dedicated to parsing the meaning between individual and collective freedom; What I want versus what we need. That we are all so dedicated to understanding what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he wrote that mysterious phrase, "The pursuit of happiness". Hint, it happens right here in the lifelong learning and perpetual improvement this university is committed to.

But the isolation of those two oceans has also helped to incubate habits and patterns less beneficial to us: our devotion to money and guns and conspiracies, our certainty about everything, our stubborn insistence on our own exceptionalism blinding us to that which needs repair, especially with regard to race and ethnicity. Our preoccupation with always making the other wrong at an individual as well as a global level. I am reminded of what the journalist I.F. Stone once said to a young acolyte who was profoundly disappointed in his mentor's admiration for Thomas Jefferson. "It's because history is tragedy," Stone admonished him, "Not melodrama." It's the perfect response. In melodrama all villains are perfectly villainous and all heroes are perfectly virtuous, but life is not like that. You know that in your guts and nor is our history like that. The novelist, Richard Powers recently wrote that, "The best arguments in the world," — and ladies and gentlemen, that's all we do is argue — "the best arguments in the world," he said, "Won't change a single person's point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story." I've been struggling for most of my life to do that, to try to tell good, complex, sometimes contradictory stories, appreciating nuance and subtlety and undertow, sharing the confusion and consternation of unreconciled opposites.

But it's clear as individuals and as a nation we are dialectically preoccupied. Everything is either right or wrong, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, my way or the highway. Everywhere we are trapped by these old, tired, binary reactions, assumptions, and certainties. For filmmakers and faculty, students and citizens, that preoccupation is imprisoning. Still, we know and we hear and we express only arguments, and by so doing, we forget the inconvenient complexities of history and of human nature. That, for example, three great religions, their believers, all children of Abraham, each professing at the heart of their teaching, a respect for all human life, each with a central connection to and legitimate claim to the same holy ground, violate their own dictates of conduct and make this perpetually contested land a shameful graveyard. God does not distinguish between the dead. "Could you?"

[Audience applauding]

"Could you?" A very wise person I know with years of experience with the Middle East recently challenged me, "Could you hold the idea that there could be two wrongs and two rights?"

Listen, listen. In a filmed interview I conducted with the writer James Baldwin, more than 40 years ago, he said, "No one was ever born who agreed to be a slave, who accepted it. That is, slavery is a condition imposed from without. Of course, the moment I say that," Baldwin continued, "I realize that multitudes and multitudes of people for various reasons of their own enslave themselves every hour of every day to this or that doctrine, this or that delusion of safety, this or that lie. Anti-Semites, for example," he went on, "are slaves to a delusion. People who hate Negroes are slaves. People who love money are slaves. We are living in a universe really of willing slaves, which makes the concept of liberty and the concept of freedom so dangerous," he finished. Baldwin is making a profoundly psychological and even spiritual statement, not just a political or racial or social one. He knew, just as Lincoln knew, that the enemy is often us. We continue to shackle ourselves with chains we mistakenly think is freedom.

Another voice, Mercy Otis Warren, a philosopher and historian during our revolution put it this way, "The study of the human character at once opens a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of people, but when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, humanity is obscured." I have had the privilege for nearly half a century of making films about the US, but I have also made films about us. That is to say the two letter, lowercase, plural pronoun. All of the intimacy of "us" and also "we" and "our" and all of the majesty, complexity, contradiction, and even controversy of the US. And if I have learned anything over those years, it's that there's only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there's a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment, which brings me to a moment I've dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality.

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, "The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed." The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, "a bigger delusion", James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.

[Audience applauding]

Listen, listen. 33 years ago, the world lost a towering literary figure. The novelist and storyteller, not arguer, Isaac Bashevis Singer. For decades he wrote about God and myth and punishment, fate and sexuality, family and history. He wrote in Yiddish a marvelously expressive language, sad and happy all at the same time. Sometimes maddeningly all knowing, yet resigned to God's seemingly capricious will. It is also a language without a country, a dying language in a world more interested in the extermination or isolation of its long suffering speakers. Singer, writing in the pages of the Jewish Daily Forward help to keep Yiddish alive. Now our own wonderfully mongrel American language is punctuated with dozens of Yiddish words and phrases, parables and wise sayings, and so many of those words are perfect onomatopoeias of disgust and despair, hubris and humor. If you've ever met a schmuck, you know what I'm talking about. [audience laughs] Toward the end of his long and prolific life, Singer expressed wonder at why so many of his books written in this obscure and some said useless language would be so widely translated, something like 56 countries all around the world. "Why," he would wonder with his characteristic playfulness, "Why would the Japanese care about his simple stories of life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe 1,000 years ago?" "Unless," Singer paused, twinkle in his eye, "Unless the story spoke of the kinship of the soul." I think what Singer was talking about was that indefinable something that connects all of us together, that which we all share as part of organic life on this planet, the kinship of the soul. I love that.

Okay, let me speak directly to the graduating class. Watch out, here comes the advice. Listen. Be curious, not cool. Insecurity makes liars of us all. Remember, none of us get out of here alive. The inevitable vicissitudes of life, no matter how well gated our communities, will visit us all. Grief is a part of life, and if you explore its painful precincts, it will make you stronger. Do good things, help others. Leadership is humility and generosity squared. Remember the opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt is central to faith. The opposite of faith is certainty. The kinship of the soul begins with your own at times withering self-examination. Try to change that unchangeable human nature of Ecclesiastes, but start with you. "Nothing so needs reforming," Mark Twain once chided us, "As other people's habits." [audience laughs]

Don't confuse success with excellence. Do not descend too deeply into specialism. Educate all of your parts, you will be healthier. Do not get stuck in one place. "Travel is fatal to prejudice," Twain also said. Be in nature, which is always perfect and where nothing is binary. Its sheer majesty may remind you of your own atomic insignificance, as one observer put it, but in the inscrutable and paradoxical ways of wild places, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self regard.

At some point, make babies, one of the greatest things that will happen to you, I mean it, one of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry, I mean really worry, about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating, I promise. Ask your parents.

[Audience laughs]

Choose honor over hypocrisy, virtue over vulgarity, discipline over dissipation, character over cleverness, sacrifice over self-indulgence. Do not lose your enthusiasm, in its Greek etymology the word enthusiasm means simply, "god in us". Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Denounce oppression everywhere.

[Audience applauding]

Convince your government, as Lincoln understood that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land. Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts.

[Audience cheering]

They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country; They just make our country worth defending.

[Audience applauding]

Remember what Louis Brandeis said, "The most important political office is that of the private citizen." Vote. You indelibly... [audience applauding] Please, vote. You indelibly underscore your citizenship, and most important, our kinship with each other when you do. Good luck and godspeed.

[Audience applauding]

[melodiclune]

@soleilonthesun @galaxynajma

Okok so I still haven't fleshed out the theory much yet, because my brain connected the dots and just gave up on me. It'll take me some more time to format a proper post on it, but the thread is something like this:

Ness wanted to find someone who can show him the magic he's been wanting to see all his life. Once he found that person (Kaiser), he is so invested he devotes himself entirely to Kaiser, no matter what. He believes, wholeheartedly, in Kaiser's ability to show him the magic he wanted to see in the world. (Magic here is both literal, and a metaphor for extraordinary soccer skills when viewed from Ness's lens).

Sae is not dissimilar to this. He wanted a striker who can receive his passes, who can achieve the vision he sees. But he's not the same, blind, unconditional devotion of Ness. He'll pass to anyone he sees fit to receive it. Again, this is a parallel to how Ness found someone to show him the magic he wants-- and Sae wants the best striker for his midfielding. Sae, however, does not do this blindly. He adds a spin of his own ego to it-- he won't pass to anyone who doesn't deserve it. He won't pass to anyone who he doesn't want to, the pass is His and He controls it. That's the main thing.

But Isagi? Isagi is the direct mirror to Sae and Ness. We've all seen the "Isagi should be a midfielder" posts, and while they're not unfounded, they ignore the very core of Isagi's ego. At the moment, how he's playing right now, is a contrast to how he was in the beginning of the series. He will Make people pass to him, because he makes sure that's He's the best option to pass to at any given moment. It's similar to how Sae will use anyone on field to his advantage. And Isagi has a scant few players he will depend on for most of his plays at this point in time-- Hiori and Kurona. Similar to how Ness holds an unconditional devotion to helping Kaiser.

What I mean to say is. They all hold the same thread of how they play soccer. But because they went through different experiences, and different circumstances, they're manifesting that thread of thought differently.

I asked myself: Isagi had a gradual slope into better players. First he was faced with Nagi, and then Rin, and then the U20 players + Sae before he got to the U20 European league players. So he had time to improve and hone his skill, enough that the gap was never high enough for him to fall into the "anxiety" part of the boredom/anxiety graph too deeply. Sae, on the other hand... He went from regular high school Japan tournaments.. to Madrid. To the insanity that is European leagues. Asked myself: If Sae had the time to hone his skill gradually before he went to Europe, would he still be a striker? If Isagi hadn't had that burst of enlightenment with Ego, and just the right amount of challenge for him to keep wanting to be a striker, would he maybe have given up on football/being a forward?

Ness is a little different from these two, primarily because of his background and upbringing. We don't know much about Sae's upbringing, but there are floating theories about the Itoshi parents being distant or what not. But for the sake of this theory, I won't speculate into that too much. Isagi, of course, comes from a comfortable and loving family. So he was much more secure in his own skin and role on field. Whereas Ness needed someone to show him validation for the magic he wants to see on field. I don't really have much in my mind about this particular comparison rn, but it's THERE. I might detail on it more if this theory goes anywhere.

That's all I've got atm. But I'd love to hear more people's thoughts on this. If this seems legit enough, I'll post it properly into tags. But I'm a little insecure atm after a rough experience hahaha

[callsignbaphomet]

So it's been a few days playing with Trevor on my Minutemen playthrough and reeeeaaaally dedicating to it. Playing also gives me the chance to develop characters for said AU which I have.

Like I said, Trevor and his little brother Tristan came across Garvey in Sanctuary which was not in the best condition. Apparently a vault dweller of some kind had helped them out but left to find a lost family member or some such and kind of forgot all about the group.

((To be fair, you're out looking for your kidnapped son and you don't have time for other shit.))

The Ravencroft brothers helped them out as best they could making the run down settlement look like an actual settlement. They saw how dedicated the people were to making it a livable place and even some newcomers were trying to teach themselves how to use guns to keep nasty shit away. Among the group was an ex-Gunner who tried her best to blend in but Trevor sniffed her out rather quickly. After a quiet sit down the ex-Gunner told him why she left and Trev appointed her as lead of security. Between Trev, the ex-Gunner and Preston they taught those that wanted to learn how to best defend themselves and their new home and as more people joined some were made into Minutemen.

Soon major settlements had training courses going and as they expanded so did the Minutemen. Preston had an eye for pointing out exceptionally talented Minutemen. Those were sent to Vault 42 for extensive training and soon an elite force was formed called Vault 42. Yeah, not very creative but whatever.

((Vault 42 was an old idea I scrapped, reworked, scrapped again and brought back for this. Basically was a small vault that was for government officials only. Government figured the enemy would think it obvious for government officials to hide in or around Langley or DC so they went elsewhere. Never happened. Vault was then taken over by some wastelanders about 50 years later but the group just vanished. 70 years later another group went in but they vanished as well. Minutemen found the place and took over. Most everything was intact. Lot of people stay away since they think it's cursed.))

Vault 42 is dispatched to take down those rougher and stronger raider and super mutant groups. They mostly work under cover of night and are silent. When shit's real bad Trevor likes to join to make sure things go smoothly.

It took years for the Minutemen to reform and even longer to become the formidable force they currently are.

Eventually The Syndicate (raider gang from Nuka World made up of descendants of MI6 and Interpol that went over to America from Europe) will join forces and integrate into the Minutemen but that's after the raider wars. Some stragglers from other gangs join them too. The Nuka World wars happen way after that.

Angelus actually plays a role in Trevor's group too! He's kind of a double agent since he's a former raider.

The Institute war was huge since the vault dweller had joined them and was then somehow given the keys to the Institute.

((The SoSu is an unknown and unnamed character since I don't have a SoSu. Hell, I don't have a Dragonborn, Lone Wanderer or Courier. I leave them as sorta mythic figures of unknown origin.))

Trevor and Tristan's pasts are also vague as fuck. Trevor came to Boston from who knows where, some people think he's an ex-Gunner, some think he's an ex-raider, some think he's a vault 75 descendant. Truth is no one knows and he and Tristan don't ever say. When asked they just make up some story every single time.

Still working out some kinks in the timelines but yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't want him being some sort of tyrant either. He gives people a chance and is willing to work with them and he puts in the work. He doesn't just sit in some bunker behind 10 walls of security while ordering others to go and do his bidding either. He wants to do the work himself. On top of that he wants to give people a chance to think things through before he pulls the trigger and that's something he wants other Minutemen to incorporate into their work ethic too.

[elbiotipo]

I don't have the time to write about it because it will become another thesis, but in many agroeexporter countries, the great landowners and corporate movers who keep the agroexporter models often aren't foreign corporations (though they do play a role) but the local elites. In Argentina, it's the local oligarchy of a few mega-rich landowner families and business that produce most of the export crops, and oh do they claim to be more Argentine than anyone else, even as they hate 3/4 of the rest of the country ("se creen los dueños de un país que detestan") But they are the ones who keep the agroeexporter model going and repress or asphixiate any attempt at the construction of a popular alternative. And of course, they are beneficial for the First World who indeed supports them, so eventually their ideological bases end up one and the same. Much like the Larreta-Morales presidential formula: a technocratic "progressive" neoliberal from the capital with an conservative and violent provincial caudillo repressor. What both have in common is that they want the agroexporter, extractivist model going, and they both will seek the help of the capitalist system to do it. Bullrich, by her part, does not even hide her intentions; the discourse for her Order, Property and Capital. Not neeed for marines or the CIA to intervene keep us a colony, she will order the security forces herself for a share of our colonial profits, and will proclaim she's the most patriotic Argentine alive while she does so.

But again, this is all already explained by Galeano and others. Because while it is true the US and Europe has constantly intervened in Latin America, our local elites have also done the most to keep us submited as sources of raw materials and nothing more.

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

[Y'all I need to get this off my chest pls quoi. Evan eventually learning French... Enjoy!!!]

“Hi… um… bonjour – excuse me? I’m looking for… um…” Evan scanned his call sheet again. It was in French. “Sorry… I can’t read it…”

“Ah, Evan Peet-air?” the lovely French-speaking lady made his name sound like chocolate. He smiled nervously. “Yes, you come with me. I take you there, is quicker.”

“Thanks.” The woman led him to an open field, reachable only on foot for the day since it had rained pretty badly overnight, and the dirt paths had become mud pits. But, with wellies on, they made it.

“Voila. Madame Sharpe is over there, under the tent.”

“Thanks so much, I appreciate it.” Evan followed the path the woman had pointed out to her, and sure enough, huddled around a screen, was Amelia. The first round of shots looked incredible. “Um… hi, Amelia…”

“Evan! You made it! I was starting to get worried!” Amelia stood, moving to the back of the tent with him. “What happened?” He was a good half-hour late, not at all like him.

“I… everything is in French and I can’t read that.” He pulled out the itinerary he’d been given, and the call sheet. “My phone’s not working over here so I couldn’t use Google Translate, and the three people I asked what you said to ask didn’t speak English at all.”

“How did you say it?”

“Parrlay voow Onglay.”

“Close enough…” Amelia smiled up at him, but she took the call sheet and itinerary from him. “But I’ll find out why these are in French. I’ll give you mine for tomorrow, since we don't have the full studio out here. It’s miserable.”

“Belgian weather, though, right?” Evan grinned.

“Sure is!” Amelia sighed. “How are you finding it, anyway?”

“It’s nice. A little different to what I’d expected, but nice. Actually, no-one recognised me in the street earlier – and there’s no paps?!”

“Why do you think I moved here?” Amelia chuckled again. “It’s heaven on Earth and no-one gives a shit about who you are. It’s perfect!”

The scenes they were filming were mainly in the forest, where the ground was thankfully solid and they had cover from the trees if it did start raining. Evan, as was his typecasting, was playing a lover who’d turned out to be a psycho killer (qu’est-ce que c’est, fafafafafa… ) and Amelia was playing the girl who’d gotten away from him, but now was on the run. There was a bit of a magical twist, though, which would take them some time to get done. But by the end of that first day, Evan felt like he’d relaxed fully into the role, even though it was already exhausting.

As the first month wore on, Evan discovered a love for Belgium that he’d never expected to have. Not least because he’d been able to walk down the street and have virtually no-one know who he was, he really felt like he could turn off his brain and just exist. Amelia had taken him around Brussels to show him the sights, but he’d been content to sit in a random bar with a beer and a book and just… be. It had allowed him to relax so fully, he genuinely didn’t want to get back on the plane back to the States, and he still had two months left there.

His friends in the States, however, had identified another possible reason why he didn’t want to go back home: Amelia. It was obvious to the whole world that, if Evan were to have a little more courage, and Amelia were to believe someone could and would want her, that they’d be an unstoppable power couple that would rule the entire cinematic universe. After all of Evan’s failed relationships, and the trauma he’d been through with each (in their own different ways, of course), someone like Amelia would be perfect for him. His friends had tried to tell him that she was perfect because she’d also known trauma. She’d known abuse. She’d known the desire to just fade quietly into the background. She also had her own empire of fame: dance schools across Europe, several in the UK, and a few in the States all generated from her success as a dancer growing up. An Oscar tucked under her belt for a movie she hadn’t thought she was any good in. An actual billion in her bank, but she gave millions away to charities across the world so that she wouldn’t ever end up on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. She couldn’t really go anywhere in the UK or the US because everyone knew her – much like Evan. She understood what he needed. And she didn’t need him for his fame, either.

But Evan couldn’t bring himself to say much more than the basic conversations they’d shared. He’d wanted to open up to Amelia, wanted to tell her everything… but he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk that his heart would be broken again. Besides, Amelia deserved someone far nicer… far better. A decent actor, maybe.

Yet he found himself often sprawled across her sofa as they read out rewritten scenes together, or sitting quietly in the same room as her while she worked, and he worked or read or something. She was happy to sit with him in silence, or scrolling TikTok together, or Instagram, or watching something… he adored her company, and she clearly enjoyed his…

It was Amelia’s lifelong best friend, Charlie, who came to the rescue. Charlie organised a dinner in Brussels with her husband Brendan, Dave (Amelia’s cameraman and content editor) and his husband Tom, and one of their dancing friends, Lotta, and her partner Michel. Charlie invited Evan, and Evan accepted, because he had nothing else to do. What neither he nor Amelia realised was that the evening was actually a moment for Dave, Tom, Lotta, Michel and Brendan to see whether Charlie was insane for thinking Amelia and Evan had something, or not.

And the result was unanimous: they had fucking chemistry.

“So,” Brendan took a seat beside Evan at the dining table. Evan liked Brendan. A chill guy. “Are you going to invite Amelia to that bagel place she’s mentioned three times tonight?”

“What – no? Should I?”

“None of us like bagels, Evan.” Brendan’s eyes betrayed his excitement. “Do it! Ask her out!”

“She won’t want me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because… she deserves someone better.”

“After tonight, I think it’s clear you are better, Evan. Try it. Ask her out.” Brendan touched his shoulder lightly.

Evan was thinking about it. God, how he was thinking about it. Of course he was in love with her. That day, they’d been doing a scene in which Amelia’s character had to lose her shit and hit Evan’s character in the chest repeatedly, in that overdramatic ‘no, no, NO!’ kind of way. But Evan had flinched back when they’d been choreographing the scene out, and Amelia had immediately stopped everything and told him they’d rewrite the scene to have her character react differently.

“Why?” Evan had asked, holding himself.

“Because I’d rather rewrite a scene in a couple of minutes than have you relive whatever you’re currently reliving every time we do a take.” She placed a gentle hand on his arm. “It’s no bother, Ev. I promise. You can trust me.”

He hadn’t needed to tell her about the abuse. Hadn’t needed to explain why he didn’t like being hit, or why he had such a visceral response to women lashing out at him – even when it was scripted. She’d heard the stories. She’d put two and two together, spotted his warning signs, and taken them in her stride and fixed it for him.

Her friends were right. She was perfect.

“Alright,” Evan murmured. He smiled at Brendan tightly. “I’ll do it.”

A little while later, when they’d all gone home save for Evan and Amelia, they went for the metro.

“I’m glad you came out with us today, Evan. I think sometimes being around people who aren’t arseholes is good for you.” Amelia shuddered a little in the cool air. “Do you remember the way back to your hotel?”

“Yeah.” He looked down. A broken person. Amelia pressed her lips together.

“Tell you what,” she smiled. “I’ve got a sofa bed. You can stay with me tonight if you’d like? Then we can maybe figure that shitty couple of scenes tomorrow, over breakfast?” Evan’s face lit up a little. “Oh, and there’s this brunch place close by actually – we’ll head out, grab brunch, and you can practice your Duolingo French.”

And just like that… Evan was completely and utterly on her hook. It’s a dangerous game to play, man, said the little voice in the back of his mind. But he didn’t care. Amelia made him feel safe… and, that night, as he curled up on her sofa bed with a gorgeous view of the stars from the skylight in her rooftop apartment… he realised that he really didn’t want to leave Belgium at all.

End of Part One

oh hi!! 👋🏼 we have another story tweam. lemme read this after i leave the gym 👀

[denver-carrington]

Helmet Berger's autobiography Ich (co-written by his friend Holde Heuer) was published in 1998. Someone (I don't know who, sorry!) posted a synopsis in English and here are the parts of it that pertain to Helmut's time on Dynasty.

From Chapter 12: Envy was also a theme in Hollywood. When Berger played in "Dynasty - Denver Clan" he was not allowed to even speak to colleagues and friends who played in "Dallas", because there was a rivalry between the two tv-series.

From Chapter 13: Berger talks a lot about his time in "Dynasty - Denver Clan" (1983/84). Producer Aaron Spelling wanted him to play a European playboy. He had to play a man who only wants his wife's money and is hooked on cocaine. But Berger did not like working in Hollywood. He describes it like a factory, every week the production team changed and another director was responsible for every new episode. This was not the place to be for an actor who used to work with Visconti and was used to higher European standards. For the eight months in Hollywood Berger took an apartment in which he lived with his coach. Soon he fired her because she made phone-calls to Europe which Berger had to pay. His colleagues Linda Evans, Joan Collins, Pamela Sue Martin and John Forsythe were friendly in the beginning, and so were Spelling's secretaries. But Berger immediately realized that they did not mean what they said. As said before, he never liked America and its citizens. "During the first four weeks I gave my best. No cocaine, no alcohol. I needed a clear head, because the actors got their text in the morning and we only had little time to learn it." Soon Berger was disappointed. None of his colleagues invited him to their houses, none of them thanked him for his presents. He realized that Hollywood means "making business without any soul". His only fun were the weekends where he met his friend Jack Nicholson and other stars. They smoked a few joints and felt wonderful. Berger likes Nicholson and calls him "one of the funniest men I know". Berger told him about his problems and Nicholson said: "The role is good for you. Everyone in America sees you. You become famous." But then the "Denver"-people said that Berger was not allowed to met people like Nicholson or Marlon Brando because everyone in Hollywood knew that those people were sniffing cocaine. He was also not allowed to visit the best night club, "Studio One", because it was known for his homosexual guests. "I could not believe it. All those jerks. Puritans. But secretely they all watch porno movies. I did not follow their rules. I had to come to the office every second day. They told me that my role would slowly disappear, if I would not do what they said. I answered: 'You really believe that I stay at home and don't meet my friends? Really? Heil Hitler.' So I was only part of 'Denver' for eleven episodes. In the end my airplane crashed against a mountain." Only when his shootings for "Denver" where over, Berger felt better and started to have fun in Hollywood. He stayed there for one month longer. He did a lot of shopping, was invited by Warren Beatty, and Barbra Streisand was giving a dinner for him. "I met Grace Jones, Linda Blair, Sally Kellerman, Richard Dreyfuss, Michael Douglas and Michelle Philips. And, of course, Marisa Berenson who was divorced from her first husband, billionaire Jimmy Rendall. I was totally high when I left Hollywood, this magical place of false illusions."

[denimbex1986]

'He starred in one of the year’s most profoundly moving films, All of Us Strangers, and won praise for bringing Uncle Vanya to the London stage. Now Andrew Scott continues an impressive run of work by giving audiences a fresh take on one of the most iconic characters of them all.

Since US novelist Patricia Highsmith first brought Tom Ripley to life in a series of novels, the shrewd criminal and con-artist has enthralled readers and audiences alike.

Over the years, actors including Alain Delon, John Malkovich and Matt Damon have brought Ripley to the screen. Now the Dublin actor takes a deep dive into Ripley in a new series for Netflix - and characteristically makes the role his own. Not only does Scott take on an American accent for the role - impressively, he learned to speak Italian to play the character, who moves to the Mediterranean in the late 1950s.

“I had a wonderful Italian teacher and learned it for three or four months before we started just so you could understand it. It's a beautiful language to speak. And then of course, when you're around it, you become more interested in it," says Scott.

“It's one of the things you have to get used to a little bit as an actor - you've got to become really adept at something for a particular period, and then you have to move on to something else. I love that about acting, actually. But I'll try to keep it, I'm going to go back to Italy this year.”

Scott has given us a Ripley for the ages in the suspenseful series. It’s written and directed by Steven Zaillian, whose previous screenwriting credits include Schindler’s List, The Irishman and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Zaillian brings Hitchcockian levels of tension to the storytelling, shot in black and white and striking in its attention to detail.

“It's the most extraordinary character and we spend so much time inside his mind and inside his world,” says Scott of taking on Ripley. “I think that's what's remarkable about it. Sometimes in a television series where there's eight hours of this, it might be about a couple, or a police department, or a family, or a hospital. This is really based on one person. We spend so much time with this guy, the character's in 95% of the eight hours, that's an awful lot of time to spend with one character.

“And so the challenge of it is to not blot the copybook too much in relation to how wonderful the mystery of the man is, as well as what we do know about him, which is that he is an enduring character that people love. But I think the questions about him, and his mysteriousness and his secretiveness, are a reason that he's so fascinating to play.”

Understandably, he opted not to watch other performances depicting Tom Ripley, though he had seen Alain Delon in Purple Noon and Matt Damon in The Talented Mr Ripley years previously.

“I love both those versions for different reasons. It's happened before in relation to Shakespearean characters, you think: ‘Oh, I don't want to see that’. You want to be able to put your own stamp on it.

“I was very lucky because I received the full eight hours of scripts, a big pile of scripts to read, which is very unusual for an actor. You usually get maybe one or two episodes. I had the whole thing mapped out and I knew immediately how extraordinarily written they were and sparsely written.

“I love the film noir-ish element to it. It's absolutely exquisite to look at and I love the opaqueness of playing this character. It felt like a real departure for me.”

The series was shot in New York and various glamorous locations throughout Italy including Rome, Capri, the Amalfi Coast and Palermo, as Scott’s Tom Ripley travels to Europe to seek out an old acquaintance, the wealthy and privileged Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn).

As a boy, a shy Scott took up acting classes and quickly fell in love with the craft - playing the Tin Man in one of his first ever performances.

Years later, he went on to star in several Irish dramas including Jimmy’s Hall and Handsome Devil. He gave us the villainous Moriarty in a TV adaptation of Sherlock and the legendary ‘hot priest’ in Fleabag.

“I think we all as human beings want to do something that's of use to other people,” he says of his career. “You want to do something that's useful in the world. I suppose I appreciate more now, how much this can be of use to people, and how it genuinely helps.

“I do feel like I try to force myself sometimes into appreciating that what I do can be of use to people and it's not a frivolous thing, because I know that actors and artists of all different persuasions have really helped me.”

There have been many memorable screen performances from the Irish actor, but theatre is at the very heart of what he does, and his recent successes include an award-winning run of Vanya, which also screened widely in cinemas.

“It's just like injecting the atmosphere straight into your veins,” he says of live performance. “You don't wait around - you're the chief artist, if I'm honest, as an actor. In the theatre, you're in charge.

“If the audience is getting bored, it's your job to pick the pace up, it's your job to be sort of all seeing, and there's nothing like that. If you don't exercise those muscles, you lose them and I don't want to lose them. I find it just the purest form of storytelling. Vanya was exhilarating, and exhausting, and all the things.”

Scott brought audiences one of the finest screen performances of the year in All of Us Strangers, which audiences are falling in love with on streaming services following its successful cinema run. He and his friend and co-star Paul Mescal entertained fans with their banter while publicising the film.

“It's been extraordinary,” says Scott of the film’s reception. “I’m still processing that actually, how affecting the film was for people. I suppose I understand for my own personal reasons more now why it affected people so much.

“I did that project with people that I really love - Paul especially. And when we brought it back to Ireland it was completely magical for both of us. It was very, very special. I'm very grateful to have just been part of it, not just the film, but the process and the reception and everything about it.”

Ripley comes to Netflix from Thursday, April 4. www.netflix.com/Ripley.'

[qwanderer]

As I'm reading through the Vorkosigan saga this go-round, I can't help but imagine how I might read it aloud, even though I almost certainly won't; it's so long and it's such a complicated prospect. The question of accents alone is just boggling! I can only read consistently in three accents, maybe fudging it to four because I can go a little bit up and down the plumminess scale with my English accent. Obviously there are a lot of different accents going on throughout the books, but I have to pick and choose where to assign my three to go with where differences would be most impactful and realistic.

The evidence is that the vast majority of the dialog in the books is spoken in some futuristic variety of English. When word origins are discussed, they line up with the true English word origins; when the MCs visit Earth, they are in London, and they can communicate easily with the locals; at the embassy in London, translation technology is required for conversation between people speaking other languages, and similar technology isn't mentioned often in other settings. Beta Colony is pretty North American coded (religion is common, but liberal ideas are dominant) and Barrayar is pretty Europe-coded; it's mentioned the empire has four official languages, and we see people speaking Greek, not expecting to be understood by the nobility. Based on the feel of the naming conventions and a mention of the Cyrillic alphabet being used, I'm guessing the four languages are (or have evolved from) English, French, Russian and Greek, but that English is pretty dominant in the cities.

Other nearby places in the galaxy seem to be able to speak to the MCs without translation more often than not, but they are mentioned to have accents. I have an idea what an Escobaran accent might sound like, based on implied name origins, but I wouldn't want to attempt to reproduce it myself. I imagine there are a lot of places in other parts of the galaxy where other languages are more dominant, but that we don't see much of those areas in the series (at least in the parts I've reread so far).

I imagine from the description of a Betan accent as "flat" and a Barrayaran accent as "guttural" that using my inherent mid-atlantic American accent for Betans is probably pretty spot-on, but the Barrayaran accent would be more of a pan-European beast that I wouldn't dare approximate. I'd sub in various English accents instead, from plummy for the Vor to more cockney for the lower classes. And American and English are my two most solid accents, and the most important contrast to make plot-wise. It's a pretty obvious choice.

I also have a solid-ish Irish accent, and I think the way to use that to best effect would be to assign it to the Komarran characters. I don't know how it fits with the actual background of the Komarran settlers, but it's very much appropriate to their galactic political role.

That leaves every other place we see to a default American accent, as well, but I think that makes a fair amount of sense, given how Barrayar's history played out in terms of instilling their differences, while allowing Betans and other "galactics" to sort of marinate into a more uniform culture, at least linguistically.

So that's how I'd assign people their accents, broadly speaking! Of course that leaves Miles wildly swinging between American and English, and Mark probably a muddy combination of all three, unless he's focusing. But deciding how that works on the fly would be the fun part!

[thenhlteaissuperhot]

why for the love of god do all the nhl players date blondes?

I mean, ninety percent of them are not even natural blondes, they dye their hair regularly and it shows - so many of them would look several times better if they just kept their hair the way it was in the first place.

As to why, I believe that it's just several factors combined so here you have my two cents:

Every time I visited the States or just watched an old reality show, I have noticed that being blonde has been kinda a thing in the USA for a long time, especially in the upper classes - like you always see the mothers of those popular and well off kids (meaning hockey moms very much included) being blonde for some reason even though there are supposed to be only 2% of actual blonde people in the States = unlike in Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, meaning that most of those US women have to dye their hair to be blonde and fit the image, which the hockey kids see everywhere around themselves as they grow up cause hockey is a sport for riches, let's be honest.

The players don't want to stick out from the rest, believe it or not, they really don't, especially as rookies, meaning that they go with whatever everyone else goes with = blonde girls. Their role models in the league are dating blondes and so they have too. This only creates pressure on the pond of girls who are really desperate to achieve the WAG lifestyle and so they dye their hair blonde to fit the image the players normally go for even if they may not actually like that. A vicious circle for both sides involved you can say.

And of course, there are the "blonde girls are simple-minded" stereotypes, which the guys actually believe in - when they are looking for a hookup or even a relationship, they oftentimes go for girls that are "not too difficult". They are all men at the end of the day, no matter how lovely and charming they might appear to you, they just want to get laid, they don't want to deal with anything that goes beyond that. Relationship-wise, it's pretty much the same scenario, most of those guys are going for girls that will do whatever they want them to do, girls that will be completely dependent on them, girls that aren't ambitious, seeking a career they would be successful in, let alone overshadowing them thanks to it, the girls that will be ecstatic about being the conventional stay at home mum that will cheer for their husband all the time, play dumb when they cheat on her, and will always look good when they take her out - that's everything those guys need to be so-called content with a relationship, as sad as it is when you really think about it.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Shared Interests

Got my grocery delivery for the month. Had to hobble down the stairs to let the guy in because my intercom thing still isn't working (my stepdad is going to call the management company that deals with the building about it), then went up to unload my groceries from his dolly into my reusable bags. And of course, the discussion went to Christmas. "Did you get lots of nice presents?", he asked me. Not sure how to explain, and not wanting to just play down what my parentals did get me this year, I just said, "Not exactly; I got mine early. There was a big thing at the Excel Centre in October--"

"Comic-Con!", he said.

OMG my grocery delivery dude is a nerd MY CUP RUNNETH OVER.

So yeah, I explained the whole "I got Critical Role autographs as an early Christmas gift" and he said he'd missed October's con but went in May and it seemed a bit empty. I flagged up that May didn't exactly have a bumper crop of guest talent, whereas October had both the Critical Role cast but also all the voice actors from Baldur's Gate 3, and people from pretty much everywhere were going to be coming because it's easier for a lot of people in Europe and points surrounding to get to London than it is for them to get to the US, where those folks normally do conventions. We talked about the axe throwing (which he was bummed he missed), and his attempt to order a fancy sword from an anime, and then we got talking about Star Wars because I explained that the only replica sword I really want is a lightsaber. This led to what Disney is doing to Star Wars and most of all to Marvel, and I had to explain fiduciary duty to shareholders because he was all "Why don't they just do what fans want?!?" and while I agree with him, there are too many fans who want too many things and fiduciary duty to shareholders demands that they do whatever won't alienate either side so badly that they can't be drawn in by name recognition.

I did have to cut the conversation a little short, but only because I have stuff that needs to be in the freezer and he does have a job to do. Otherwise, we probably would have been there all day.

So now I am going to put away my groceries, go to the corner shop (while stopping at the communal letterbox on the way back in to get the new nightshirt I ordered) and then I will continue to observe Liminal Spacemas to the best of my ability. But it just goes to show you - so many people are ashamed to voice their interests and there's no need, really. You could find a kindered spirit a lot more easily than you could find a shunning. (And anyone who gives you shit for the things you love isn't worth your time anyway.)