#or whatever that's called in English im translating the title literally

[midnightmah07]

Thinking about giving Jeanne yet another redesign

[selfcareparker]

(lovely anon) ok so this may sound so dramatic but; let me paint you a picture: i’m responding to your latest message, sitting on the edge of the sofa. i type in “lovely anon” into the search and see this longgg post come up and i’m like uhhh... i scroll down and see the people you tagged and literally. when i saw @ lovely anon. i . cried . like full on tears. my brother goes “what are you doing” “she tagged meeeee” and he continued what he was doing and didn’t care LMAOO but i was so emotional? i love and appreciate you too and aAH IM CRYING!! you’re just really sweet and i didn’t expect it at all and it was really lovely to be a part of something :’)

the kermit pic sent meee but yes yes yes!! when you start uni let me know, lol i’m so excited for you!! let me know how it goes cuz i’m literally hype hahah & yes we will be in our sad corners of the world, missing england but you’re right it’ll be sooooo worth it in the end!!! and oH i’m glad you talk to them lol i truly thought you like haven’t seen them/haven’t spoken to them this whole time😭 that would’ve been awful!

also i totallyyy get what your saying about the english speaking thing. and idk why you’re insecure (well i *knowww* bc it’s not your first language and you’re studying it in college so yuh) but your english is great :)))

lol yeah that makes sense.. my mom took french in college and she remembers NOTHING HDJSHSJ (the fact that you wanna learn MORE languages i- ahh i so admire you.. you literally know so many languages🥺) yea i mean you know a bunch of languages bc you know the base of words lol, but i wonder if because you know latin it’ll be easier for you to learn french? oh- oh wait you said it’ll be easier HAHHAHA

THERES SO MUCH EXCITING STUFF TO TALK ABOUT HDGSJSJSL it’s so wild to me that you can’t watch chaos walking :( i’m a professional hacker tho so i’ll try and find a way for you LMAO (by professional hacker i mean i literally have gotten multiple free trials and i’m pretty sure the hulu police are after me bUT ITS THEIR FAULT BC WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE???) i mean the movie was good? and cute? and funny? but yea don’t think it’s gonna be the most fantastic thing haha AND THE DOGGO AWWW (i saw it again today- or my today lol, saturday, aND THESE OLD PEOPLE CAME AND SAT IN FRONT OF ME AND MY FRIEND LIKE ITS A LONG STORY LMK IF YOU WANNA HEAR IT)

SHARK FILMS?!?!! PLEASE READING THIS I HAD NO IDEA YOU WOULD LIKE SHARK MOVIES TOO FHSKSHSHDJDJGAJAYSJS ok so i haven’t seen any of the classics (i’m working on it) but i would probably watch jaws to laugh at it? not like that lmao but like comparing it. OKAY BUT HONESTLY I BARELY KNOW ANYONE WHO LIKES SHARK FILMS AHHH OKAY im adding “the shallows” to my watchlist bc it sounds super good AND SAME AHSJD ANY BODY OF WATER IN A MOVIE I JUST KNOW ITS COMING LMAO watch me not go in the water anymore after seeing that picture HHDJSJ

WHEN I READ THIS I JUST GOT DONE TALKING TO MY MOM ABOUT THE MEG AND THAT SCENE WHERE THE SHARKKK JUMPEDDDD AND ATE THE OTHER ONEEEE AND THEN JONAS HAD TO DO- bro i cannot (i think that one is my favorite because i love me a bit of romance and the subtle romance hAD ME) 47 meters down PHEW could you imagine?? i try not to think too hard about it i’m like “don’t be dumb catherine, don’t put yourself in a dumb situation” (not autocorrect having “dumb bitch” ready i am not lying) and i literally understand... there is no other way to explain 47 meters down

i CANNOT watch horror movies, can’t can’t can’t, i literally hate them i cannot do it!!! the thrill is tempting and it’s cool in the moment but i cant lmao. i don’t have nightmares about scary things (for the majority of the time) but going to sleep i’m like oooohhhhhh shit 🥲 literally what you explained

music !!!! music !!!! music !!!! (u ever write a word and now it looks weird lmao) MY BROTHER DOESNT LIKE MUSIC AND ITS SHIT IM LIKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU- anyway, my music taste is all over the place i mean......... it’s crazy. earlier today i was listening to meghan trainor’s album “title” oUT OF NOWHERE, but just a few minutes ago i was listening to fall in love with me by earth wind and fire soooo lol .. megan is *chefs kiss*, i’m not familiar with stormzy🙈, harry styles.... IM SORRY IM THAT PERSON but i don’t listen to his solo music EEK i only listen to adore you... and not that frequently... the music video freaked me out... i like niall’s solo music a lot more, which i listen to a lot more. now. one direction. favorite. please & thank you. i have a playlist called “boy bands” and it consists of one direction and the vamps (obsessed with cherry blossom btw) but as you can see my taste is all over the place!! fr fr if i sent you what apple music has as my “favorites” it went from ariana grande to carrie underwood to glee (OBSESSED DONT LET ME TALK ABOUT IT) i mean please if you let me i will nonstop (hamilton HDJSH) talk about music all day😩 & NOOO UR MUSIC IS GREAT HAHSK IM NOT A BIG RAP PERSON BUT DOJA CAT IS MY FAVORITE!!

okay good, i’m glad :) i was just nervous that you did feel that way <3 and GOT IT HAHAJ healthy pressure is always good :’) my friend got me these pens cuz i love stationary and school supplies lol and was like “now you have to write something” soooo yea i feel that! and i saw you posted the ficcccccc literally so proud of you 🥺🥺 i’m trying to decide if i read it tomorrow or tonight..... sleep or a literal beautiful creation made by the sweetest person and is v v nice smut and college!peter and 4.7k...... sleep aint really calling no more.

GIRL ALL OF MY SENTENCES ARE TOO LONG HAHAHAH IN FACT THIS IS TOO LONG SOOO (also why am i 3 days late..😑) anywho it’s 1 in the morning so <33 lovely anon

🥰

oh my god the fact that you cried nearly made me cry too😭😭🥺🥺 (also, your brother LMAO), i wasn‘t even sure if you‘d see it but i immediately thought of you so of COURSE i included you <333

the hulu police lsjsjaiaik, girl i was ready to get a hulu membership when i wanted to watch big time adolescence and i couldn‘t find it anywhereee, and when i got to the payment it said i need a bank account that‘s based in the US or whatever. like bro i was about to pay you!! but i was forced to find it somewhere (and i did, on levidia,— not that i‘ve ever used it because it‘s illegal 😤 i would never!!! i‘d rather support billion dollar companies and spend my money on watching films that i can find for free 🥰🥰🥰 not

i‘ve found chaos walking online so i‘ll watch it som time this week!! also YES TELL ME THE STORY

okay so idk if you watched/are planning on watching falcon and winter soldier but i watched the first episode the other day and they were speaking french (just a few seconds) and I UNDERSTOOD SOME WORDS DLDJDJ and i was so proud of myself. i‘ve only ever learned french with duolingo lol (i only do like 5 mins a day and that‘s why i was so surprised that i understood some of it!!). and yeah apart from latin i feel like italian, german, french and english are all similar in a sense.. i mean obviously they‘re completely different languages but for example there are some grammatical constructions in french that i think i wouldn‘t understand if i only spoke english? so when i translate those things into english you can‘t directly translate them bc you say things differently, but when i translate them into german then it makes more sense to me. idk that‘s something i noticed so i feel like if you already know multiple languages it‘s easier to learn another language compared to if you only know one language and are trying to learn a second one. even if the languages aren‘t similar then i think you get the hang of it easier.

ikd slsjsjs also i don‘t want you to think that i‘m a linguistic genius or anything lmfao, like i‘m only fluent in english and german and i‘m just a wannabe (ew that word) polyglot sksj (yes i had to google polyglot— i do think learning ancient greek would be super cool tho? like imagine studying latin AND ancient greek, whew). and honestly i don‘t think i‘ll ever be fluent in another language bc i don‘t plan on living anywhere other than germany or possibly england and i‘m not dedicated enough to properly learn any other languages esp if i don‘t have anyone to speak the language with. but i still try my best and i just love language/languages as a whole so yeah i‘m happy & just learning as much as i can dkdjh🥰

(I guess language/linguistics are/is my passion (which sounds sooo lame lmaoooo) and the word passion comes from the latin word pati (i think💀) which means to suffer, and in german passion is called Leidenschaft which basically means suffering too, idk why i‘m telling you this maybe you know it already. but ok dumb fun fact, in german you can make compound words with as many words as you like, and the longest official german word is Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz which is a law for the monitoring of labels on beef... this is such a dumb fact but i think about that word like once a day idk why dodjsjsj so... 👁👄👁)

but i‘ll stop boring you with my linguistics talk because truly i don‘t know much about languages but i am interested omg i‘m gonna shut up now.

now water + sharks. (so in non-covid times i always go to croatia with my dad during the summer, and even before ever watching a shark film i was always kind of scared in water.. but after watching so many shark films wldjdj HELP Like you know when you go deeper into the ocean and you can‘t see or feel the ground/floor? anymore.. then i just start imagining sharks. like i can‘t help it i just imagine a shark sneaking up on me or feeling something graze my foot ABD I JUST START FREAKING OUT SSKJSHSJ. idk. anyway kdkdh i do love the ocean/swimming though but the older i get the more i realise how fucking scary the ocean is ( even if we’re gonna disregard sharks)

your brother... what‘s wrong with him? HOw CAN YOU NOT LIKE MUSIC LIKE WHAT THE FAWK

OKAY BUT SAME ABOUT THE ADORE YOU MUSIC VIDEO DLDKDJSJSKSLSLKSKSJSHSH and yeah i have to say harry’s style (styles lol) as a solo artist isn‘t reaaally my cup of tea, and i only like the popular songs from his second album and the first album is only good when i‘m in the right mood (haven‘t actually listened to it in a while though, but kiwi is one of my all time favourites along with only angel but i hate the start, like it takes 40 seconds to actually begin properly). i like mgk and because of him i watched the dirt which is a film about motley crue, and now one of my favourite songs ever is same ol situation and i‘m into rock now lol. +++ justin bieber. I had a justin bieber cardboard cutout thingy😭 i was the biggest Belieber on earth when i was 13-16, but i didn‘t like his last album and tbh he‘s become a bit weird lately, BUT OH MY GOD. i Listened to his new album yesterday and i‘m in LOVE with the song hold on

i really like niall‘s music toooo!!!! And doja cat 😌😌😌😌 And THE VAMPS OG MY GOD. i got to see them live bc they were the opening/support act for little mix and ajdsjskslslsjsjsj. (Also i love concerts, some of the best memories of my life are concerts, i‘ve seen nicki minaj live 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 and justin twice and my heart fills every time i think about how excited i was, it was my first concert ever (16th of September 2016 😌) and i was the happiest person alive seeing justin drew fucking bieber (even if i‘m not tooo sure about justin nowadays)

i have a confession? Idk what hamilton is. I mean I‘ve heard about it and i keep googling it but i‘ve never watched it (is it even a film???? or like a proper musical? also pls tell me you grew up with high school musical. i have a few friends who didn‘t and it makes me so sad 😭😭😭 hsm is the best thing to happen to my childhood , the sooooongs— i still listen to some of them every week or month lool they make me so happy)

(Okay wait i was about to recommend some stormzy songs but you said you‘re not that into rap so i won‘t dksksjl)

What you said about my fic AHSLSLSJB (i wasn‘t sure if you sent an ask about it earlier? idk that might have been someone else, so if it was (and you‘ve read it already) i hope you liked it sksjsj i was...... unsure about it. and i have this reeaaallly long peter fic that i started writing in december and that‘s the only peter thing i currently want to write but also i can‘t because idk how to continue kddjj.) but I’m definitely getting back into writing i have a few blurbs that i want to write so 🥰🥰🥰

Oh and pls as soon as you read this let me know: violet or yellow? (it‘s just a tiny thing for my new theme slsksj)

[dillydedalus]

october reading

i finished my masters thesis this month (yay!) so while i still read quite a lot for escapism i was also operating on no more than 2 braincells at any time, and one of those braincells was just. continuously screaming. so any incoherence or whatever here is. because of that.

i am sovereign, nicola barker a fantastically weird & enjoyable novella about a house-viewing gone wrong that eventually blows up the novella form. i don’t want to give away the meta aspect too much, even tho it’s not entirely unpredictable, but it is so very entertaining and delightful to read. had such a fun time with this. also has a great cover. 4/5

the lifted veil, george eliot i’ve only read middlemarch by eliot, so a 75-page novella about the supernatural sure was... different. it’s fine, but nothing special imo. i enjoyed the first chapter, which sets up latimer, a soft young man with the gift of foresight/telepathy and his fascination with his brother’s fiancee, whose mind remains opaque to him (....twilight???), but the second half is pretty meh. 2/5

the notebooks of malte laurids brigge, rainer maria rilke (read the german obvi) loved the beginning of this, where morbid, too-intense, death-obsessed author-insert malte laurids brigge walks around paris, seeing everyone carry their death with them, which then makes him think of the deaths he has witnessed in his childhood. the parts about his childhood in a danish noble family were also good, but it really lost me with the overtly poetic, weird historical/religious stuff?? feel like this might have been a victim of termin master’s thesis like maybe that’s not the time for poetic, fragmentary, modernist-ish novels. 3/5

wie der soldat das grammofon repariert, saša stanišić (read in german, english translation by anthea bell) i really enjoyed stanišić‘s memoir herkunft last year so i went back to his 2006 classic, about a kid called aleksandar growing up in yugoslavia and eventually fleeing to germany as a refugee during the war. it’s very similar to herkunft in story, although the presentation is very different. honestly overall i found it a bit Too Much, too long & too stylised in its structure. but like, i can see why it’s so popular. 2.5/5

i capture the castle, dodie smith i really liked this! cassandra mortmain is a very strong narrator, the atmosphere of the dilapidated castle and the dysfunctional family are great, & i was surprised by the crushing poverty of the family in the beginning - cassandra obviously attempts to cover this up both in her own head & in her journal, but for much of the first half or so i was genuinely really worried for the kids - and this makes rose so much more sympathetic in her resolution to escape poverty. i was less convinced by the whole love quadrangle this book got going on, but on the whole this was very charming, but often very melancholy in a far deeper way than i expected. 4/5 

the death of vivek oji, akwaeke emezi my second emezi this year, altho sadly neither of them have lived up to the glory of freshwater. this one is about (gender) identity, grief, trauma, love, and solidarity/community based on otherness, which are similar thematically to freshwater, but in a novel that is, i would say, both more stylistically conventional and more hopeful/uplifting (altho it is still very depressing in parts). i enjoyed this on the whole, but it just doesn’t grab you by the throat the way freshwater does, and the reveal/central mystery just feels a bit lacking. 3/5

gott wohnt im wedding, regina scheer listen, this book is probably more competent & historically interesting than literarily great BUT it’s literally (literally) set around the corner from where i live, i know pretty much every single place & business mentioned in it & the house troubles are extremely relatable, if a lot worse than what i am currently experiencing. anyway. this novel is centered around a house in berlin-wedding & the people who live in it & it's about the holocaust & the porajmos, current discrimination against sinti&roma, the history of the wedding, gentrification, familial trauma & all that. it’s very interesting historically, slow but still very readable, and like.... i just really love the wedding! it’s kinda shitty & depressing but i love it!!! 4/5 the only good indians, stephen graham jones note: the elk in this book is not what you, a european, think of as an elk. that’s a moose. anyway, this is a horror novel about four native american men who hunt for elk when, where and how they shouldn’t have and ten years later find themselves pursued by a vengeful elk spirit. i enjoyed this! the scenes where shit goes down were certainly very horrible & gruesome & very sad as well. 3.5/5

solutions & other problems, allie brosh this book really is out there & exists. anyway hyperbole & a half was like, one of my formative internet things and i still love it a lot. this book is second only to the winds of winter in eternally getting pushed back and back and back, so this even getting published was def a pleasant surprise. it’s still really funny, and the weird ugly drawings are still amazingly effective, but this one is. very sad. some really bad shit happened to brosh inbetween and it’s kinda a downer (i mean the first one had the depression saga but this one... is darker). 3.5/5

a supposedly fun thing i’ll never do again, david foster wallace .....i might have to stan dfw, just a little bit. like, i read infinite jest when i was way too young to appreciate it (still traumatised by the uh. creative use of brooms tho) & i have NO intentions of ever rereading it BUT this essay collection was so good that i may just have to read a lot of his other stuff. particular highlights are the title essay, about a cruise journey, and an essay about the illinois state fair, two things that feel particularly fascinating and offputting in equal measure in this year of plague, where even the idea of being in enclosed spaces with many people freaks you out. but i also really appreciated his essays on david lynch & television & fiction, even if i don’t agree with all of his takes. he just has such a good voice! funny, smart, precisely observed but always with a strange spin. 4/5, minus points for too much tennis, but oh well

gruppenbild mit dame, heinrich böll (group portrait with lady) marcel reich-ranicki criticised this book for being, essentially, a sloppy mess and that’s kind of accurate - it’s definitely too long & a bit draggy & böll (and the narrator/“author”) go on tangents and into details with indulgence & abandon, but it’s also... kind of brilliant? the way the “author” collects material and testimony on leni (the lady), her family, coming-of-age and the love affair with a soviet forced labourer that made her an outcast, constructing a documented history of her while leni herself remains ever elusive, the focus on structure, architecture, construction, the endless loops of self-justification (pelzer’s insistance that he is not inhuman, the real estate tycoon’s insistence that they just want what’s best for leni & that her resistance to profit-logic is abnormal)... there’s so much in here, and a lot of it doesn’t need to be there, but a lot of it does. 3.5/5 

sweet fruit, sour land, rebecca ley very lyrical, quiet, feminist climate dystopia. it’s good, well-written, very evocative of hunger and loss, a dystopia but really more about grief and identity, and i read it during the last few days of my master’s thesis and thus have absolutely nothing to say about it. 3.5/5

i also & this will be a shock, dnf’d burning down the haus: punk rock, revolution & the fall of the berlin wall, a book about the east-berlin/german punk subculture. it just felt like a longform essay artificially extended into a 400-page book & the writing was pretty basic in a music bro tries to be deep and like, subversive and shit kinda way. 

[sikereviewdotcom]

strawberry shortcake s2 ep1 - horse of a different color

this one was suggested by someone who couldnt keep their mouth shut and not sing the strawberry shortcake intro theme in the middle of our economy class

no one wanted to hear that, but they  went ahead and then i actually followed up on that train of thoughts i remembered about the fucking cartoons and i knew it pronto: its a must-see shit its like slightly above the level of magical school bus series, but the final rating is for the fin not the beginning so lets begin this horseshit:

were reviewing “horse of a different color”, it focuses indeed on strawberrys horse, honey pie pony (its her entire damn name, how sweet right? like all of them, i got diabete from this review but its the cost of maintaining this blog anyway, the kids are playing together on a that tree having fun jumping around like chimpanzees hooba hooba but sadly our filly quickly realizes she cant play king kong with them and keep falling on her ass,

yet since theyre all retarded or young (id say its a fifty-fifty case for them kinda normal ig, i mean they ARE literal 6yo) they try several ways of getting her up on that tree, not thinking how to get her down if they ever were to succeed (good for them: aint happening) its child labor too btw, from an horse still same deal what if honey pie fell down on them? crushing them corpses with her mighty pounds? the findus company would be delighted to hear such news, im sure its some quality (sweet ass) horse meat

once it all fails she understands a horse isnt meant to climb a tree, too big too fat its four legged, not even entertaining the relationship giraffes have with trees

but it aint over, then (after a talk with herself) hp hears the laughters of a bunch of kids which catches her attention, it always does who can ignore that sorta noise? although she aint annoyed by it shes just into the idea of riding a bike now, shes even gonna get a go at it oh yea thats it we finally found her human hobby gogdamn shes a backward furry

of course it fails aswell since she has no hand for the handle and shes heavy so i guess its the reason why she rides into w/e and cant stop? because otherwise she couldve also just.. actually it makes no sense does it? i mean she couldve easily stopped the ride actually how is that kid bike even holding her? ive never tried putting a pony on a bike for 6 y/o but i doubt about its capacity in not being crushed aswell as i doubt in the kids bones not being severely damaged after a visit under honey pies horsy buttcheeks

but all of that really makes her sad: she cant play with her human friends and shes the only horse around strawberry land or whatever see me tearing it for her, theres so much emotions in this episode especially after that filly trynna get kids to get into some horseplay horseshit like dude theyre only 6, lets go easy on them, might have a problem with the parents of the kids watching this episode no one even thought how fucked up this one part is? sure horseplay isnt only sexual or w/e but it still is the visual of 6yos on all four jumping around and neighing together with their ass a little bit too exposed wow im going on a dangerous road here? aint i? not gonna sue the writers im sure it was their subconscious speaking probably got issues from their childhood, eventually got them sorted out since 2004 what do i know? aside from me not caring

back on track : after seeing horsey being so sad the kiddos decide to get her a horse friend but where the fuck? they got no idea, they are proud nonetheless and go tell honey the good new until they are like “wait but we have no idea where to find horses!” ofc we get a big reveal, some serious strawberry shortcake lore: actually all the horses, ALL OF THEM FROM THE ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET are on one (1) single island: ice cream themed to diversify it all they are just chilling over there in ponyland and for some reason this one here got lost or idk guys she took the boat and checked the rest of the world out as an even younger filly, found strawberry and her friends and decided now she was a centaur  slash humanrry furry human, idk you get it but shes their friend and so on to introduce the concept of an AWESOME island full of equestrian activity and ofc ice cream but its kinda lame because who cares? everythings already made out of food, also why isnt the ice cream melting? its one water? nevermind for the introduction as i was saying, hp sings an horrendous sounding song it deteriorated my ear drums they got pierced or something  or maybe im exagerrating? either case horses cant sing:

so to the ice cream land they go, huh

of course it wouldnt be a big adventure without an almost broken bridge oh no whatever shall we do? could we possibly cross it safely? lets try it out  guys: yay it worked good for us little stress and suspense it was wack how they got honey pie out of the hole her big ass hoove made im mesmerized by the power of friendship and sugar at this point, just in full awe for the rest of the episode probably over dosed on all the ice cream flavoured horseshit, i got some all over my mouth its dripping on my desk i gotta clean that later

next thing we know: horses its all this episode is about (aside from labor) but you see, so far hp would switch between normal human language and neighing well turns out her other fellow equines can only neigh and so they just neigh together while our english well-spoken mammal translates to the moronic kids who just smile smuggly

of course the animals are having a welcome party then, dancing around while the morons are just bored, harsh one being a cartoon character isnt it guys? w/e theyre gonna ask for honey pie to come back home now, convinced that her natural habit isnt her place and she loves them too much to just leave them and never come back and break any plans they ever had together- oh shit looks like shes leaving forever huh? what a plot twist mark that on the bitch quota for today

the first one to leave is the little boy btw, important thing to note: hes the biggest pussy he cant even face reality: oh no, no more pony back time before sleep thats quite a bummer, downer and man how are they going to survive now they got no animal to watch over them? jesus theyre soon, on the boat (idk where they got it from idk why suddenly theyre on a boat because then theyre once again gonna cross that bridge but ok) anyway yea theyre having a relationship crisis during that ship trip yada yada ah and the bridge, because (see i do not call them morons for now reasons obviously they deserve this title not only because theyre 6 but also because they are just daft:) they proceed, once in the middle of the bridge all 4 of them, to stop and wonder

“will the bridge be able to hold all of us? wont it break? damn i wonder if it will crack” and they talks without moving until vlam: a tree comes and breaks it (dont ask) so now theyre in trouble:

back to ponyland: bitch pie realizes how much she misses her actual friends and that she can speak english which her other horse friends cant do so she is special and probably abnormal, shes a big outcat of the pony society and has no other reason but to escape her incoming death sentence for fraternizing with the humans of course none of the second part is true, she just wants to see the kids again so she says asta la vista baby to the neigher team and runs away see, she hasnt taken the boat and yet also arrive to the bridge? why a boat sequence then? i will skip this for now but it WILL play in the rating, imagine im the parent of the youngster watching this crap and i have to endure it

if it sucks this bad and is this illogical i might just get bored and change the channel, idc my progeny aint gonna be watching this in either case, ill make them watch political debates then interrogate them on what they learned after what but it wasnt actual political debates just random furry youtuber venting with their fursona sprites animated and thats how you make your kids retarded, the kick of this joke is that i aint planning on getting any kids but totally gonna make them watch classics too such as the attack of the killer donuts as soon as they reach 6 so they wont be dumb and probably not getting diabete or w/e in their adulthood

then honey pie saves the kids btw all of them, heavy shit

and they all go back to strawberryland, happily after a big “wow i missed you sm, you are my real friends w/e if you dont look like me i aint speciest guys really!” theyre all vegan too btw so this works for them i havent watched enough strawberry shortcake episodes to know if they ever eat meat but i have doubts seeing how theyre into a very cannibalistic diet which include eating dessert when obviously thats what they are at least half part, this cartoon raises a lot of political questions it may have a deeper value than i first attributed to it

the end: another terrible song plays about horseshit and how tasty it is

thats all folks

so the rating: big 6/10, so you know 5/10 if its a decent kid show where im highly eager to click on the x and get back making jams but nah

surprisingly enough, i only wanted to stop watching half of the episode and not the entirity of it so credits for thats since im an adult and not a kid, imagining kids enjoyed this sweet childish cartooness or w/e now why +1? its because of how many political questions it raised, how it made me think about our society and cakes yknow its more than kids having a conflict with an horse it talks about veganism, specism, handicap, cannibalism, the management of the limited ressources were exploiting and so on yea really makes you think, its subliminal messages to make kids smarter: they watch their dessert-imbecile counterparts doing bs and then get it right irl: good  ah- it also makes it better for you when youre watching this with your kid, you suddenly transcend to another level of spirituality, existential crisis activated or at least reasoning mode or w/e youre willing to name this the point is you arent bored still despite all of this i rated it quite low for such a serious kid cartoon what couldve possibly made me tic? 1) kids are morons and cant understand all of this, not clear enough for the targeted public 2) projection onto the characters/dialogues from the writers of their childhood traumas (the horse play event didnt go unnoticed, karren brown) 3) my little pony ripoff 4) its controversial, our society, especially in 2004 couldnt understand the depth of this shit and finally 5) i got so much ice cream flavoured horseshit all over my desk god help me this is so filthy what a fucking mess i would totally recommand it to anyone who feels like being blown away by the statements made in this work of art 6/10 but really we all know in the future, itll be a 9/10, some ahead-of-its-time-crap

tg, out

[herowyn]

what are some good documentaries you’ve liked?? Any recommendations?

oh boy. so sorry i took so long! i kept putting off my answer, because i don’t really have one???

like, i never go looking for documentaries, i’ll just watch whatever’s interesting on tv that day, you know? which means that 1. i never remember any title, and 2. it’s french tv and half the docs i see are french productions.

- one i remember (about ocean life) from a few months back was a bbc production called “Blue Planet”! It was gorgeous, one of the very first things i saw on my new (and first!!) flat screen tv and boy was it a treat. definitely recommend!

im such a loser that’s literally the only title i can recall lmao

- anyway if u happen to be a french speaker, i Absolutely Recommend “Secrets d’Histoires”. they are about historical figures (and include a Lot of women) and are so so so so so good. sadly i don’t know if they were ever translated or if they have an english equivalent??

- again if you understand french, “Voyage aux Origines de la Terre” is a must. I’ve seen it a few times and always enjoyed it!

[meiizumi]

Castle of Shikigami: An informal rant nobody asked for about my most obscure obsession to date

STOP i spent like 2 days writing this post and im only posting it on tumblr because it’s the one website i’m a member of that can hold the most text. i wanted to infodump somewhere...... read this to learn something i guess (´･ω･`)

Bad voice acting is the Peak of comedy to me, and while I was looking for something to laugh at one day, I found this game called Castle Shikigami 2 for the PS2. The US version of the game's dialogue is rife with machine translated text that makes no sense, and awkward voice acting to boot. They even have voice actors saying the wrong lines, voice actors speaking implied commands, and a few voice lines are left in Japanese. Apparently, Roger Craig Smith (Sonic the Hedgehog's current voice actor) was in this game but I don't think he's even credited?! I think I know which character he voiced but I’m not exactly sure.

The history behind this game’s localization is REALLY weird. Castle of Shikigami/Shikigami no Shiro was originally an arcade bullet hell shoot em up game. The series was created by Alfa System and it was one of Alfa System’s main IPs. There are three main shmup installments and a text adventure game for the PS2, Nanayozuki Gensoukyoku. Nanayozuki was practically fanservice for whatever number of CoS fans there were back then. Each main game in the series was originally an arcade cabinet, but they were all ported to PC and home consoles. In CoS 2′s case, it came out on the PS2, Gamecube, and Dreamcast, but only the PS2 version got localized. The western publisher, XS Games specializes in publishing quality budget titles such as “Bass Pro Shops: The Strike” for the Wii. I theorize they didn’t care too much about the actual content of CoS 2 and were more focused on selling a game quickly for a low price, so they just machine translated it and adjusted a few things. If you’re wondering if Castle of Shikigami 1 was also translated this badly, the answer is No. XS Games instead removed all the dialogue from the western release of CoS 1, and released it with the title “Mobile Light Force 2″.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘Mobile Light Force TWO’ if Castle of Shikigami 1 is the first game in the series?” If you want to know what Mobile Light Force 1 was, it’s GUNBIRD; another shmup game, but by a completely different developer than Castle of Shikigami. I don’t know why they did that. What really kills me though is that both MLF 1 and 2 use the same boxart, which is COMPLETELY unrelated to the actual contents of either game. AFJQHJFOKLJFDS look at this

There’s more hilarity behind Mobile Light Force that isn’t hard to find so you can search that up if you’re interested. But thankfully, Castle of Shikigami 3's Wii edition got more of a proper localization by Aksys Games.

Now I would bluntly say something like “stan castle of shikigami” but:

1. This series’ lore is insanely convoluted. It’s an essential part of this expansive fictional universe referred to as “Mumei Sekaikan” (I don’t know what this translates to in English) where there’s like, 7 different parallel worlds. There’s more obscure ass games and manga that are tied to this universe, and I think there’s even a tabletop RPG made based off it. Have you heard of “Gunparade March”? Most likely you haven’t; it’s an obscure video game made by Alfa System that also got adapted into an anime, and I feel it can be described as Mechas x Persona. One of the characters in CoS 2 is just one of the GPM characters going undercover to find her senpai who traveled to the CoS world. Or something like that. The 7-world universe isn’t explicitly talked about in the game but they make so many references to it without defining anything that it’s like you Must know about it. There is NO documentation in English about the Mumei Sekaikan I could find on the internet, although there is a wiki in Japanese where I got a ton of knowledge from (GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS MY TRUSTED FRIEND) I feel like I might be THE person in the United States who has the most knowledge on the Mumei Sekaikan, and I could go on another tangent talking about what I know so far (and who this one specific dude Shibamura Yuuri is) but I won’t.

2. The writing isn’t excellent and can be pretty Unwoke ™; the first game came out in 2001 and the third game came out in 2005 if that gives you a sense on what era these writers were in. As far as the games dialogue goes, the characters appear kind of flat. CoS 1 and 2 Kotaro (i refuse to use the official “Kohtaro”) is stupid and driven by JUSTICE to a point where it’s annoying. I can’t tell if Hyuga is trying to be a Ladies Man in CoS 2 and 3. Kim, a religious tae kwon do instructor, spends CoS 2 thinking about how he should atone for his sins, then he turns himself into jail at the end. Sayo’s backstory is that she was a shrine maiden raised as a “human weapon” to have no emotions and her only goal in life was to kill god and then die, something like that. However, after CoS 1, she gets a crush on Kotaro because he actually treats her like a human and Of course that’s what you’d expect from the main teen girl and boy in the series. In CoS 3, Sayo's character is mostly played out to be a major tsundere for Kotaro even though surprisingly HIS character in this game changed a ton compared to 1 and 2 (he had to kill an illusion of his older brother, who he learned actually died earlier, and now he has to kill an illusion of his childhood sweetheart... damb that shit sucks :/). He’s still stupid though

There’s a gag in CoS 2 that I can’t clearly remember where it’s like, Niigi makes Sayo and Fumiko, who are both romantically interested in Kotaro, think that he’s only into little girls? Meanwhile, Fumiko’s magic goes wrong and her appearance turns to that of a child though in response she’s like “hee hee maybe Kotaro will like this”. basically more On-Brand early 2000′s anime unwokeness than average. Speaking of Fumiko, she’s a 400+ year old militaristic witch who constantly teases Kotaro (who’s like 16 or 17) and she wants to marry him for his magical potential since he’s like one of the candidates for becoming God??? From the official CoS 3 character descriptions, “Her hobby is to steal the men from other women. Her second hobby is trampling upon people.” She canonically stole her stepmother’s husband from her stepmother (the 3rd boss of CoS 3). I don’t get how that shit would have worked

3. The game itself is HARD af but to be fair I’m a scrub gamer. I can’t get past stage 3 on easy difficulty without continuing. Yes i bought CoS 1 on Steam, Yes it has a port on steam i feel like i should have mentioned this earlier

4. Besides CoS 1 having a port on Steam, CoS 2 and 3 might be hard to obtain legally. The poorly translated CoS 2 was apparently super cheap back then, but since it’s an old game, its value might’ve increased. When I tried looking up prices for English CoS 3, all the listings were like at least $40 and being broke I wouldn’t want to spend more than $29 for a Wii game in 2019... honestly I just emulated CoS 2. shout out to PCSX2

Last month I was desperate, bored enough, and deep enough in the Shikigami rabbit hole that I tried to find the manga based off of it online. The CoS manga only tells the events of the first two games so I still don’t really get anything about CoS 3, like who Mihee, Batu, and Emilio are supposed to be. However, the plot events also differ. For example, Roger Sasuke exists as a character in CoS 3 but in the manga he literally Dies. There’s 11 total volumes of this; 3 volumes dedicated to CoS 1 and the latter 8 (the “Twisted Castle arc”) dedicated to CoS 2. Only the very first 3 chapters were scanlated to English all the way in 2011. Fortunately, I did find the entire manga uploaded though............... in CHINESE. So you know what I did? I “read” the entire thing using my phone’s Google Translate OCR app to take pictures of each page and comprehend the translations. Of course I still don’t understand CRAP because of the Mumei Sekaikan jargon + machine translation but I understood enough to get emotionally attached to some of the characters. I wish I hadn’t. At least through the manga I learned that the characters DO have some depth and pre-established relationships. For instance, the reason why Roger Sasuke became a ninja is because when he first landed in Japan as a kid, he was getting bullied or something and he didn’t know Japanese then Kotaro saw this and told the bullies to stop. Then after Roy /sorry i mean Roger learned that he was set to home-stay with the Kugas in the first place, he decided to dedicate his life to Japan in order to protect Kotaro back. I think. DO U SEE HOW ABSURD THIS SHIT IS Anyway Nanayozuki takes place between the second and third games and sets things up for CoS 3. There’s a full playthrough of it uploaded to YouTube and I think it contains a lot of juicy lore, but it’s just too much to go over with Shitty Google Translate OCR. There’s also Shikigami no Shiro novels which apparently contain the most backstory, but I have a 0% chance of finding these online for free. Not to mention that these would ALSO be too much effort to Google Translate.

in conclusion: You don’t HAVE to play Castle of Shikigami. Like, I’m not gonna recommend it for the content, but if you love shmups and are looking for a shmup game you haven’t heard of then I will recommend it for the gameplay (old touhou mutuals assemble theres a POWER-UP-BY-GRAZE MECHANIC). I’ve counted like 4 total fans outside of Japan that like this series for the story, and I don’t think that number is going to increase because I doubt CoS 2 will ever get retranslated and ported. I just want you to know that this series exists and that there’s a ton of wacky shit behind it besides the bad Castle Shikigami 2 dub. also if someone knows enough japanese or chinese and has an INKLING of interest in this series umm talk to me and help me decipher stuff

I‘m kinda sad that the series is pretty much Dead though. This is the most recent piece of official Castle of Shikigami art I could find, and this was for the 2018 New Year. The next most recent piece of official CoS art I found was also drawn by the character designer Sonoda Miku all the way in January 2008, commemorating the end of the CoS manga serialization. Alfa System released a spiritual sequel to Castle of Shikigami on the Japanese Switch eShop called Sisters Royale, with character designs I think are still by Sonoda. By “spiritual sequel” I mean that it has some of the EXACT same shot types as CoS and the same mechanic where grazing bullets increases your power and score. This is the closest we’ll get to a Shikigami no Shiro 4. I wonder what the business decision behind that game was but it actually looks like fun and I want to play it so OK Go off i guess

[tumblunni]

Just started playing Princess Maker 1! its so surreal that we finally got an english translation of this like a decade after it was released, and way after the PM2 translation??

Mostly its kinda... ehhh. Its only interesting to a fan who wants to see what changed, its just 100% worse than PM2 in all ways. Unlike PM3/4/5, PM1 isnt like a different story or a new gameplay gimmick or anything, PM2 is almost literally an improved remake of a buggy game. I mean.. you have a different child character but the backstory is almost exactly the same even! And the gameplay and interface are sometimes almost unplayably awkward compared to PM2. ALSO JUST NO JUST NO There is a LOT of outright full-frontal nipnops for NO REASON. Its not even like it makes sense or anything, its just ‘hey 25% of all vacation images are goddamn pron and you’re playing the creepy lolicon roulette every time’. Same for random enemies being naked :P At least in PM2 the pervy fanservice nonsense was optional! So I’m probably only gonna play this once and then delete it forever and stick to PM2. I’m glad they changed the stuff they changed...

ANYWAY! Fun differences that are less frustratingbad! I tried to take screenies of em! The interface is way more minimal than PM2, with lots of stuff being crammed together in the same option. Its neat that you can click and drag the text boxes around, this was something that wasnt in PM2. (But was in PM3 and PM5 if i recall?) Its a bit annoying though that sometimes it is NECESSARY since the default text position covers up the damn interface. Everything is so cramped!!

Talking to your daughter is Weird, its pretty much 100% useless. Well, worse than useless, it can screw you over! Its a 50/50 chance that when you praise her she’ll either lose stress or lose STATS. Specifically the stats that determine stress in the first place! Since they have different names to PM2 I didnt realise my ‘spirit’ stat was basically consititution and I got it down to 0 by being too nice to my adopted daughter :P I guess maybe its cos she’s spoiled she becomes less able to handle stress...?

You dont collect new outfits at all, you just have four outfits to choose from right from the start. There doesnt seem to be any actual benefit to wearing particular clothes during the right seasons. And they all change in design every year, so its fun to click through them even if there’s no real point to it. The glamour/elegance boosting dresses are just consumeable items instead, you can buy multiple of them and they dissappear once you use them. IS SHE EATING THE DRESS??

The feature you get from talking to your daughter in PM2 is actually talking to the townsfolk in PM1. They tell you what she’s good and bad at, instead of her having voiced dialogue saying it directly to you.

Other misc stuff I’ve noticed but didnt catch a screenshot of:

I actually do quite like the one difference between the backstory in PM1 and PM2. In PM2 after saving the kingdom your knight dad character gets blessed with an angel child by the gods, in PM1 he just adopts a normal child. Its kinda more heartwarming that way, he just weeps at how many orphans were created by this war and decides to retire from knightdom and open an orphanage. It might be just one scene, but it gives the dad much more personality than the one in later games. ^_^

Winning the harvest festival gives you no prize money at all??? Its a bit more fun tho cos there’s a beauty contest where you can bribe the judges.

Its nice that the game still keeps running when you switch to another window, PM2 didnt have that. But in PM2 doing jobs has a cute animation and there’s a skip function, so you dont really need to flip to a browser while some long text scroll plays out :P

Being sick completely destroys you, you get a huge loss of EVERY STAT and have to sit through the full annoying animation of resting three times even though you dont have any stress left to recover. You just cant do anything else!

There also doesnt seem to be any way to recover from turning troublemaker and i have no idea what caused it?? Sitting here with no stress and she suddenly hates me. And it affects nothing, she still succeeds fine at work. Speaking of which, work failure seems to be random instead of related to high stress or stat levels???

its not just me,right? the weapon shop grumpy grandpa is really cute what a sweet man wish I could hug him! he’s also like The Best job, cos even though the stat he boosts is rather specific and lame he’s the only one that doesnt decrease another stat at the same time while also giving reasonably decent wages and having a low failure rate! hooray for mr gremp!

Oh, speaking of which! Battle stats work completely differently and are CONFUSING. No matter what i try, I’m still oneshotted by the weakest enemy in errantry :P You have this ‘exp’ stat instead of attack/defense/skill like in PM2, but even when you level up it doesnt seem to affect anything...

Oh, and all the jobs give different stats compared to other PM games, which is confusing. Innwork raises stamina, instead of farming (which is called lumberjack this time, rather than them being separate) And weapon shop raises that confusing EXP, and every job gives very low money with no way of gaining money from winning the festival, so the high priced sleazy bar job is way more tempting. We’re talking everyone else gives 50g or 100g a week and this one gives you 500g or more all at once! But its just so much more gross to do the ‘bad job that loses stats’ this time, since its heavily implied to be prostitution instead of just working at a bar. And this game is so much more pervy, gahhhh... But then you just get delinquent and sick for NO CONCEIVEABLE REASON, and being sick drops your stats practically to 0, and its so impossible to play this damn game that WHATEVER im gonna treat my daughter awful just so i don’t lose! >_< GAHHHHHH Its turning into like ‘the how to justify child labor slavery game’ :P

I dunno, maybe the game does still have a sin/karma stat but its hidden?? for some reason suddenly i cannot gain Morale points anymore, at all?? its SO CONFUSINGGGGGGGG the interface is SO CROWDED there’s no word wrapping! I DONT KNOW WHAT ANYTHING DOESSSSSS

the talking to the castle court thing is more like the badges in pokemon?? every single time you have to talk to everybody, you dont get to choose you just unlock more and more people as your elegance levels up

aaaaaand somehow my blundering through the game actually got a good ending?? O_O The duchess ending actually has a really interesting bit of epilogue! Your daughter wins her way into high society by sheer force of awesomeness, even though she was but a humble orphan. Its like the cinderella story but with a really badass sort of feminist twist! Yeah, your happy ending is marrying this dude, but its said that YOU saved HIM. Not by being a big masculine hero, but using the traditionally feminine marriage skills that you’ve been training throughout the whole game. Instead of just sitting around waiting for someone to whisk you off your feet because you’re beautiful and innocent, you meet a disgraced noble whose family has become poor, and after you marry him for love rather than nobility, your badass awesomeness actually rescues the family from bankrupcy! You act as super accountant and reestablish his noble reputation with your silver tongue, and singlehandedly restore the princess title all by yourself while your husband is all ‘omg i love my power wife’ It reminds me of Virion’s marriage endings in FE Awakening! So yeah, way better ending than just ‘you talk to the prince once a month for the whole game and then become a princess’, like im PM2.

[toomanyskeletons]

So, who are your OCs?

BOY that is a silly/weird/strange question to ask because i have SO FUCKIN MANYThe ones i tend to focus on are:Category One - Super Dead Brother Games OCs (from my novel-ish thing of the same title)Probably my newest OCs which are developed but not much. There are 12, kind of, and about 7 which are more important.Here goes:

Sad and Dead: basically a parody of Sam and Dean from Supernatural. They die every chapter, and are probably the laziest characters becauss i had to do JACK SHIT to make them vaguely real people. All I had to do was Sam and Dean and then exaggerate them slightly. I think. Every character in the SDBG is ‘exaggerated’ anyway, meaning that so far they have pretty strange reactions to things, which may be written out, or it may not.

Linda: started off as the 'I’m a vegan’ stereotype. I got kinda attatched to her though. Likes cooking. Soccer-mom type person without having any children. Sucks at cooking.

Lily: A chilled out kinda person. I realise here that actually i dont know much about my characters but hey that’s why im asking you all for questions. Wants to be a pro skateboarder. Victim to a heterosexual love triangle in chapter 3.

Ashlee: Foodie. Vaguely stereotypical white girl. Possibly autistic? I realised that she could be, and then tried to write her as so. Not entirely sure if it worked. Considered 'annoying’ by most of the other characters to be 'annoying’ because of her habits and her voice, which is often loud and screechy.

Marilyn: was originally a cotton ball with some wool and some eyes glued on, and before you look into that for meaning, i mean it literally. I made her in science class, starting as marilyn monroe, then a parody of marilyn monroe, then could be rose lalonde, then her own character ish. Can talk to eldritch abominations, which come up frequently in the story. Her best friend was an eldritch abomination named N'gwit, and during the story she befriends another one.

Clyde: an eighty seven year old man (though i may have changed that, i dont remember) with some form of memory problem. Believes he is multiple fictional characters throughout the story, including anakin skywalker, nemo’s dad and katniss everdeen. Befriends Dominus Apis (next on the list) under the belief he is Luke Skywalker.

Dominus Apis: google translated his name from english to latin to sound cooler, 'Bee Lord’. Super ripped, i think i described him as being built like dwayne the rock johnson sometime in the story. Can control bees with his mind, but is severely allergic to them.

Jeremy: he. I dont know much about jeremy. Mostly, he’s an asshole who doesnt like dogs or shakespeare, and he is willing to die for a girl he has only known for three days.(spoiler alert here, if you want to read the story i wouldnt recommend reading it)Or. Isn’t willing. Either way, he does. Dont misunderstand, its not for her protection. He tries to win her love and instead jumps head first into a pool of very sharp and non melty ice.(spoiler alert over)

John McJohn: also an asshole. Dies about 500 words into the first chapter so you cant blame me for not knowing about him.

Anon: based off the 4//chan// anon, is also a kind of asshole. Wears a hood over their head the whole time. Likes My Little Pony. Does not interact with other characters much. Mostly just exists to die. Their gender is never revealed.

Spencer: he likes weed. Thats basically his whole character. He’s a clone of another guy, though that never comes up in the story. Spends basically the entire story stoned.

So that’s the first batch of characters, i think there’s 12 there but knowing me i’m forgetting someone. Anyway.

WAIT, FUCK, I FORGOT TWO.

The Dungeon Master: started as a temporary name, then grew on me. Kind of like the game makers of the Hunger Games, except one person. They rush into decisions VERY quickly, as you will hopefully discover if you read the story. Never meets face to face with the first twelve.

George: the DM’s assistant. Spends most of the time being bossed around by them, and gets sick of that. Not much i can say here without spoiling an entire chapter lmao. He doesnt come up much anyway.

On to part two, the ocs of a universe which is called the Spectraverse currently, but has gone through many names.

I have so many characters in this universe, including eight gods, their children the eight archangels, THEIR children the Third Generation, and the god’s parent/s named Gaia and Xavier which merge into one being called Spectra.

The important characters are, mainly from the first book because i really think i will bore you if i keep going on like this. If you want to talk abou t spectraverse with me, do it in a specific ask. Otherwise i will talk f o r e v e r.

Taylor: Third Generation angel, if you want me to explain all the mechanics behind that just ask. He’s basically my first OC, if you dont count Marina, who he blended in from. Okay its a long story but basically, it was Marina, then Taylor for about 10 years but as a girl, then i discovered i was trans and decided that My Somewhat Self Insert should reflect me in that way, so he is now Taylor, a transgender guy whose dead name is Marina. Has been training in magic from the age of four, isnt good at much else. Has a large collection of vinyls. He currently has the abilities of fire manipulation and shadow manipulation, and he’s an illusionist as well. Was the strongest person in his country, where magic is basically a sport, but faked his death and didnt go back. Yes he is ENTIRELY one of the most overpowered characters but then again most of them are also ridiculously overpowered, so whatever.

Mystic: a third generation nephilim, which means his dad was an archangel and his mother was human. Taylor’s boyfriend. Has good control of his emotions, typically, which means he can reliably learn the magic of temperature manipulation, which is a sort of secondary magic to water manipulation. Stays on the sidelines and doesnt do much for the first book, which i am kinda angry about, but you get to hear his backstory in the second book, as well as a plot based on him.

Amelia: third generation half angel half demon. In the process of changing from one universe to another, her relation to the MC’s drastically changed which means that yeah i also basically dont know shit about her, either. currently the strongest mage in the country, which was basically the entire plot of the first book.

Gabriel: archangel, also known as the second generation. Bisexual. Autistic. Is proud of both of those things. Manages to convince the main character to do some things in the first book. He was supposed to have a plot line ans then i completely fucking forgot to write the subplot, so. Fucks off to god knows where in the second book, and returns in the yet to be written third book as a father figure to an orphaned child. Is the archangel/guardian of lightning, which is one of eight elements. I’m not going to go into that either.

Nathaniel: Taylor’s dad, also an archangel. is dating Gabriel. Known for his tendency to fuck off and disappear for decades at a time. Most of the other archangels hate him. Was an important figure in Taylor’s life, as the only family member who accepted him as transgender.

So. That was long. Im sorry i really enjoy talking about my OCs lmao, even if that isnt all of them. I have so many and yeah there ar e so many things i did not explain here for the sake of saving time on mine and your part. Did that make sense?Anyway. If you want to ask more about my oc’s, go ahead. Most questions, if as vague as this, will end in an answer like this.

lmao thanks for sending an ask i love you for it, feel free to send another bu t i wont answer it because i just spent like 1.5 hours typing this and i gotta be up relatively early tomorrow so i’d better go to bed.

Thanks tho

[steroidusr]

digimon anode tamer part 1: super old man

^ index ^ | part 2 ->

[the game’s full title is digimon digital monsters - anode & cathode tamer - veedramon version. holy shit, i am not calling it that.]

ALright here's a most likely inaccurate history lesson off the top of my head about... video games

way back in the day, bandai decided they were way too fuckin cool to release games on systems people actually owned, like the game boy. so they made their own handheld system... the wonderswan. i dont know why it's a swan, but i dont really know why the game boy is a boy either. they released a series of games on it which tied in to the tv series and were a canon part of that story, except for when they weren't. the wonderswan games were never released in america though. this wasnt actually a problem, until digimon 02 introduced a character from "tag tamers", and parts of that game (i.e. like half his backstory) were referenced. even in the english anime. this led to a whole lot of "wtf is going on" from viewers, which it would have even if we did get the games, because 02 is incomprehensible. of course, while AMERICA never got any english wonderswan games... hong-kong, inexplicably, did. but only of the first digimon wonderswan game. apparently the translation is really bad.

and THAT... is the kind of content im here for

..............and after that dramatic introduction, norton ate my emulator

yeah uh hang on lemme fix this turns out this is a super outdated version anyway (thanks emuparadise) so yeah

what the fuck is wrong with norton. "this program doesnt have any viruses in it but ONLY a few hundred people in 'the norton community' have used it so it MUST be dangerous so we're gonna just delete it first and ask questions later"

once i was trying to find a trainer editor for pokemon gsc and i found a perfect one that was like, exactly what i needed but it wouldnt open. it just would not fucking open. no error messages or anything, i'd double click it and nothing would happen.

fortunately that is not the case tonight

no wait--

ok that's better. ...sort of

so this game was originally released in two versions, "anode tamer" and "cathode tamer". i dont know what the differences were or what those words mean. anyway what we're playing is the "veedramon version", which... i thought was an upgraded third version, like pokemon yellow

but... apparently it's literally just... the two games on one... cartridge?? o...kay

it is officially too late for livetweeting (THANKS NORTON) but here's our first Audience Participation Time: pick one of those "but what are the differences" man i dont fuckin know just pick one

AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION TIME, AGAIN, ALREADY: we need a name

please hurry this music loop is really short and repetitive

(fyi the default name is ryo)

In a perfectly normal housing area... The long, long adventure starts here.

the adventure is long (and long), unlike these sentence fragments

He’s on winter vacation and, today, he was going to get a new computer as a Christmas present from his Dad.

well, he was, before his dad realized that christmas was over like almost a week ago (also i snorted at "His name is Nyo." same nyo)

>TAKE: Hello! Chatting on New Year’s Eve is cool, isn’t it? Oh yeah, do you remember about the little incident in the summer?

you mean the "little incident" where giant monsters destroyed fucking everything

uh-oh looks like we've got a weeb on our hands

The town got really wrecked, didn’t it...

YEAH UH THAT'S STILL NOT A "LITTLE INCIDENT"

>UK: Yeah, I know! But was that really an earthquake? My dad said it was a terrorist attack!

what's that wacky prankster duke crabtree up to this time

>TAKE: Yeah, I know. Some people even said that it was because of the Digimons!

go to bed, TAKE

this is taking too long so i'm gonna give you all a helpful summary of the rest: "digimon arent fucking real shitlord"

i cant believe tai liveblogged digimon adventure

....so are we using dub names or not, bc on one hand we have the english logo and "tai", but we also have... "maa-kun"??

anyway then the power suddenly goes out. this somehow affects nyo's battery-operated laptop computer

>Tai, Matt, everyone has been captured...

ok so i guess the plot of this is that all the main characters have been kidnapped so agumon enlists the help of... this random kid to save everyone. remember when i said the games are canon to the storyline, except when they arent? this is one of the "arent" parts. ...the game's plot is canon to the anime's storyline... except for... the game's whole plot?? sasuga digimon

[the only way this could possibly be canon is if all the other digidestined completely forgot about their new pal ryo nyo somehow. but frankly, i find it a little hard to swallow that they’d do something like forget about a fellow digidestined and never bring him up in conversation or even think about him. it just seems so out-of-character for those kids to go about their daily lives, utterly failing to acknowledge the existence or possible disappearance of such a good friend. im certain if ryo nyo had been replaced with, say, a mysterious evil cat-stealing doppelganger, his fellow digidestined would surely respond with shock, alarm, and most of all, deep concern for their friend’s well-being. im positive they--]

so agumon... uh... emails? nyo tai's digivice, and-- --i just remembered "nyotai" is japanese for "woman's body". we fucked up

man that really couldve been spaced out better

what part of "the digivice" do you not understand, nyo

I need your help, Nyo!

i was gonna make a joke here but i cant fault agumon for repeating himself, since apparently nyo's a bit slow

WHAT PART OF "TOUCH THE DIGIVICE" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND, NYO

IT'S A DIGIVICE, NYO, WE HAVE LONG SINCE ESTABLISHED THIS

so i guess then nyo's... parent? walks in and finds out their 10-year-old child is fucking gone. amazing i always say digimon is about traumatized children but it's really the parents who are the most traumatized of all

on a bad rpgmaker map, from the looks of it

You’re Nyo, right? I was waiting for you.

You were waiting for me?... Agumon?

WHY DOES THIS DIALOGUE HAVE SO MUCH PADDING

"a... digital world? a world that is digital? im in a digital... world?"

"a digital network? inside a machine? like a computer? or a game? a computer inside of a machine? a DIGITAL machine?"

"OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT" WHY DOES THIS CHILD HAVE THE MEMORY SPAN OF A GOLDFISH

That doesn’t matter!

I was only borrowing it.

you...your dad bought you a computer... but you "borrowed" his instead

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS NYO

"--to be sent to someone competent, but youll have to do"

so basically it's your average incomprehensible digimon plot. gotcha

Explain everything slowly!

"so, what youre saying is, we're in a... digital world"

look nyo i dont think even the writers ever figured this out

I have no idea what you’re...

......the end?

THIS IS JUST THE EXACT SAME BACKGROUND AS BEFORE BUT WITH A SHADOW AROUND IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE

I’M SCREAMING

ok so suddenly this eyeless fuck appears out of nowhere and murders nyo

[this is agumon. this is agumon’s role in the game.]

then...

...we get this...

...long-ass cutsce--

--baby "frame"?? really????

...in which agumon basically plays the game for us...

...and wins a battle without any user input.

o...kay...? so nyo's completely useless then

"IF YOU WANT TO LIVE"

how is his mouth stitched if he's made of fire? wouldn’t the stitches burn?

so this uses dub names, but also jp terms like "baby flame" “baby frame” and "chosen child"??

a mix between dub and jp terms.... i finally understand... this was translated by crunchyroll

No, I’m human and not  human at the same time.

oh my god it’s tricky

that's more than enough of that for now. we've still only seen cutscenes! wow!

[August 14th, 2016 - 5:23 PM]

i havent updated in like two weeks because i, mysteriously, feel reluctant to keep playing... whatever that was

"we're in the digital world" "DIGITAL... WORLD? A WORLD THAT IS... DIGITAL? WE ARE... IN IT? RIGHT NOW? IN A... DIGITAL WORLD?"

this is all nyo's fault

Let me explain.

explain to him as you would to a child. a small child. a baby.

yeah, that sort of thing seems to happen a lot around here!

please dont list them all especially with text this badly spaced out

he actually didnt list any more after that. "just those three, everyone else just kinda stood around and watched"

There were still two left.

"there were still 41 episodes left"

TWO? TWO LEFT? AS IN THERE WAS ONE LEFT, AND ONE MORE AFTER THAT? STILL REMAINING? 

(also, i didnt leave out any caps, that’s really his entire line. nice lowercase, nyo. nyowercase)

SINCE WHEN THE FUCK DOES KABUTERIMON HAVE EYES oh wait that's chimeramon kimeramon. original digimon do not steal

(offscreen, apparently)

they survived with the power of gay feelings i guess

...so, wait, chimeramon was already around before 02?? are you telling me that ken's Original Digimon was somehow LESS original than we thought (he actually does call it「僕のオリジナルデジモン」and every time i remember that i cry. im crying now)

first the digital world was terrorized by milleniummon... and then it was terrorized by an 11-year-old chunibyo with a deviantart oc (...can you even have "eighth grader syndrome" in fifth grade)

yeah, pretty much, i guess, sorta

yeah ok blah blah it's evil and it fucked things up and THERE'S SO MUCH EMPTY SPACE IN THAT BOX YOU COULDVE USED

LOOK AT THIS SHIT!!!! IM CRYING THIS SPACING IS SO BAD

NYO

he proves his understanding by recounting all that shit back to us, near-verbatim, because that's how people talk

his... folks?? did milenniummon kidnap tai’s parents too????

so basically the plan is to... uh, beat up a bunch of OTHER evil digimon until we've captured friended enough good digimon also level grinding i guess and THEN we can go kick milleniummon's ass. ok

allles

does nyo do anything but repeat what others say back to them because it sure doesnt look like it so far

^ index ^ | part 2 ->

[clubofinfo]

Expert: A century ago, a Southern academic and racist emerged in Europe and the United States as a crusader to “make the world safe for democracy”.1 Wilson had been elected president in 1913, the year before Europe’s imperialists plunged the world into four years of mass murder. That war alone caused some four million direct battle casualties and untold millions of non-combatant deaths in the aftermath. Woodrow Wilson, despite the policies he actually pursued, would be turned into an icon of the 20th century’s most enduring myth—the benevolence and humanitarian virtue of the great slaveholder republic founded in 1776. Wilson could arguably be called the nation’s first celebrity politician and international celebrity export. This remarkable marketing accomplishment predated television. The successful promotion of Wilson on both sides of the Atlantic as the archangel of peace and the United States as virtual heaven on Earth was certainly made easier by the cinema (especially the newsreel) and mass literacy (although an overwhelming number of the soldiers slaughtered in the European theatre were illiterate). It was the organisational and manipulative skills honed during the campaign to bring the US into this initially European war that would empower the men who came to dominate the mass media—whose descendants dominate it today. In 2017, a real estate mogul from New York City, the original headquarters of the propaganda machine that created Woodrow Wilson, became the 45th president of the United States. The country has been waging war almost continuously since 1945, most recently its proclaimed “Global War on Terror”. From all indications the US war efforts have not been all that successful, at least by any literal interpretation of the war’s stated objectives. The “terror” that is the “enemy” does not appear anywhere near defeated. Despite the efforts of US Forces (both overt and covert), the third president has now arrived in the White House with what might best be called a stalemate: as Remarque titled his book Im Westen nichts neues (misleadingly translated into English as “All Quiet on the Western Front”).2 So 2017 begins not unlike 1917. There has been no progress in the war—just a continuous flow of corpses and body parts, albeit mainly those of civilians in the alleged combat zones. In 1917 Wilson’s handlers needed to create the conditions by which the US population could be persuaded to surrender its men and boys as cannon fodder in Flanders and at the same time convince the belligerents in Europe that the US was not shipping soldiers and materiel to Europe to expand its own empire. These were no mean tasks. Aside from a significant faction among the ruling elite that was unwilling to spend money defending Britain (a competitor), there was the generally held attitude of a largely immigrant population that Europe was the place they had gladly left behind. Either they wanted nothing to do with Europe or they were sufficiently connected by family ties that they saw no reason to return to shoot relatives who happened to remain in Europe. As for the Black population of the US, they had nothing to say in the matter. The number of Blacks allowed to vote for Wilson was insignificant. Furthermore they did not need to go to Europe to be killed. It was dangerous enough being Black in the US. The US regime had neutralised the indigenous population and its ex-slaves were largely under control. Hence one could say that domestic peace (for whites at least) prevailed. However, in 1913 Wilson had signed the Federal Reserve Act.3 Explained as a law to establish economic and monetary stability after what had been one of the longest depressions in history, it actually transferred the nation’s finances to a para-state corporation dominated by the country’s most powerful banks—who after 1914 had also become the principal creditors of Britain and France in their war against Germany. In other words, the US regime had created a structure by which its fiscal and monetary policy would be made not by the legislature (as foreseen in the Constitution) but by committees of men for whom the outcome in Europe was far from a matter of indifference. In the first months of the war—in fact until late 1915—the Allies seemed a sure bet. Their creditors were convinced the war would be won quickly. By 1916 faith in a quick end to the slaughter had disappeared. Much worse were the serious fears of an adverse decision, either a victory for Germany or an end to hostilities with conditions disadvantageous to Britain and France (and hence their US bankers). Anything short of an Allied victory heightened the risk that the Allies would default on their debts. Hence pressure mounted for Wilson to mobilise on the side of Morgan’s debtors. Needless to say the DuPont family was just as thrilled to increase its supply of explosives and munitions to the War Department.4 Provocations had been fabricated in the past to justify US military intervention against weak or defenceless countries like Spain and Mexico (and the much hated Black republic of Haiti) whose inhabitants also were considered racially inferior. But a war in Europe would be a war against white people with comparable or even superior weaponry and military aptitude. The last war the US had fought against whites was half a century ago. The Civil War had traumatized the country for decades thereafter. Hence Wilson’s government was faced with a huge challenge: to create an image of the war in Europe, which could be sold to the white citizenry. Moreover it had to create the illusion of a threat to the country which could make the US intervention appear as self-defence. To do this it was necessary to create a new image of the USA. This image had to be compatible with the various narrative levels of the sales campaign. To accomplish this complex task, the Committee on Public Information was established. Since the British Empire had been the traditional enemy of the US since 1776, a story had to be concocted in which the US and the UK were now friends bound—as opposed to enemies separated—by history. Then a story had to be invented as to why the German Empire, only constituted in 1871, was an enemy of the US although there had never been a war between the two countries. A story also had to be told that there was something common between Britain and France (historical enemies and constant competitors) and the US, which made them the natural allies of the United States. Then there were some tricky details. A lot of immigrants actually came from Germany and or had family ties to different parts of the German Empire. Until recently there had been no reason to give this much attention. Now it was entirely possible that such German immigrants would be asked to fight against Germany. Could they be trusted? What about the Irish who had no reason to love Britain as the colonial master of their ancestral homeland?5 Complicating this was the known activism of Germans in the emerging labour movement. Then there was the large number of rural and semi-rural inhabitants far from the centres of power. Leaving aside the notorious ignorance of world geography and affairs of those farm boys and ranch hands, who could be recruited to take land from Indians and Mexicans: Would they volunteer to get their guns and sail far away to Europe, where there was no land to grab? Thus the Committee on Public Information had to rewrite US history—almost from the beginning. This was the origin of the US mission in World War I to “make the world safe for democracy”. The polemics of the British settler elite; e.g., Thomas Jefferson, notwithstanding, the foundation of the United States was a unilateral declaration of independence from an imperial regime in London that threatened to extinguish the sources of oligarchical wealth in thirteen of its North America colonies in favour of industrialisation and power-sharing with creole elites emerging in the Caribbean: in short, an end to chattel slavery and the expense of suppressing slave rebellions.6 Democracy, a system of government whose spurious origins are attributed to the slave-holding society of ancient Greece, was redesigned as the perennial flower of a state whose landowners and financiers had consistently resisted every attempt to deliver it to the vast majority of the country’s population. At the same time the “melting pot” fantasy was invented to explain why previously separate immigrant communities, successively imported to exploit whatever group had landed in the previous generation, were now mysteriously all Americans. These ethnic and language groups were inoculated with the holy spirit of Manifest Destiny, the political equivalent of the “gift of tongues”—in reality the sediment of America’s acidic political system. Germany was then reduced to a mere rapine horde of cannibals, ruled by a fanatical dictator (an image to return throughout the 20th century in the depiction of the regime’s enemies). The German emperor, a cousin of the then-reigning British king-emperor, was turned into the enemy of Democracy and humanity.7 In essence, the Hohenzollern king-emperor was simply turned into the logical opposite of the emerging fiction. The diplomatic manoeuvres by which France had assured that Germany went to war remained concealed so that even today charitable historians insist that Germany was the sole cause of the war.8 The vicious image of Germany then had to be turned into a real threat to the innocence of Europe. The sinking of the Lusitania (the Latin name for Portugal), a British merchantman plying the Atlantic with munitions, but loaded simultaneously with American passengers, became the Maine or the World Trade Center for US propagandists. The German imperial government had published ample warning in the United States that the ship was transporting munitions to Britain and as such could not enjoy the benefits of neutral shipping. Despite public knowledge that the British ship was deemed a legitimate target for German submarines, the ostensibly neutral US government did nothing to discourage its citizens from taking passage. When it was duly sunk, outrage followed. The incident was converted into a casus belli for the United States regime to abandon its previously declared neutrality and to openly side with the British and French in the European imperialists’ war. The bankers’ president reacted according to a script that is followed to this day. Then the war atrocities propaganda, which the British had used so successfully to incite their own subjects, was reworked for domestic consumption in North America. Meanwhile an entire industry had been created to fabricate the American Dream (still a central element in school curriculum in the subordinated Federal Republic of Germany).9 Needless to say the treatment of non-whites in the US could not and was not heralded as a virtue. Yet since white supremacy was a major part of all European imperial ideology, this omission went unnoticed. British and US propagandists were eventually to elaborate the myth of American independence into the absurd—because truncated—fable of national self-determination as an excuse for fragmenting the Austro-Hungarian and German empires after the war.10 The history of how these central myths were propagated in the US is too extensive to treat here but Creel, who was the leading light of the Committee on Public Information, gave a detailed account in his book about the Committee.11 However, it is crucial to understand that the “Dream” is a 20th century fabrication, designed to sell the war at home and persuade European allies that the US was not entering a war of conquest in Europe. In 1917, the empire that still cannot say its name, was shaping the consciousness of subsequent generations for whom the US is merely the purveyor of “freedom”, Coca Cola and Levi’s jeans (later the Internet, a computer system designed for surviving its own plans for global atomic war against the Soviet Union).12 This is the non-empire with over 800 military bases worldwide and whose ambassadors have the power of pro-consuls in most of the world’s 187 United Nations member-states.13 It is necessary to understand the public relations (as Edward Bernays felt compelled to rename “propaganda”) and corporate advertising machine that was created to invent the strange belief that the United States of America is truly exceptional—not only for its citizens, but for the rest of – at least the white part—world. It is this carefully crafted and maintained image of the US—found in every cinema, on almost all televisions, and in the music and consumer goods proliferated even more virally than the weapons supposedly limited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is the base for the consciousness of millions who have been taught to abhor every particular quality of their own cultures and countries not consonant with the taste promulgated by the boards of US corporations, especially among those who think of themselves as “white”. As Bukharin has been cited, Anglo-Saxon ‘love of liberty’ was only “a less vulgar but no less untenable attempt to advance a territorial-psychological theory. The place of “race” is here taken by its substitute, the “middle European”, “American” or some other humanity”.14 Only then is it possible to grasp the peculiar reaction to Donald Trump’s election in 2016 to the highest elected office of that invisible empire, with its ubiquitous invisible army. George W. Bush was mocked. Barack Obama was canonised. But Trump—who is in every way as much a creature of the real US as his predecessors and competitors—is reviled and treated as a threat to world peace. Ronald Reagan—who actually joked on camera about nuking the Soviet Union—has been forgotten, like the Alzheimer’s he no doubt brought into office. Not even a month has passed since the inauguration of Mr Donald Trump of Trump Towers as the 45th person authorised by the US Constitution to occupy the slave-built mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania most appropriately named the White House—which with the notable exception of one Kenyan-American and his family, has also been occupied solely by men who consider themselves to be “white” and their domestic servants often enough of the “coloured persuasion”—and the Washington correspondent of the liberal Lisbon daily Publico reported that the world economic system is threatened with destruction by one of the most notorious (though certainly not the richest) New York real estate magnates.15 No irony was intended. Portugal, a country whose cultural significance, were it not for Brazil, would probably compete with that of Belgium or Finland, is about as far as one can get in what North Americans call “Old Europe” from the centres of power. Its last great moment was 1755 when the destruction of Lisbon by an earthquake precipitated a European financial panic.16 Since then—as the 2008 casino collapse amply showed—it has been sufficiently far from power to have become a very realistic place—a showcase for the fraud that drives that world economic system and how a people accustomed to poverty and neglect by their rulers still manages to maintain a kind of quiet dignity and decency noticeably lacking in the Western hemisphere. The absurdity of the report from Washington ought to be apparent in a country whose 11 million inhabitants—making it slightly larger than Mr Trump’s home town—have been reduced from imperial citizens to inhabitants and customer service employees in a relatively cheap theme park for the rest of Europe’s still employed tourists. They could be forgiven for asking what the new US President could possibly do to more seriously diminish their standard of living than has already been done by the 44 previous. However, its political class continues to pursue the ideals enshrined in the Treaty of Methuen, probably the first subprime mortgage of an entire country to be consummated in modern European history.17 This reader had to ask which world economic system was threatened with demise by the new tenant in Washington’s most exclusive rental property? By what logic or stretch of the imagination is one to believe that a man made wealthy by real estate speculation in one of the most manipulated property markets in the world could even conceive anything that would destroy the basis of his family’s wealth? Did we all miss something? Is or did Donald Trump become a communist—even after the collapse of the Soviet Union ostensibly proved to us all that there is no alternative to capitalism? Another bizarre headline heralded the “end of political correctness”.18 For those who follow this line of thought it may be helpful to remind them that “political correctness” originally meant the hypocritical and deliberately divisive appropriation of the language of political liberation to undermine the very liberating goals of ending various forms of exploitation and oppression based on race, class, or gender. It is a testimony to the effectiveness of reactionary propaganda that the language of liberation has been converted into an instrument for defending its opposite. It is also proof that language is not isomorphic with the real world—an insight only appreciated when the managers of language—the mass media in all its permutations—attack those who hold views with which they cannot agree. Nazis and the now largely defunct communist parties of what was once called the Soviet bloc are the only ones whose use of language was supposedly deceptive or simply dishonest. In what was once called “the West” or the “free world” the unrestricted expression of ideas was claimed as an exclusive property. Per corollary everything said or written in the West was per se free (and putatively true) whereas everything said in the “East” was putatively false and composed of lies. No matter how many lies were exposed in the West, the West was still “free” and “true”, while no matter how accurate or intelligible the communication in the East was, it was composed prima facie of lies. One of the most astounding examples of this hypocrisy was the claim that official economic reporting in the East was always doctored, if not outright false. This claim was reasserted when the GDR collapsed as the basis for deliberate undervaluing of state-owned assets awarded for next to nothing to Western bidders (to the extent competitive bidding even applied.) Yet it was not only standard practice of Western governments to falsify cost of living figures by changing the composition of the basket of goods used to measure it or to fake unemployment figures by changing the definition of unemployed, whole batteries of accounting firms specialised in producing deceptive balance sheets to undervalue companies for tax purposes. This practice was especially common for US corporations operating in Latin America; e.g., Cuba and Guatemala.19 The fraud was only exposed when nationalist governments in those countries tried to enforce compensation for eminent domain actions based on tax returns that had been filed under previous regimes. John Blair, in two studies produced while he was an economist for the defunct US Congressional Committee on Transnational Corporations, wrote quite clearly that the US Government has no reliable economic statistics because it is almost impossible to get accurate disclosure from the principal economic actors—business corporations.20 In other words, the world economic system that Mr Trump supposedly endangers is so opaque that not even those employed by the government to routinely record and analyse its activity are able to attest to the reliability, let alone veracity of the data disclosed. How this condition can be reconciled with the dogma of free information in the West defies comprehension. So let us leave aside the “nuclear threat” Mr Trump supposedly poses to the world economy, as we know it. The fact is we know very little about it by those criteria we have been told we are to trust; e.g., the Press owned by those very corporations whose secrecy is all but inviolate. We have no reliable or honest information about the status of the world economy from anyone claiming the right to tell us its condition. In political terms we are not even entitled to this information since it is per se private property—free only for those who own it. Ultimately this means the only claims sane people can make on their governments is that they do or do not do certain things, which have a real economic impact—e.g., secure incomes or the basic needs for everyday life for real human beings. Of course, that is where the central conflict begins. That “world economic system” to which not only the Portuguese journalist refers is not designed to satisfy real economic (basic needs of everyday life) problems. It is designed to satisfy the needs of legal entities called corporations and other subordinate fictions for those people who “own” them. So to return to plain language—the author for Publico is saying that Mr Trump poses a threat to the system by which existing corporations and their owners satisfy their needs. But these needs must not be too clearly specified since the more specifically they are described the more obvious it must become that they have nothing to do with what most of the world’s population expects from an economic system. The jargon of the world economic system is so pervasive that few people even realise that their own descriptions of the economy make it impossible to draw a direct connection between what corporations and their owners do and what effects those actions or omissions have on the struggle to satisfy the basic needs of everyday life. Here it is important to mention the ideological function of the so-called “priority of needs” pyramid which everyone taught economics and business administration in school or university learns. This pyramid claims that humans prioritise their needs beginning with food and shelter and in the last stage—when everything else is done—consider the acquisition of knowledge or wisdom or human rights. This “priority of needs” is really an argument for depriving humans of their humanity—which for better or worse means the necessity of determining themselves what best satisfies their basic needs. Like B.F. Skinner’s primitive behaviourism theories, the hierarchy of needs is really a trick to justify slavery, both physical and intellectual.21 The language is deceptively simple. The illusion of simplicity is intended to mirror a supposedly simple reality. But reality for humans has never been simple. Ungoverned by “instinct” and wholly at the mercy of language, it is impossible for humans to satisfy their own basic needs without cognition—essentially overt and covert verbal behaviour. Of course, without cognition they can satisfy the needs of others—and that is why this clever metaphor is a standard “social science” explanation in a discipline that prides itself on pretensions to numeral-mathematical objectivity. The exaggerated fear of Donald Trump—not confined to the Portuguese middle class—can only be understood in terms of what the image of Donald Trump means to those fed on the American Dream—a neurosis cultivated in the advertising laboratories of Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Committee. This is not to say that people have no reason to fear the future exercise of US imperial and corporate power. Rather it means that Donald Trump—properly speaking the spectacle of Donald Trump, President of the United States—has infected the educated white population with a massive dose of cognitive dissonance. After the phenomenal “Blackwash” of the US “Global War on Terror” purged popular memory of the embarrassing George W Bush era, a garden-variety white billionaire threatens to undermine a century of brainwashing. This raises an even more important strategic question. Do the invisible people who rule the US not recognise the risk that Donald Trump poses for the carefully nurtured infatuation of Europeans and the white middle classes everywhere with the American Dream? Or do they feel this is an endgame? Are they convinced that they have sufficiently isolated Putin’s Russia and the Chinese tiger so that no matter what the US does it will retain the support Wilson’s Committee on Public Information so carefully engineered—if only because the US remains the lesser of all evils, makes the more popular films and controls the Internet? We cannot forget that the machinery, which maintains consent, ignorance and ideological conformity with the Business ideology of the United States, is still in place. It is entirely possible that Donald Trump is an accident or evidence of dissent in the US ruling elite—which is still overwhelmingly “white”. Given what we know—or could know—about this machine, the hysteria about Donald Trump may also be a crafted fabrication. Despite all the formal outrage over President Trump’s policies, not a single European government has threatened retaliatory measures against the US. Although Mr Trump declared NATO obsolete neither Greece—which cannot even afford to be in NATO—nor any other member has announced its withdrawal. Nor have there been any calls for such action in the mainstream or compatible media. So is this a lot of “wolf-crying”? What about the so-called real economy? Donald Trump has trumpeted that his administration will bring Chinese jobs back to the US. One might conclude that he is promising US corporations to reduce workers to the status of “coolies”. No government in Europe—and certainly not the European Commission—has any plans for restoring full-wage employment to its own citizens. Angela Merkel has successfully suppressed any debate about German military deployment in the US combat theatres where refugees are the second major crop—after opium. The past half year, the Portuguese government, led nominally by a Socialist, spent most of its time concocting a budget to please Germany’s George Wallace, the finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble—little mention of the Portuguese themselves whose wage and consumption taxes have increased every year while salaries have been frozen at 2006 levels. If crypto-socialist Hollande has now decided not to seek re-election it is probably because he did his real job—dividing the French Socialist Party (PSF) beyond the capacity to govern.22 A minister under the last French president declared in an interview that the Americans had bought the Socialist Party years ago—only confirming what Philip Agee wrote in his CIA Diary.23 The Guardian, part of the compatible Press in the UK, published an article by a “colour revolutionary” from the Gene Sharp cottage industry that brought us the spectacle of Yugoslavia’s explosion and the fascist coup in the Ukraine.24 The author asserts that no more than 3.5% of the population is needed to bring down a tyrannical regime. Apparently there was never 3.5% capable of forcing the release of thousands of Black Americans rotting in US prisons, including such political prisoners as Mumia Jamal or Leonard Peltier—although their “trials” have long been proven to have been rigged by the State. Nor can one avoid the question whether the “special relationship” between Britain and the US allows a major British daily to advocate an unconstitutional challenge to the elected POTUS (never mind for a moment that the US has one of the most archaic and least democratic electoral systems on the planet)? The sincerity of the 3.5% is apparently as selective as the interest of the infamous 1%. One hundred years after fabrication of the Good America myth, the nightmare of the “American Dream” seems about to end. The comedian George Carlin once said they call it the “American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe it. Maybe it would be a good thing if Donald Trump’s election made people wake up. * Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924, US President 1913-1921) was born in Virginia and educated in Georgia and South Carolina before taking degrees at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) and ultimately becoming president of Princeton University before launching his political career. Among his contributions upon becoming US President was to introduce the post-slavery Jim Crow regime into the federal civil service. (For the reader unfamiliar with US military institutions: the twisting citation in the title is from the US Marine Corps hymn. The Corps was a major foreign policy instrument for US Presidents already in Wilson’s day. It serves a function as presidential lifeguard not unlike the role of the Household Cavalry in service to the British monarch). * Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts neues, was a best-selling novel (1929) describing the conditions on the Western front during World War I from the German side at least. In German “nichts neues” means “nothing new”, a more ambiguous title than the harmless sounding “all quiet”. * The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is often included in the catalogue of Wilson’s “progressive” legislation. In November 1910, the secret “council” was held at the Jekyll Island Club on the eponymous Georgia sea island where much of the US ruling class had been accustomed to spending vacations. It was attended by representatives of the US banking elite and its political officials in the Treasury and the Congress: Nelson Aldrich, A. Platt Andrew (members of the National Monetary Commission), Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; Frank Vanderlip, National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Davison, J P Morgan & Co.; and Charles Norton of the First National Bank of New York. Together they drafted what was called the Aldrich Plan. The Aldrich Plan in turn formed the basis for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. * For details see Gerald Colby Zieg, Beyond the Nylon Curtain (1974), reviewed elsewhere by this author. World War I was “a great banquet of gold” for the Du Ponts who grossed over one billion dollars during the war (p. 131). * Any doubt about the British attitude toward Irish independence was removed when Roger Casement, who had played a leading role in exposing the slavery and mass murder in the Congo Free State under its owner, Belgium’s Leopold II, was hanged by the British for treason because he took his Irish nationality seriously and was convicted of accepting German promises of aid to the Irish nationalist struggle. It has been suggested that the British were killing two birds with one stone since Casement had earned the enmity of the Belgian empire too. * See Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (2014), reviewed by this author elsewhere. * Wilhelm II was a welcome guest in the United States before the war. This author’s grandfather was a witness to one of the yachting enthusiast’s visits to Newport, RI on the occasion of regattas in Narragansett Bay. * In 2013, Christopher Clark, an Australian historian “sympathetic” to Germany omits entirely Britain’s interest in provoking war in 1914. See The Sleepwalkers by the current Regis Professor of History at Cambridge University, also reviewed by this author. In contrast Carroll Quigley (1981) provides a more circumspect analysis in The Anglo-American Establishment, a book largely disregarded although Quigley was a Georgetown professor and Bill Clinton mentor. * English books in German schools still teach the long-discredited “Thanksgiving feast” story although it is a matter of historical record that Thanksgiving in the US was celebrated as a military victory—like Blood River in Afrikaner history’s Day of the Covenant—until Abraham Lincoln turned it into a national holiday of reconciliation between the North and South in the US Civil War. The American Dream is composed of little lies, exaggerations and outright falsehoods written into textbooks, film scripts and consumer-based celebrations exported wherever a buck is to be made. * This became part of the Wilsonian “14 Points”. See Markus Osterrieder, Welt im Umbruch (2014) for a detailed discussion of the intricacies and contradictions of this covert project—which somehow only applied to peoples who were deemed “white”. * George Creel, How we advertised America (1921). Creel was a journalist chairing a group comprising Madison Avenue advertising executives et al. See also Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin, (1996). * Fittingly the dean of armed propaganda (counter-terrorism) in the US, Edward G. Lansdale (1908-1987), began his career as the advertising executive who made Levi’s jeans into the famous clothing brand it is today. For some odd reason the worshippers of the Internet forget to mention that it is the successor to the ARPANET, invented by the US military to assure that its computer systems would survive the expected retaliatory strike following the first atomic strike against the Soviet Union—the core of US strategic planning until the end of the so-called Cold War, as can be seen in the official history film produced by the Sandia National Laboratories, the R&D department of the US atomic war establishment.  See U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy. The fact that almost all crucial servers for the Internet are located in the US—such that the EU felt compelled to adopt consent rules for the storage of data from European users on US servers—is never seen as a risk to “Internet freedom”. Never mind that virtually all Internet software, and much of the hardware, originates from US corporations. * There is an old joke on the Left about the US regime: “Why has there never been a coup in Washington D.C.?”  The answer: “Because there is no U.S. Embassy in Washington D.C.” In a conversation the son of a Honduran tobacco plantation owner told this author that in the nation’s capital, Tegucigalpa, the three most important buildings in the country were the Catholic Cathedral, the headquarters of the Honduran armed forces and the US embassy, whereby the latter was paramount. * N. Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, London 1972 (1918), p. 112. cited in Kees Van Der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984). * Rita Siza, “Trump começou a desmantelar a ordem comercial global” Publico, 24 January 2017, pp. 22-23. * This event also played a central role in Voltaire’s satirical novella Candide, a work later adapted by Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein to dramatize the political atmosphere of the United States during the post-WWII purges. * Treaty of Methuen named after the British diplomat, John Methuen, who negotiated this treaty with Portugal in 1703. Ostensibly a commercial treaty, the British Empire essentially guaranteed Portugal’s sovereignty (against any challenges by Spain) in return for what would now be called “most favoured nation status”. In the course of Anglo-Portuguese relations, Portugal would sacrifice its textile industry to Manchester in return for privileged access of its wine to British markets (e.g. Port and Madeira) and open its Brazilian ports to British merchants. Arguably the Treaty of Methuen made Portugal a permanent extension of the British Empire on the Continent. * Ligia Amancio „Trump e o pós-politicamente correcto“, Publico, 27 January 2017, p. 47 * This was the real source of conflict between United Fruit and the Arbenz government that led the CIA to overthrow the Guatemalan president in 1954. It was also the reason why Fidel Castro nationalised assets of major US corporations—they had refused compensation based on their fraudulent tax returns filed under the defunct Batista regime. * See John Blair, The Control of Oil (1976) and Economic Concentration (1972). * B.F. Skinner, About Behaviorism (1974) Skinner’s research coincides with a whole range of programs funded by the CIA to investigate manipulation of human behavior. Skinner’s most famous books were Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). It is entirely possible that his work was wittingly or unwittingly promoted by those sources of academic largesse. For a stark contrast to Skinner’s “biological determinism” see Morse Peckham, Explanation and Power: The Control of Human Behavior (xxxx). * João Ruela Ribeiro, “A alternativa à austeridade vem desmoralizada e sem poder”, Publico, 28 January 2017, p. 3. “O resultado: a direita não passou a apoiá-lo e a esquerda que o elegeu abandonou-o. Hollande, o mais impopular Presidente da Quinta República, chega a Lisboa com um pé for a do poder, o Partido Socialista totalmente dividido e com a ameaça da Frente Nacional.” * Philip Agee, CIA Diary (1975). * Gene Sharp (*1928) is a retired political science professor from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and researcher at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs, who founded the Albert Einstein Institution in 1983. The institution’s funding has come from the entire host of US political warfare foundations—NED, IRI, Rand, Ford. His cottage think tank (amusingly also located in Cottage Street, East Boston, Massachusetts and its role in the manufacture of synthetic “revolutionary” movements is the subject of a documentary The Revolution Business. OTPOR—meanwhile renamed—played a central role in orchestrating the media campaigns that made Milosovic’s Serbia the tyrannical cause of the war which with the power of the US—exercised by counter-terror expert Richard Holbrooke—forced the destruction of the Yugoslav Federation in the early 1990s. The process was described in detail in the documentary The Weight of Chains (2010). http://clubof.info/