#paranoia 2013

[amberheardnet]

AMBER HEARD | Paranoia (2013)

[fortunaegloria]

HARRISON FORD AND GARY OLDMAN

Air Force One (1997) dir. Wolfgang Petersen

Paranoia (2013) dir. Robert Luketic

[amberheardarchive]

AMBER HEARD as EMMA JENNINGS in PARANOIA (2013)

[shinozaki-ayumi]

i love the block button

[threadmonster]

What does it mean when you strategically plan out how to buy something without judgement being passed down upon you? Just... Just asking for a friend (⁠��⁠ ⁠▽⁠ ⁠•⁠;⁠)

[thestalkerbunny]

So truly as his song proclaimed, on one sunny day (A heat index of literally 97 degrees and climbing) I once again met with our old friend Bill Cipher by purchasing The Book of Bill.

And I gotta say.

It was like a WAVE of nostalgia.

I had forgotten how GOOD and WITTY Gravity falls had been. Not to mention the book in itself is SMART. We as a community were ENTHRALLED with the evil tortilla chip-an absurd thing to vote Tumblr's most sexy man 2013-and the book knew that and was like 'here is more of the chip man.' Like obviously there's codes and treats and what have youse for the smarter folks. But just the energy of the whole book, the fake ADS, the amazing design work, the missing pages, GATSBY, the LORE Bill gives that fills in so many blanks for us while callously poking more holes with a pencil at the same time. You read it perpetually bouncing back and forth questioning how reliable a narrator Bill is and more importantly, how much of it do you REALLY want to believe in?

It's a narrative that explores Bill as a person-at least how Bill Perceives it and with missing journal pages from Ford, how FORD perceived Bill.

The whole book in itself is a BREAK UP story, between a Man and the Monster who he unknowingly let into his life. A monster that pushes him to the brink, that makes the possession trope EXCITING AND NEW to me as he is horribly aware and actively communicating with the monster who is actively threatening his very LIFE if not given obedience and compliance. And it's not one sided yelling into the void convos-they can actually communicate and it makes the disregard so much more terrifying. It both makes you empathize with our favorite villain while not cheapening it so much to redeem him.

Reading this book validates the mania we see Ford with when we get the flash back episode of the Portal Incident. The sick sort of Paranoia that he's developed because every waking moment of his life has been ruined by someone he let in, trusted and opened up to.

The Book of Bill doesn't pull punches. There are parts in this book that go from 'comical horror' that jacks it up to 'Jesus fucking christ'

The Book of Bill does what the original show was not allowed to do-which is go further with how DAMAGING a relationship Ford had with Bill. How it was an addiction, feeding off each other. Ford in finally having someone who could in essence-REFLECT his own intellect back at him and Bill, a creature that demanded an audience to be witnessed by constantly.

Regardless, this was a FASINATING read. 110/10 totally work the trip in the 97 degree heat I made to 3 towns over JUST to get the Barnes and Noble EXCLUSIVE Copy that will now sit very proudly on my shelf. Go Buy it, Go Read it, It is WORTH it.

[ckret2]

I know that making things not only canon-compliant but canon-plausible is basically your hobby, and you tend to enjoy taking every little detail no matter how inane and incorporating it into the greater lore of your work. Have you ever had a moment where you were trying to find a logical explanation for something, realized that it was EXTREMELY STUPID, and now you just avoid writing things that will make it come up?

I think most fan writers have one piece of canon where they're like "Yeah, no, that was a bad decision, I'm just replacing [unbelievable event/racist character portrayal/blatant disregard for how mental health works in reality/etc] with [piece of fanon that makes it work better]."

Usually, even when there's an obvious author mistake, you still have a cool canon-compliant thing to do with it. Curious if there's any exceptions.

yeah, there's a few things.

Evidence implies that Ford fell in the portal in 1983. Evidence implies that the show takes place during 2012, but maaaybe 2013? The show says he fell in the portal "thirty years ago." He was probably intended to fall in the portal in 1982 but that doesn't line up with some of the dates (particularly, song release dates). Also, exactly how long did he know Bill between meeting him and getting portaled? And exactly how long was the paranoia era? My solution: the show takes place in 2012, Ford got portaled in *mumble mumble*, it's been """thirty""" years since he fell in the portal, we're NOT gonna worry about it, and maybe the Eurythmics released their albums a year earlier in the Gravity Falls universe did you ever think of that? Huh?? But at any rate I just try to quietly glide over the little timeline issues without addressing them.

Anything Bill says that would validate a real world conspiracy theory is a lie; but, much more likely, I'm just never gonna talk about it so we can ignore it completely, especially if the conspiracy theory is antisemitic or racist. "A cabal of global elites secretly rules the world and has a really cool break room"? Bill's lying; but also, we're NOT gonna talk about that, just chucking it out the window completely. "Bill helped fake the moon landing"? We can crack jokes about that one but only to establish that Bill was lying. "The Egyptians made the pyramids look like Bill"? We're NOT gonna claim the Egyptians made the PYRAMIDS for Bill, at most they might have redecorated them; but we're probably not gonna talk about them redecorating the pyramids anyway; and we're gonna crack jokes about how stupid Ancient Aliens style idiocy is; and maybe we're just gonna minimize talking about Bill's relationship with Egypt entirely.

(A side note: one thing i REALLY appreciated from TBOB is that it clearly established that they did not build the pyramids for Bill, just temporarily redecorated them; they did not worship Bill, they thought he was a pest; and the book went out of its way to have Bill say anyone who claims aliens helped with the pyramids is a con artist. It didn't have to do that! But it really improved things a LOT.)

Anything not mentioned by Bill that alludes to iffy real world conspiracy theories, we're just not gonna talk about. "America is secretly ruled by someone other than the president and nobody knows," not gonna talk about that, I don't care that it's Santa. "Dapperly-dressed reptilian aliens," not gonna talk about that, I don't care that they were here to go dog sledding. "Mt. Rushmore is secretly a bunch of robots built to defend America from a future threat," NEVER gonna talk about that, Mt. Rushmore is a carving made by a racist on stolen land sacred to several Native American peoples, it does not deserve to be made cool.

and speaking of Santa: I don't care for Jewish characters getting shoved into Christmas stories, especially if they're "wow, it turns out the Christians were right about the existence of this folkloric figure associated with one of their most important holy days" Christmas stories, so there's a high chance I'm just never gonna mention the Krampus plot lmao. If I do, it'll only be because I need to acknowledge the relationship building Ford & Fidds got. (Or to acknowledge Ford's rage at being commanded to conform to holiday expectations, which is REALLY funny and he's completely right.)

Those are the things off the top of my head.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for stealing jewelry and a few other items from my hoarder aunt?

This was a few years ago now, I wanna say maybe 2018? My dad has two sisters, Z and K. K is married to a hoarder and has some hoarding tendencies herself so their house and particularly their garage is a mess. Not biohazard levels of mess but for sure just dusty, dirty, and stuffed with with ancient unusable garbage. K and her husband don’t have any kids, they’re both in their mid-70’s and both are in pretty poor health, so Z flew down from Florida and asked my father and I to come help clean. We agreed and came down for a day.

I have a weird relationship with my aunts. K took care of their mother until she died, and until she died my father would be at his sister’s beck and call. He would frequently abandon his own family to go help K and his mother. I don’t blame him for this, he wanted to help his sick mother, but I do blame K for using him as free labor. He built the house K is hoarding in, destroying his body in the process. Now that I’m an adult I don’t really speak to either aunt, like I had no contact with Z since Z’s second wedding in 2013. K is much closer location-wise but I don’t speak to her either because she’s just kind of off putting. The last time I spent time with her we went shopping and she kept telling me stories of her miscarriage and how annoying her husband is and pointing to someone and loudly asking “you think that’s a man or a woman?” Like I understand we are family but K and Z are as close to strangers as family can get to me. This doesn’t even cover my mom’s opinion of them and their treatment of her. Both Z and K have a history of manipulation, deception, and are both very vindictive and ignorant. She hates them both to the point of paranoia. My sister and I have a similarly low opinion of them both, but we both are more tolerable, myself especially.

So we arrive and we clean, Z and I working together to throw away a bunch of shit and my father worked on installing a new dishwasher. I stumble upon this gorgeous hanging lamp that looks like a large full moon. I text my mom about it and she flips. “That’s mine,” she says, “your father and I found that on the side of the road one night when we were first married.” So I load it into my dads car because it’s so pretty and it belongs to my parents. “Hey, you better ask if you can take that” Z says and I flat out tell her that it belongs to my mom. She shrugs and we continue to work. I find another really cool set of hanging lamps and a solid wooden lamp base carved to look like a gazelle that probably belonged to K’s husband’s parents and I took those too, with no input from Z.

These items weren’t lovingly packed and carefully stored away. They were sitting in plastic bins stuffed with dozens of boxes disintegrated plastic gloves and tools that were more rust than anything else. Towards the end of the day we discover some jewelry boxes and I take those inside to go through with K. A lot of it was junky costume jewelry but there’s some incredible pieces including a pair of 14k gold hoops that look like rams heads, a cool brass ring with an enameled signet with the Sagittarius archer, and a huge silver heart pendant. I carefully set aside the items that I would like to take home and K didn’t say anything, either because she didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Finally when we got home I showed my mom all of the cool stuff I found and she kind of scolded me, saying I should have asked to take this stuff and I brushed it off by joking that this was payment for my cleaning services. She was very happy that I rescued her moon lamp though.

I’m wearing that chunky silver heart pendant today and am thinking about it again. K doesn’t have any children so the only people who would ever inherit this junk would be either myself or Z’s kids, but Z’s daughter is no contact with Z and Z’s son lives on the other side of the country. We own the property that K lives on, pay for the taxes on it and pay for the maintenance on it all without charging K anything, so even when she and her husband die my family is going to have to clean it anyway and I can assure you I would be the only person who would actually want to sift through the garbage to find cool stuff. I feel like I saved this stuff from the landfill. I wear the jewelry I took, we have that really cool gazelle lamp displayed in our living room, and my sister said she was going to use the hanging lamps I brought home for when she has her own home. But of course I technically stole all of it and for sure will not be giving it back, even if she noticed it’s missing. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[rileykeouhg]

AMBER HEARD in PARANOIA (2013) dir. Robert Luketic

[stuckyfingers]

WW2 Propaganda story board: 1943

Drawn by mysterious artist, S. Grant, depicting Captain America protecting a soldier, who thanks him for the bullets he gave him. In a footnote, Captain America replies: "Don't thank me, thank your best gal, who bought series E defense bonds!"

Later heavily criticized for its homoerotic subtexts, it stirred controversy in the 1950s as the artist was connected to be Captain America himself. The paranoia died down with the lavender scare and the drawing reemerged in the 90s, staying in the Smithsonian archives until 2013, after which it was reported stolen.

[wildfyrevalkyrie]

ahhh yeah, i see what you mean! he's def at least making her keep things from max/steel, which is actively putting a strain on her relationship with them. tho tbh, i didn't read it as her staying away b/c forge told her to or b/c she's that bad at lying, but b/c she's just so busy being a ceo that she ends up being neglectful. especially b/c max has steel and, at least based on that part of "supermania" where she refuses to believe that steel was the one who bought all the comics, she still considers steel to be a mature adult, aka someone who can babysit when she's busy (which speaks to how little time she's spent with steel since he was revived). also that scene in "torbolt the terrible", where she refuses to take 2 hours out of the end of her workday to attend max's big football game.

also can i just say that forge and molly's dynamic is kinda weird? putting aside the fact that molly is in nearly all flashback scenes of the n-tek founders and is explicitly stated in ep 1 to be an ex-agent (which makes it kinda weird she's not considered the fourth founder/is never called out as being important to the organization's history), she's the ceo of a company that was planted there by her brother. also he's ordering her to keep secrets from her own son and she's listening. the tl;dr on this section is just that forge seems to hold more power than her than he should given that they're siblings that got their start at roughly the same time.

tho that seems to be a running trend with forge. he's not happy unless he has the most power in the relationship. and he doesn't seem to realize how that destroys them, which you summarized perfectly

I forget how early on the show starts showing, to the us and Max and Steel, that not everything Ferrus does or says can be entirely trusted, simply because it's not the whole truth.

It starts in episode 7 or 8, which makes sense considering there's only 26 episodes and they need to spread out the whole turbo star thing over the last half of the season, which relies on those two not trusting anyone and sneaking around to find the answers themselves, but it really shows how Ferrus is reluctant to trust a 16 year old and his robot friend even after barely working with them. Though that might also give him more incentive to lie, because who knows what they'll do with the information, right?

He also punishes them for trying to find out what he's hiding by giving them more training, as seen at the end of the episode 'Uncle Sam Wants You!', which is weird to me. He could have gone about making their next training session harder without telling them, but then they wouldn't know its for breaking a rule, a rule set purely to limit what they know so that they become more subservient. A rule put in place because Ferrus doesn't trust Steel enough to believe him when he says that he won't hurt his host, and more importantly friend, on purpose. A rule put in place because he doesn't have faith in Max to try and stop Steel from 'going bad' even after he sacrifices himself, his relationships with people and his grades to do good and be a hero. He thinks they could betray him, and so he lies to Max and Steel.

Steel being someone Forge worked with in the past for years, who kept one of his best friends and closest allies protected against everything. Max being his nephew, a blood relative, that grew up with Molly and Forge, thus causing Max to see him as a father figure, rather than his actual dad who was never present. He has a long history with both of them, and yet he doesn't trust them enough to tell them what they are, who they are.

[boringkate]

Any time people go on about anti trans hate and violence being on the rise (which I'm not outright disputing bc fuckin idk it sounds pretty plausible (my understanding is that just hate crimes in general are up) (people are increasingly radicalized by right wing social media etc) (tho I'd argue the average person is more chill than ever about queers in general)) I get thrown off by them leaving out how the trans community is also on the rise.

Like.

If the trans community is over nine thousand times larger then there'd have to be over nine thousand times as many hate crimes just to maintain the same level of danger for individual trans people.

Which obv the people saying this stuff are incentivised to leave out. Because either they're saying it to fear monger and justify their own paranoia (if you're a white girl living in montreal then you aren't gonna get full on murdered by a stranger just for being a tgirl lmao be realistic) or they're saying it to garner pity from the cis (we deserve rights specifically because we're just so murderable!)

Like check this out. I don't know how to find decent statistics on this stuff, but here's a pic that came up when I did a duckduckgo image search for transgender hate crimes graph.

Very scary!!! Except it definitely felt like the number of trans girls out in the world also got multiplied by like AT LEAST two point five from like 2013 to 2020.

"But that chart only goes up to 2020 and it's gone up since then! Very scary!"

So has the number of people transitioning (again)! It's raining girl dick out there, babe!!!!

[fortunaegloria]

Harrison Ford in Paranoia (2013) dir. Robert Luketic

[amberheardarchive]

AMBER HEARD behind the scenes of PARANOIA (2013)

[willothewispwisteriadawn]

Why the “Josh was misdiagnosed” theory is very likely incorrect. (Reworded)

Yeah, I know I did a post on this, but I liked my articulation of it better on Reddit, so I’m reposting.

Josh being misdiagnosed has been one of the most popular fan-canons since 2015, but way more indicates that the schizophrenic behavior was caused by Phenelzine withdrawal.

I think the misdiagnosis theory is popular because it’s so tragic and unfair (not that Josh’s story isn’t tragic already). It also allows us to feel more sympathy for Josh while placing some blame on outside characters (the failure of five doctors!)… But the misdiagnosis theory doesn’t have nearly as much supporting it as the withdrawal theory does. All the details we get are telling us that Josh has been depressed since childhood, but developed the schizophrenic symptoms much more recently.

Breakdown

The last drug Josh was on was Phenelzine. The story indicates, from Hill’s text messages (and from a line Chris says about Josh being off his meds) that Josh suddenly stopped taking this medication. Here are some relevant details:

1. BAD HISTORY WITH TAPERING— Josh has a bad history with drug tapering: (Referred on 11/29/2013 after patient's response to drugs tapered badly). The report also mentions that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was considered due to Josh’s history with tapering.

2. POSITIVE FINAL CONSULTATION— The end of Josh’s report shows that the Phenelzine worked. Josh said that he was doing better, and Hill decided Josh could be discharged. I think this detail is important because— unless Josh was lying— it indicates that the Phenelzine was affective for the condition he had. But it ALSO gives us a reason for Josh to have stopped taking his meds.

The report lists the Phenelzine‘s withdrawal symptoms.

Nightmares

Hallucinations

Catatonia

Shocks

Agitation

Aggression

Slurred speech

Ataxia

Paranoia

Insomnia

Many of these side effects are linked. Hallucinations and catatonia can go hand-in-hand, for example. The scene when Josh is dazed in front of Mike and Sam has some elements of both schizophrenia and catatonia in it. Slurred speech and ataxia are both on here, and Josh definitely shows odd, erratic, and slurred speech patterns. (I think ataxia is more about coordination? But it can affect speech). To be honest, you can point out moments in-game that are symptomatic of most of these.

Finally, we get dialogue that suggests that Josh’s really schizophrenic behavior is new. For example, Mike asks Chris if he’s ever seen Josh behave this way. Chris says he never has. Because Chris and Josh have known each other for around ten years, this question and answer stands out.

Conclusion (TL;DR)

I can’t speak to the accuracy of all the medical stuff in here; that’s a different can of worms. I am just saying the writers did all the following— A) gave a list of drug withdrawal symptoms, B) told us that Josh might have stopped taking his meds, C) made sure to show Josh exhibiting the withdrawal symptoms they already mentioned, D) explained that some of this behavior feels new. Conversely, there’s not much included to show that he was misdiagnosed. We have one doctor disagreeing with Josh on treatment. But we don’t have the same story-in-the-details that we do for the withdrawal theory.

Hill medicated correctly, for what Josh had at the time: depression. The schizophrenic-like behavior only started after the depression meds weren’t tapered correctly.

[tanadrin]

@sadoeconomist

Something politically aware people on every part of the political spectrum from the left to the right think is true and leaders of the Russian, Chinese, Israeli, etc. governments believe in enough to talk about publicly and make major geopolitical decisions based on maybe is not just a crazy fringe conspiracy theory, could be that there's some truth to the CIA, NED, etc. having more involvement in these events than the video author thinks I watched all this stuff happen in real time, and I read your notes, which went over how Russian hybrid warfare succeeded in Crimea in 2014. Every major power takes hybrid warfare seriously, what's objectively stupid is your mischaracterization of how it works. Trying to astroturf a revolution out of nowhere simply by paying random citizens en masse to overthrow the government would indeed be stupid but that's not what it is. Your notes seem to suggest that the video says US was paying little attention to eastern Europe until 2013 but Russia was frequently reacting to imaginary US provocations because they are stupid. It's like there's a giant America-shaped hole in the video's narrative. Ukraine was understood to be a NATO-Russia geopolitical battleground long before Euromaidan, it wasn't just Putin shadowboxing imaginary opponents out of pure stupidity that led to this.

You seem to be operating on the basic assumption that governments don't do stupid things for no reason, or fall prey to obviously inane conspiracy theories. That's simply not true; governments are led by human beings, human beings are subject to a common set of cognitive biases, and when you're an authoritarian right-winger (as the leaders of Russia, China, and Israel all are right now), an explanation for your apparent unpopularity that pins all the blame on the CIA instead of your shitty policies and your attempts to cling to power flatters those biases.

But we don't need to speculate about the propensity of governments to do stupid shit, because we have plenty of historical and contemporary examples of governments believing in nonsense: Havana Syndrome in the US, AIDS denialism in South Africa, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in Nazi Germany and Imperial Russia, etc., etc. And often these false beliefs lead to real strategic blunders: the Bay of Pigs, the Iraq War, World War II, etc. Sometimes world leaders are stupid! Like, leadership probably tends to select for some kinds of intelligence and ability--charisma, social intelligence, and so forth--but it doesn't automatically make you a geopolitical genius, or make you immune to believing false things about the world.

And the biggest problem with the conspiracy theory outlined here isn't just that we can trace its origin to a fringe American political cult, it's that it's not necessary to explain any development in politics since 1989. There is no problem in understanding the revolutions of '89 or 2000-2014 that CIA involvement is necessary to solve. Indeed, as the videos point out (if you would actually watch them), trying to use "the CIA did it" as an explanation adds considerable problems, bc color revolution theory doesn't work. It's based on misconceptions, misunderstanding of data, and a healthy dose of paranoia.

The only real problem is trying to explain Putin's behavior--and that doesn't require color revolution theory to be true, only that Putin believes it is true. And why he would believe something is true, when he has the supposedly vast power of the Russian state at his beck and call, is easy to explain: authoritarian dictators surrounded by yes men do not have accurate pictures of the world! From Idi Amin to Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin, there is a common pattern of authoritarian dictators losing touch with reality, getting really weird, and coming to believe all kinds of counterproductive stuff that flatters their egos. It would be an even bigger problem to try to explain why Putin was immune to that dynamic after 24 years in power.

"World leaders don't shadowbox opponents out of pure stupidity" is an assumption that seems wholly ungrounded to me. Why not? World leaders do foolish things all the time on large and small scales. World leaders make mistakes. World leaders can become paranoid and out of touch--and if they lead countries without functioning electoral democracies, they can stay in power regardless. World leaders are not a magic special class of human being. They're just people. And whether it's because they're your uncle who watches nothing but OANN and Fox, or they're the President of Russia and they have yes-men and the Global Research guys telling them only what they want to hear, they can end up making absolute nonsense a load-bearing part of their worldview.