#the crippling weight of the modern era

[twilight-good-yall-dumb]

A perspective on social media from a girl who (mostly) had none~

Recently, I created an Instagram account, because I wanted to experience what having a normal social media was like for a change. I haven't been on any traditional social media besides Tumblr since early high school (I am now an adult in college), and I've kept it that way for a reason. I'd had Instagram, Twitter, and maybe even snapchat way back when, all throughout middle school and up into my freshman year of high school. But then I realized what a terrible impact it had on my mental health and also became a bit of a luddite simultaneously. So, after a few bad interactions with social media my freshman year, I'd proven to myself that it did more harm than good in my life, and I got rid of it (seemingly) forever.

Fast forward to me at the start of this summer. I was feeling isolated (back in my hometown, away from my university life), and I had a thought that almost instantly became a plan. I would get Instagram for the summer. At the time, it felt brilliant. I could experience social media properly as an adult, study the effect it had on me, stay in touch with friends while I was lonely, and have an opportunity to post some of the film photos I was proud of. The excellent caveat was that I had given myself a time restraint. By the end of summer, I'm to delete the account no matter my experience. I told my friends about my plan and made them promise me that they would not let me keep it any longer than I'd stated.

So, I make an account, and it's fun! I'm following all of my friends, I'm connecting. I get the dopamine rush of posting for the first time, getting follow requests and comments from my lovely friends, all very enthusiastic for this experiment. But even in the high, I could already see that nothing had changed. My brain was systematically the same brain it had been all those years ago, and I knew almost instantly, that I would have no trouble deleting the account when the time came.

Now here's the thing: I don't regret making it. I've had fun, but the way that it almost immediately shifted my focus and scattered my routine has been sort of mortifying. I've found myself many times mindlessly scrolling and thinking, "I thought I was better than this? I thought I'd bested the brain rot and short attention span of social media?" But what I've realized is that there's really no such thing. The only way to do that (other than maybe not being neurodivergent but uh, I can't help that) was to just not have it at all.

And the process as well has made me reflect on Tumblr as a platform. What I've come away with thus far is that Tumblr, despite being a far less profitable or populated social media than most, is a far healthier online space (for the most part. it still has it's issues, like a hivemind mentality at times, etc.). I've seen posts where people discuss this before, but it's become so true to me: Tumblr is one of the only social medias that truly encourages discussion. It's the only social media where people aren't scared of words. Nowhere else could I make this post, nowhere else would something this long and convoluted gain any traction or incentivize any interaction. And though I have no idea if this will get any notes, I do know that it's possible. Being so used to that, it's been so strange to try and wrap my head around the short form content I'm fed over there (I think TikTok would put me in my grave). Whether it's the caption on a post, the length of a video, the comments, the words accompanying a story, language and content is so restricted. There is so little to be said and so little to add.

As I've played around with stories, I've had a blast simply making myself laugh and posting little photo collages of things I've been up to or making shitty ms paint stories with my random thoughts. But what's so strange to me is I'll make a story, post it, and then look at how much I've written and feel ashamed for it. And how can you not when the function of a story is to last a few seconds? Sure, Instagram is meant to be a primarily visual platform, but these are not novels I am writing, they are simply thoughts. Sentences. And I look at them and feel embarrassed immediately for putting so much of myself on display.

Which only feeds into my final thoughts on the thing. Relative anonymity on social media is a fucking gift. We are so incredibly blessed on this hellsite to be given the opportunity to create a blog rid of any semblance of our true identity, and still create a community. We can post about the things we love unashamedly, discuss our interests at length, and make friends with mutuals, all while never feeling obligated to give any of your real self away. I think that is the most beautiful version of an online space we can cultivate. I post something a little bit goofy on my Instagram, and I immediately fear the way people (in my real life) will perceive the REAL version of myself. I think constantly about how the version of me in other people's minds is being systematically molded by the presence I have on that damn website, and it's crippling. I'll never get to be my truest self there, because I'm too scared of a somewhat uncontrolled group of people knowing so much about me. But here, fuck it. I can say the most untamed, feral things, and somebody will like it and maybe even play along, all while having no idea who that thought belongs to. There's a peace there.

Lastly, on an unserious note, this website has altered the way I talk about things in an online space that I think normal people just are not equipped for. I will say something on my Instagram that I assume is recognizably a joke or meant to be taken lightly, and I'll have somebody respond to it in a manner that disregards the sarcasm or silliness all together. I'm like dude, this is clearly a funny, a silly even. Perhaps I'm just too weird for normal social media, and I can accept that. But honestly, I think so many people would benefit from being their true selves in real life only, and approaching their online space as something different entirely. Let the world and the people around you discover who you are as a person, not the curated profile you have on some evil website. Delete your social media. Embrace peace and discover a sense of self that is separate from the shallow online world. And maybe get a tumblr. It's pretty cool here.

[translationandbetrayals]

Yuji Itadori and selflessness in Jujutsu Kaisen

(MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE JUJUTSU KAISEN MANGA, GO READ IT WHAT ARE YOU DOING IF YOU'RE NOT UP TO DATE???) Our sun, our boy, our beloved Yuji Itadori, protagonist of the hit series "Sorcery Battle". One of the most beloved and well known protagonists of the modern era of manga, along with Denji and most likely...Deku??? Or Eren maybe, who knows, that's far from the point. The point is, Yuji is the protagonist of one of the most brutal mangas in recent memory, as anyone who's read it knows, people die, A LOT, like, actually dropping like flies every 10 chapters or so, and it ain't just a background character, even in the volume 0 of Jujutsu Kaisen, where Yuta is the protagonist, we see the death of Geto Suguru, a pretty major character, though at the time the author didn't intend for him to be major so he just kinda, poofed him, even though, in this first chapter, the trend which we will dwelve into soon, starts. This trend is the trend of selfish people being powerful. In the first chapters of Jujutsu Kaisen, we see Yuji's grandfather pass away, his last words telling him to "Help people", in the jujutsu world, someone's last words carry inmense weight, due to people being able to tap into more cursed energy as they're about to die, normal people as well not just sorcerers (even though if you ask me, Yuji's grandpa was a sorcerer but that's something else for another day). These words deeply mark Yuji and he does as his dying grandfather tells him, he helps people to the best of his ability, being selfless and always helping everyone when he can, which as we all know turns out preeeetty poorly, we see Junpei die, we see Nanami die, we see Nobara die, we see Todo get crippled and unable to use his boogie woogie (practically death for a sorcerer), we see Yaga die, we see A LOT of death, and a lot of Yuji getting beat up so badly he on various times wants to give up, but he doesn't cuz he's just BUILT like that, Yuji's philosophy even states he sees himself as a cog in a big machine, a lot of times he doesn't care if he's gonna die, as long as he does his best to fulfill his role.  On the other side of trying to save everyone and be a good person, we have Ryomen Sukuna, the most powerful jujutsu sorcerer to ever live (Yeah I think he's stronger than Gojo, I like Gojo more but like bro...PLUS it's not even bad that Sukuna is stronger, he's like what, a thousand years old, Gojo is barely 28, give him the time Sukuna had and he no diffs, but as of his last appearance, yeah Sukuna is stronger Imo). Sukuna's philosophy throughout the whole series is of being selfish, and needing that hunger to reach your goals, he finds people who lack this hunger and desire to "burn it all down and grab what you want" as weak, he explicitly finds Itadori lame for this same reason, he's too much of a good person. Even after he kills his opponents, Sukuna basically goes to hell or heaven with them and talks to them about their fight, telling them they were strong and such if he had a good time, for example in Jogo's death, he tells him he should've been more selfish instead of caring about his curse brothers, and that way, maybe he would've given him a better fight. Even apart from these two, every time we see someone being selfish, they're strong, like really strong, and every time we see someone being selfless, they get punished, HARD. Just look at our "hero" cast, everyone's who's a good person gets absolutely TRASHED by the evil selfish characters, Mahito killed Nanami, a sorcerer who really cared about his students and wanted to keep them safe, he fought for them and only them, which got him killed, even in his last moments, he carefully thought of what to say, as to not curse Yuji Itadori. And RIGHT AFTER THIS, we see Mei Mei, who ran away from Shibuya when she had nothing to win from it, not giving a single thought to his fellow sorcerers or innocent people trapped in Shibuya, and what is she doing? She's chilling in Malaysia, if you remember correctly, this is the place our beloved Nanami wanted to go to rest, this LOVELY WOMAN (no) quite literally stole Nanami's dream, and gets to live, SOLELY because she was selfish. Another example, Megumi, who always fought for the rest and saw himself as expendable, which kept him back from developing as a sorcerer until Goatjo Satoru told him to stop being such a pissy pants suicide boy (actual words trust me), only THEN when he started being the tiniest bit selfish, he got stronger and developed his domain expansion. We could even take the example of Gojo not killing Yuji when he met him, cuz he was a dangerous vessel, containing Sukuna, this single act of benevolence and selflessness, literally has caused ALL of our pain in the Jujutsu Kaisen story. Lets go even further and talk about Gojo's massive growth after he died and came back to fight against Toji, the growth we see here is CRAZY, he acts completely unhinged and couldn't be more rewarded for it, he goes from maybe a grade 1, to truly the strongest there is, when he forgives Geto's actions and doesn't throw a hollow purple at him in the middle of the crowd of people, he is later punished. The message couldn't be clearer, it's kill or be killed, it's be selfish or DIE. Which. Is why seeing Yuji steadily climbing the ranks of power, when being selfless and a good person, is HYPE, this man is defying everything we've seen narratively, Yuji and Sukuna aren't only mortal enemies, their ideas and philosophies clash with a passion, though Yuji has lost everything and Sukuna hasn't lost a single thing, Yuji has always acted for the good of the people he loves, and Sukuna knows nothing about love. Truly our Jujutsu Kaisen, go read it right now and draw fanart. -Javier Salinas

[seat-safety-switch]

Have you ever wondered just how much uncorked horsepower is all around you? We live in an era where cheap access to gross amounts of grunt is easily available. Even if you’re European, a quick perusal of the relevant periodicals reveals that the shittiest imaginable family hauler is making more horsepower than a full-ass sports car of the 1970s. And nobody uses it.

Sure, there’s the argument that we need all this pluck to keep our increasingly-heavy land barges moving in traffic. That doesn’t account for the fact that horsepower has been inflated much faster than even the ballooning curb weight of commuter cars. Nowadays, 300hp is table stakes for a pickup truck, and automakers are bolting on turbochargers to make up for the crippling weakness of having to reduce their four-bangers to sub-2L.

All of this only serves to infuriate me further. I’ll be stuck in traffic, trying to keep my 79-horsepower bullshit barge on the boil, and some nimrod in front of me with four hundred horsepower and an “M” badge on the back of their SUV is dragging the brakes through a corner. I need that momentum! And what’s worse: they won’t dollop out all those unused ponies. That poor engine must be so bored.

You may be asking yourself: wouldn’t I approve of a lowly-stressed engine? Exactly the opposite. Not only are today’s modern engines complicated, containing advanced engineering concepts like “important gaskets,” but they have a tendency to get all coked up when they’re not treated with the sharp backhand that they were designed for. As soon as I figure out how to bolt a modern engine into my car, and trick it into working by telling it sweet lies over the CAN-bus, I want to go fast. And if I do go fast, well, I’m gonna stretch those rods and rip that built-up carbon all across the cylinder walls. An Italian tuneup is only fun when the horse doesn’t immediately shit out its lungs and then slip in the blood.

All this is to say: got a car with more than 100hp? Do me a favour. Beat the shit out of it. Really whip it like you hate it. Slam your hand in the door a few times before you turn the key this morning (do they still have keys?) Hey, you never know. Maybe you’ll find out that you can make use of all that horsepower, and that weird smelly guy in the hairy-looking brown Volare will stop swearing at you. Maybe you’ll even get hooked, and become friends with him. He could use a good discount on engines.

[cherrywoes]

dark sun. (ryoumen sukuna x fem! vessel! reader x oc.)

iii. yugen.

— a profound awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words.

rating: mature.

warnings: mentions of forced child bearing, violence.

YOUR NEW HOME was small, but much larger than the tiny closet that you had been sleeping in for the past several years. A bed with a mattress lay in the center of the room, the headboard pushed against the wall, and a desk and nightstand were the only other furniture to occupy it. It was much more modern than you had expected, but still kept to the traditional layout that most of the campus had to begin with. It smelled of wood polish, cleaner, and a faint incense that was making your stomach roll unpleasantly.

“They burned sage here,” Sayaka explained quietly. She stood behind you right before the threshold of the door, holding your bag while you scoped out your new abode. The rest of the ten minute walk had been silent between the both of you, filled with Ama-no-Kagaseo’s malice, Sayaka’s worry, and your disturbing apathy at the event. She kept running her fingers over the rope handles of your bag, working at each stray strand until it fell apart. “The previous tenant passed away violently and had lingering energy in the room.”

It was a convenient lie. Sorcerers didn’t ‘haunt’ in the same way that humans would haunt their homes, families, or killers; they did not remain behind at all. Wherever they went, there was no trace of them left behind. You knew that much from a book you’d snuck from Yaga when you were younger, before you were ever a vessel. Sayaka likely didn’t know that you were aware of that fact, nor would you allow her to be. You had to be clever now; you weren’t going to lose your freedom so easily now that you had it. And if that meant hiding things from Sayaka for now, then so be it.

“I see.” Ama-no-Kagaseo’s energy swept through the room and extinguished the incense burning in a corner. The smoke dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, floating up between the slats in the ceiling and encouraged to vanish by an incorporeal hand. You would have a headache later because of the smell, but you already felt better because it was gone. You, like Ama-no-Kagaseo, had an extreme sensitivity to anything purifying or cleansing in nature—although it couldn’t kill you, it could severely cripple your senses enough to the point where you would black out. Whether or not Ama-no-Kagaseo took over was his choice after that. You had discovered that little factoid after accidentally touching a blessed object in an elder’s office. “What am I to do here? I know they wouldn’t just let me stay here without some caveat in return.”

Sayaka followed you inside and set your bag beside the door. “There were whispers of having you keep an eye on Gojou and Itadori Yuuji, but I don’t know if they ever came to an actual decision over it.”

Oh, it was too convenient—in the off chance that Gojou would wield Yuuji to take down the elders and crooked system of clans and power, you would be there to keep them in check, to counterbalance the scales into neutrality’s favor. It was a good plan, a smart one, but you highly doubted they had factored in one thing: Ama-no-Kagaseo did not follow orders.

“Right. Of course not.” You pressed your fingers into the mattress, testing the softness. Beneath the fabric, your fingertips gave way to springs, hard and slightly broken in from where someone else had slept in a specific position. It groaned beneath your slight weight and you pulled back, eyes darting around the room to search for a futon—that would be infinitely more comfortable than this bed. “So, if I’m not going to do that, then what am I going to do? Sit here and rot until they call for me?”

You were bitter, and understandably so. Your freedom was on the leash of the elders who held the other end, usually with an iron fist and heavy hand. You were always raised to never bite the hand that feeds, but it was looking far too tempting right now. You could understand Gojou, just a little bit, and his frustration with the way things worked among the sorcerer society, but it did not make you feel guilty for what Ama-no-Kagaseo did to him. Not quite.

“Just…” Sayaka sighed and sat down on a cushion at the foot of your bed. She hid her hands in her pockets, fiddling with something that sounded vaguely like a chain or chain links clinking together like windchimes. She didn’t seem nervous, for once, but more exhausted—lethargic, even. The dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced than usual, her cheeks sunken and a little wan in the light. You hadn’t paid much mind to the changes in her appearance, but when she let her guard down it was apparent that she was tired. “Be careful. The president of the Kyoto campus is coming soon for the events—no, I didn’t ask—and he’ll want to see you, presumably.”

For just a moment, you had thought she would open up to you. Your gut tumbled with disappointment.

“When am I ever not careful?” With a slight scoff and a roll of your eyes, you evaded the cushion next to her and opted for sitting at the windowsill instead. It offered a perfect view of the courtyard and a small garden out behind it, flowers just barely peeking out over the stone paths. The wood was rough and unsanded, but you tolerated it just to maintain distance between yourself and Sayaka. “My entire life has been nothing but ‘careful’. You don’t have to tell me that, Fujiwara-san.”

You could feel her flinch at the sound of her last name. You never used her last name, at least not in private, much in the same way she only ever used your last name and never your first. It was new, bizarre, and foreign, because she knew, just like you knew, that the tiny chasm that Sayaka herself had made was starting to fissure into something bigger, something that wouldn’t just close on its own.

“Right. What was I thinking?” The sorcerer rubbed her face and exhaled a long breath. With a second glance at you, she got to her feet, shrugging off the vulnerability she had shown and replacing it with the Sayaka you knew. “I’ll leave you to unpack. Dinner is at five; you can join Gojou, Itadori-san and I if you’d like.”

With that offer lingering in the air, she stepped outside your room and shut the door behind her with a quiet ‘snick’ of the lock. It wasn’t locked, but the idea was there—after all, there were no tumblers on the inside of the knob.

“Indecisive.” Ama-no-Kagaseo manifested before you in a bright spurt of black flames, stars writhing inside each individual lick of heat. You reached up to allow him to hover over your palms to which he did so gladly, the fire oddly cold against your skin in comparison to the heat in the air around him. “She knows not what she wants.”

You huffed a breath. “I know. It’s her choice to make, though.”

“Mm.” A brief flash of fire and he was reaching for his human vessel against your chest. He lingered close to it for a moment, but you could feel his thoughts churning in the connection you shared, ponderous and curious. “Interesting.”

“What is?” You inquired, watching as he allowed his human body’s eyes to slide open for the first time in decades. They were completely black and enveloped with stars, much like you had been told how you appeared, and a single blue dot appeared beneath his eye.

“Nothing. For now.” The eyes slid shut and the flame retreated back into your open palms. “Hungry?”

Your stomach was rumbling, but a glance at the clock on your new desk revealed it was just four-thirty. You wondered if you could get away with eating early and retreating to your room again without ever having to run into Gojou or Itadori, although that was highly unlikely. Avoiding anyone here was as impossible as the moon rising before the sun.

“It’s a bit early,” you said instead, leaning against the windowsill and tucking your knees to your chest. You rested your hands on your knees, watching Ama-no-Kagaseo flicker curiously at your denial for food. “It’s okay, I’m not that hungry.”

A quick rush of flames indicated he didn’t believe you, but he went incorporeal afterwards, reverting back to a cool breeze that lingered in the air around you. He likely had nothing else to say or nothing on his mind that was important; he had a habit of doing such lately, though you could never pinpoint why. You supposed that it was not important for him to retain some physical manifestation while he was thinking, or that it was not his priority if he was too deeply in thought.

With a sigh, you sat back and stretched out your legs. You weren’t sure what to do now; years without freedom had put limits on your movements and hobbies. To now be handed that freedom on a silver platter, probably with later conditions, you almost wanted to go back to being stuck in that closet room all day and night. But you couldn’t do that, not when opportunity was already in your grasp.

What did people your age do? You stared outside the window at the stone path, eyebrows furrowed in thought. You were certain they didn’t have a Curse, that’s for sure, and they definitely weren’t a vessel for the world’s most evil being in creation. They also dressed differently from you—you, who looked like you had stepped out of a mystical, traditional Japanese fantasy novel—even when they were required to wear uniforms. Their sense of style and overall mood, just from meeting Itadori Yuuji, was different from yours. You wouldn’t fit in in modern society, or even the sorcerer’s carefully monitored one.

You were stuck, in a sense, in an era that you weren’t born in.

Ama-no-Kagaseo lifted a strand of your hair with an invisible hand in comfort. He was not quick to offer a solution and merely left you to ponder on all of the possibilities within your combined power. After all, they had to be your decisions to count to the council, not his. Any hint that he was persuading you in any way would force them to lock you up in a sealed room and execute you on sight.

But that was the issue, wasn’t it? There weren’t any other female descendants. You were the last remaining female Shiraishi. The men in your clan, while unrelated to you and having married in, were too old or uninterested in obeying the whims of the elders, as was their right. You had no choice in the matter. If you wouldn’t produce an heir willingly, they would make you do it by force—you had been told that they would sweep the women away to a clinic in Tokyo and create a child artificially, guaranteeing a female offspring. You weren’t, but your father was nonexistent in your life and may as well be as dead as your mother.

“Then I’ll just have to end it,” you mumbled to yourself. It was the only right conclusion. You would stop subjecting innocent girls to being vessels and you would simultaneously release Ama-no-Kagaseo in the process. But to do that, you would need help and information from Ryoumen Sukuna. He was, after all, the one who developed the technique to seal Ama-no-Kagaseo into a human body in the first place. He would be gone as soon as all twenty fingers were found, anyway, so there was no risk for him to be resealed again. You would just have to bide your time and wait carefully until the time was right. “What do you  think, Ama-no-Kagaseo?”

In your connection, you felt him full heartedly agree—but there was also reluctance there, hesitation.

“What is it?” You inquired softly. He surprised you by completely manifesting—a childlike version of his personal form, indicative of his tumultuous emotions because, even though he was a god, he experienced emotions on a childlike level, experiencing them for the first time—and pushing himself into your arms, uncaring of his actual physical form against your chest. “Amatsumikaboshi?”

His white hair, turning a dark blue and then black towards the ends, brushed against your arms as he further wormed his way against your side, just small enough to fit on the window seat with you. He wore a drastically oversized yukata decorated with a dragon scale design, expensive, and of the same fabric as your kimono. A golden eye, as gold as doubloons, peered at you from behind a fringe of snowy white strands, and atop his head sat two sharp horns, each as white as his hair and darkening to blue towards the points. He was not as intimidating like this, but you still held the same respect for him, and he you.

“No.”

Amused, you raised an eyebrow and rested a hand on his head, combing through the strands soothingly much in the way he would yours when you were tired. “‘No’, what?”

Amatsumikaboshi—not Ama-no-Kagaseo, for this was no normal representation of a false identity—fixed you with a determined stare. He was of so few words that you only understood him through his emotions, new and unexplored as they were, and he was keeping them from you for some reason, fixed on the idea that he was going to tell you himself.

“No separation.” He frowned, then, and reached for your heart, and traced it back to his. “No split.”

“Oh.” You blinked at him, then, tilting your head to further meet his eyes. His pupils were unusual slits now, some link to a dragonic form you didn���t know of. “But we will part some day, Amatsumikaboshi. I’m only human.”

He seemed angry at that fact, eyebrows furrowing at being reminded of it. He never liked being reminded of your very finite life, at risk every time you got sick or ate something that could have been laced with poison. He glared—glared at his human form—and all at once, seemed to come to a conclusion. Some invisible future began playing out in his head, all of his own creation, and whatever it was, it made a smile appear on his face. It was the first time you’d ever seen him smile out of happiness, at least in a physical body you could see. You’d felt the others against your skin or hair, but seeing it was a different thing entirely.

“Do not worry,” he said after a few moments of silence, meeting your concerned gaze once more with disturbing intensity. “I can fix it.”

“Fix it?” You echoed. You reached forward and adjusted a fold of his yukata that threatened to crease, usually out of habit of doing it to your own. He grabbed your hand and placed it back on his head instead, waiting patiently for you to resume petting him. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Yet.” He rested his head against the juncture of your shoulder and chest, a hand creeping up to rest against your heart and feel the gentle beat against his fingers. “For now.”

Blinking, you were about to question him further when your stomach interrupted you. A loud growl tore through the momentary silence and Amatsumikaboshi snickered, sitting upright, all questions and thoughts forgotten—or at least ignored.

“Eat,” he said, a hint of a smile still on his face, and leaning forward, brushed a kiss against your cheek. And then he was gone in a rush of blue, black, and white sparks, as incorporeal as he was before.

You sat on the windowsill, a blush creeping up your neck, and touched the tingling skin on your cheek in slight shock. You knew he was watching you, amusement rushing through your connection, and something else—so fast you couldn’t even guess as to what it was—and probably laughing to himself.

Embarrassed, you got to your feet and slipped on your shoes, heading down the hall towards the room where Sayaka had invited you to eat with her, Gojou, and Itadori Yuuji. Hopefully they didn’t mind you being a little late.

Before you could even turn a corner, a man was staring at you—dressed entirely in black and wielding a dagger in his right hand.

“Who are you?” You demanded. He didn’t answer.

Instead, your vision went white, and before you knew it, you were back inside your consciousness, inside Ama-no-Kagaseo’s domain, except you were keenly aware of your physical body hitting the floor and Ama-no-Kagaseo’s true form standing right beside you.

“Ama-no-Kagaseo,” you whispered, shock weaving into your voice as he carefully enveloped you into his arms, much like you had earlier. He was two heads taller than you in this personal representation of himself, warm, and lean. “What happened? Why am I here?”

He hummed against your head thoughtfully, dark and insidious. “Someone is trying to break my connection to you.”

“What?” You pulled back to stare him in the face, watching those golden eyes flicker over your face as if memorizing a dream. “What do you mean ‘break’ it?”

“Don’t worry.” Ama-no-Kagaseo smiled indulgently and pulled you closer again, your ear pressed against his chest—and to your shock, the steady beat of a heart sounding against your ear. “No power in this universe will ever separate us.”

And for once, you didn’t really believe him. 

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[pulledbytheweather]

“Most cases of starvation and malnutrition are caused by poverty, war, and abuse, but their damaging results can also be brought on by one’s attempt to fool Mother Nature. The power of culture can also wreak havoc on logic. In Chinese history, we know that the cultural ideal of women having small feet caused many to allow their daughters’ feet to be bound at a young age in order to force the feet to develop into a deformed — but very small — shape, essentially crippling them. In that era, people believed that a woman needed to have small feet in order to have status and marry into the right family. In our modern world, we live with a culturally thin ideal. Whether it comes from images in the media, the fashion and beauty industry, or family pressure, we see the relentless drive to lost weight, to change how the body looks, and to create an image that is impossible to attain or maintain. Combine these cultural issues with the purported health implications of obesity, and you get the perfect storm for body dissatisfaction.

One can lose weight rapidly (and dangerously) through an eating disorder like anorexia, which, if not treated, will cause health consequences similar to those of outright starvation. One can temporarily lose weight through dieting. But as has been described a number of times through this workbook, diets simply don’t work. Even worse, dieting promotes weight gain beyond pre-diet weight; this was been demonstrated in children, teens, and adults. And, yet, people continually try to fool Mother Nature, believing they can achieve and keep their fantasy body. [...]

Stop the madness; stop trying to fool Mother Nature. Surrender to the body you were meant to have. Treat it with love, respect, self-care, healthful living, and joy. The freedom you will achieve as a result will allow you to place your focus on life goals that are truly achievable and maintainable.”

The Intuitive Eating Workbook: Ten Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food (2017)

[stewblog]

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a paean to one of cinema’s most misunderstood stars. It’s a veritable love letter to Nicolas Cage starring Nicolas Cage as Nick Cage. (Yes, that added “K” is how the character is credited in the movie.)

Is it a bit weird to have Cage playing a (fictionalized) version of himself? Maybe a little. The movie borders on hagiography, even if the script bakes in material about his poor life and career choices. And if anything it holds back on some of the weirder aspects of his real life. For instance, I never quite got the impression that this Nick Cage would spend nearly $300,000 on a dinosaur skull that he would later have to give back to the Mongolian government after learning it was stolen. Regardless, it’s clear that director Tom Gormican (and his co-writer Kevin Etten) has a genuine, long-lasting affection for the actor and his work and Cage, ultimately, just feels happy to be there along for the ride.

The ride being that Nick Cage is on the downslope of his career. Roles are drying up and the ones that do surface aren’t always satisfying creatively (or financially). He’s in debt up to his eyeballs, his daughter is embarrassed by him and his ex-wife only marginally tolerates him. After failing to land “the role of a lifetime,” Nick decides he’s better off not acting at all. So he declares his retirement and agrees to one last massive payday before going into seclusion. That is, he’s agreed to be paid $1 million to fly overseas and be the weekend guest of Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal), a mega-wealthy olive oil magnate and borderline obsessive Nicolas Cage superfan.

After a rocky start, Nick warms up to Javi’s affections and the two become fast friends. Until, that is, he learns that his host is actually an international arms dealer who has kidnapped a foreign president’s daughter in order to leverage favorable results in an election. The CIA forcibly recruits Nick and, as you can imagine, hijinks and hilarity ensue.

That said, regarding movies propelled by a comedic meta-narrative in which a former box office star plays a fictionalized version of themselves heavily based on their actual trials and tribulations as they reckon with their own faded celebrity and familial struggles, 2008′s JCVD is my preferred take on such material. Jean-Claude Van Damme delivered a shockingly honest and emotionally compelling performance in it and I was legitimately disappointed he was overlooked when awards season rolled around. But JCVD was also a film chasing heavier material with a much more somber tone. It was a chance for Van Damme to have what amounted to an on-screen reckoning with himself, his successes and failures and even his former drug abuse. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent never burdens itself with heavier material like that. It’s fine using vague descriptions of personal and professional struggles as largely window dressing and a means to propel this lighthearted romp forward. The meta aspect is fun but largely inconsequential, as opposed to integral as it is with JCVD.

Was that the right call? It’s hard to say. The movie is perfectly fun and enjoyable as it is. It’s a lark of a film that was clearly made by people who have (nearly) the same level of appreciation for Cage as Javi. Could it have been more satisfying by digging deeper into Cage’s psyche? Perhaps. There’s certainly no shortage of material to mine. Cage is one of the most fascinating, thoughtful actors to grace the screen in the modern era. His star has fallen mightily in the last decade-plus as he’s taken on seemingly every role offered to him (in large part due to a need to pay off crippling debt). But I’ve never gotten the sense that he’s ever given a lazy or thoughtless performance. The material has gotten smaller, but he never has. That’s the sign of a man who truly loves what he does.

For years, he’s been often described (or outright parodied) as being “weird.” And, granted, he is. But I’ve yet to see a performance from him that was weird simply for the sake of it and not also rooted in some other piece of art that was inspiring to him. Watch or listen to any interview with Cage where he gets to talk about his craft and you’ll find a man who works hard to channel meaningful bits of inspiration, whether he’s emulating a Francis Bacon painting or channeling the actors in a 1920s German expressionist silent film.

All of which to say, it’s clear that Gormican and Etten understand this about Cage and ultimately shines through even though certain thematic depths remain unexplored.

Helping the film stay light on its feet is the chemistry between Cage and Pascal. The movie could have ditched the meta aspect entirely and kept the “actor visits his biggest fan who’s also a gangster, hilarity ensues” plot and the movie would have been just as fun thanks to the delightful rapport these actors share. Cage deserves a comeback and I’d love it if that involved him making a half dozen more buddy movies with Pascal.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent isn’t Cage’s best stab at meta-narrative filmmaking. Adaptation tread similar ground with the whole “the movie starring a real life person is slowly becoming the cliched script the characters were dismissing earlier” schtick and Cage’s performance in it is far more interesting. Cage has done some of the best work of his career recently (it’s a crime that he wasn’t given an Oscar nod for his work in Pig), but if you’ve managed to miss some of his recent compelling work this is a fun, fluffy reminder of how what a treasure the man has been.

[gavillain]

Top ten princesses!

*rubs hands together* Alright, let’s rank us some Disney princesses. Technically there’s only four others who aren’t gonna make the cut buuuut they’re the four I don’t really like XD

10: Pocahontas (Pocahontas)

With Pocahontas, you can very clearly see the behind the scenes "self-consciousness" of the filmmakers baked into her character writing. Pocahontas was Disney's big attempt at Oscar gold, trying to tell a Big Important portentous story while also grappling with trying to make Pocahontas as inoffensive as possible. The result is a character who is kind and likable enough, but also kind of wooden. The historical accuracy value is practically nil, and Pocahontas as a character and a movie comes off worse and worse with the passage of time. All that being said, I think Disney did the very best job they could with Pocahontas given the situation she emerged in. They created a character who is likable, free-spirited, a strong believer in justice and unity, and a character who leads with empathy and courage at the forefront. If nothing else, Pocahontas is a strong role model for little girls to look up to, and her love story with John Smith is one of Disney's most mature love stories as well, so there's plenty for older fans to enjoy as well.

9: Mulan (Mulan)

Mulan is counted as a Disney princess because they don't have any other Asian princesses and they wanted a more diverse lineup. That's the reason. Y'all can stop pretending not to know now. But with that strange categorizing, Mulan is weird fixture of the princess lineup any way you look at her. Mulan, for me, both as a princess and a movie, has always been just kind of there. A lot of people passionately love it, and I get that completely. A lot of people tear it apart, and I get that too. Mulan is a great girl power character, and her resourcefulness and cleverness being her defining trait is excellent. Her internal turmoil over her identity is perhaps more poignant here than with any other princess, and Reflection still stands as one of the greatest Disney songs ever written. That said, Mulan's defining character flaw being clumsiness and awkwardness and this being why she has such internal turmoil about fitting in just makes her come off as a bit hollow to me, and I feel like there was a better route to take her. After how surprisingly good an LGBT take on her worked over in Once Upon a Time and how much better that informed her feeling like an outsider, it just made the animated version come off as weaker on the internal side to me. Good character overall, though, and I do really like Mulan.

8: Moana (Moana)

Moana has a similar situation to Mulan where she's not really a princess but she gets shoehorned into the princess mold because they have nowhere else to put her. She and Mulan are Disney heroes, and they have different expectations for that reason. All that being said, Moana is easily the best of the Revival era CGI princesses. For one thing, while she has a bit of the Revival trend of modernizing the princesses too much, they don't make her overly adorkable to make her relatable (... “overly” being the key word; she’s not exempt). On the contrary, Moana is written very much like a person. We see Moana grapple with the weight of duty both to her people and to the world as a whole. Her story is one of trying figure out whether it is better to chase the unknown or to follow the tried and true. And I like that. I also really appreciate how Moana wins the final battle with empathy for the monster, and that's what makes her unique. The whole "Know Who You Are" musical number is legitimately one of the most powerful moments ever put into a Disney film too. My biggest issue with her actually comes from Maui whose constant meta quips and spotlight stealing tends to undermine Moana's character a lot and takes away from some of her moments that I wish hit harder than they do.

7: Jasmine (Aladdin)

Jasmine is the only princess in the lineup who is not the main character of her movie. On the contrary, she's the love interest of the main character and more of a supporting player in her film. She doesn't even get a solo, something every other princess, save Merida who isn't in a musical, gets. As a result of this, Jasmine isn't really as strong in her own right as several of the other princesses. But she's still awesome. She has a strong internal life and vibrancy, and the way her character revolves around a longing for freedom and the way that compares to Aladdin and the Genie makes her really come alive and work well within the context of the film. She's also clever, resourceful, a self proclaimed fast-learner, and someone who never allows her voice to be silenced. Yet even with all her strength, she's allowed tender moments of kindness and gentleness to show that there's another side to her. Also the TV series and sequels expanded on her character in a wonderful way.

6: Tiana (The Princess and the Frog)

Okay, yes, Disney's first black princess being a frog for more than half the movie was a bad creative decision on their part that wasn't a good look. But for Disney's first black princess, considering the company's history with race issues in particular and how self-conscious a lot of their princesses of color have come off, I think a lot of people underestimate just how good Tiana is. Tiana is vibrant and full of personality without every coming off as a stereotype or as anything less than dignified and admirable. She's hard worker, but she never comes off to me as trying to be "look how much better I am than the other princesses." She lets her actions and her character speak for themselves. I like that her arc is actually about finding a healthy balance between storybook love and wishing and hard work and determination. She's a woman with ambition, but she also learns to make time for a bit of fairytale fantasy and the things that really count like love and friendship. Also, just major props to Anika Noni Rose for making Tiana so damn likable and fun to follow.

5: Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

And now that we're in the top five, we start getting into the classics. Aurora gets an unfair reputation as a basic boring princess who needs a man to save her and has no value of her own. But with Sleeping Beauty being an adaptation of ballet in particular, that's really missing the forest for the trees. Sleeping Beauty was envisioned by Walt as the pinnacle of animation, an animated film that would stand tall in an art gallery, and you can see that very much at play in Aurora. From Marc Davis's absolutely stunning animation on her to Mary Costa's beautiful vocal work in blending with the musical stylings of Tchaikovsky, Aurora is, more than any other princess in the Disney lineup, a piece of high art. She's written deceptively simply to allow for the animation and the music to convey the brunt of her character. And, when you get right down to it, Aurora is, like art, designed around the emotions of the piece more than specific character quirks. Yet the essence of her kindness, of her grace, and of her sly looks and shrewd coyness is all right there in the character. She also pretty perfectly encapsulates the emotions and feelings of young love, and I think there's a lot of value in that portrayal as well.

4: Ariel (The Little Mermaid)

I used to give Ariel a hard time in the recent past, and I fully regret allowing certain sects of discourse to color my view of her. Ariel is an amazing character, and an excellent princess. One of the things that has struck me, revisiting the movie as a gay adult, is just how queer of a story Ariel's is. Hans Christian Anderson wrote the original in response to male lover of his, openly gay Howard Ashman was a major creative driving force behind the story, and openly gay animator Andreas Deja brought to life the visceral Grotto scene based on his falling out with his own father. There's queerness baked into the fabric of this film, and it shows itself clearly with the narrative of a princess who is unhappy with her home life and has a forbidden love that she must hide away from her own family and then must undergo the process of evolving into the version of herself that she wants to be in order to satisfy the love within herself. She gets dismissed as being just a rebellious teenager, but there's so much more to her than that and she hits home to so many people for that reason. Also, Jodi Benson's incredible voice work and the writing for her makes Ariel constantly a vibrant and interesting character who I feel like we get to know better and more intimately than almost any other princess.

3: Cinderella (Cinderella)

Though, much like Aurora and Ariel, Cinderella gets an unfair reputation as weak and needing a man, that couldn't be further from the truth. Cinderella is an abuse survivor who keeps her dreams, optimism, and kindness alive even in the face of crippling despair and misery. She's a woman who fought a daily battle just for the right to keep existing, and while the Fairy Godmother gave her magical assistance, Cinderella earned her happy ending herself. I just have to admire how she embodies patience and kindness while also still being strong in her own way. She's not a masculine warrior action figure; she's very feminine. Yet she finds strength in her femininity without relying on sex, and I just think that's wonderful. I also really love how much personality and humanity they filled Cinderella with without going overboard or making her into a parody of herself. Cinderella maintains the grace, poise, and beauty of a princess all while having so many little quirks and traits that make her feel like a real woman. Also, it must be said, Cinderella III is still the best Disney sequel, and I love how it expands upon her and gives her new opportunities to prove herself all while maintaining the core kindness and strength of her character.

2: Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

The one that started it all and still a radiant joy of beauty and kindness, Snow White is everything a princess should be. Like Cinderella, Snow White shows that you can survive abusive situations with your positivity in tact. In fact, Snow White goes one step further. She shows that "there's no use in grumbling when raindrops come tumbling; remember you're the one who can fill the world with sunshine." She's a beacon of hope and positivity who shows that compassion and kindness are the true virtues that deserve to be held as the most precious. She also shows the importance of found family and finding a loving support system that is right for you even if that's not your actual family members. In addition to all that, Snow White is great for being full of personality and having a vibrancy to her. She meets the dwarfs and immediately begins to take charge and to hold them to the standards she expects. She's never afraid to make her voice or opinion heard, and she's also got a playful teasing side to her that shines through. While her film is a heightened reality, she still has a core realness to her that makes her plight and her adventure feel all the more immersive for a viewer.

1: Belle (Beauty and the Beast)

But my favorite princess is always plain to see. While I love many of the other princesses, none quite hit that same sweet spot for me that Belle does. Belle is an outcast. She's a well read and intelligent woman more concerned with books and ideas of adventure than she is with the types of things she's expected to be concerned with by her small town. According to the townsfolk, she should be only concerned with getting married to a handsome man and being his doting little wife. However, Belle has absolutely no interest in taking part in any of that nonsense, and because of that, the people of her hometown write her off as odd or crazy. Many of us have been in a similar situation and felt excluded from society because we were somehow "not normal." Whether it was for our sexualities, our weight, our skin color, our religious beliefs, our over abundant love of comic books, or what have you, many people out there feel alone and ostracized. Yet Belle is that shining beacon of someone who lives her authentic life no matter what the world around her thinks, and that can give courage to others who relate to those feelings. Belle inspires the Beast to change to be better for her, not because she can break a spell, but because she sees the true beauty inside of him that no one else ever had. Some of my favorite types of heroes are those individuals who see the good inside of everyone. Those who give everyone a fair chance, especially to those who were never given a chance by anyone before, are the type of heroes we need more of in real life. No she can't fight off villains or complete daring feats of physical prowess, but she doesn't have to do those things to make a difference. She can save an entire castle by goodness and compassion alone. Paige O'Hara really does a fantastic job filling Belle with personality as well. I love that her voice work conveys confidence and strength, but also has moments of gentleness and vulnerability. She's allowed to have a range of emotions and certain spunk that is nothing short of endearing. Special mention must go to how excited and energized O'Hara plays Belle as getting when she talks about her books and stories. You really get the sense that reading is Belle's passion, not just something she enjoys. There's a real sense that Belle experiences the world around her fully and vigorously, and that adds to the charm of her character that makes her, for me, the most likable and best of the Disney princesses.

[laryna6]

One of those ‘A Christmas Carol’-based fics with Saotome Eiji.

Kyousuke’s dad appearing warning of the demons of the Sanzu river and the measuring of karma that awaits the dead, and Saotome going ‘I must have fallen asleep/that’s a foreign Buddhist thing’ because of the... heavy pushing of a... propagandized version of Shinto as part of Japanese nationalism building up to WWII.

Instead of Christmas it’s Obon (a festival of Buddist/Confucian origin) ofc.

To fit with ‘the idea that people have to earn the right to live is effed up’ from the original, perhaps as a child he was sent to an orphanage bc his family couldn’t feed him? The additional damage of not knowing who your ancestors were in a culture practicing ancestor worship.

Other students of psychic research inviting him to hang out at the university but he wanted to get an officer position in the army, so needing to avoid undesirable elements.

Saotome’s present day obon, Kyousuke who was raised in China being taught about Shinto because as a half-Chinese person on top of an esper in an era of nationalism... they worry about the kid and he might be safer if he do all the ‘I am a loyal subject of the emperor’ signaling. Two of the espers in the unit canonically come from traditional priesthood families and have OPINIONS about what these motherfucking nationalists are doing to corrupt and twist everyone’s spirituality and traditions and their sense of connection to their families and their people and the land. Making shinto priests government officials?!

Saotome going they’re not proper LoyalTM to the army and Japan

Spirit #2 going ‘was the army ever loyal to them?’

Fujiko and her father discussing how their family is nobility and the need for the nobiiity to give up power and instead bring about democracy if Japan was going to escape being conquered and exploited by imperialists like the countries around them.

Fujiko going ‘but the warrior classes all got positions in the military, and now we’re a military dictatorship and Japan has just become one more imperialist power, it’s disgusting and her father going absolutely, and discussion of duty to their ancestors and their country foreshadowing Fujiko making a choice that according to traditional morality and the noble code of conduct was ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLY HORRIBLY WRONG to the point of disgracing her entire family line because what kind of people could have produced a traitor like that... but because of it in the modern day Japan is the second least awful country in how it treats espers.

Then spirit #3, and Saotome going ‘I’ve seen the precogs, espers going to war with normals, Kyousuke betraying the country/me to serve a queen’

And then it’s the younger queen and two other girls going ‘Minamoto we want to go to a festival with you’ while a harried man basically shoos them out the door with a broom and goes ‘go! Your families want to see you! Here are your boxed lunches and snacks for the trip’ and the girls are espers who use their powers to get to their normal families. the queen and her big sister get in a wrestling match over the cookies and only belatedly realize their mom’s eaten them all while commentating while they dress for the festival. another girl and her normal father engage in some police brutality towards festival pickpockets as bonding. the third girl, at least, is traditional and proper even if she’s performing a ceremony that comes from non-Japanese origins (and yet... it’s still a tradition that ties them to their ancestors and the gods and who they are, and Shinto says that tradition is sacred, it doesn’t say that traditions that first came from outside aren’t sacred)

The man is following his mother around as she chatters with everyone and gets up to shenanigans at the festival. ‘Father couldn’t make it again’ mentioning a grandmother who used to stay with him at these. Looking up at the sparks rise above the fire to send the dead home, lonely even though he’s surrounded by people in his hometown... and then he gets tackled by the three girls demanding he take photos with them while they’re all in kimonos

And then it switches to someone announcing That Bastard is finally dead. Far from the land he was born, with no one in the country he served who cares to claim his body ‘so we should send someone to pretend to be a relative’ and someone declaring that this is now a formal meeting because while obviously they all want to desecrate his grave, they are going to do it in an organized fashion that reflects the gravity of his crimes and pays respects to his innocent victims and continuing victims of that bastard’s legacy of murder and hatred. Eggs and toilet paper are not up for discussion is said with a pointed look at another man, who whines ‘big bro!’

This is the most diverse group of people Saotome has ever seen, people from all over the world united in their hatred of someone who gets referred to with several different languages’ curse words.

And then someone walks in and goes ‘here you are, okay, what are you up to? I’ve been raising kids for half a century, I know that when you’re all quiet and busy somewhere you’re up to no good’ and it’s Kyousuke. The guy who went ‘big bro’ gets his ear twisted, and whines ‘dad!’

It’s revealed that ‘that bastard’ is someone who hurt Kyousuke, who they’re protective of like the unit is (he still looks so young...) but when he gets it out of them he’s no! and there is a whine of ‘dad! He shot you!’ ‘I know’ *bullet scar revealed* ‘I’m the one he shot, so I get to decide what to do with him’

Kyousuke lifting away a sheet to reveal a body old and twisted and crippled. And Saotome’s. Kyousuke is blank an solemn... and sad.

Going through the Shinsosai funeral rites, all foreign Buddhist influences removed as he would have wanted, and maybe there’s a reason the people of Japan for centuries were happy to have Buddhists to help them usher their families into the next world, because he can see the weight of the kegare on him, how Kyousuke mourns him, is the only one who mourns him. Eventually a woman who treats Kyousuke as both an embarrassing younger brother and as a respected father comes to help, to cheer him up, even though she despises Saotome too, for hurting him.

A picture of the unit, in Kyousuke’s family shrine. ‘Now everyone in this photograph but Fujiko is dead... He took my family from me, but he, too, was family.’

Then he grabbed the woman, teleported, and dragged her down with him into the ocean for purification.

...then Kyousuke goes to bully the man from before, who is arguing with the three girls about how yes, they are sleepy, Kaoru nearly flew them into the ground getting home, while making them all tea before he shoves them into their bedroom. When he turns around Kyousuke has stolen the cup that was supposed to be for him, and the man at first automatically raises his hackles, but then looks sympathetic.

Kyousuke looks away, annoyed and pouting, at sympathy from this person.

‘...If I try to comfort you you’re going to shove my head in the toilet again,’ the man says, getting himself another cup of tea.

‘Absolutely’ Kyousuke agrees.

Silence, and eventually Kyousuke says, ‘at first I thought you were his reincarnation, even though he would have been offended at the idea of him reincarnating. Then I found he was with the Comericans, had been since the war, and I thought, it would have been better if he was you. Not for the Queen. But for him. If I hadn’t failed to avenge my comrades back then, he could have moved on to a better life or the otherworld. Not been forced to live on a failure and a pawn in a foreign land, unable to return home. He was a proud man.’ Looking down at his tea, ‘when I met him again, he asked me to kill him.’

‘..in the precog, I know there’s a nuke on the way when I shoot Kaoru,’ the man says, and now Saotome knows where he’s seen him. ‘even though I want to kill her so she can’t leave again and I want it enough to kill her before she stops that nuke from destroying Tokyo, I still know that I have to die for this. I’m just getting the order wrong. I should die before I do that. Having to live with what I do in that precog would be a fate worse than death.’

‘That was why I erased his memories that day. He... there was no point in him continuing to suffer. None of us would have wanted that for him. I thought... didn’t he know our feelings? That we were loyal to him, that we didn’t mind dying for him? And then I saw that he truly didn’t recognize our feelings. Because he didn’t know what it looked like, to recognize when people truly cared for him. But he cared for us, and so when he thought that espers would turn against normals, that it was impossible for us to ever care for him... Those damn precogs. They broke his heart before he put a bullet through mine.’

‘Maybe... next obon?’

a shake of the head. ‘he thought it was too foreign. It’s fine, our comrades will beat sense into him in the afterlife.’ Kyousuke drank the rest of his tea.

‘..Some of the parts of the traditional ceremony... PANDRA loves you, but I think that would have made it hard to force them to cooperate,’ the man said. “I don’t want to hear words honoring him either, but you like to do things I don’t want.’

‘What, are you going to give me condolences for his loss?”

‘I can honestly say that I am very sorry he’s dead, because it means I will never get to strangle him,’ the man vigorously throttled the air, going from kind and patient to a man more than capable of shooting a young woman in love with him, and back, ‘from turning you from such a sweet, good little kid into the godawful brat I have had to deal with.’

Kyousuke snorted.

“Do you want another cup of tea, or a cup of milk?”

“Milk.” Kyousuke said, and when the man was on his way to open a white door, he began, “Utsumi-san said that he graduated first in his class, but he had no family and no background. The esper unit was his proposal, so when he told us that we could serve our country and be accepted, he wagered his own future on the chance that ours could be happy. Utsumi said later that he never trusted Saotome-Taicho, because he knew he didn’t truly care for us. I asked once why he didn’t warn us, if he knew that, but... Utsumi knew his heart, so he knew that Saotome-taicho also was different, was desperately wishing to prove he was valuable enough to accept. He knew what bait to dangle before us because it was the exact same lure that led him to the army. We all wanted him to have that happy future, along with us.’

[vomara]

I'm curious of your thoughts on this, if atla took place during modern day (aang still having been frozen in an iceberg for 100 years, the whole storyline still happening etc.) What differences do you think there would be? Especially on the world. How would bending affect their world as well?

hm, this is a really intriguing question. i wrote quite a bit on it, whew -- this clocks out at over 1k words. all under the cut.

i suppose you'd first want to define "the modern world". are we assuming this takes place in our universe, or in theirs, at a point in time where their societies approximately mirror our own? personally, i'm going with the latter -- as much as it might be interesting to set a modern day au in asia, ATLA unfortunately has blended many asian cultures enough to make them inseparable. sticking with the ATLA world with a sort of modern spin is for the best. (it'll also likely be more western, as i am speaking from that particular perspective.)

ATLA itself doesn't take place too long in the past -- from fire nation technology, the show likely takes place only about 200 years prior. this tracks with LoK, which is essentially the 1920s. thus, in this case, aang is born during what approximately appears to be LoK, on the surface, but without republic city.

so, aang lives in the southern air temple, one of the few remaining spiritual havens of the world, and he goes through his early childhood like he did in canon, with barely any differences. he gets declared avatar, he gets upset, he runs away and freezes himself into an iceberg.

the fire nation attacks and wipes out the air nomads soon after. in this world, the fire nation is still imperialist. canonically, ATLA draws parallels between the fire nation to both PRC and WWII imperial japan. while i refuse to directly posit them as one or the other, in this case, they would be more like the latter, with a strong flavor of american imperialism. i suppose the ensuing 100 year war would be a war of attrition, where the fire nation wears at the rest of the nations over the course of decades, slowly gaining colonies, fostering economic dependence, crippling opposing political institutions, nurturing civil war, arming both insurgent groups and tyrannical governments. (in this world, the firelord and the the grand secretariat of ba sing se are on very good terms. but there are whispers that they've recently started to fall apart.)

aang wakes up to a world that looks quite like ours, near the southern water tribe. the SWT in this au is even more of a parallel to inuit and aboriginal cultures. fire nation imperialism has eaten away at their territory, resources, culture, and people. at some point, they started ignoring the SWT, and so in this au, the SWT is very similar to canon, with the exception of maybe a few more pieces of technology. do they have electricity? one generator, powered by water, not enough to provide heating for anyone other than the elderly. do they have phones? two phones, which they charge very, very rarely, and most of the time, they take a rowboat out into the icefields to piggyback their signal from the southernmost reach of the earth kingdom.

the majority of earth kingdom is almost as industrialized as the fire nation, and in the urban areas, slums and skyscrapers stand side by side. omashu, under the rule of king bumi, is a bit better, more like singapore. besides the large urban centers, the sprawling rural areas remain very similar to how they are in canon, with additional technology. they mostly have electricity, phones, and the internet. there is more extensive cultural mixing throughout the earth kingdom. ba sing se, like in canon, is a propaganda state, and they enact this through extensive censorship. even outside of ba sing se, most media is owned by the centralized earth kingdom government (though, again, the exception is omashu). king kuei, like in canon, is only a figurehead, and the monarchy itself no longer has weight in the earth kingdom.

other societies, such as the NWT are also readapted into this world. the NWT is fairly urbanized, but still manages to retain a sense of antiquity. it appears nearly identical to the NWT in canon, and they have little to no electricity -- and yet they thrive, regardless. however, to maintain their own culture, they limit their own access to the outside world. as a result, they are woefully unprepared when the fire nation attack them both by air and water.

overall, the four nations have likely become less discrete, with the exception of the NWT. we currently live in a very globalized world, with significant economic interdependence, so this is just an application of this into ATLA. thus, as aang, katara and sokka travel the earth kingdom, heading north, they meet people of more mixed cultures than in canon.

prince zuko, in this au, is still banished, and it's in disgrace that he receives a rickety, past-century ship, barely retrofitted to the modern era. his father could clearly afford to give him better, but he chose not to. in addition, prince zuko isn't just known throughout the ports, nor is his banishment kept quiet. everyone and their mother can recognize him -- he's been shown on tv since he was a kid. there are rumors on internet forums about why he got banished, some good and some bad. as a result, his presence is more incendiary than in canon. he's practically an underground celebrity. this makes it a lot harder for him to retain anonymity later in the series, and the same can be said of general iroh, although most images of him on the internet and tv are pre-lu ten's death, so most assume he should look younger.

anyway, i could go for a lot longer, but for the sake of brevity, i'll skip to bending. since bending is a natural aspect of the ATLA world, it evolved alongside modernization. however, there are less benders being born nowadays. in the middle of concrete cities, only the toughest earthbenders continue to manifest their bending. in the fire nation, fewer powerful benders are being born. the connection that people have to their own elements have been worn away at by the alienation inherent to modern society. the continued destruction of the environment, and the killing of both badgermoles and dragons contribute to the decline of bending. (this is why toph is even more exceptional in this modern au.)

yet institutions for bending remain. earthbenders still hold earth rumbles, firebenders still challenge others to agni kai. however, bending is more strictly regulated in day to day life. in some cases, the bending energy is redirected from fighting to social productivity -- earthbenders are employed in construction, lightningbenders can work at electricity plants, etc. as aang and katara confront these new applications of bending, they are... confounded. it seems that most benders don't even enjoy their bending anymore; it's simply a tool to them. for aang and katara, who were raised to find joy in their bending, this attitude is stifling. the reason both toph and zuko become aang's teachers, then, is because they defy this bending attitude. for toph, she truly loves bending, as an extension of herself. for zuko, fire lives and breathes alongside him, and within him. their particular style of connection to their own bending make them aberrant, and eventually help place them as aang's teachers.

[thedcdunce]

Ultra-Humanite

“Now give me the pen before I tell the others how horrid you truly are.” - Ultra-Humanite

Aliases:

Dolores Winters

Gender: Male

Height: 7′ 9″

Weight: 666 lbs (302 kg)

Eyes: Red

Hair: White

Powers:

Unique Physiology

Brain-Blast

Abilities:

Science

Gadgetry

Medicine

Acrobatics

Weaknesses:

Host Bodies

Equipment:

Power Stone

Universe: 

Earth-Two

New Earth

Citizenship: American

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: Scientist

First Appearance: Action Comics #13 (June, 1939)

Powers

Unique Physiology

Enhanced Intellect

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Durability

Animal Control

Hypnosis: sufficient power to implement a suggestion in the minds of almost all members of Infinity Inc. simultaneously

Telepathy

Telekinesis

Brain-Blast: By his own words, equal in power to that of Brain Wave I.

Abilities

Science: He know scientific techniques which endow superpowers to ordinary humans.

Gadgetry

Medicine: He knows how to cure cancer.

Acrobatics

Weaknesses

Host Bodies: Common host bodies will degenerate after some unspecified amount of time.

Equipment

Power Stone

Pre-Crisis

Ultra-Humanite was Superman's first recurring nemesis during the Golden Age, even ahead of Luthor. Due a scientific experiment, he has "the most agile and learned brain on Earth". He was one of the greatest criminal geniuses ever. Unfortunately for him, while the energies of his mind continued to develop and expand, even developing low level mind energy techniques such as telepathy, his physical brain interface never advanced. Unable to contain the mental energies, his body began slowly burning out. Thus in his early career, he was a small, elderly, crippled scientist, who fought Superman using his intellect, inventions, and numerous front men and stooges.

The Ultra-Humanite's signature achievement is transferring his consciousness into other bodies. He is the fourth mad medical scientist, in a DC comic book, to transplant a human brain into another live body. But Ultra-Humanite was the first to use a live human receptacle for the transplanted brain; his three predecessors all moved human brains into live apes. The human subject of Ultra-Humanite's first human-to-human brain transplant was a well-known movie actress.

It was in the body of actress Dolores Winters that the Ultra-Humanite committed many of his most ambitious and memorable crimes. The Ultra-Humanite selected Dolores Winters' body as, in that era, most male police would not suspect a woman, let alone a recognized public figure, to be an active criminal mastermind. The Ultra-Humanite continued to use Winters' body as his base until he was forced to seek out the next victim to house his super-powered brain. In Winters' form, he fought the All-Star Squadron while in collusion with his own future self; later, in a new and more monstrous form, he clashed with the Young All-Stars.

Over decades of super villainy, Ultra Humanite improved his own technology and techniques, in medicine and many other fields, until he attained the ability to transfer his consciousness directly, without surgery, into other bodies. For several years he simply moved himself from one human victim to another, but in the long run, this was unsustainable. His human bodies' endurance time became less and less, as his mental-energy generation continued to advance, burning out the bodies at ever-faster speeds. Tiring of having to change over to new bodies in an almost ever decreasing time, the Ultra-Humanite re-developed an albino gorilla, originally from Gorilla City to be able to house his super-brain and abilities. He then transferred his consciousness into this giant albino mutant gorilla, which affords him incredible strength and durability.

In this body, the Ultra-humanite has been able to use his mind powers to ever increasing effects. He re-formed the Secret Society of Super Villains and used them to attack both the Justice Society of America and the Justice League of America. These supervillains were defeated and banished to an interdimensional limbo, while the Ultra-Humanite escaped, with the assistance of his earlier self from 1941. Both versions of this monster then teamed up, in 1942, and launched an attack on the wartime All-Star Squadron. This mad scheme was thwarted by the interference of the time traveling members of Infinity, Inc. Back in the modern era, the older, more powerful Ultra-Humanite attempted to destroy the Justice Society of America again, but was again defeated following Infinity, Inc.'s intervention, and at the end of this clash, he apparently lost his mental powers for a time.

Post-Crisis

Certain aspects of the Humanite's early history were altered by the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, notably the removal of the original Superman from the timeline; in this revised history, the Ultra-Humanite apparently first clashed with the All-Star Squadron and later became a recurring foe of the JSA. Much of his later life, however, appears to have been relatively unchanged. Some time after his initial clash with Infinity, Inc. he came under the mental domination of alien spore creatures but was released by Infinity, Inc. and the New Teen Titans. Later, he clashed with the JSA again following their return to action, after creating for himself a powerful new humanoid body.

At some point behind-the-scenes, the Humanite transferred his brain into the body of Johnny Thunder of the JSA, and took possession of the pen that activates the Thunderbolt. The villain used the djinn to rejuvenate his host body and create a world dictatorship, with futuristic cities, and the vast majority of the meta-human population under suspended animation. He was again defeated, and shortly afterwards was apparently killed by the Crimson Avenger, who shot his brain to pieces. He is, however, notoriously difficult to kill.

Fun Facts

The Ultra-Humanite is one of the first ever recurring comic book super-villains. Historically, he was the first recurring enemy to Superman.

At some point after gaining his gorilla body, the Humanite was apparently taken out of time to join the Black Beetle's Time Stealers.

[marysvietlitblog]

Ten Interesting Vietnamese Novels

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today. (Amazon.com)

Crossing the River by Nguyen Huy Thiep

Crossing the River presents a wide range of Nguyen Huy Thiep's short fiction, both realistic stories in contemporary settings and retellings of folk myths that serve as contemporary parables. When Thiep's stories first appeared in the 1980s, they set off a chain of debate, not only within intellectual and political circles, but also within the society at large. Typically, the struggles of his characters were about survival, not survival in the context of war or revolution, but survival in the context of the emotional and psychological strength it takes to live within the harsh confines of post-war Vietnamese society. Thiep captured the emotional quality of Vietnamese life in a way no other author had done, and his importance can be recognized today by his enormous influence on younger writers (GoodReads)

Against the Flood by Ma Van Khang

Against the Flood caused a sensation in Viet Nam when it was published in 1999 because of its controversial description of sex and politics in that country. The plot revolves around a writer, Khiem, whose book is banned and who is publicly censured by his contemporaries, while the tangled relationships in his own circle involve drug-trafficking and adultery. His lover, a pretty and intelligent woman, is slandered and sacked from her job. She leaves Hanoi and becomes involved in opium traffic in an attempt to investigate it, but is arrested before she can report the activities to the police. His wife, a smuggler, has an extramarital affair and dies during an abortion. Khiem and his lover are finally reunited after a long separation. The novel presents a vivid picture of contemporary Vietnamese society, examining the dramatic tensions inherent in a changing society, and is imbued with the themes of friendship, love, and betrayal. (Google Books)

Dumb Luck by Vu Trong Phung

Banned in Vietnam until 1986, Dumb Luck--by the controversial and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung--is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late colonial era. First published in Hanoi during 1936, it follows the absurd and unexpected rise within colonial society of a street-smart vagabond named Red-haired Xuan. As it charts Xuan's fantastic social ascent, the novel provides a panoramic view of late colonial urban social order, from the filthy sidewalks of Hanoi's old commercial quarter to the gaudy mansions of the emergent Francophile northern upper classes. The transformation of traditional Vietnamese class and gender relations triggered by the growth of colonial capitalism represents a major theme of the novel. (AbeBooks)

Night, Again by Linh Dinh

A couple's scheme to get rich by killing their father backfires, leaving them in charge of a cripple. In heaven, a baby, dead through neglect, tells his playmates: "Life down there is just one long sleep." A young soldier, saved by a stranger, can never again find her to thank her. A man carries a massive clock. Using a variety of techniques and styles, in this collection of twelve short stories contemporary Vietnamese writers—edited by poet, short story writer, and novelist Linh Dinh—show us Vietnam through their own eyes. Night, Again breaks with the traditional views of the Vietnamese that have focused on the Vietnam War and turns our attention to postwar life in Vietnam. These writers present impressions--at once strange and familiar--of postwar realities. (Barnes&Nobles)

Beyond Illusions: A Novel by Duong Thu Huong

Beyond Illusions opens with a woman named Linh staring at her sleeping husband, Nguyen, with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust. She strains to remember how she, as a young student, once linked her destiny to his. A scruffy yet romantic professor of literature, Nguyen had captivated Linh with his youthful optimism and lofty moral values. During their first years together, the couple struggled to make ends meet in the penury and deprivation of postwar Vietnam. But when Nguyen left academia to become a journalist, he confronted the harsh reality of the Party and the crushing weight of its bureaucracy. Torn between his outrage at the rampant corruption and hypocrisy of the Communist party, and the need to provide for his family, Nguyen ultimately surrendered to the propaganda machine, censoring his own articles and fabricating statistics to keep his job. Having recently discovered the truth about her husband, Linh's heroic vision of him is now shattered and she decides to leave him rather than betray their shared principles. But soon, she too must confront the realities of a country where power has corrupted even love, where fear has silenced all but the bravest, and only flatterers and opportunists survive. (Google Books)

The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family by Duong Van Mai Elliot

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Duong Van Mai Elliott's The Sacred Willow illuminates recent Vietnamese history by weaving together the stories of the lives of four generations of her family. Beginning with her great-grandfather, who rose from rural poverty to become an influential landowner, and continuing to the present, Mai Elliott traces her family's journey through an era of tumultuous change. She tells us of childhood hours in her grandmother's silk shop, and of hiding while French troops torched her village, watching while blossoms torn by fire from the trees flutter "like hundreds of butterflies" overhead. She makes clear the agonizing choices that split Vietnamese families: her eldest sister left her staunchly anti-communist home to join the Viet Minh, and spent months sleeping in jungle camps with her infant son, fearing air raids by day and tigers by night. And she follows several family members through the last, desperate hours of the fall of Saigon-including one nephew who tried to escape by grabbing the skid of a departing American helicopter. Based on family papers, dozens of interviews, and a wealth of other research, this is not only a memorable family saga but a record of how the Vietnamese themselves have experienced their times. (GoodReads)

Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong

Paradise of the Blind follows a non-linear, vertical plot depicting the development of Hang, the narrator, through several life-changing events. An adult Hang in the 1980s receives a telegram stating that her uncle, Chinh, is ill and that she must visit him in Moscow. Throughout her journey to Moscow she recounts significant events in her childhood. As she looks back on the past, she realizes it is the steadfast resolve toward familial duty that has made her family so miserable. She realizes this does not have to be her fate. While she is waiting to leave Russia for Vietnam, she sees a group of young Japanese students who are happy and laughing and free. She longs to be Japanese, of a race that does not carry the same burdens as her people. She resolves to do what it is that makes her happy—because her duty to her mother, who would sacrifice her own daughter to help her corrupt brother—is not happiness. (BookRags)

Listen, Slowly by Thanha Lai

A California girl born and raised, Mai can’t wait to spend her vacation at the beach. Instead, she has to travel to Vietnam with her grandmother, who is going back to find out what really happened to her husband during the Vietnam War. Mai’s parents think this trip will be a great opportunity for their out-of-touch daughter to learn more about her culture. But to Mai, those are their roots, not her own. Vietnam is hot, smelly, and the last place she wants to be. Besides barely speaking the language, she doesn’t know the geography, the local customs, or even her distant relatives. To survive her trip, Mai must find a balance between her two completely different worlds. (Google Books)

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

Set against the backdrop of French colonial Vietnam, The Lover reveals the intimacies and intricacies of a clandestine romance between a pubescent girl from a financially strapped French family and an older, wealthy Chinese-Vietnamese man. (GoodReads)

[sequoiann]

❧ j.ww | saturation

pairing; seventeen wonwoo x reader

genre; fluff, soulmate!wonwoo

synopsis; in which one won’t be able to see color until s/he meets his/her soulmate

word count; 3.1k

notes; finally got to this request !! i’ve been meaning to write it since forever but i never got inspiration for it ahaa but it’s f ina lly done :DD

You stood in front of the vending machine, your fingertips lightly grazing past the glass surface which displayed the different drinks available. 

“Hey, which do you want?” you asked your friend, Sura, who was on the phone. When she didn’t reply and continued chattering away to whoever is on the other side of the line --- presumably her boyfriend, you nudged her. 

“Quick, we gotta get to class soon,” you told her. You managed to catch her attention, and she brings her phone away from her ear for a moment.

“Sorry! The green one, please!” she said, before putting the phone back to her ear. 

“Hey, I’m hanging up, I’ll talk to you later,” she mutters into the phone before ending the call. 

She looks to you, who had your arms crossed around your chest, your feet lightly tapping on the ground in mock annoyance. 

“Green?” you asked her incredulously. “Might as well tell me the shade of grey that I see.”

Sura widens her eyes slightly, biting in her lips. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry! I forgot!”

You laugh, breaking the tension. “It’s alright.”

Sura quickly puts in her own coins into the machine and presses on the apparently green-canned drink.

You lived in a world of complete black and white --- and so did everyone else, until they meet their significant other; their soulmate. Sura, of course, had found hers. Her soulmate was from a different school, though, so they only met on weekends --- but their bond was unbreakable. Most of the kids your age could already see color, but you weren’t a part of that group. It wasn’t pleasant. Everything felt monotonously dull, and you just couldn’t feel or see the life in anything. It was almost as if everything was dead. 

But you’ve grown up with this for the past 19 years, so it wasn’t like you were not used to it. You just felt unsettled whenever you saw someone gasp upon receiving a bouquet of roses, exclaiming things like “it’s so pretty!”. To you, you just questioned it. What is pretty? It’s just a dark, grey mob. 

Even people simply speaking about colors, you couldn’t help but feel left out from the community. But you never mentioned that. You knew that it was inevitable to talk about colors the moment you could see them. 

But no matter how edgy you felt whenever you heard about it, you clung onto your friends’ descriptions about colors for dear life. The way they described how yellow was like the bright sun; how it was pretty much the brightest color, and how red was just warm and fiery. The crippling realization that you may never meet your soulmate and may never be in the world of colors had you thinking a lot. 

“Y/N! Are you listening to what I’m saying?” Sura spoke, elbowing your side as you two walked down the hall. You snapped out of your thoughts, shaking your head. 

“Huh? What?” you asked. Sura raises an eyebrow and you chuckle sheepishly. “Sorry. I must’ve zoned out.”

“I was asking if you wanna go to the party after finals,” Sura repeated herself. 

“The tradition’s still going, huh?” you smiled, and Sura grins, playfully, hitting you with her shoulder.

“Of course! It’ll never die. It’s the only thing that motivates us to get through the year, isn’t it?” she says, wiggling her eyebrows, resulting in you lightly slapping her across her cheek, laughing at her comical face. 

“Stop doing that,” you laughed. 

Sura quickly regains her composure. “Okay, so you up for it, right?”

You furrowed your eyebrows together falsely, stroking your chin with your thumb and index finger. “I don’t know, am I?”

Sura widens her eyes and shoves you, making you bump into a random student, the both of you stumbling.

“Watch where you’re going!” the student scolds, and you immediately apologize. Sura just snickers in the background.

“Look what you did!” you said in a hushed voice after you passed the student, and Sura just shrugs innocently. 

“You’re going. I have no one else to go with,” Sura said, practically forcing you on the matter. “Please?”

“Fine,” you relented. “It’s not like I’ll let you go have fun all by yourself anyway.”

Sura lets out an excited squeal, making you smile like a mother would at her child. “Yes!”

“But we’ve gotta study for finals first! It’s next week, and it’s Friday already,” you reminded her. 

“Yes mom,” Sura says in a dull voice, taking a 360-degree change, and you chuckled. 

Just at that moment, the bell rings for the start of the next class.

“Shit,” you cursed under your breath, and both you and Sura made a sprint to the lecture hall.

The weeks of finals went by pretty slowly for you. It was a long and mentally-strenuous process of every student having to sit on the plastic chair while their brain fights the urge to walk --- no, run the hell --- out of the door. But no one does, of course; no one can. We all just sit and write the test, but when your mind was on full freak-out mode it’s hard to remember the little details of what you have been studying overnight for. 

You constantly flexed your numbing hand from writing pages after pages of essay scripts, feeling the pain of your nails digging into the skin of your clammy palms. You didn’t know if it was you, but whenever it was the examination period, the examination halls’ and/or classrooms’ air were stale, sometimes tinctured with bleach. Was it bleach? You weren’t sure. 

But whatever it is, the 2 weeks passed. The school air cleared undoubtedly, for you at least, and your body easily started unwinding --- the tension that was in you dissolving like dust. 

“FINALLY!” someone shouted from across the classroom after the last paper ended, making everyone smile, some laughing. “LET’S ALL PARTY TONIGHT!”

Choruses of hyped-up ‘yeah’s were heard. 

“Whose house is it this time?” Sura asks to no one in particular, but loud enough for everyone in the classroom to hear. 

“Mingyu’s!” someone replies, and louder cheers erupted. 

You smiled. The finals after-party was held at Mingyu’s place two years back, and it was the best yet. His house was big, but not too big that you’d get lost, but big. Really. Bigger than your average household, of course. Mingyu is dubbed as the ‘rich kid’ of the cohort, but he’s nice and friendly, not much like typical rich kids.

“Don’t mess it up too much!” Mingyu calls out jokingly from his seat, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. You scoffed lightheartedly. What kind of party wouldn’t be messy? 

“We definitely will!” Soonyoung, the class joker, replies, resulting in Mingyu sticking his tongue out at him before leaving the classroom. It made you chuckle. 

“Hey, let’s go over to my dorm room. I’ve got clothes for you for tonight,” Sura said, her books piling up in her arms. “Needa’ visit the locker to dump these first, though.”

“Sure.” You laughed, slinging your dull, green backpack over your shoulder before taking half the stack of books from Sura, grunting a little at the weight. “Why’d you bring so many books today? It’s the last day.”

Sura sighs, the two of you walking to the locker hall. “I had to do some last-minute revision. I left out an entire chapter. But luckily only one question on it was tested.” She smirks, seemingly quite proud. 

You scrunched up your nose in disgust. “Ugh. Not fair.” 

Sura shakes her shoulders mockingly, and you laugh. She’s such a child. 

You two arrived at her locker, and she opens it, dumping all her books inside --- literally. 

“You’re just gonna throw them in there?” you asked, widening your eyes. 

“Yeah. I don’t need them anymore,” Sura said decidedly, eyeing her pile of books in your hands, and nodding towards the dump in her locker. You chuckled and threw the pile in there, too. Sura quickly shuts the metallic locker door, locking it, and the two of you made your way over to Sura’s dorm. 

Sura had her dorm all to herself, since her roommate had migrated a while back. Lucky her. The dorm was decently big, and being the only one living in it was a luxury. 

 Sura plonks down on her own bed, and you did so on the other empty, unoccupied bed. You sometimes sneaked in after roll-call to bunk with Sura, so this room was pretty much like your own. Your own roommate never told on you. 

“What’s the dress code for tonight?” you asked. Each year was different; to spice it up a bit and make it more significant. There was one year where they jokingly made the dress code to be ball attires, and it was horrendous. The ladies came wearing huge, puffy ball gowns, and there was barely any space to walk. Everyone kept complaining about their dress being stepped on, too. The entire party got cancelled in the end, you heard. You and Sura didn’t go that year, purely because the idea of wearing gowns in this modern era sounded ridiculous to you two. The both of you weren’t the type to use these kind of chances to flaunt. Apparently, no one else in the school had the same mindset at the two of you. It was funny hearing stories about it, actually. 

“Casual,” Sura said, grinning. You pursed your lips in a self-satisfied smile, too. 

“I’m calling on dibs on your hoodie,” you said quickly, running to Sura’s closet. 

“Which?” she asked. 

“I don’t know, the really comfy one?” you said, pushing aside her hanged clothes. You finally spotted the hoodie you were looking for, and pulled it out. 

“This one!” you said, waving it in the air. Sura was about to argue for it, but stopped herself.

“Fine, you take that one, I’ll take the other... um, army green one...” she trailed off, hopping off her bed and walking over to you. She rummages through her closet, before pulling out a hoodie which was simply of a dark grey shade to your eyes. You couldn’t help but run your hands across the fabric. 

“Army green,” you said, letting the words roll of your tongue. “Must be pretty dark.”

Sura smiles. “It is,” she confirms. “Pair it with jeans?”

You nod. “Casual and cute.”

The both of you laugh. Hoodies paired with skinny jeans were your most commonly worn set of clothes. Sura and you were pretty much the same height and size, so clothes were exchanged all the time. She pulls out a pair of ripped light-colored jeans --- you didn’t even know the color of denim --- and you just pull it on, together with the hoodie you had taken out. 

Yes, you were that close with Sura that you two would even change in front of each other. 

“Time check!” you called, fixing your hood.

“We’ve got... 1 more hour till the party starts,” Sura said. 

You pulled a face. “That’s long.”

“Not if we make a trip to Starbucks outside campus,” Sura said, grinning. You returned the grin and the both of you dashed out. Your campus oddly didn’t have a coffee store, unlike most of others, but the other facilities easily made up for it. 

You still needed your daily dose of caffeine, though. The both of you made a super quick trip to Starbucks, before heading for the party.

You and Sura arrived at Mingyu’s house 15 minutes past the starting time, aka 7:15 pm. It was already packed, as you expected, and would fill up more over the next half an hour of so. It’s like that every year. 

Sura spots her boyfriend in the middle of the sea of humans, and nudges you excitedly. You smiled and let her go over. Her boyfriend was one of the ‘special’ recognized guests allowed into the annual parties.

You squeeze through the dark crowd, trying not to trip over feet or knock over anyone’s party cups. Spotting Mingyu at a corner, you waved to him.

“Hey, Mingyu!” you called out. Mingyu turns his attention away from his group of friends to you.

“You’re here!” he walks over, handing you his cup of drink --- which you gladly take. You and Mingyu were pretty close; you two always studied together for upcoming tests. 

You hummed as you downed the unknown liquid hungrily. You hissed a little as the bitter substance burned your throat slightly.

“Vodka?” you questioned. 

Mingyu shrugs. “There’s punch in the back, if you want.” 

You laughed, hitting him lightly. “No thanks.” 

“By the way,” Mingyu said, slightly cautious of his words. 

“Yeah?” 

“...Still black and white, right?” he asks, and you nod, emotionless.

“Someone transferred to our school, and he’s starting next week,” Mingyu told you. “He skipped the finals. And he’s coming today.” 

You raised an eyebrow. “So?” 

Mingyu pursed his lips together. “I mean, I talked to him beforehand. He’s really nice. And you could be lucky this time.” 

You huffed. “I can only wish.” 

You grabbed another cup of vodka from the counter top, sipping on it. You didn’t want to get tipsy too quickly.

Mingyu’s phone rings in his pocket, and you were surprised that you could actually hear it above the loud music that was being blasted over huge speakers. 

Mingyu checks his cell, and smiles. “He’s here.” 

“Go ahead,” you said, and Mingyu stands up from leaning on the wall. 

“Be right back.” 

You started to wander around the place, with only your half-full cup in hand. It wasn’t easy to get around, of course, with everyone everywhere, but once you managed to escape the crowd, the back of the house was pretty empty. Except for a few people who were just all over the opposite sex. You escaped that too, of course. You didn’t need to see where they were gonna take it to.

You realized that there were random groups of cups of vodka on almost every table you passed, and you took that to your advantage, grabbing a cup whenever you finished yours. You knew you could hold your liquor pretty well, so you didn’t think much about it. 

 “Y/N! Wonwoo’s here,” you heard someone call from behind. You turned around, and something just suddenly seemed to blind you.

The man named Wonwoo, who standing beside Mingyu, was practically glowing. He wasn’t in black and white --- the only shades you have been seeing since forever. It was as if the saturation meter got turned up to its highest setting. His hair was of a certain dark shade, closely resembling the shade of the bark of oak trees, his sweater of a hue that was warm but vivid and vibrant, his jeans in the pigmentation of denim. He was in color. 

When your eyes met, the colors didn’t spread calmly like you had expected all along. Everything around you seemed to slow down as the colors burst from him, swirling like oils and dyeing every other bit of whatever was in your field of vision. 

There was a moment where both of your faces were simply washed blank with confusion, like your brain cogs could not turn fast enough to take in the sight before your very eyes. Every muscle in your body froze, and you could only hear and feel the hard palpitation of your heart against your chest. 

Your other half obviously recovered from the stupefaction faster than you did. A wide grin spread across Wonwoo’s face as he took 2 large strides towards you. He wrapped you in a warm swaddle of his arms and his chest, and pulled you close. Despite the temporary heaviness in your stomach, it fluttered at the feeling of your body pressed against his.

“I--- You--- That’s---” you stuttered, making Wonwoo chuckle as he hugged you just a little tighter. He didn’t want to let you go.

“Yes, that’s color,” he said, his voice low and comforting to your ears. “I see it.”

Your eyes couldn’t help but dart around the room, observing every single thing. So this was what they called pretty. It was, indeed. 

You pulled away from Wonwoo, and you unconsciously held onto his arms as you looked up at him, into his eyes. 

“Your eyes,” you said softly. It was sparkling. It wasn’t the usual dull, soulless eyes that you’ve been looking into, in others, for the past nineteen years. 

“Brown,” Wonwoo said, smiling gently. “My friends told me it’s brown.” 

You broke out in a wider smile, your hand caressing his cheek lightly. You were amazed, really. But more than that, you felt a odd feeling in you. Something that seemed to knot in your stomach, but made you feel light. 

“I told you!” Mingyu exclaimed from the background, breaking the atmosphere. You look over to him, who seemed more excited than yourself, laughing.

“Get lost!” you said, and Mingyu holds both hands up in defense. 

“I will, to let you two have your own catch-up time,” Mingyu said, winking before walking away. 

You didn’t know that Wonwoo hadn’t gotten his eyes off you yet. When you turned back to him, he abruptly closed the distance between the two of you, pressing his soft lips onto yours. You were taken aback for a moment, but Wonwoo’s arm on your lower back gently pulled you closer, and you let yourself melt into the kiss.

You never felt more fulfilled in your life.

“Hey, I’ve got to go find Wonwoo. That ass said he’ll teach me Math today,” you said. You two said your goodbyes on the phone and hung up.

“What did you call me?” 

You whipped your head around, surprised to see the mentioned person behind you.

“Oh, hi Wonwoo!” you quickly said, smiling sweetly. Wonwoo mimics your smile exaggeratedly, then returns to his expressionless face. 

“I asked, what did you call me?” he repeats lowly, making you want to burst out laughing. 

“An ass!” you sputter, before running down the hallway in a giggly mess. Wonwoo laughs and runs after you, easily catching up and wrapping his arms around your waist from the back. 

“More like the love of your life,” he teases.

“Wonwoo, we’re in the middle of the hallway!” you laugh, trying to wiggle out of his grasp. 

“So?” he said, chuckling. His embrace loosens and you turn around to face him, and he plants a light peck on your nose. You scrunched up your features cutely, making Wonwoo chuckle. 

“Cuddle night?” he asks, and you excitedly nod. 

“I’m up for that anytime.” 

[davidmann95]

Since you've listed the preferences of the Superman actors, and also have done a FrankenBatman, can you do a similar worst to best list of the Batman actors in your opinion?

Skipping over Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowrey, as I haven’t seen the Batman film serials:

9. Dick Gautier

Adam West’s fill-in for a 1974 Equal Pay PSA, his impression is far from up to snuff, with not an iota of West’s hilariously sincere conviction.

8. Val Kilmer

I’m what might be called a Batman Forever apologist - as opposed to Batman and Robin, which requires no apologies - but Val Kilmer’s flat, passionless performance is certainly not one of the aspects I would leap to the defense of. I suppose he deserves some credit for being the last to wear an acceptable big-screen Batman costume for 21 years, but bleak as 1995-2016 was in that regard, no cowl is enough to cover up that he just wasn’t a very good Batman.

7. Bruce Thomas

The Onstar Batman may not have had a chance to make much of an impression in his 6 commercials - nor did he give any kind of impression that there was some kind of grand take on the character just waiting to show itself - but he did pretty well with what time he had, with some decent comic timing and a straight-faced attitude to fighting the Joker, Penguin, and Riddler that managed the tricky balancing act of showing a serious version of Batman who regardless still clearly enjoyed his job.

6. Michael Keaton

I’m not totally certain I ever fully bought Keaton as Batman - his greatest performance in superhero movies wouldn’t come until, of all things, his time as the Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming - but I still most certainly bought him as an unhinged trust fund millionaire who would beat the snot out of sword-wielding street punks and a sewer-dwelling Danny DeVito, and that goes a long way. Plus he casually backhanded that one guy so fantastically it’s been a cultural shorthand for how awesome Batman is ever since.

5. George Clooney

While he delivered maybe the 5th-best performance of the thoroughly amazing Batman and Robin, it was regardless a seriously underrated one. His Batman may not have quite found the line overall between serious and camp it seemed to be aiming for, but he still had a number of great individual moments under the cowl, he was a smooth as hell Bruce Wayne, and his work bouncing off Michael Gough’s Alfred and Chris O’Donnell as Robin was A+ all the way. If nothing else, his delivery of “She wants to kill you, Dick” was Oscar-worthy.

4. David Mazouz

From what fairly little I’ve seen, Gotham is an utterly bonkers and entertaining Batman show at its heart, but one utterly and irrevocably crippled by a delusional self-image of actually being about Jim Gordon and generic cop show bullshit, rather than baby Batman hanging out with baby Catwoman under the world’s crankiest babysitter in Alfred as supervillains ham it up at each other. Insomuch as there’s a soul to the thing though, it has to be Mazouz, who pulls off a solid performance of a Bruce Wayne who deep down is already very much Batman, but in spite of his willpower and conviction simply doesn’t yet have the skill, maturity or perspective as to how to apply himself yet, with all the frustration that brings as he figures it out a bit at a time. Seeing him confront his parents’ killer or hold strong in the face of Cameron Monaghan’s proto-Joker, it’s honestly difficult to believe he’s even operating in the same genre as most of his co-stars, much less the same actual program.

3. Ben Affleck

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice has a boatload of sins to be held accountable for, but the casting of Affleck as the caped crusader to fill Bale’s considerable shoes was not one of them. His Bruce Wayne is simultaneously genuinely charming while having *just* enough of an air of sleaze that he’d be believably overlooked, while his Batman…well, feels like Batman in a way no one else has quite matched, with the kind of visceral, focused intensity and righteous hate you’d expect from a guy who’s spent almost of a quarter of a century trying to fist-fight crime into submission, with an entire unseen history of allies lost and ground wars against brilliant, sociopathic crimelord-artists, while still showing the kind of sympathy in his rescue of Martha Kent and encounter with Deadshot in Suicide Squad to make clear there’s a soul underneath. While he hasn’t gotten a proper opportunity to strut his stuff yet - even the most generous interpretations of this version up to this point hold that he was *intentionally* being written entirely out of his character in his debut - if Matt Reeves and Chris Terrio bring it for The Batman, I could absolutely see him topping this list down the line (especially if they don’t try and fix what’s broken with that suit, the first palatable modern take on his uniform that only makes him look all the more like he stepped off the page).

2. Christian Bale

If Christian Bale committed a single sin in his tenure as Batman, it was that when he screamed “SWEAR TO ME!!!!!!” in that one crooked cops’ face before dropping him 10 stories, stopping him right above the ground, and then having him fall on his face, he was fully conscious that it was the hypest shit of all time, and mistakenly believed his Batman voice should be at that level of intensity all the time rather than the lighter degree of raspiness he went with in Begins. The voice aside though - I think it largely worked given it was meant to scare the shit out of muggers, though I’ll admit it really did get to be a bit much in Rises - he was tremendously better as both Bruce Wayne and especially Batman than he was ever really given credit for at the time. It’s not entirely surprising; he was surrounded by bold, charismatic figures being pushed to their limits and capital-A Acting, while the very nature of what he was doing meant keeping it a bit more emotionally reserved. But his Bruce Wayne was almost immaculate in his grand douchebaggery, his sparring with Alfred gave us some of those characters’ best scenes in their almost 75 year relationship, and his Batman was haunting, enraged, and unstoppable. I suspect he could have been pushed a bit farther though; while I entirely disagree with the notion of Christopher Nolan’s films being cold and emotionless, I feel like a lot of the time he was played a note or two low in terms of intensity when taking it further could have made him stand out much more, and made clearer his actions under the cowl were as much an extension of his personal rage as an act to frighten the superstitious and cowardly. Regardless, he can absolutely hold his head high as the definitive modern interpretation of the character to the world at large.

1. Adam West

With every Batman up above, there’s always at least one ‘but’. They were great except; he’d be perfect if not; so on and so forth. That is not the case with Adam West. The superheroes’ superhero, he was the ultimate straight man to a world of camp madness, whether refusing to throw a bomb in a lake when it’d endanger a group of ducklings, making leaps of deduction that held more in common with dadaist poetry than criminal psychology with a 100% success rate, or somehow summoning up the willpower to not stop Batmaning to go run off into the sunset with Julie Newmar’s impossibly gorgeous Catwoman. The epitome of Batman as father-figure, dedicated keeper of public order, and crimefighting savant - as well as a damn smooth Bruce Wayne - he leapt off the pages of the New Look-era titles and defined a platonic ideal of decent-hearted superheroism that carries weight to this day. More than any to succeed him to date, he was a perfect, hilarious embodiment of his time’s vision of Batman, taking it to a level that can truly be said to have redefined the character to an extent no one else to wear the cape has come close to matching.

[mindfulthoughtpollution-blog]

The Bipolar Support Group Shuffle:  A Short Story

      Harold walked the trash lined streets of Berkeley, imbued with a deep abiding need for human connection. He tried looking people in the eye, staring in an attempt to tease out understanding, the fleeting remnants of empathy. His want lead to several fight-fuck-or-flight scenarios that were both harrowing and reinvigorating. Aside from the brief foot races, rushing around and past drunken homeless men wielding chains, breath stinking of cheap-and-available vodka, he found himself an object of desire. Well, in a sense, primarily he was being propositioned by concentration camp thin meth addicts who tried to barter with their withering sex appeal in exchange for drugs. Direct offers were put to him by route of drug addled confusion, they thought Harold was his younger brother Joshua. This was the natural byproduct of weight loss in combination with the skewed and fractured memories of drug addicts. Everything was hazy and distorted in the land of sunken cheeks and open weeping sores. Harold’s unwillingness to play these scenarios out resulted form the abyss of his loneliness. It was all encompassing, beyond the usual routine of urban reclusiveness that he was accustomed to over the course of his adult life. Earlier in the year, he found himself immersed in a number of awkward fumbling social relationships that predictably fell apart as the bonds strains under the weight of collective neuroses. This assessment was most likely a gross simplification, their were individualized aspects that sabotaged each one, customized the path of social suicide, individualized methods of a particularly gifted social anarchist. Combined with his stubbornness,  an unwillingness to compromise or backtracks, his burgeoning social circle shrunk.

      Among the ruins of his social life, was the memory of his muttered confession to Kyle. Harold had spent nearly the entirety of his adult life with a diagnosis of manic depression. During his freshman year at Berkeley, Harold began taking a low dose anti-depressant for crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as the dose built-and-built, his mania became more and more pronounced. The end result was a week, give or take a few days, of full blown explosive mania culminating in a handful of benzodiazepines and a seventy two hour hold at Herrick Hospital. When Harold was diagnosed with manic depression, via the age-old-human guinea-pig method, he was overcome with solemn resignation. Within weeks, Harold had a lithium induced fine motor tremor to go along with hia inability to mange money. Harold wandered the streets of Berkeley in a daze, gradually adjusting to a high dose of lithium, he felt lethargic, grotesque, his mental state transparent and palpable. Harold clung to the belief that he was transparent for years to come, every interaction with a shaking, babbling incoherent was a sober reminder of who he was, and  if worst came the worst, who he could end up being.

      In the Media, bipolar disorder had made headway in the public consciousness, for every small gain, little uplifting commercial, a celebrity “outing” them-self, there were  school shooters, abusers, addicts, a never ending stream ranging from bad to worse.  Being a closeted manic depressive was for the best, anyone who knew simply twisted it against him, in a vile or crass manner, but there was a niggling urge to confess his secret. Harold felt it was the missing piece, an explanation for some of his undesirable traits that could get him some leniency in the social arena. Harold confessed his bipolar disorder to Kyle about six months into their friendship. Harold told him towards fashioning a social safety net, during a time he was struggling against extreme familial upheaval. The news had landed with a resounding thud, that eventually morphed to obnoxious maternal-type nagging. Within about a month after Harold confessed their friendship had fallen apart. He took one key lesson from his time with Kyle; sometimes loneliness is better than being eviscerated for a semblance of honesty.

      Months passed since Harold had seen Kyle, and his ability to be alone had begun to disintegrate. He found himself searching the internet for support groups that might offer some  relief. It did not take long for Harold to find a support group, meeting in the basement of Herrick Hospital every Saturday. One support group for actual bipolar people, three meeting several times a week that served the friends and family. The martyrs of whole process, those who had to be around the psychotics, junkies, sex addicts, future mass shooter with healed razor blade scars on their wrists. Scared over wrists were track marks for the lithium set, among the telling signs of lives wracked with shame and regret. Harold contemplated going, listed the excuses for avoiding the sacred ground of his indoctrination into anti-psychotics and crippling mental illness. The intervening years since his infamous code ‘5150’ had been wrought a chilled acceptance of what he was, the expected ceiling of his achievement, the bated breath resignation towards a life of staggering mediocrity.

      There had been threats along the way a dangling sword of Damocles that gained coherent structure as the missed doses of Abilify (Note: Abilify is an anti-psychotic) began to fuse together, menacing and unforgiving. The Sword’s weight was comprised of the missed pills, fifteens and tens in pastel of yellows and pink. Harold found out the hard way suicidal thoughts arrived when the pills stopped. He could feel his heart beating against his sternum, hard then slow, it beat in schizotypal repose. Then came the alternating hot-and-cold sweats, the shift in his interior monologue between explosive anger and an abyss of sadness that guided him through hardware stores on solemn missions to find single sided razor blades, for ahem, an box cutter, no wink, no safety check. Harold would leave awash in cowardly flop sweat, dumping the bag into the nearest trash can before fleeing back the dank muskiness his apartment.

      Threats of sending him back, to staggered gait heroin addicts and long spindles of drool attached to heavily medicated schizophrenics, manic depressives, occurred when his anger flew out of control, broken doors, high-end electronics, splattered food. The standard waste products of wrestling with a diagnosis that was wrenching his potential away form him at a rapid pace. Sometimes the cops were called, masculine female officers in button down plaid shirt and pleated khakis would run down the suicidal ideation check-list, that for some inexplicable reason, they would have to read from a clipboard they guarded like a well seasoned poker player. Harold gave the right answers, always the right answers, deviating meant another ‘5150’ more time among the hollowed out, medicated zombies, burnt and beaten, the slashed and burned.

      He had a sense of morbid curiosity, returning years later, an alumnus of a club no one has ever, or would ever want to belong to, returning to view the campus once again. Harold traveled down to Shattuck on a blustery day in early November, light was shinning in subdued observance of the occasion. He stood out front of the seven plus story structure, all glass and egg shell white painted steel. The hospital was another outpost of a bizarre fixation of the medical establishment with high end, modern lobbies, all chrome and polish, with rooms like you might see at third rate nursing home. Harold walked briskly past the reception area darted to the nearest elevator.

      The room was peeled wall to wall red carpeting stained with mashed in cigarettes and detox vomit from different eras of usage, stacks of chairs and peeling, beaten folding tables. The general aesthetic of a wrong turn; screaming red carpet and tables with water damage from months and months of coffee urns boiling through coffee until it was the taste, and consistency, of diesel fuel. Seeds of doubt were multiplying and dividing within him, hesitance blooming into a full blown panic attack. This was it, some kind of psychic trap, the moth to the flame, this journey had become a full expression of his desire of self-immolation. Somehow, someway he was going grind himself to dust. It was only panic, he lapsed into the fallacy that mental health professionals had intuitive abilities, before them he a transparent supplicant ready to reaped from the herds of capable.

      No such luck, or he wasn’t that lucky.

      As the chairs were unstacked and placed in a safety circle, the numbers of lithium congregants swelled and spilled out into the hallway. They were divided into two groups the regular adherents going with counselor of choice, newcomers waited top be field and sorted, apathetic to the khakis-and-sweater-vested savior into whose care they were assigned. Harold just sat, breathing in short, shallow bursts, flecks of sweat appearing on his brow. How come mental health professional equate shopping at the Gap or Banana Republic with a veneer of professional dress; crossed his mind among glib cynical pokes and prods meant to tear at austerity of this support group circle jerk. The meeting began with a grayed and generally unkempt women in a ankle length purple floral print dress asking them to qualify how they were doing on a scale form one to ten, ten being best.

      Harold sat in his chair, digging his back against the padded frame of the chair. The words of his fellow congregants washed out, not registering.

      “Your turn.”

      “Me?” Harold pointed to himself, feigning a casualness of someone who happened to wander into a bipolar support group.

      “Yes. What’s your name, and how are you feeling?”

      “My name is Gabe, and I am an eight, right now.” Harold gave a fake name, knowing that if and when he should chose to bolt out of the meeting, he didn’t want anyway of Them tracking him down.

      Next was the in-depth check in, a graying woman, rail thin, a contorted scare crow, began to run down her latest stay in a mental institution. The words dribbled out slow, and deliberate, every syllable was a reach. Diane’s eyes were rolling back into her head, a heavy dosage cautionary tale, a tragedy case highlight reel. Harold was grating his back teeth, trying to temper his panic with an inculcation of artificial morbid curiosity  Her med list ran together, a general history of hits and misses, long stretches awash in the afterglow of daytime television, fumbling with jig saw puzzle pieces. Harold sat through ,desperately choking back his want of running out the room, stripping off every shred of soiled clothing, back to being fully anonymous. Diane’s run down petered out, exhausted, she flopped back against her chair.

      An youngish asian girl, Sydney immediately picked up the baton. More coherent, not dribbling down her face, or intermittently passing out. She went on about a man she had been a single, as in one, date with that she believed was the One. The perils of dating the mentally ill, love and hate come so fluidly, merge into one another without warning, and on occasion without reason. She was running through a list of details from the poor guy’s dating profile, if he only knew, if he only knew, bubbly, happy, interwoven with classic delusions. Worrisome, but Harold let a slight smile over his face, as Sydney wound down, he rose to his feet and slipped out the side door. vowing not to return to Herrick for any reason. It was more a cavalier romantic gesture then stemming from internal stability, but he knew in those brief moments that somehow he was different, and he was hopping this notion of different meant better.

[racingtoaredlight]

Hiwatt

When you see these images...even if you know nothing about guitar amplifiers...you’d immediately assume they sound like dirty, huge rock’n’roll amps.  To a novice, you might assume they’re like those old Marshalls and Fenders...I mean, they have four inputs, and all that...and would naturally assume they have huge amounts of gain.

You’d be wrong.

***

My second amp ever was bought from my uncle.  A Hiwatt Custom 50 1x12″ combo that weighed probably 95 lbs.  It didn’t distort.  At all.

Because...despite the name “HIWATT” and the imagery and all that...these amps were designed to be clean monsters.  Hiwatt doesn’t mean huge volume and huge saturation...it means you can run those watts to 11 (on the brilliant channel) and there will be almost no distortion.  On the normal channel, there will be none, period.

Hiwatts were ahead of their time in two respects.

Firstly, they were designed to complete military specifications.  This meant that a) wiring had to be perfectly neat, b) wiring had to be easily accessible, and c) both those qualifications would need to be met during repairs in the field, i.e. under pressure.  Hiwatt’s were wired immaculately (first pic below), with the highest quality parts and transformers, and were extremely durable...here’s a pic of one of Gilmour’s original Hiwatt stacks (second pic).  These things were indestructible.

Secondly, Hiwatts were massively ahead of their time in how they were meant to be used.  By having this massive amount of clean headroom with very little overdrive, it was the perfect platform for the burgeoning pedal market.  Fuzzes, overdrives, chrouses, phasers, flangers, envelope filters...all that shit could be thrown in front of this amp and work perfectly.  Because that’s what it was intended for.

Today, almost every major manufacturer has a “pedal platform.”  Hell, Fender over the past two decades have almost completely cornered this market with their Blues Junior/Deluxe/DeVille/etc.  A simple clean channel that stays clean even at relatively high volumes that’s well equipped to take pedals...

It’s cheaper to buy a new pedal than amp, and if you look at the pedal sub-industry you’ll see this massive maelstrom of competition for guitarists’ disposable $100-200.  “Pedal platforms” are easier to use at all volumes, easier to get consistent sound out of, the amps you’ll most likely run into at gigs where backlines are provided...and it makes for a great platform to have fun with.

Hiwatt’s were the originals.  They could be played clean at volumes where Marshalls and Fenders will be almost completely saturated.

So then why did they fall out of favor?  When the original owner died, the guy in charge of all that great wiring design was forced to use substandard parts and change his schematics in the name of margins.  They were Hiwatt in name only after that, despite keeping the 500 lb. casings.

It wasn’t long before Fender and Marshall caught up...it’s not like they ever took a backseat to Hiwatt to begin with...and music was evolving into higher gain territory already by the mid 70′s.  Hiwatt just wasn’t the flavor of the month, despite all its design advantages.  Simply put, outside of niche genres, music hasn’t evolved back to a world where Hiwatt’s will be practical.  Their size, once a huge benefit, is a crippling liability in a world where even at shitty clubs, your amps are being mic’d.

Which means...would you rather carry 115 lbs. of clean amp to a gig, or 35 lbs. of amp that’ll be mic’d?

All that aside tho, the designs are more than enough to endure and keep a niche in the guitar equipment industry.  Because, despite the weight and size and volume, the clean tone is where it’s at.

There have long been established camps in the amp world...the big boys being Fender and Marshall’s various eras.  After those two, things get more diverse...the mega-boutique Dumble, the never-changing Vox’s, the sterile and cloying Mesa Boogies (I guess Santana’s tone with a Mark 1 was great, but aside from that they’re truly mediocre amplifiers for anything other than metal)...then a bunch of third tier boutiques and/or copies that we don’t need to get into.

Before the modern era, there were always compromises.  You got no dirt from Fender blackface Twins.  You got a flat, characterless clean sound from Marshalls even though you got the volume.  Fender blackface Deluxes couldn’t stay clean at higher volumes.  Tweeds were club amps.  Marshalls were dirty stadium amps.

When you didn’t have PA help and wanted to stay clean in huge venues, you did not have an option.  That’s where Hiwatt came in.

It’s not quite a Fender blackface, even if they’re both sparkly clean...the Hiwatt has a wonderfully balanced EQ with neither a mid scoop or bump.  More mids means more presence in a band mix with less overall volume.  The character of tone, while reminiscent of the blackface amps, feels more like a British Marshall because of the EL-34 tubes.  And it gets that beautiful chimey quality of a Vox without the early saturation you get from an AC-30.

If you want that overdrive, yea...Hiwatt’s probably aren’t for you.  But if you use clean extensively and add pedals for dirt, it’s manna from heaven.

And while their popularity has waxed and waned, Hiwatt’s seem to be in more demand now than at any time in my guitar playing life.  Probably because they’re a great pedal platform for guys playing medium to large clubs, and don’t have to haul their own gear.

Anyways, they’re great amps.  I enjoyed my time with one, even if I moved on and sold it back to my uncle before moving to Texas.  They’re unique even if they don’t really feel unique, because of how comfortable getting good sounds out so easily.  The cleanliness and simplicity of the wiring was way ahead of its time, something almost every boutique manufacturer worth a shit does these days...even with things like eyelet-boards and PCB available.

So there we go.  That’s all I got for today.

[courtneytincher]

McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II: The 60 Year Old Fighter That Just Won't Die

The last American F-4s would see action during Operation Desert Storm, before being retired in 1996. The Pentagon later converted some into QF-4 target practice drones.The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a legendary aircraft — an icon of the Vietnam War and the archetype of the third-generation jet fighter designs that entered service in the 1960s. More than 5,000 of these heavy supersonic fighters were built, and hundreds continue to serve and even see combat in several air forces today.But the Phantom’s record in air-to-air combat over Vietnam — especially when compared to its successor, the F-15 Eagle, which has never been shot down in air-to-air combat — has left it with a reputation of being a clumsy bruiser reliant on brute engine power and obsolete weapons technology.(This first appeared several years ago.)This is unfair.The Phantom’s fundamental flaws were corrected by 1970 — while more recently, Phantoms have had their avionics and ordnance upgraded to modern standards. These modernized Phantoms flown by the Turkish and Greek air forces can do pretty much what an F-15 can do … at a much lower price.Baptism of Fire:When the F-4 came out it in 1958 it was a revolutionary design — one that went on to set several aviation records.Weighing in at 30,000 pounds unloaded, its enormous J79 twin engines gave (and still gives) the aircraft excellent thrust, propelling the heavy airframe over twice the speed of sound at a maximum speed of 1,473 miles per hour.The early Phantoms could carry 18,000 pounds of munitions — three times what the huge B-17 bombers of World War II typically carried. The weapons officer in the rear-seat could operate the plane’s advanced radar, communication and weapons systems while the pilot focused on flying.Furthermore, the F-4 came in both ground- and carrier-based models and served in the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines. The only other frontline fighter to serve in all three services before or since is the F-35.(Recommended: How to Replace the F-35) But when the F-4 confronted the lighter-weight MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters of the North Vietnamese air force in 1965, the Phantom suffered.In the Korean War, the U.S. Air Force had shot down between six and 10 enemy fighters for every one of its aircraft lost in air-to-air combat. In Vietnam, the ratio was closer to two to one (including other aircraft types besides the Phantom).The F-4’s primary problem was that it had no built-in cannon. Instead, it relied entirely on newly-introduced air-to-air missiles — the radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow, the heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder and the older AIM-4 Falcon.The Air Force didn’t realize those early missiles were terrible.Studies showed that 45 percent of Vietnam-era AIM-7s and 37 percent of AIM-9s failed to either launch or lock on, and after evasive maneuvers, the probability of achieving a kill fell to eight percent and 15 percent for the two types, respectively. The Falcon missiles were even worse, and the Pentagon later withdrew them from service.The North Vietnamese MiGs, equipped with both cannons and missiles (on the MiG-21), would outmaneuver the heavier F-4, which for all its speed, was not especially agile. Worse, American pilots weren’t trained for close range dogfights, as the Air Force assumed air-to-air engagements would occur at long range with missiles.Furthermore, the Phantom’s J79 engines produced thick black smoke, which combined with the aircraft’s larger size, made it easier to spot and target from a distance. On the other hand, the rules-of-engagement over Vietnam prohibited U.S. pilots from shooting at unidentified targets beyond visual range, further crippling the advantages of the missiles.Improvements:However, the F-4’s problems began to recede. Air-to-air missile technology dramatically improved with later versions of the Sparrow and Sidewinder. The F-4E model finally came with an internal M161 Vulcan cannon.Before, some Phantom units made do with external gun pods that vibrated excessively.In 1972, an F-4 piloted by Maj. Phil Handley shot down a MiG-19 with his plane’s gun — the only recorded aerial gun kill performed at supersonic speed.Eventually, the Air Force upgraded all of its F-4Es with wing-slats that significantly improved maneuverability at a slight cost in speed. New J79 engines even dealt with the problem of the F-4’s visible black smoke.(Recommended: 5 Greatest Fighter Planes of All-Time)The Navy, in contrast, perceived the problem as being a lack of Air Combat Maneuvering training, and instituted the Top Gun training program in 1968. Navy pilots went on to score a superior kill ratio over Vietnam of 40 victories for seven planes lost in air-to-air combat.The Air Force’s Phantoms claimed 107 air-to-air kills for 33 lost to MiGs, and the Marine Corps claimed three. Ground fire shot down 474 Phantoms in all services, as the heavy-lifting Phantom fighters did double duty as ground-attack aircraft.Two sub-variants of the Phantom also distinguished themselves — the RF-4 photo reconnaissance plane, optimized for speed, and the Wild Weasel, specialized in attacking enemy surface-to-air missiles defenses.The last American F-4s would see action during Operation Desert Storm, before being retired in 1996. The Pentagon later converted some into QF-4 target practice drones.(Recommended: How to Win a War with China)Phantoms in the Middle East:However, the Phantoms proliferated around the world. The F-4 saw extensive use in Israeli service, scoring 116 air-to-air kills against the Egyptian and Syrian air forces, starting in 1969 during the War of Attrition.In one engagement on the first day of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, 28 Egyptian MiGs attacked Ofir Air Base. Just two Phantoms managed to scramble in defense, but they shot down seven of the attackers.The Israeli Phantoms’ primary target — and most deadly foe — during these campaigns were Arab surface-to-air missile batteries. SAMs accounted for most of the 36 Israeli Phantoms lost in action.The swan song of the Israeli Phantom force came during Israel’s 1982 intervention in the War in Lebanon, when Phantoms — escorted by new F-15s and F-16s — wiped out all 30 of Syria’s SAM batteries in the Bekaa Valley in one day without losing a single plane in Operation Mole Cricket 19.Iran received 225 F-4s from the United States prior to the Iranian Revolution. These formed the backbone of the Iranian fighter force during the nine-year-long war with Iraq. The Phantom reportedly acquitted itself well versus Iraqi MiGs, and carried out several long-range raids on the Iraqi airfields. The actual number of air-to-air kills remains disputed.21st century Phantoms:The Phantom still sees service. But it’s somewhat of an anomaly. Just compare it to F-15 Eagle.The F-15, which entered service in 1975, is emblematic of fourth-generation fighter aircraft that remain the mainstay of modern air forces today. The F-15 is also deliberately unlike the F-4. It’s a heavy, twin-engine, two-seat fighterand an agile dogfighter.When the F-15 and the lighter F-16 saw their first major air action over Lebanon in 1982, they shot down more than 80 Syrian third-generation MiGs at no loss.The supremacy of the fourth-generation was confirmed again in the Gulf War, in which Iraqi fighters shot down only one fourth-generation fighter (an F/A-18 Hornet) for the loss of 33 of their third-generation aircraft. How could the F-4 possibly keep up in this new environment?Easy — by integrating the same modern hardware used in the fourth generation.The Phantoms flown by the Turkish and Greek air forces both have modern pulse-doppler radars, which give the F-4 “look down-shoot down” capabilities. In the past, high-flying radars had trouble detecting low-flying aircraft because the radar waves bouncing off the ground created a cluttering effect. Active Doppler radars cut through the ground clutter.Modern F-4s can also fire the full range of modern ordnance such as the advanced AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missile with a range of 65 miles, precision-guided munitions such as the AGM-65 Maverick, and late model Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles.As combat aircraft are essentially weapons platforms, these capabilities mean that the F-4s can handle most of the same offensive tasks a fourth-generation F-15 or Su-27 fighter can do.But surely the electronics and instruments are out of date? Not really. For instance, modernized F-4s have improved Heads Up Displays (HUDs) so that pilots don’t have to look down from the canopy to check on their instruments.Germany flew upgraded F-4Fs until 2013, and maintains them in stock in case of future need. South Korea still has 71 F-4Es (only modestly upgraded) in its 17th Fighter Wing. Japan maintains the same number of F-4EJ Kais upgraded with pulse-Doppler radars and anti-ship missiles.The Israelis pioneered the art of Phantom upgrades in the 1980s with the Phantom 2000 Kurnass, or “Sledgehammer.” Though retired from Israeli service in 2004, Israeli firms went on to upgrade Greece’s 41 Peace Icarus Phantoms, equipping them with ANPG-65 pulse-Doppler radars and the ability to fire AMRAAM missiles.Israeli upgrades contributed to the Turkish air force’s Terminator 2020, which has additional wing strakes for improved maneuverability.The 2020s have had 20 kilometers of wiring replaced for a net loss of 1,600 pounds in weight. The Turkish versions also feature a diverse array of modern sensors and electronics. Like other modern F-4s, they can deploy advanced ordnance such as Paveway bombs, HARM anti-radar missiles and 3,000-pound Popeye missiles with a range of 48 miles.The Terminators are primarily ground-attack planes … with some notoriety. They’ve bombed Kurdish PKK fighters in Turkey and Iraq in 2015 and 2016. An RF-4 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Syria in 2012, and three F-4s crashed in 2015 — earning them the appellation “Flying Coffins” in the Turkish media.The Iranian air force in 2009 claimed to operate 76 F-4Ds and Es, and six RF-4s. Tehran has reportedly modified the planes to fire Russian or Chinese air-to-ground and anti-shipping missiles. They still rely on AIM-7 Sparrows acquired second hand.Likewise, Iran relies on smuggled and improvised spare parts for its F-4s, just like its F-14 Tomcats.Iranian Phantoms bombed Islamic State targets in Iraq’s Diyala province in December 2014, and they continue to play cat and mouse games with U.S. patrols and drones over the Persian Gulf.But are souped-up F-4s really equal to fourth-generation fighters? None of these 21st century Phantoms have flown in air-to-air combat — but F-4s Phantoms have engaged in non-lethal dogfights with Greek F-16s on several occasions.They also tangled with Chinese Su-27s in a 2010 exercise — and according to some reports on the internet won zero to eight.And if you compare videos of F-4s with wing slats making a tight, 180 degree turn (see 4:25 above) compared to F-15s doing the same maneuver, you will note that they both average seven to eight seconds to complete the turn, even though the latter is purportedly more maneuverable.This doesn’t prove upgraded F-4s are superior to later designs, of course — but it does show they capable of pulling their considerable weight when compared with fourth-generation fighters.The Phantom has proven both versatile and adaptable over time. Few of those present for its first flight in 1958 could have imagined that it would remain in frontline service nearly 60 years later.Rudolph Emilio Torrini contributed to this article.

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The last American F-4s would see action during Operation Desert Storm, before being retired in 1996. The Pentagon later converted some into QF-4 target practice drones.The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a legendary aircraft — an icon of the Vietnam War and the archetype of the third-generation jet fighter designs that entered service in the 1960s. More than 5,000 of these heavy supersonic fighters were built, and hundreds continue to serve and even see combat in several air forces today.But the Phantom’s record in air-to-air combat over Vietnam — especially when compared to its successor, the F-15 Eagle, which has never been shot down in air-to-air combat — has left it with a reputation of being a clumsy bruiser reliant on brute engine power and obsolete weapons technology.(This first appeared several years ago.)This is unfair.The Phantom’s fundamental flaws were corrected by 1970 — while more recently, Phantoms have had their avionics and ordnance upgraded to modern standards. These modernized Phantoms flown by the Turkish and Greek air forces can do pretty much what an F-15 can do … at a much lower price.Baptism of Fire:When the F-4 came out it in 1958 it was a revolutionary design — one that went on to set several aviation records.Weighing in at 30,000 pounds unloaded, its enormous J79 twin engines gave (and still gives) the aircraft excellent thrust, propelling the heavy airframe over twice the speed of sound at a maximum speed of 1,473 miles per hour.The early Phantoms could carry 18,000 pounds of munitions — three times what the huge B-17 bombers of World War II typically carried. The weapons officer in the rear-seat could operate the plane’s advanced radar, communication and weapons systems while the pilot focused on flying.Furthermore, the F-4 came in both ground- and carrier-based models and served in the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines. The only other frontline fighter to serve in all three services before or since is the F-35.(Recommended: How to Replace the F-35) But when the F-4 confronted the lighter-weight MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters of the North Vietnamese air force in 1965, the Phantom suffered.In the Korean War, the U.S. Air Force had shot down between six and 10 enemy fighters for every one of its aircraft lost in air-to-air combat. In Vietnam, the ratio was closer to two to one (including other aircraft types besides the Phantom).The F-4’s primary problem was that it had no built-in cannon. Instead, it relied entirely on newly-introduced air-to-air missiles — the radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow, the heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder and the older AIM-4 Falcon.The Air Force didn’t realize those early missiles were terrible.Studies showed that 45 percent of Vietnam-era AIM-7s and 37 percent of AIM-9s failed to either launch or lock on, and after evasive maneuvers, the probability of achieving a kill fell to eight percent and 15 percent for the two types, respectively. The Falcon missiles were even worse, and the Pentagon later withdrew them from service.The North Vietnamese MiGs, equipped with both cannons and missiles (on the MiG-21), would outmaneuver the heavier F-4, which for all its speed, was not especially agile. Worse, American pilots weren’t trained for close range dogfights, as the Air Force assumed air-to-air engagements would occur at long range with missiles.Furthermore, the Phantom’s J79 engines produced thick black smoke, which combined with the aircraft’s larger size, made it easier to spot and target from a distance. On the other hand, the rules-of-engagement over Vietnam prohibited U.S. pilots from shooting at unidentified targets beyond visual range, further crippling the advantages of the missiles.Improvements:However, the F-4’s problems began to recede. Air-to-air missile technology dramatically improved with later versions of the Sparrow and Sidewinder. The F-4E model finally came with an internal M161 Vulcan cannon.Before, some Phantom units made do with external gun pods that vibrated excessively.In 1972, an F-4 piloted by Maj. Phil Handley shot down a MiG-19 with his plane’s gun — the only recorded aerial gun kill performed at supersonic speed.Eventually, the Air Force upgraded all of its F-4Es with wing-slats that significantly improved maneuverability at a slight cost in speed. New J79 engines even dealt with the problem of the F-4’s visible black smoke.(Recommended: 5 Greatest Fighter Planes of All-Time)The Navy, in contrast, perceived the problem as being a lack of Air Combat Maneuvering training, and instituted the Top Gun training program in 1968. Navy pilots went on to score a superior kill ratio over Vietnam of 40 victories for seven planes lost in air-to-air combat.The Air Force’s Phantoms claimed 107 air-to-air kills for 33 lost to MiGs, and the Marine Corps claimed three. Ground fire shot down 474 Phantoms in all services, as the heavy-lifting Phantom fighters did double duty as ground-attack aircraft.Two sub-variants of the Phantom also distinguished themselves — the RF-4 photo reconnaissance plane, optimized for speed, and the Wild Weasel, specialized in attacking enemy surface-to-air missiles defenses.The last American F-4s would see action during Operation Desert Storm, before being retired in 1996. The Pentagon later converted some into QF-4 target practice drones.(Recommended: How to Win a War with China)Phantoms in the Middle East:However, the Phantoms proliferated around the world. The F-4 saw extensive use in Israeli service, scoring 116 air-to-air kills against the Egyptian and Syrian air forces, starting in 1969 during the War of Attrition.In one engagement on the first day of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, 28 Egyptian MiGs attacked Ofir Air Base. Just two Phantoms managed to scramble in defense, but they shot down seven of the attackers.The Israeli Phantoms’ primary target — and most deadly foe — during these campaigns were Arab surface-to-air missile batteries. SAMs accounted for most of the 36 Israeli Phantoms lost in action.The swan song of the Israeli Phantom force came during Israel’s 1982 intervention in the War in Lebanon, when Phantoms — escorted by new F-15s and F-16s — wiped out all 30 of Syria’s SAM batteries in the Bekaa Valley in one day without losing a single plane in Operation Mole Cricket 19.Iran received 225 F-4s from the United States prior to the Iranian Revolution. These formed the backbone of the Iranian fighter force during the nine-year-long war with Iraq. The Phantom reportedly acquitted itself well versus Iraqi MiGs, and carried out several long-range raids on the Iraqi airfields. The actual number of air-to-air kills remains disputed.21st century Phantoms:The Phantom still sees service. But it’s somewhat of an anomaly. Just compare it to F-15 Eagle.The F-15, which entered service in 1975, is emblematic of fourth-generation fighter aircraft that remain the mainstay of modern air forces today. The F-15 is also deliberately unlike the F-4. It’s a heavy, twin-engine, two-seat fighterand an agile dogfighter.When the F-15 and the lighter F-16 saw their first major air action over Lebanon in 1982, they shot down more than 80 Syrian third-generation MiGs at no loss.The supremacy of the fourth-generation was confirmed again in the Gulf War, in which Iraqi fighters shot down only one fourth-generation fighter (an F/A-18 Hornet) for the loss of 33 of their third-generation aircraft. How could the F-4 possibly keep up in this new environment?Easy — by integrating the same modern hardware used in the fourth generation.The Phantoms flown by the Turkish and Greek air forces both have modern pulse-doppler radars, which give the F-4 “look down-shoot down” capabilities. In the past, high-flying radars had trouble detecting low-flying aircraft because the radar waves bouncing off the ground created a cluttering effect. Active Doppler radars cut through the ground clutter.Modern F-4s can also fire the full range of modern ordnance such as the advanced AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missile with a range of 65 miles, precision-guided munitions such as the AGM-65 Maverick, and late model Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles.As combat aircraft are essentially weapons platforms, these capabilities mean that the F-4s can handle most of the same offensive tasks a fourth-generation F-15 or Su-27 fighter can do.But surely the electronics and instruments are out of date? Not really. For instance, modernized F-4s have improved Heads Up Displays (HUDs) so that pilots don’t have to look down from the canopy to check on their instruments.Germany flew upgraded F-4Fs until 2013, and maintains them in stock in case of future need. South Korea still has 71 F-4Es (only modestly upgraded) in its 17th Fighter Wing. Japan maintains the same number of F-4EJ Kais upgraded with pulse-Doppler radars and anti-ship missiles.The Israelis pioneered the art of Phantom upgrades in the 1980s with the Phantom 2000 Kurnass, or “Sledgehammer.” Though retired from Israeli service in 2004, Israeli firms went on to upgrade Greece’s 41 Peace Icarus Phantoms, equipping them with ANPG-65 pulse-Doppler radars and the ability to fire AMRAAM missiles.Israeli upgrades contributed to the Turkish air force’s Terminator 2020, which has additional wing strakes for improved maneuverability.The 2020s have had 20 kilometers of wiring replaced for a net loss of 1,600 pounds in weight. The Turkish versions also feature a diverse array of modern sensors and electronics. Like other modern F-4s, they can deploy advanced ordnance such as Paveway bombs, HARM anti-radar missiles and 3,000-pound Popeye missiles with a range of 48 miles.The Terminators are primarily ground-attack planes … with some notoriety. They’ve bombed Kurdish PKK fighters in Turkey and Iraq in 2015 and 2016. An RF-4 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Syria in 2012, and three F-4s crashed in 2015 — earning them the appellation “Flying Coffins” in the Turkish media.The Iranian air force in 2009 claimed to operate 76 F-4Ds and Es, and six RF-4s. Tehran has reportedly modified the planes to fire Russian or Chinese air-to-ground and anti-shipping missiles. They still rely on AIM-7 Sparrows acquired second hand.Likewise, Iran relies on smuggled and improvised spare parts for its F-4s, just like its F-14 Tomcats.Iranian Phantoms bombed Islamic State targets in Iraq’s Diyala province in December 2014, and they continue to play cat and mouse games with U.S. patrols and drones over the Persian Gulf.But are souped-up F-4s really equal to fourth-generation fighters? None of these 21st century Phantoms have flown in air-to-air combat — but F-4s Phantoms have engaged in non-lethal dogfights with Greek F-16s on several occasions.They also tangled with Chinese Su-27s in a 2010 exercise — and according to some reports on the internet won zero to eight.And if you compare videos of F-4s with wing slats making a tight, 180 degree turn (see 4:25 above) compared to F-15s doing the same maneuver, you will note that they both average seven to eight seconds to complete the turn, even though the latter is purportedly more maneuverable.This doesn’t prove upgraded F-4s are superior to later designs, of course — but it does show they capable of pulling their considerable weight when compared with fourth-generation fighters.The Phantom has proven both versatile and adaptable over time. Few of those present for its first flight in 1958 could have imagined that it would remain in frontline service nearly 60 years later.Rudolph Emilio Torrini contributed to this article.

September 03, 2019 at 06:00AM via IFTTT