#there is no way to facilitate that with you HERE. there is no fucking version of reality where you get someone else to come in

[killbaned]

i WANT to do something else with myself and my time but i'm too fucking tired and too fucking depressed to fucking do anything and yes i know it's just a reaction to the current situation and yes i know it's not my fault but that doesn't make me less fucking pissed off about it.

[mothmans-side-ho]

Armand called Lestat a clown in the most round about way

s2e3 hot wired the two passions in my brain into this info dump, however seeing as a central theme of this episode (and the season) is power, status, and their subversions, it seems relevant. for context, I have 2 degrees in theatre, specifically theatre history and how trends effect form. (I am in no way an expert though, and this is very simplified). long story short, I'm relishing in being a big ol nerd about this entire season

FINALLY, we got to see Lestat (a version of) strutting his stuff on stage in a scene with peak commedia dell'arte shenanigans. Commedia dell'arte is/was an originally Italian form of theatre which was defined by lazzi (comedic bits), improv, and stock characters. these stock characters have been around from Roman times and are still super familiar to us today - the young lovers, the pervy old rich man, the soldier with bravado, etc. It's been seen as a somewhat formulaic form of theatre which relied on quickly identifiable characters and situations so audiences can sit back and enjoy the butt jokes and servant beatings.

In the book - specifically The Vampire Lestat - our beloved Lestat RELISHES in playing a character called Lelio, one of the young lovers. It is in playing Lelio that he "found a tongue for verses and wit [he]'d never had in life" (TVL pg 31). It is in playing Lelio that Lestat first gets a taste of the person he can become, and it is in Lelio that we see the first glimpses of the Lestat which so fully seduces Louis. In short, Lestat casts himself as the suave and handsome romantic protagonist, here to sweep people off their feet. The young lovers are also notably some of the only roles portrayed without masks, to emphasize their youth and natural beauty.

SO IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN LESTAT SHOWS UP IN S2E3 DRESSED LIKE THIS:

He has a half mask! He's wearing all sorts of colors! He's clearly acting as a go between between two other characters who seem to be of a higher status than him! As I said before, commedia dell'arte can be very formulaic (especially by the late 1700s when it is being codified away from being improv focused to being cemented into scripts). From all of these visual and characterization clues, Lestat is not playing Lelio the young lover, he's playing a Harlequin! And his costume seems to be heavily based off of this Harlequin (Arlecchino, Arlecino, etc.) which is literally the wikipedia image of a Harlequin.

(note, if you give a fuck, this image is depicting an Arlechino from 1671, roughly 125 years before Lestat on stage. in my mind, this accounts for the changes in silhouette, styling, why Lestat doesn't wear the mask for the entirety of the performance, etc. Also, just while we're talking about costuming, I believe the late 18th Century was still a time in which actors would have been expected to provide their own costumes, which would explain why Lestat's version is made with expensive fabrics and includes cunty little details like the bow in his hair. At the very least, I can see him making looking good a priority as the owner of the theater and as...well...Lestat.)

Okay, okay, okay. Why does this matter?

Harlequins are not characters of any social status. They're servants who are quick witted enough to get into antics but stupid enough to be commanded by animalistic instincts (lust, food, you name it). The Harlequin being beaten by their master was ENORMOUSLY funny, and is the origin of the term "slapstick comedy". They a memorable iteration of clown.

In this scene, which I'm willing to bet was inspired by (if not outright) Carlo Goldoni's A Servant of Two Masters, Lestat plays a servant who interacts with two characters. One appears to be a young woman in a breeches part - another common trope of commedia performance. The other appears to be the young male lover! We see Lestat prancing between the two, seemingly facilitating some romance plot, being paid for his compliance, and doing a good ol fashioned butt lazzi. (Could he be presenting his ass for beating? Maybe.)

So why is Lestat not the young valiant lover, but instead A LITERAL CLOWN? Three potential, not conflicting, reasons. By the time Lestat is performing (mid to late 1790s, based off Armand's earlier comment about Robespierre's 1794 execution), the Harlequin characters were the most sought after roles! At this time, we are seeing the emergence of "Celebrity Culture" where audiences sought out actors for their off-stage personalities as much as their on-stage ones. This is an extremely fitting position for Lestat to fall into. Yay a semblance of historical accuracy!

Secondly, Lestat's ENTIRE ROLE in season two is to come between this season's new pair of young(ish) lovers: Louis & Armand. Lestat's function is to repeatedly detract and distract from their relationship through Dreamstat's antics (appearing at the piano calling Louis a whore, having Louis re-kill him, etc.). Additionally, simply put, Lestat (and Sam Reid as Lestat) is a lot of fun to watch. He is absolutely a stand out (if not THE stand out) of the show! His constant ability to serve cunt is often what your eye is drawn to, he pulls focus to himself, and often undercuts the more subdued, philosophical, and morose nature of others. Both on-stage and on-screen, Lestat continuously upstages his screen partners. He does kinda function as a Harlequin. But in the end, the Harlequin's antics are also what ultimately drive the young lovers together. If not for Lestat's actions, Louis and Armand would have never met nor bonded over knowing this fucked up brat prince.

But we also have to remember! This portion of the episode is presented by Armand the mind fuckery master. It is absolutely in his best interests to paint Lestat as some sort of ridiculous, lesser being driven by animalistic nature. Especially if - by extension of the metaphor - this frames he and Louis as the virtuous and optimistic young lovers, striving to cling to each other in a world of chaos. I would be EXTREMELY interested to see if, when recollected by someone else, Lestat appears in a different role or characterized differently.

Again, given the celebrity culture of the time and Lestat being himself, it is entirely believable that he would appear in the Harlequin role (Truffaldino, if this is Goldoni's Servant). However, I think it's extremely telling that in Armand's iteration of the story Lestat is not the dignified, refined, and sympathetic young romantic. He is instead a literal fucking clown.

[needle-noggins]

My book club reading this morning started with me goofing on Legato and etc., but then I got hit with the cafe scene. Let's talk about it, because I've been ready to bring up the body autonomy/exploitation/rape stuff for a while. This is going to get heavy, so fair warning.

Spoilers for Trigun Stampede, which I'll compare this to, in case anyone here is coming into the book club completely blind to Trigun (I assume most fans at this point have seen Stampede).

So. Damn. This is where the very heavy theme of bodily autonomy and exploitation really comes into the story. Obviously we have the conflict between the slavers and Legato. These girls are going to be sold for organ harvesting, but first... yeah, those slavers are fucking awful. Legato kills them by forcing them to kill themselves/each other, and Legato frees the girls. I think this is the first time we see what Legato's powers are - he makes people's bodies to move against their will. He later muses on this scene, wondering why he felt sympathy for the girls and spared them. If you've read Trigun Maximum before, you know why.

I want to compare this to Stampede, because it's the easiest way for me to talk about this theme without spoiling more of Trimax. When I watched Stampede for the first time, I remember being floored by the tank scene with Vash and Knives. Vash floating helplessly, paralyzed by Knives, his roots extending to the plants in the tank, and the reveal of those plants being pregnant. Knives boasting about making new Independents. It was so heavy that I had to pause the show and walk around for a bit. I still can't totally watch it.

Then, when I read Trimax, I saw just how much of a recurring theme this is in the story on a whole. OK, Nightow, that's fucking painful and kind of triggering for a lot of folks - so why does the story have to include this?

Well. It highlights just how horrible Knives, Legato, and other people can be, but more importantly, it's central to the entire plot and its resolution. We have to look at the other side of the conflict and zoom out a bit. In all versions of Trigun, there is exploitation - of the plants, of innocent people, of Vash's power. And, in all versions of Trigun, there's the struggle to find freedom and autonomy against it, specifically. Knives struggles to give the plants freedom (or his version of it). Vash struggles to free humanity from Knives (who not only kills indiscriminately, but also exploits people to kill for him. Hello, Wolfwood). Vash also struggles to find freedom from Knives, who uses Vash's powers against his will. That's a really boiled-down version of the central conflict.

So, what happens in this conflict?

Vash heals plants who have been damaged by humans' exploits. Vash helps people in any way he can, no matter who they are - because he wants what's best for humanity - all of it. And, at least in Tristamp, who saves Vash when Knives is using him? Fucking Meryl. Meryl, who jumps head-first into danger to save Vash. I could write an essay on Tristamp Meryl's character development in alone, but I won't (yet).

There's exploitation and rape and terrible abuse, but there's help. There's healing facilitated by others, sometimes others who have experienced something similar. I'm sure someone else can say this much more eloquently than me, but I wanted to get the conversation started.

[etherealspacejelly]

Hey dad,

Are you out to your parents? I can never come out to mine, which creates a lot of questioning for my future.

If you are, how did you do it (I’m presuming you have parents)?

Thanks from a closeted new follower of your brilliant posts :)

I am out to my parents! I came out about 5 years ago now, it was my anniversary recently actually!

i came out to my dad first. i was going to his house for a different reason, but i decided to do it then because. idk. i just felt ready i guess. i sat down with him and he could tell something was up, so he asked me if there was anything i wanted to talk about and i said yes. and i told him i was nonbinary and aroace, and that i wanted to use they/them pronouns and go by a shortened version of my birth name (this was before i had decided on robin and he/they). he asked me what those things meant, with genuine curiosity because he hadnt heard of them before, so i explained it to him and he said ok! thats fine. and he said he loved me and supported me no matter what, and that it would be a bit hypocritical for him not to since he is queer himself (which i was not aware of at the time! he just assumed i knew??? hes pansexual lmao)

he did a bunch of research in his own time, watching videos by nonbinary youtubers and stuff like that. he learned how important it is for parents to facilitate social transition, so he took me to get my first gender affirming haircut a few weeks later. he also bought me my first binder, and took me shopping in the mens section for the first time. he also took me to my first pride that year! he has remained super supportive, calling me his son at work, greeting me with "hey my boy!" every time he sees me or calls me on the phone, has barely ever slipped up on my pronouns. basically, my dads a fucking legend lmao

i think a few weeks to a couple months after i told my dad, i came out to my mum. that went. not great. she was like. ok. and immediately went back to her phone. my heart just sank. she still gets my pronouns wrong 5 years later, she says often that i will always be her daughter. she even said that trans people are just mentally ill. she loves jkr and often uses terf talking points. but, she Says she supports me and isnt transphobic, and she Tries to use my pronouns so. yk. that makes everything ok /s

she also thinks that ill change my mind about being aroace when i find 'the right person'. i never told her about the queer platonic relationship i was in because i knew she would just use that against me. i had an entire year long relationship, and to this day she has no idea.

the thing is, my mum had always been a self professed supporter of the lgbtq. when i was a kid it was always "when you grow up and get a boyfriend or girlfriend" or "when you get married to your husband or wife", so i thought it would be a slam dunk. i thought, theres no way she wont accept me. but here we are. meanwhile, i had been quite nervous about telling my dad! i didnt know how he was going to react.

so, you never really know how these things will go. this isnt me telling you to come out, by the way! if you feel unsafe or unready then please dont. do whats right for you first and foremost. but, sometimes people will surprise you i guess, and not always for the better.

you will find your people. family is about unconditional love and acceptance, and if your parents arent providing that for you then they're not doing their damn jobs properly.

im always here if you need a dad, it would be my honour.

I love you, and I'm proud of you, kiddo :)

[comicaurora]

Do you know of any other good cartoons, especially if they don't end on a cliffhanger?

Is it my birthday already?

ReBoot (s1-3)

You've already all heard my pitch for this, but TLDR it's set inside a computer, the heroes defend the integrity of their home system by battling viruses, playing games and defeating The User, a godlike being outside their comprehension (aka us). Evolves from episodic pop-culture referential humor into an incredibly immersive and fraught character drama unpacking the nature of heroism, family, growing up and losing who you used to be vs growing up and not losing yourself, and what it means to become a monster to defeat a monster. A series technically canceled that ends on the mother of all cliffhangers, but the season that was canceled was the bonus season they weren't expecting to get anyway, and also it sucks. Watch the first three seasons instead, they form a cohesive overarching narrative and end incredibly satisfyingly.

Batman Beyond

50 years after Batman: The Animated Series, hooligan with a heart of gold Terry McGinnis becomes the new Batman, quippier, capeless and a bit more irresponsible than the old one, guided by an old and reluctantly retired Bruce Wayne. Basically "what if Batman were Spider-Man", but somehow really good. Like most DC cartoons from that era, ends with a loose "and the adventure continues" vibe. Highly episodic, a couple two-parters sprinkled in there for flavor. Also has a few follow-up comic series, some of which are even good! As a corollary, the other DC cartoons in this zone are also good - Justice League, Batman: The Animated Series, etc.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes

The best version of The Avengers. A team of colorful superheroes slowly assemble over the course of the first half of the first season, fighting a very large rogue's gallery and occasionally each other. Contains the best version of Thor ever written and an astoundingly good portrayal of Captain America, but the entire core cast are well-written and have solid interpersonal dynamics - half the fun of each episode is just seeing what unique friendships every random subset of The Avengers have with each other. Having recently rewatched some of it I can say I actually think the first season is the best it gets, and the second season struggles in places - a few episodes become full-on idiot plots to facilitate certain plotlines (Hulk vs Red Hulk being the worst offender) but the second season has a nice conclusive finale and a few bright spots of characterization. Captain America's writing is rock-solid all the way through, which it needs to be to make the Secret Invasion plotline work. The first season is incredibly good.

Transformers: Prime

Robots in disguise etc etc, a crack team of autobots live in hiding on Earth fighting decepticons and occasionally ferrying their three human friends to school. Good team dynamics, a fantastic portrayal of Optimus Prime as a rock-solid paragon hero, a team dad and a millennia-old warrior of incredible skill who is very, very tired. Great versions of Megatron and Starscream, lots of other fun secondary characters. Three seasons, portrays a very slow war very well - ground is gained and lost from episode to episode, big battles feature every single asset the heroes have managed to scrape together in previous arcs, etc. Also portrays how fucking terrifying it would be to be a squishy human child underfoot during a giant robot fight. Dwayne The Rock Johnson is in the first five minutes of the show until he gets killed for being too expensive. The 3D animation takes a little getting used to, and I say that as someone who genuinely likes how ReBoot looks.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

preaching to the choir with this one here on tumblr.hell, but this show slaps. A reboot of the 80s cartoon, but the kind of reboot that's basically the story someone would make up when playing with the original's officially licensed action figures. Loyal horde soldier Adora learns to her shock that she's actually on the bad guy side (and also can transform into a magical warrior with a fancy sword) and immediately defects to team good guy, which is seen as the ultimate betrayal by her best friend/repressed childhood crush Catra, who doubles down on the bad-guy thing super hard for four seasons. Characters written with a surprising amount of emotional depth who often react to things more realistically than one might expect - frustration, lingering anger, calling people out for mistreating them, etc. Shouldn't be a high bar, and yet so many shows just use characters as emotionless props incapable of advocating for themselves ever.

Castlevania

Dracula's wife is killed by the church and he sets out to exterminate all of humanity in retribution. He's opposed by three heroes of varying levels of heroism - his half-vampire son Alucard, the speaker magician Sypha, and Trevor Belmont, last son of the family of monster-hunters who dedicated their entire existence to fighting Dracula. Animation is absolutely gorgeous but very not kid-friendly. Ends on a completely satisfying and happy note, which is shocking considering the tone of the show leading up to it.

Hilda

A very, very cozy and adorable urban fantasy slice-of-life story about Hilda, a little girl from the wilderness who moves to the big city with her mother after their house is accidentally crushed by a giant. Features a lot of scandinavian folklore. Got two seasons and a movie that wraps everything up pretty solidly. Absolutely incredible aesthetic with occasional moments of abject horror, just how I like it.

Dishonorable mentions, aka shows I watched but can't 100% recommend because of Grievances I Will Enumerate:

Centaurworld

A warhorse from a war-torn world falls through a portal and gets isekai'd into a brightly-colored magical bubblegum dimension where everyone is a boggle-eyed magical centaur. First season has incredible musical numbers, like broadway level stuff, and it's got some appealing nightmare fuel, but the problem I keep running into is the silly elements are so over-the-top that they undercut the serious parts in a big way. Also, the appeal of a cohesive found family narrative is pretty seriously undercut when the entire found family is composed of joke characters that don't experience plausible emotional investment in their circumstances and don't act like people. The thing is, this isn't a mistake, this is very deliberate on the part of the show and it's doing what it's doing incredibly intentionally - I just don't think I like it.

Dota: Dragon's Blood

A dragon-slaying warrior gets whammied with a dragon curse that sometimes turns him into a monster, and also about a million other things happen. Not finished yet, so I can't guarantee it won't end on a cliffhanger. Based on a game series I'm unfamiliar with, and unfortunately, unlike Arcane (which I would whole-heartedly recommend, it just currently left off on a cliffhanger) it doesn't really seem to know how to stand on its own without the game lore. It jumps around a lot between a huge number of characters, and a lot of the time it's not clear why we're watching what we're watching. I do like the parts of it I've seen! I just haven't been able to stick with it because it feels so scattered.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

An anime based in the universe of Cyberpunk 2077, which is in turn basically just Shadowrun with none of the interesting fantasy elements. A gritty and unpleasant universe where everyone is a jerk, everyone is very narratively disposable and only bad things happen. Seems to have nothing an audience is supposed to get invested in - it gives us a colorful squad of found-family types but covers the entire friend-making in a dialogue-free montage and then kills all of them in like two episodes, it gives us a romance but undercuts it with a timeskip covering the actual getting-together part, it seems to have a theme about how believing you're special is bad but it also demonstrates at several points that the hero actually is kinda special, it has an extremely solid anticapitalist theme but because it's a cyberpunk dystopia nightmare there's nothing any of the main characters can actually do about any of it, etc. I watched it all in one go and the whole thing slid out of my head right after. Also this is a niche complaint but the use of futuristic cyberpunk slang nonstop in the dialogue might really grate on you. The animation is very nice, though.

Tales of Arcadia (Trollhunters, 3 Below, Wizards)

Urban fantasy series made in large part by Guillermo Del Toro, featuring a whole bunch of characters doing assorted fun things - some chosen by magical artifacts, some alien royalty on the run from a civil war, one the apparently-immortal apprentice of Merlin, etc. I whole-heartedly recommend all three of these shows! I do not recommend the grand finale movie, which feels like it was written by someone who read the script notes for the previous shows and nothing else. Ends with a timeline reset that completely undoes the entire timeline of the series. Because it ends with a retcon, the movie feels comfortable killing characters pointlessly and letting our heroes act totally out of character whenever convenient. A bafflingly terrible ending for a series I otherwise really, really liked.

[lunar-years]

Sorry, another anon jumping in here- while I'd love to think that Roy would take Jamie's feelings in an R/K wedding into account, I think canonically hes still a bit inept at reading Jamie sometimes (ie: the bar date/ stay away from Keeley scene) so I can see him asking Jamie to be best man without considering the further implications. Which of course leads to the Richmond boys deciding to be an emotional support bubble for him through the whole thing and its only later in the evening when Roy steps outside for some air and sees Jamie with eyes shining, gritting his jaw determinedly trying not to cry while Sam tries to wordlessly comfort him, that Roy realises hes fucked up a bit there. Isaac coming up to him like "we know you didn't mean it like that, but bit cruel that bruv"

yeah 😭

I think it all very much depends on the timeline this is theoretically happening in, too. The thread I read about the alternative s3 roy-keeley wedding was kind of funny because they were using s3 dynamics with everyone else but those two. So when they said "Jamie would obviously be best man!" I found myself thinking...like...idk man, I don't even think Roy would even want or ask Jamie to be his best man in that scenario, because they would not actually be best friends the same way they are in the actual s3.

This might be very cynical...but in a s3 where the Roy & Keeley we see on the verge of breakup in the s2 finale are suddenly getting MARRIED... i do not think Roy and Jamie would become nearly as close in that timeframe as what we see play out in canon. Because so much of their dynamic in s3 is built upon Roy being in a very bad place post-breakup, then volunteering to train Jamie (imo, at least in part as a distraction/way to bury himself in work to stop thinking about how miserable he is in the personal aspects of his life) and then ending up genuinely loving spending time with Jamie and spending ALL of his time with Jamie, slowly pulling him further out from his slump because Jamie's given him something and (someone) to care about again.

Whereas, if Roy is busy and stressed out over wedding planning all the time, whilst also consumed by the same unaddressed insecurities that plagued his relationships with both Keeley and Jamie in the s2 finale (which he only would've pushed further down after a successful proposal) I 1) think it's quite possible he wouldn't have even volunteered to do extra training with Jamie in the first place and 2) even if he did, wouldn't have had the same time to spend with or focus on him, resulting in them...not becoming close! certainly not best man close. Also, Keeley has ALWAYS been a point of strife between them. it's why Roy's head butting Jamie in the s2 finale, it's one layer of why the bar date goes so poorly, etc.

Roy "when I look at her I only think about Jamie fucking Tartt" Kent who has not gone through the breakup nor any of the growth said breakup facilitated is a man deeply insecure in his own relationship (and in this case, engagement) who sees Jamie on some level as still a threat to his peace. I do not think he'd want Jamie to be involved in the wedding at all, tbh, even if their relationship was getting slowly better and they were at the place of tentative friendship we see in the s2 finale.

Now, of course all that changes if we're talking about a scenario where roy-keeley have gotten back together post-series and are then getting married somewhere down the line. That's the version of events where I think 1) Jamie would do anything Roy asked him to, up to and including being his best man, even if it hurt him in the process and 2) Roy would be perceptive enough and care enough about Jamie not to ask. You're totally right that Roy struggles to read Jamie sometimes, but I also think there were sooo many factors at play in the bar date and so many of them would be eliminated in a scenario where Roy and Keeley are getting married post-series. Like, so much of Roy's obliviousness there stemmed (imo) from jealousy and insecurity and his own desire to win Keeley back regardless of Jamie's feelings, so part of it was him being inept on purpose as a form of avoidance, lol.

Whereas, if he's proposed to Keeley and said yes and they're both in a significantly more secure place in their relationship, Jamie isn't really any "threat", so I would like to think Roy would at least pick up on his discomfort surrounding the wedding before hitting him with "will you be my best man" (or like, Keeley would say something when Roy brought up the idea, because it really is deeply ludicrous).

[communistkenobi]

Could you elaborate on the different ways that Qui Gon, Obi Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka and Luke defined Jedi or what it means to be a Jedi? I love to read your thoughts on stuff like this!

Yeah of course! I’m a bit rusty on Star Wars canon so this will be a bit more vague, but my general opinion is basically some version of the following:

imo Qui-Gon is billed in the canon as being a skeptic of the Jedi Order. He questions rules and determinations made by the Council, seems to dabble in conspiratorial or esoteric interpretations of Jedi theology or rules (iirc this is from Master & Apprentice), and seems to generally hold himself out as a contrarian. I don’t know if this manifests as a comprehensive critique of the Order, or if he just believes that pushback against institutional orthodoxy is inherently good. And you can probably critique his skepticism (he’s still an agent of the Order and by extension, the Republic), but like from what I remember in canon he is a guy who likes debating and questions his orders from the Council. My instinct is that he’s one of those anti-institution libertarian types, it’s not like a comprehensive critique of the Order but a more surface level desire to question authority (which, hey, no complaints in that regard lol). Now this is a separate question from how he views being a Jedi, but clearly some element of that is a moral obligation to “find a better way” to be a good person as a Jedi, to pushback on norms. He wants to be the minority opinion in the room, keeping the Council honest and all that jazz.

Which Obi-Wan fucking hated lol. Again pulling from M&A (mostly because it’s the most recent SW novel I’ve read with them in it), but Obi-Wan seems to be like this beleaguered bright-eyed student who has to put up with his Master’s bullshit antics. My personal view of Obi-Wan is a guy who fully buys into the Jedi Order as an institution that facilitates justice - he may critique the methods the Order uses or bend rules to get a better outcome (thinking of the 2016 Obi-Wan & Anakin comic here), but I think at the end of the day Obi-Wan believes the Order is a net-good for the world, believes in the mission of the Jedi to engage in diplomacy on the Republic’s behalf (I believe this is in conflict with his Legends characterisation, but iirc in the new canon he’s much more of a keener and I tend to like that interpretation more), and in his pursuit to be an ideal archetype of Jedi, he craves the legitimacy and prestige the Order confers onto his status as a Jedi Knight, especially as a Knight training The Chosen One. I think this is also why his death is integral to Luke’s story, as Luke had very different ideas about what a Jedi Order would look like and had Obi-Wan survived ANH, they likely would have fought bitterly about it.

Anakin I haven’t thought as much about, I think in general he was becoming a Jedi because that’s what everyone wanted him to be, and maybe he did have that dream at some point, but I think Anakin is mostly resigned to training and being knighted because that’s just how his life is going. He doesn’t seem to have a great deal of respect for the Order or Jedi customs (this informs a lot of his conflict with Obi-Wan), and he seems disinterested in furthering the Order’s political and social role in the Republic. He was actively hostile to taking Ahsoka on as a student, and I think his eventual fall from grace and turn towards the Sith marked this like, ultimate form of indulgence for him - a total rejection of his destiny, of all the expectations put on him, and a way to perform the perceived inadequacy that he was burdened with as a child. Like look dad, I’m the bad guy asshole everyone was so afraid I’d become! I’m not a Jedi and never could be! Fuck you!

Ahsoka I think has a much more developed version of the skepticism that we see from Qui-Gon, because she was confronted with the entire might of the Order and was cast out for a crime she didn’t commit. For her, being a Jedi is synonymous with institutional acceptance, and so if the Council doesn’t consider her to be a Jedi, then fuck that noise she’s not a Jedi. I think in terms of outlook you could say she’s still very Jedi-like, in the same vein as Luke, idealistic and self-sacrificing, but with Ahsoka it’s tinged with more cynicism and pragmatism than I think we see with Luke (at least in terms of the OT - I’m not familiar with the ST at all and don’t have a desire to engage with it so maybe later in life that’s a different story for him, idk). I think the loss of Anakin in particular also affects her a lot, and probably informs her non-attachment to a lot of people. She’s a drifter for personal safety reasons, but I also think she wouldn’t do well in a group long term (compared to someone like Kanan, who very much eschews the attachment rule and finds community with the Ghost crew). In that sense I think you could argue she’s a Jedi in practice but not in writing.

And Luke like. Idk where to even begin lol. He’s the only one of this group who was not brought up in the Order and has no formal training. Even Yoda and Obi-Wan’s training can’t substitute for growing up around other Jedi and being taught that kind of discipline and culture from a young age. He doesn’t have access to Jedi written teachings or Jedi history, he doesn’t place them in the same political context as the rest of his lineage does, experiencing the Jedi only as a bygone era, mysterious and ultimately fundamentally unknowable. Which means that his vision of Jedi-hood is probably “heretical” but also sort of a necessary new way forward, responding to what he perceives to be the failures of old Jedi teachings and ways of life. So for him Jedi-hood is a much more provisional affair, it is what he makes of it because he’s the guy who is literally making it. Which is ironic given that he’s literally THE original Jedi in the canon, like he’s how audiences are introduced to Jedi, but so much of that lore has been built up around him that he kind of becomes the odd one out. Which makes Filoni’s comment that he’s not really a Jedi sort of correct? Almost? Like I don’t actually really agree with it and his reasoning is idiotic, but Luke is not the traditional Jedi, he’s the origin point for an entirely new tradition. So he is a Jedi, very much so, but there is a break in tradition that can’t really be squared with the previous historical circumstances that created the Order. He has to forge a new way forward and reshape how Jedi exist and practice in a totally new context. Which is very cool!

[roobylavender]

i’m not sure if you’ve talked about it before but i’m soso curious about your opinions on how the interactions/relationship between leslie & post-res jason would go/be

i like to think it wouldn't be all that different from her interactions with bruce actually because i tend to be of the opinion that jason is the most like bruce of bruce's children. the quintessential "illogical" reaction to, reclamation of, and extrapolation of trauma; the slow suicide of the civilian self; the overwhelming despair over personal inadequacy in the face of crime; the consistent urge to project onto others. it's a lot. and obv jason is a somewhat more.. volatile character than bruce once he comes back from the dead. but i think most people would agree that had the red hood characterization not gone so haywire after under the hood that that volatility would mostly be an internalized thing. jason is a delusional person to an extent but he's not incapable of human interaction or parlance. whatever he does as the red hood—while powered by a warped sense of self and the world; while indicative of several social wrongs; while externally easy to perceive as an "extreme" reaction rather than as the natural conclusion to vigilantism in and of itself—is for the most part practical. he's not a loose cannon by any means. he can be talked to and reasoned with. bruce simply happens to be the worst person to even attempt to do that because he does not have the answers that jason, let alone he himself, would want. bruce is a very emotionally confused person and he's at a stage in his life by this point where all he knows how to do is say sorry. he's no longer the guy everyone goes to for solutions. people have started to lose faith in him as to that and he himself has started to lose faith in his own ability to do so. this is honestly where my strongest criticism of bruce would lay. he's not someone unaware of his various issues and transgressions. he thinks about them all the time. but he doesn't do much to solve those issues and transgressions. instead what he has a tendency to do is isolate and wallow and beat himself up meanwhile the people upset with him are stood in a corner like well.. ok.. what the fuck are we supposed to do with that.. and that is ultimately helpful to no one lol!

which brings me back to leslie. i've never been a fan of the later, rare iterations of leslie that take her into the realm of judge, jury, and executioner. although i haven't read war games myself (nor do i ever intend to) i can't ever imagine that leslie's means of expressing her aversion to and exasperation with bruce's lifestyle would culminate in her deliberately facilitating a child's death—or faking that child's death. whichever version of canon you want to go with is fine for the sake of argument—to teach bruce a lesson. for every horrible thing about the world or gotham or bruce specifically that leslie is privy to she nonetheless keeps faith in the latter's desire to do good. she doesn't agree with his methods nor lifestyle by a long mile but she's not loath to the batman in a way that would preclude her from recognizing bruce wants to do better and ultimately reach a point at which vigilantism is no longer the answer. leslie is the harsh and necessary critic of vigilantism, and purportedly a cynic with respect to the rest of the world, but in practice she is a far less unforgiving person than she portrays herself to be and her commitment to remaining in crime alley is a testament to that. it would probably take a good word (from talia, imo!) and some mulling over for her to come around to the idea of taking jason under her wing. but i don't think it would be something for her to put her foot down over. at best she would hold him to a higher standard of future behavior because she wants to know that when he says he is going to get better he means it. the stray lighthearted threat would be lobbed at him here and there but she wouldn't really mean the words. there would be the external impression of cut and dry dialogue between a begrudged employer and the random kid she decides to give a job because she knows he would end up a mess otherwise. but there would be a latent affection there too (if not immediately ascertainable by jason because he would still be too burrowed in his anger and grief and confusion to recognize it) because she knew him when he was a child and she suspects the part of him that existed before death is still hidden somewhere for people like her to find

[zeico]

Long post request: how do you feel about BG3?

I didn't realize a new patch came out on final fantasy for about a week because Baldur Gate o Baldur Gate

currently in act 3 and trying to stock up on shit since I recently cleared out the bank. I'm TRYING to hold myself to not starting a new character until I finish this one but I see so many monk items and i want themmmmm (I have a half elf monk open in character creator right now)

Since I played a lotttt of dragon age origins, parts of the structure of bg3 felt very familiar to me like the camp itself and like how u interact with the companions. Like coming home in a way.

I'm also playing 5e a lot so that part of the structure of it was very easy to adapt to. I do still have trouble with like certain interface things like oh man gotta select the version of the spells BEFORE TARGETTING NO GALE WHY ARE YOU RUNNING TO THEM GET BACK HERE WHY ARE YOU HITTING THEM WITH YOUR 8 STRENGTH BACKED STICK

But its great and I do like the changes made to better facilitate it being a VIDEO GAME. Like I'm a Divination Wizard. My main Thing is portent dice. (There's also detect thoughtsing my way through all social encounters which is SO GREAT honestly scratches an itch I've always wanted to do but it would be such a pain in the ass for tabletop. Like first first ever dnd character I cooked up was an illiterate mind reading sorcerer that like got by through just that. But that would be so annoying to do with like.... PEOPLE AT THE TABLE of like 'so im just constantly getting ur surface thoughts...... i can't entirely control this... i'm sorry....' )

ANYWAY portent dice!!!!! in bg3 they have it at level 6 you fulfill little prophecies to get ur dice back to make the big boss miss their BIG attack or make SURE you hit (or my favorite, make the rogue crit on a sneak attack) instead of having it that when u cast a divination spell u get a spell slot back. since theres so few divination spells especially like using IN COMBAT so I understand the change.

I also like the variety of shit you can do. like my partner is one to summon 9 creatures btw the whole party so theres a small army of creatures following their main party. (also several buffed with mage armor and everyone has a higher level aid cast on them so they also have a decent amount of health its really funni to watch) I like wrote off the summon guys moves because I just dont like to have extra guys usually.

Something I wish I did on my first playthrough tho was simply long resting more I think I fucked myself out of a lot of social link scenes in act 1 bc I straight up didn't rest enough. The game is like 'oh no time is ticking' but things aren't REALLY like that (cept for like... 2 instances I can think of) bc its a videogame and thats fine.

It WANTS you to use all your abilities and not be dum like me and just cantrip my way through most the first act 'just in case i need my slots later' why am i like this. both short and lone rest more and just use all your moves its FINE

speaking of social links and companions theyre all great. I love them all. I DO wish some things weren't like... romance locked it feels??? well more like you HAVE to reject them???? idk I had a scene with gale when he's like 'but we're not THAT close tho' and i felt bad bc like... I want to be wizard friends with you. I'm SORRY I'm so weak to both vampires and elves.

heard some shit about astarion having like so much content compared to all the other companions and man imma feel so spoiled on my playthroughs where i dont smooch the vampire. I do wish everyone else had more scenes too its a shame.

something about bg3 thats HILARIOUS to me personally is that its all like 'recruit allies against the cult' and in another irl campaign im in thats been in hiatus for years but I still hope to come back its REALLY similiar. Oh no a huge looming death cult threat to the city. oh no the city has its own fuckmess of bullshit to deal with. OH NO a shapeshifting killer. Anytime theres strong parallels to that campaign it sparks joy.

A few technical problems I've had tho were around switching characters in and out of the party. like in a building and I wanna run back to camp to tag in someone. Wait why are they on the roof????

Or I tag in someone and WHY ARE YOU CLIPPING THROUGH THE FLOOR? Tbh the game is so enjoyable I just sigh and say "Video. Game." out loud and load a save. Like the last time that was REALLY frustrating is when it just would NOT let me out of a restricted area like please I persuaded u 3 times let me go I was on my way OUT.

Also why do all these 8 strength men have abs. This is Wrong. I'm bad with figuring out the technical shit of modding but holy shit I need them to not have abs.

Anyway I had this and the character creator open for like 2 hours now so Imma start that now.

[thegeminisage]

ok, tng update time. i'm quite behind! monday we did "deja q," tuesday we did "a matter of perspective," and then wednesday was "yesterday's enterprise."

deja q: NOT as bad as i feared but still not great. turning q into a human was a fantastic idea because in general it helps facilitate empathy when you see a character suffer, which worked a little on me, and then also i greatly enjoyed seeing him suffer because he was so annoying before, lol. guinan and worf kicking him when he was down were the best <3

another smart choice was to have data be the only one who had any sympathy for him - precisely because data's "feelings" ""can't"" be hurt and he's less likely to hold grudges. also, because data is wonderful and it's easy to get behind his cause of reforming q into some kind of functional being

AND it was good that the first time q felt shame it was because data almost died for his ungrateful fucking ass...correct response

unfortunately i still have many problems. during that section right before data's sacrifice move, all of the goodwill q generated by being fun to laugh at kind of evaporated because he was being annoying

SECONDLY, i have realized the reason i dislike q is because his main two personality traits have aged horribly. firstly is the "randumb~ XD" humor (the mariachi band at the end of this ep, the random napoleon soldiers from the other ep, his various costumes...). i think the only person who could ever do that kind of humor well was robin williams and they didn't cast him as q and also he's dead now, so knock it off. his second personality trait is that he's smarter and more powerful than anybody else in the room which he (and the people writing him) seems to think is a license to be an asshole to them, as long as it is charming assholery. think t*ony st*rk, house, bbc sh*rlock. this of course is a deeply flawed premise to begin with, but he doesn't even do it WELL. nothing about his assholery is charming. specifically i am thinking of all the "worf is dumb because he's a big brutish klingon" jokes, which are for sure fantasy racism and border on ACTUAL racism, because they're derivative of horrible antiblack stereotypes. not that q is the only source of this kind of stuff aimed at worf, but it's really damning that it's ALWAYS the first thing out of his mouth and played for laughs and made his "but worf i'm a klingon at heart too!" bit extra unfunny

anyway, bringing in a SECOND q to praise him for his "selfless" act is eeehh considering one q is already one too many and the act wasn't even that selfless. it would've been better if he said the only reason he was doing it was for data, specifically, so he could stop feeling shame - that's more genuine than trying to get me to believe he'd give himself up for that ship of people even if really what he was mostly doing was committing suicide.

nonetheless i DID really enjoy getting to see data laugh at the end. GOOD for him <3 also lmao, the moon is falling, so true. JUST like majoras mask

a matter of perspective: the one thing i don't understand here is the bit where picard is a horrible painter and then data insults his art. like yes it was funny but i thought it would have something to do with the main plot. riker sees events this way and that lady sees them this way. not unlike in the art room where everyone interpreted the nude model in a different manner!

ALSO, WHY IS THERE A NUDE MODEL. does that woman not live and work on this starship. does she not have to command respect from her coworkers the rest of the time. they didn't even do this in the holodeck where that sort of thing would have made sense!! the one time you WANT the holodeck around...

anyway, i thought this episode veered dangerously close to dud territory. trial drama is fine, even though it begs the question of why no lie detector in tng. holodeck recreation also fine in this instance, as was the murder mystery

but why ON EARTH did they feel the need to show a fake version of riker attempting to rape this lady and then have deanna go well that's the way she remembers it because i sense no dishonesty from her :) this is just the true way each of you remembers it :)

LIKE THERE IS A CANYON OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIKER'S VERSION AND THAT LADY'S VERSION. it's not like they can both partially be true. in one instance she flung herself at him despite his clearly being uncomfortable and in the other he forced her despite her asking him to stop!!! like in this case what you do is believe the woman except because riker's our protagonist we know he didn't do it except they never CLARIFY that he didn't do it??? obviously i don't think for a minute that he did, but of all the fucking things to leave open...

anyway i hated it. i actually hated it more than catherine did which may be a first for tng

yesterday's enterprise: TASHA YAR?????????????????????????????

ok, the premise of this was kinda confusing at first, but i don't give a single fuck. TASHA YAR!!!!!!

i was so happy and confused to see her but the more scenes she had...man. like, ok, they did not HAVE to have her make out with this guy. even in death they will not stop doing this to her. but the whole thing where guinan was like your death was meaningless and empty in this timeline so she decides to go back and die in the past instead...GOOD for her

also, i'm a little confused on my canon - i think the battle that other enterprise went back to die in was the one that worf's parents were killed in? which is why he wasn't on the bridge because he fuckin DIED at age 6 or whatever? i guess they must have done enough good to save at least some people??

anyway, ABSOLUTELY adored this one. tasha yar redemption arc. that was the LAST thing i EVER expected to see on tng but here we are. they even made that other captain a woman although lmao in the end they refridged tasha nd this other captain. STILL. if shes gotta die let it be better than the death she got in canon. i'll miss you queen

my one gripe, aside from her boyfriend, is that she and data had a lil scene in the elevator and im mad we could not infer from it whether or not they had fucked in this timeline. rip :(

NEXT TIME: "the offspring" and "sins of the father," which is a normal title that does not at all match the title of a merlin episode i wrote a 130k coda about

[etrosgate]

when i initially read the manga (+watched the anime), it was something i liked, but felt like there was just something lacking that prevented me from truly loving it. then i started reading the novel and it filled in all those lacking spots as well as fixing some issues i had and now it's easily my favorite version (even without having read all of it) and i really really love shiki in general.

EDIT: i forgot to link to the fantranslation!! it's incomplete, but they've gotten a good way into the book. (~78%) start reading from here, and make sure to read the cultural/translation notes between chapters! they're pretty important for this particular narrative

for shiki fans who don't know anything about the novel, here's some interesting differences.

most of them stem largely from the shift in target demographic. the original novel is pretty obviously for an adult audience, while the shiki manga was published in a shonen magazine. to facilitate that, they upgraded natsuno's role from a side character to protagonist.

while also being for age reasons, i'm pretty sure it was a decision also made to narrow the scope (for at least the beginning of the story). the novel is Very much an ensemble piece, with the first chapter alone having 8 different pov characters. it's to the point where singling out a protagonist is more of a matter of figuring out"who has the most pov chapters" and "who is most central to the narrative" than an obvious answer. i'd be most confident in saying that seishin is the protagonist (with toshio as the next closest to it).

it's a lot easier to get teens hooked on the smaller but more active natsuno+other kids drama plot, as opposed to in-his-30's seishin and 1 million various other normal people who live in the town gossiping about how so-and-so saw a car coming towards sotoba suddenly stop and turn back around before it got there lmao.

if you couldn't tell already, the novel is extremely slow-paced and mundane. up until page 545 (out of 1,271) when toshio has that conversation with natsuno and first begins to consider the possibilities of vampires, there is no overt signal to the reader that anything supernatural is occurring. it's largely a medical mystery, with some overall ominous feeling and the occasional character feeling like someone's watching them, natsuno realizing someone picked up some of the fragments of the letter he shredded.

for context, that same scene where the doctor realizes its vampires occurs about 43% into the book, while in the anime it's 20%. people who found the anime/manga too slow paced would NOT be able to handle the novel haha

and let me be clear, i fucking love that about it. the extremely grounded tone (and lack of those crazy character designs) suits the story sooooo well, and it benefits from taking all that time getting to know the village (even if it was really difficult to keep track of who was who). everyone feels very... real. people you can easily see being your neighbors irl, in the best ways and the worst. while still being clearly sympathetic, it also establishes how the cruelty that ensues from the humans in the ending came from flaws they had long before the shiki ever came.

i ended up just talking about shiki so i forgot the fun facts lmao

natsuno never becomes a shiki, he just dies.

akira also dies, as there is no natsuno to save him.

the novel opens with a prologue showing the ending, the pov of a fire fighter driving to deal with the fire consuming sotoba, who sees a man (seishin) driving away from the town with a coffin in his car's truck bed

tohru's a bit older, more firmly an adult and cool older brother kind of best friend

the kirishiki mansion itself has more of a presence (makes sense, considering the novel is intended to be a play on stephen king's salem's lot)

i don't htink this bit has been translated yet, but i do know the lore explanation for werewolves: if you have parents who are both genetically predisposed to rising as shiki, their child would be genetically predisposed to rising as a werewolf

when seishin arrives at the hospital and finds out about toshio's experimentation+killing of kyoko, he doesn't immediately leave. he initially helps him clean up, and only starts objecting once the conversation uncovers the fact that toshio doesn't view what he did as murder. in fact, it didn't even occur to him. they have an argument about it, with seishin unable to accept toshio's desire to kill the shiki when it is done with the intent of exterminating an existence because it's "unnatural", and toshio unable to accept seishin's inaction, as his refusal to fight the shiki means condemning the village to its death. and so they part, unable to deny the truth in the others' accusations.

[samsspambox]

The 'Aetem + pierced ears' post is giving me "Wotakoi + Nifuji piercing his ears bc he saw Neru date a guy who had them" brainrot? Like... an AU...why do I imagine a version of Artem doing this sort of thing? 😳

HI HI! putting the nonnie here again bc I feel like I didn't elaborate enough on the last ask and wanted to make a proper post about artem with piercings!

ima be honest tho, i have not seen Wotakoi but have seen snipetts from tiktok reviewers to have a general idea of how it goes (it has been on my watch list for a while now, i just haven't gotten around to it)

anyway: artem with piercings. ever since that scene in 6.2 where he's like:

and that got my monkey brain thinking, you know? cuz first of all artem at a party? hmmm,,, and then the earring part!! and then with me being me, i had to find some way to prove to myself (and yall) that artem could have pierced ears. so!

Artem with Piercings? It’s more likely than you think.

an observation/analysis on artem and the possibility that he has pierced ears.

(~600 words)

Aight so, as mentioned in a previous theory, I'm betting good money on Artem having either closed piercings or having actual piercings without the studs in. It follows a pattern I've mentioned before, but that’s not the only reason I think Artem has piercings. Like yeah, in 6.2 he says that he wore earrings to a party (he went to parties?) but I would assume that he wore clip-on. After all, his sprite doesn't show any holes, right? Well… let’s look at Marius’ idle sprite. 

The sprite itself has four earrings on the left side and none on the right (considering he’s the one who did at least one of the piercings, it makes sense they’re on his left). Looking through stories and cards where he’s wearing a suit, he doesn’t take out the earrings. He witches them out for ones that don’t call as much attention to them compared to events where he can dress up (re: Fabulous Feast vs. Main Story 7). 

'But what’s the point?' I hear you ask. Well, mostly to get you focused on his ear. We don’t have a sprite where a person known to have earrings… doesn't have them on. This goes for MC as well. A brief glance into cards where they appear always has them wearing a pair of earrings, so we don’t have that baseline as to what ears in this universe look like if they have a piercing but don't have an earring. 

Anyway, aside from the theory, why would I think Artem had piercings at one point? Well, I’d cite teenage rebellion or something similar. In his revisiting youth card (which im still fucking salty i didnt get fuck you mr. wing) he says he knows how to pick locks. Idk what type of pin mc was wearing that day but the fact that Artem ‘I get called an emotionless robot by the media’ Wing can pick a lock using a pin that he’s not really familiar with?? Idk man something ain’t adding up here. 

There’s also the fact that his mom called him ‘Difficult to deal with’ as a teenager. Now, let’s not jump the gun and say Artem was a full on bad boy, far from it. Back to his revisiting youth card, we’ve seen the outline of Artem’s highschool portrait. We know that while stand-off-ish, he was generally a good kid. But you can be a good kid while being difficult to deal with. Honestly when someone won't approach you for some bullshit reason, there has to be some way to pass time. Especially in a closed environment like school. Hence: lock picking. People like learning how to break into things because they can, not because they use the skill.

But then when do we get to the earrings? Well, we get to them at the same time. Gifted Kid Artem Wing was probably bored, already had the reputation of being a loner (not a total one but one with acquaintances), and was in an environment that both facilitated and spread bad ideas. All Artem had to hear was people talking about piercings for him to get the idea. It’s entirely plausible that Artem got piercings on a whim. After all, no one is going to tell him otherwise. 

Now I do think he let them close out if he did get them. Going back to Marius having earrings, he changes them when it comes to corporate matters or just day to day. Idk if I’m just assuming but isn’t it a thing in corporate culture to just, you know, not have earrings? Marius gets a pass because he’s the protagonist he’s the CEO of the company. You’re not gonna tell the CEO to go change, are you? Artem, while being the senior partner, still is Celestine’s employee. I’m 90% sure Celestine wouldn’t mind because it's Artem, but better to err on the side of caution, right? 

So there’s a 50/50 chance he either has piercings that aren’t closed (since we don’t have a sprite to show us what that looks like) or he has them closed.

and yeah! that's my long-winded ramble. thank you for asking!!

[moconut]

Whatever It Takes: A Degrassi Season 10 Retrospective (You Don't Know My Name, Pt. 2)

Remember that HBO Degrassi reboot that was supposed to happen? It's cancelled, just like my interest in this episode. Let's get this out of the way so I can talk about things that actually facilitate entertaining commentary beyond making fun of the word "hoedown" (who am I kidding, I'm not getting any wittier than that).

Back at Degrassi, Drew struggles to write his own essay. His brother Adam snarks that maybe Drew should've turned in the paper Alli wrote for him after all. Drew is offended at the memory of Alli's betrayal, saying he doesn't appreciate being called stupid. What he's really saying here is he hates honesty.

KC runs through the list of different cliques Drew should consider picking a new girl from. Are cliques a real thing? In Catholic school, we just had a) popular girls b) semi-popular girls and c) girls like me, who didn't even make the senior year class montage slideshow. Drew likes the sound of a cheerleader and hits on Marisol, which is hilarious when you remember how he ends up hating her guts just one season later.

Meanwhile, Fiona attempts to give Holly J an intervention in the hallway after Sav calls her "hot stuff." Holly J denies she has any feelings for him. Fiona reminds Holly J that she needs to marry Declan so they can become sisters--fitting, as Degrassi Takes Manhattan taught us that Fiona is rather fond of incest.

Sav has a very different version of what's going on between the two. Peter, holding a rather negative view of Holly J (which isn't altogether unwarranted), grills him as to whether their kiss was "tight," "hot," and involved slapping. I think he's getting a little ahead of himself there.

Love is also blooming amongst our Three Tenners (for one of them, at least). Connor defends his online girlfriend, saying she's just as good as a real life one. Dave needles him into trying to move the relationship offline, which Connor eventually agrees to--just so that Dave can find out what a real date is like. Haha, fuck you Dave.

Drew and Marisol's date isn't going so well. Drew quickly realizes Marisol is just copying everything he does, including liking the band Hot Chip. I don't think that's a real band even in the context of Degrassi. He further tests this theory by ordering a tuna wrap with strawberry ice cream and garlic salt, which she also orders. Peter walks away in disgust, probably thinking these two were made for each other. Marisol tops it all off by literally saying "It's easier if I don't have to think for myself!" You know, maybe these two are made for each other.

The Three Tenners arrive at the steakhouse for Connor's date with LoveQueen16, looking for a girl in a Realm of Doom shirt. In walks what appears to be a woman who looks more like a LoveQueen46. Connor wants to talk to her, but Wesley and Dave quickly drag him out.

Speaking of romantic failures, Drew immediately runs back to Alli after realizing Marisol has the depth of a sheet of paper. He tries to win her back, but she's rightfully unmoved by such charming lines as "You win. I'll go to the dance with you" and "Does 'ugh' mean 'yes' in Hindi?" Alli's face says it all.

Things are going a little better for Sav and Holly J. She arrives at the Dot to check out how Hoedown (.......ha) decor is going, and is so wooed by the wagon wheels and cowboy print tablecloths that she forgets everything she said about not liking Sav. This Hoe is Down bad.

Later, she gazes wistfully at photos of the two of them posted publicly on her FaceRange. Fiona warns Holly J that's she's probably just rebounding from Declan, which she denies. She then gazes wistfully at a photo of Declan.

Drew, meanwhile, has devised the perfect plan to woo Alli: have guys on the football team enact a skit in the hallway about how great he is. No one but Drew is impressed, and he is left to forlornly fondle his football.

Having come Down from her Hoeing high, Holly J realizes what she needs to do. She returns to the Dot where Sav has been decorating by himself for hours instead of going to class. She tells him she’s not over Declan. He’s sad but unsurprised, but at least he has Jones Soda to comfort him.

Later that evening, it’s finally times for the Hoes to go Down to the Dot to party. Drew is staring at Alli dancing with an NPC when Marisol pops in to flirt with him. He asks if it would be weird to request girl advice from her. Yes, yes it would be.

Sav publicly thanks Holly J for making the dance possible, which is weird to me because it seems like he’s done 99% of the work. Holly J mostly just showed up to either kiss or dump him. Either way, she’s impressed by Sav’s farmer hat and flattery. They decide to have a casual thing for the six months to graduation. What’s really optimistic here is to assume a Degrassi relationship will even last six episodes.

Meanwhile, Adam lures Alli to the photobooth. She’s annoyed to find Drew in there, which is the natural reaction. He finally tells her what he actually likes about her, which is basically that she’s smart in every way he isn’t (and that’s a lot of ways). Alli tries to say he’s people-smart, but I’m not sure about that after the whole self-aggrandizing football fiasco earlier. But whatever, they’re back together now. Woo.

Things wrap up the next day with Sav and Holly J in the student council room. They’re stunned when Fiona and Anya walk in, even though they weren’t doing anything particularly scandalous. They all stand around awkwardly with coffees until Sav asks if Fiona and Anya will help them count change from the dance. Fiona refuses because she doesn’t like touching Coynes. Not after last summer.

And that’s it. You know what? Fuck the long-winded analysis this time. I can’t pretend to care about this episode enough to act like there’s anything warranting me acting like I remotely know what the fuck I’m talking about. Drew and Alli are a bad couple. Holly J and Sav will—by their own admission—end their relationship by graduation at the latest. The only plot that comes close to being interesting is Connor’s middle aged cyber gf, and it barely gets any screentime here.

Enough. It’s taken me nearly a year to scrounge up the motivation to do this, and it’s solely so that I can move on to the rest of the season.

[duffy-is-daydreaming]

Pro tips to undergraduate college students taking any class that’s taught by a GTA (Graduate Teaching Assistant)

Source: I’m a GTA and I’m just about to finish teaching my university’s public speaking class for the first time

You do not need to feel intimidated by or somehow inferior to your GTA instructors. Very little sets them apart from you aside from a few years of life experience and a completed bachelor’s degree. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t respect a GTA as the person in charge of the classroom, but you don’t need to fear their wrath if you need help or make a mistake. Unless you really fuck up in the way of academic integrity somehow, the worst thing that can happen with any given assignment is that you fail it and you try to do better next time. It’s happened to a lot of us, and it will probably happen to a lot of you at some point, and that’s okay. You’re going to be fine.

Any first-year GTAs are actively learning how to teach the class as they go along. A lot of the second-year and beyond GTAs are also still learning. If they seem awkward or make “careless” mistakes, it’s not because they don’t care or they’re trying to make your life difficult. It’s because they’re stressed out, extremely busy, and often just entering a new stage of young adulthood that’s even more bewildering and frustrating to adjust to than the first. We’re trying our very best, I promise!

We want to help you succeed! We want to help you succeed!!! We feel extremely excited and proud when you show improvement in something you struggled with earlier! We are being 100% genuine when we say you can reach out if you need help and we are desperately hoping that you will actually do so! We want to help you succeed but we need you to commit and communicate in order for us to facilitate that!!!

To newer college students who aren’t sure what the phrase “office hours” refers to: office hours are the times that your instructors set aside to host drop-in meetings with students. You (usually) don’t need to schedule a specific appointment to visit your instructor’s office during pre-designated hours, but if you suspect that the reason for your visit might take up a significant portion of those hours, your instructor would probably appreciate a heads-up about it so they can prepare. You also don’t have to have a reason strictly related to the class to show up to office hours; I had one student come in just to say hello and get a sense of where to find me for future reference, and another who came to ask me not about our class, but about the advanced version of it because he was interested in taking it in a later semester.

Want your GTA to absolutely adore having you as a student? Here’s what to do:

Follow directions and ask questions about things you’re unsure of (showing us that you’re engaged).

Communicate your needs regularly and transparently (showing us integrity and self-advocacy).

If you like the class and/or the instructor, tell them face-to-face. It will make a GTA’s entire week to hear from a student that they’re doing a good job.

Conversely, one of the most surefire ways to seriously piss off your GTA is to schedule a meeting with them outside of office hours, then decide not to show up and not to notify them of this development until after the scheduled meeting time has passed, if at all. Do not behave this way unless you are genuinely 100% unable to send them even the bare minimum of notice. I mean it.

The mid-point and end of the semester can be very difficult times for graduate students. Be kind to and patient with your GTAs around midterms and in the last weeks leading up to finals; it makes our lives that much easier, which will make your life easier in turn!

Other GTAs feel free to add onto this with your own advice! And best of luck through the home stretch of the semester—I believe in you!!! :D

[mariacallous]

In 2019, the Moscow authorities created a nonprofit organization called Dialog, which they billed as a means of facilitating better communication between citizens and the government. The project was so successful that it was soon extended to other regions of Russia. The following year, Dialog and its regional subsidiary became a crucial element in the Russian authorities’ campaign to amend the Constitution and “reset” Putin’s term clock. Two years later, when the Kremlin found its full-scale invasion of Ukraine lasting longer than expected, Dialog once again proved itself as a critical part of the government’s toolkit: the organization now uses a vast network of popular Telegram channels and more than 100,000 social media pages to spread fictitious stories aimed at discrediting Ukraine. In a new investigation, journalists from Meduza, iStories, and The Bell dig into Dialog’s background and the team of ‘pseudo-hipsters’ behind its wartime disinformation campaign.

The English-language version of this story has been edited for both clarity and length. You can read the full investigation in Russian here.

On February 24, 2022, journalist Yulia Eidel went out onto the balcony of her fifth-story apartment in Dnipro and heard explosions in the distance: the Russian army was shelling a nearby airport. Inside, Eidel’s three children — aged five, seven, and 17 — were asleep.

At first, Eidel remembers, she had no idea what to do. Eventually, she decided to take her kids to stay with some family friends in the countryside, figuring things would be calmer there. Back then, she says, many Ukrainians still believed that “this whole shitshow” could be stopped if “a critical mass of sane people in Russia” simply applied enough effort. Eidel decided to look for people who might fit the bill in the Telegram chat group for her classmates from Moscow State University’s journalism department, which she graduated from in 2008.

After arriving in a quiet village, two days after the start of the war, she wrote in the chat: “Guys, you probably know, though you may have forgotten, that I’m originally from Ukraine. All of this is happening to me right now.” She added links to news stories from the Ukrainian media to her message. What she meant to do was simply to say: “This is me. You know me well. This is what’s happening. Let’s try to come up with a solution together. What the fuck are you so silent for?”

Some of Eidel’s classmates responded with messages of sympathy, but four people wrote that “the situation isn’t that simple,” and one woman asked her not to “turn the chat into a war-centric group.”

Later, another one of Eidel’s classmates, a man named Vladimir Tabak, came online and wrote just two words: “Good evening.” Someone else responded: “Well, here we go.” Eidel got the feeling that “the wolf had shown up in the fairy tale.”

She sent a private message to one of her classmates, asking her why others were responding that way to Tabak. “Oh, but he’s one of the people who monitor social media groups and pages and report who should be shut down and who should receive support,” the woman replied.

The barnacle

Vladimir Tabak, a registered journalist in Russia and the head of the pro-Kremlin “autonomous nonprofit organization” (ANO) Dialog, first gained public attention in 2010, with the release of a calendar featuring photographs of former and current female Moscow State University (MSU) journalism students in lingerie. The novelty item was created in honor of then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 58th birthday.

The calendar’s release was announced on the blog of propagandist Kristina Potupchik, then serving as the press secretary of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the calendar “this lady’s initiative,” referring to Potupchik, but it soon became clear that it had been the brainchild of her close friend Vladimir Tabak, a recent graduate of MSU’s journalism program who was also leading a “creative group aimed at creating Internet projects under the presidential administration.” (What activities this group ultimately engaged in and how long it existed is unclear.)

Several of Tabak’s former classmates who spoke to the authors of this story referred to him as a “rich kid” and a “slacker.” One of them, journalist and feminist activist Nastya Krasilnikova, described him as a “slippery character”:

For the entire five years that Tabak and I studied together in the journalism department, he was very noticeable. He had a striking appearance, always wearing flashy clothing, but he didn’t participate in many department activities.

To this day, I still remember the disgust I felt when the calendar with the female students came out. It struck me as very strange that so many women agreed to be a part of it, but the fact that Tabak was behind it didn’t surprise me at all.

As a student, Tabak spent a lot of time at nightclubs, his classmates said. “The students he photographed for the calendar were the girls who surrounded him. He was always into that stuff: cars, cocktails, parties at Pacha that lasted all night, all of that,” said one person who remembers him from the university.

Tabak bragged that he had been the one to sell the idea of an erotic calendar to Vladimir Surkov, who served as the deputy head of Russia’s presidential administration at the time. Surkov, who was also the mind behind “Nashi,” had been introduced to Tabak by Kristina Potupchik.

“Vladimir had no reservations about his calendar for the [Putin] administration. He didn’t give two shits about the journalism department — he understood that there wouldn’t be any consequences from them. Then the calendar came out, and [MSU Journalism Dean Elena] Vartanova was horrified, but she couldn’t do anything about it — her hands were tied,” one of Tabak’s former classmates said.

In Tabak’s view, the key to a successful career was to find a “big fish” and “cling to them,” barnacle-style. A source who worked with him in the past said that the first “big fish” he clung to was Vladimir Surkov. Next came Sergey Kiriyenko, who currently serves as the first deputy chief of staff of the Putin administration. As “one of Surkov’s people,” the source explained, Tabak was “inherited by Kiriyenko, and made his career under him.”

Something for everyone

Vladimir Tabak’s career under Kiriyenko began in 2019, when he became the deputy director of Dialog, a nonprofit led at the time by Alexey Goreslavsky, the former deputy director of the presidential administration’s public projects team. Put simply, Goreslavsky served as the Kremlin’s Internet curator. Two years after Tabak’s appointment, Goreslavsky left Dialog to head up the Internet Development Institute, and Tabak took his place.

When Dialog was first created, it was billed as a way for the Moscow authorities to use the Internet to communicate more effectively with citizens. Before long, the organization began opening analogous agencies throughout the country, each of which was referred to as a “regional governance center” (RGC). In reality, according to sources who spoke to the investigative outlet Proekt, Dialog’s initial purpose was to spread propaganda in favor of Russia’s constitutional amendments in the summer of 2020.

Just a few months after Dialog was established, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, and the Russian authorities found a new use for the organization. Before long, the project found itself responsible for keeping citizens informed about the public health situation, and the site StopCoronavirus.rf, launched by Dialog (though the organization itself denies this), became the public’s primary source of COVID-19 infection data. In addition to public health information, Dialog also published original content, including comics, memes, and TikTok videos.

At the height of the pandemic, the authorities decided to go through with the referendum on amendments to the Constitution. Dialog immediately began spreading the message that people shouldn’t fear the coronavirus and that they had a duty to vote. “The Constitution campaign involved several different narratives. One was that voting would be safe: there would be seven days to cast your ballot so that there wouldn’t be crowds. They also pushed the idea that this was real patriotism and that the aim was to consolidate society,” said a former Dialog employee.

One source who works for a major anonymous news account on Telegram recounted how, before the start of the election, he was approached by Dialog employee Pavel Popereshnichenko, who offered him cash in exchange for publishing a series of video clips advertising the amendments as a “necessary measure” for defeating COVID-19. The source declined the offer, but he soon began seeing similar clips on other Telegram channels, as well as on YouTube and regional social media pages (the outlet Mediazona has previously reported on these clips).

According to internal Dialog documents obtained by the authors of this report, the organization also used targeted ads to spread messages in favor of the proposed amendments. For users who were “concerned about the elections’ legitimacy,” for example, there were posts about how the voting would be overseen by election monitors. Pet owners and animal advocates were served ads highlighting the fact that you could bring dogs to the polls. And for religious voters, there was an ad proclaiming that “With divine help, God will return to the Constitution!” The post noted that the nuns of the Alekseyev-Akatov Convent in Voronezh had already voted.

The vote was held on July 1. According to official figures, more than 78 percent of voters (with a 65 percent turnout rate) voted in favor of the amendments — and, by extension, for a “reset” of Putin’s presidential term clock. To celebrate the end of the successful media campaign, Sergey Kiriyenko himself paid a visit to the Dialog office.

A beautiful system

In the summer of 2020, Dialog split into two entities. The “main” organization remained under the supervision of the Moscow city government’s IT department, while a separate subsidiary was established to work with Russia’s regions. As of 2022, more than 2,500 people worked for Dialog Regions, which received more 6.5 billion rubles (more than $67 million) from the Ministry of Digital Development. (For comparison, the parent organization received just 1.8 billion rubles, or around $18.7 million, in 2022). By 2024, the Russian authorities plan to allocate around 24 billion rubles ($249 million) to Dialog Regions.

Officially, Dialog Regions has two purposes. The first is to oversee the official social media pages of Russian governors, city governments, regional ministries, schools, and other public entities and government structures. Employees of the organization teach regional civil servants and politicians how to create social media accounts, gain followers, and respond to comments, in addition to telling them what kind of content to publish. As of the end of 2022, according to the Digital Development Ministry, Russia had 130,000 “state social media pages.” Tabak has said that 50 percent of Russian Internet users read these pages.

The authors of this story studied Dialog’s recommendations for running official school social media pages. They advise administrators to ensure that “content is based on regular news updates about school operations that are significant and relevant to the target audience” while also cautioning “not to forget about the federal agenda.” At the same time, according to the guide, the school pages should post news about decisions made by the president and the government, the work of the region’s governor, Russia’s achievements in science and sporting events, and “patriotic events.”

The pseudo-hipsters

Describing the second area of Dialog’s operations, the deputy governor in one of Russia’s regions said that its task is to “monitor all social networks for cases of public outrage,”

when a fence isn’t painted, a tree is covering someone’s window, roads aren’t getting repaired, someone’s having problems getting medicine, and so on. They look into whether the issue can be addressed or not, send requests to the relevant ministries, and work with the authorities to set deadlines for solving the problem.

The politician, who spoke to the authors of this report on condition of anonymity, praised Dialog’s work: “In my view,” he said, “it’s a godsend, it’s extremely effective.”

Kudos to them for creating this system. These things increase the public’s trust in the authorities by at least 30 percent. When a person is living in squalor, nothing’s happening around him, and nobody around him gives a damn about him, he feels a certain annoyance towards the authorities. If the government starts responding to his requests, taking action and solving his problems, the person will start thinking more highly of the authorities.

An employee of a large Russian company that has worked with Dialog agreed that “regional governance centers” have a positive role:

At some point, the presidential administration realized they needed to start working properly in the regions, and that everything would go down the drain otherwise. And they did a pretty important thing: now, if somebody craps in your apartment stairwell, you can send a complaint to the governor through an RGC. And the RGC will give the governor a thrashing if he doesn’t make the shit go away.

This goes a long way to keep people satisfied in the regions and to keep the authorities’ approval ratings up. I mean, look at [Moscow Mayor Sergey] Sobyanin: you might hate him, but you can’t deny that things in Moscow have improved. And this concept, that if you clean up the shit and make things nice for residents, then they won’t ask for things like freedom and democracy — it works. Kiriyenko is well aware of this.

According to a source who knows multiple Dialog employees, Kiriyenko has praised the organization in closed meetings, observing that while complaints to the RGCs used to take two hours to address, “now it’s just 17 minutes.” (According to Dialog’s official data, it actually takes RGCs up to three hours on average to process complaints.)

The system does have its shortcomings, however. Among other things, it’s likely not reaching older citizens, many of whom don’t use social media. “They wanted to launch a print publication for the 50+ audience so that they could send their complaints directly to the newspaper,” said a source close to one of the RGCs. “But nothing came of that, because the atmosphere at Dialog is more ‘creative’; in other words, everyone there is pretty laid-back. Eventually the idea was abandoned.”

A source close to the St. Petersburg government painted a similar picture of Dialog’s employees: “They’re pseudo-hipsters — and so is Tabak. The typical RGC employee looks like this: a beard, a vape, and white sneakers. Deadbeats.”

Nonetheless, a source from the Putin administration said that the “bearded hipsters in the white sneakers” remain useful to the authorities, adding that they can “amplify any conflict on their social media pages.” In August, for example, a Dialog-run Telegram channel called Signal pilloried Khakassia Governor Valentin Konovalov, a member of the Communist Party, after he angered the Kremlin by beating a candidate from the ruling United Russia party.

As of the end of 2022, Dialog had RGCs in 93 regions and federal districts. The records reviewed by the authors of this report did not mention Ukraine’s occupied territories, but a Dialog employee said that Dialog representatives have visited them multiple times, including trips to Donetsk and to the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

A government resolution regarding the rules of providing subsidies to the RGCs says that the offices should monitor complaints and appeals in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” the Zaporizhzhia region, and the Kherson region. Additionally, Dialog itself has reported training civil servants in the occupation administration in Mariupol to run government social media accounts.

Kiriyenko’s favorite toy

One of the main jobs of Dialog’s RGCs, according to a source close to the Putin administration, is to promote information favorable to the government in the traditional media, on social networks, and on Telegram. This entails creating new Telegram channels as well as buying existing ones, a former Dialog employee said.

Dialog also shares pro-government posts on Odnoklassniki, or “Classmates,” the social media service most popular among older Russians. The authors of this story managed to find posts from Dialog, for example, in a Krasnodar group called “Advice for you.” The group has approximately 50,000 members and consists primarily of housekeeping tips such as how to combine paint colors in one’s home or how to save money at bargain stores. In addition, the group often sees posts about Sergey Kiriyenko and his various useful activities: how, for example, Putin’s First Deputy Chief of Staff personally checks food prices in Ukraine’s occupied territories or how he helps make children’s New Year’s wishes come true.

The page also appeared on a list of accounts that helped spread “news” about Ukraine allegedly using banned weapons against the Russian army. The list contains nearly 400 groups on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Telegram.

Dialog also serves as a polling agency. “Why? To show that not only can we put together media campaigns, but we can also track their results,” an employee explained.

Right now, the agency is conducting an Internet survey of “businessmen from the Donetsk People’s Republic.” The results of these surveys are distorted: responses can be submitted by anyone through links that are posted on government websites and social media pages.

Despite this, the polls are in high demand, not only among the various government ministries that work with Dialog, but also from the Kremlin. “This is Kinder’s favorite toy — alternative data for the president,” said a high-ranking regional official, referring to Kiriyenko by his nickname “Kinder” (short for “Kinder Surprise”), which has stuck to him ever since he became prime minister at the age of 36.

According to the speaker, Dialog conducts surveys on a wide variety of topics, including faith and religion, NATO, Russia’s government institutions, and relations between Russia and Ukraine.

After Moscow launched its invasion, Dialog started compiling briefs on the state of the “information realm around the topic of the special military operation,” analyzing how Russian Internet users were responding to war-related news. One of the updates reviewed by the authors of this story reported an increase in users’ confidence in General Sergey Surovikin, noting the “importance of the image of Surovikin as a speaker on the topic of the special military operation.”

The organization also went beyond informational reports, providing recommendations (though specifically to whom is unclear). One, for example read: “A rapid and firm response from the Defense Ministry’s command is needed for high-profile shortages of ammunition and provisions for draftees in the special military operation zone (with accountability for those responsibile for the situation).”

No basis in fact

In the summer of 2022, pro-Russian “war correspondent” Alexander Kots wrote on Telegram: “Received from subscribers in Kharkiv: these are announcements, in various parts of the city, from local public utilities offices. They’re asking residents to leave their apartments unlocked, so that territorial defense fighters can set up firing positions inside if necessary.” Similar messages were posted in multiple other pro-war Telegram channels.

A month later, these posts were included on one of Dialogue’s regular reports to the Putin administration on effectively distributed disinformation. (The authors of this story reviewed several such reports.) The story about the announcements was marked as a “successful operation”: the Kharkiv authorities had made a public statement refuting it, which meant it had spread among Ukrainian users. “In reality, the doors [shown in the picture] were in a Moscow apartment building,” said a source who worked with Dialog.

Another fake news story spread by the organization purported that Muslims in Germany were putting up flyers demanding that Ukrainian refugees leave the country. A picture of the flyers, which were actually put up by Dialog employees on the windows of a business center near the organization’s office in Moscow, was sent to more than 300,000 followers by a Telegram channel called Ukraina.ru. The only source mentioned alongside that information was “We’re told.”

Dialog’s newest area of focus — generating disinformation about Ukraine and Ukrainians — took shape several months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. “We were instructed to start finding ways to respond to news stories. And everyone started pitching ideas, proposing stories, brainstorming… And somehow this idea came up: creating fake news stories,” said a source who attended the brainstorming sessions.

According to Dialog’s records obtained by the authors of this report, the organization was responsible for creating fake news stories about

Ukrainian servicemen selling their military awards on eBay;

high-ranking Ukrainian officials acquiring elite real estate in Switzerland;

Ukrainian refugees being offered demeaning jobs like “animal masturbator” in Poland;

the Ukrainian government drafting women;

Ukrainian soldiers taking pills that increase aggression.

At least 60 people were involved in creating fake news stories at Dialog. “The thinking was: the Ukrainian side is capable of fighting an information war, so why shouldn’t we? I don’t know if that’s a justification or not,” said one employee.

In the war’s initial months, the procedure for creating disinformation worked as follows. Every evening, the employees would compile a list of news items that, in their view, needed a response. Vladimir Tabak would personally approve the selection. The list would then be forwarded to Dialog’s various departments as well as to numerous Telegram channels working with the organization. The next morning, Dialog employees and Telegram admins would brainstorm and pitch ideas, finally choosing the one that would go public that day.

Telegram was central to Dialogue’s campaigns since 2020, when its youthful staff convinced their boss Alexey Goreslavsky that this would be the most effective platform for engaging the audience, as recalled by the administrator of a large anonymous news channel. Dialog has been using Telegram to put out disinformation ever since.

Attendees at Dialog’s meetings have included, for example, representatives of the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Readovka, which took an ardent pro-war stance shortly after it began, according to one Dialog employee. Another employee said that representatives of Mash, one of the largest “tabloid” Telegram channels, were also known to take part in the meetings. (Neither Readovka editor-in-chief Alexey Kostylev nor Mash editor-in-chief Maxim Iksanov responded to questions from the authors of this investigation.)

The blogger Katrusya, who runs the Telegram channel Signal, has also attended meetings at Dialog, representing a “network” of channels owned by propagandist Kristina Potupchik, a friend of Vladimir Tabak.

“No matter when you go to Potupchik’s office, there’s Potupchik, Potupchik’s dog, and Vladimir Tabak,” said one of Potupchik’s former employees. “Potupchik would hand out envelopes of money to [employees], right in front of Tabak. As far as I understand, they even had a shared accountant. At the very least, I overheard them discussing accounting details. Potupchik had 40 or so writers who would write posts for the network — including posts on the topics that Tabak assigned.”

Kristina Potupchik did not respond to questions related to this story. Nonetheless, the authors of this investigation determined that in 2022, Dialog Regions sent more than 50 million rubles (more than $500,000) to a company called Rokk Media that belongs to Yelena Berdova, the mother of Potupchik’s ex-husband Anton Berdov. The Telegram channel Baza previously discovered that Berdov and Potupchik own a house in Spain that’s worth about 500,000 euros.

Dialog also found ways to spread disinformation without having to pay. According to one employee, the organization would often send “tips” to large Telegram news channels, posing as eyewitnesses to fictitious events. Often, the channels would publish these stories without verifying them.

By the end of the year, however, many major Telegram channels seemed to have wised up to Dialog’s strategy and stopped sharing fake news uncritically.

“The strategy stopped working,” one Dialog employee explained. “And the channels increasingly stopped accepting our fake stories. Because they noticed that there was a large wave of them, and it was unclear what was going on and who was behind it.”

This crisis is well-illustrated by an internal presentation from Dialog that the authors of this story managed to obtain. According to the document, the “international media space is seeing a large number of creative initiatives launched in support of Ukraine” that “increase the world’s positive perception of Ukraine.” In response, the organization decided to “adapt” these initiatives for the Russian media space to “strengthen patriotic sentiments” and “develop positive perceptions of the special military operation.”

Fighting ‘fakes’ with fakes

Over the course of the war, Dialog has increasingly devoted itself to providing media support to the Russian Defense Ministry. This is no coincidence: in the future, Vladimir Tabak hopes to get involved in “more than just media” and to take a high-ranking position in the presidential administration, according to two sources close to the Putin administration.

“Vladimir Tabak has complained that in the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Defense Ministry put out information in an incompetent and untimely manner,” an acquaintance of the Dialog head said. “And perhaps after several weeks, they managed to agree that the presidential administration would work on the Defense Ministry’s communications. But now, ‘everything is under control,’ of course.”

At the start of the war, Dialog created a website and a parallel Telegram channel, both called Tribunal, which it presented as a Russian version of Myrotvorets, an online Ukrainian database that contains information about people accused of colluding with Russia or participating in separatist movements. Tribunal compiles dossiers on Ukrainian “war criminals” and publishes articles on the “crimes of the Azov Nazis.” “When Azovstal was captured and the Azov fighters were awaiting their so-called trial, Tribunal was the platform that explained [to the public] why they had to be prosecuted,” a former Dialog employee said.

Later, Tabak’s organizations became responsible for distributing critical posts about Yevgeny Prigozhin.

According to one former employee, Dialog’s partnership with the Defense Ministry was managed by Tikhon Makarov, one of Tabak’s deputies.

“We laughed at him, because it was clear to everyone that the Defense Ministry was talking nonsense. But he was sincerely on the Defense Ministry’s side,” the source said.

Makarov is also in charge of the popular Telegram channel War on Fakes, according to a source who has partnered with Dialog. The channel was created at the very start of the war and currently has more than 600,000 followers.

The website of War on Fakes claims that the channel is run by anonymous “owners and administrators of several apolitical Telegram channels” who “provide objective information about events in Ukraine and the Donbas territories.” It bills itself as a platform that “exposes fake news” while itself spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda narratives.

The Russian Defense Ministry is the “main beneficiary of this channel,” the source who has worked with Dialog emphasized. In one of the last posts about Russia’s missile strike on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk, which killed 12 civilians, including children, War on Fakes referred to the attack as a strike on a “foreign mercenary deployment site.” A post about a missile strike on a residential building that killed 46 people in Dnipro last winter said the incident was a gas explosion caused by Ukrainian air defenses.

The authors of this story have obtained an instruction manual from Dialog about how to “debunk fake news” in situations where there’s no factual basis for doing so. The document suggests discrediting the source of the information, pointing out when there’s no photo or video confirming a report or when it relies on anonymous reports. Another recommendation is to mention who might be benefited by the news, saying things like “Ukraine wants to demoralize Russian citizens.”

[bestworstcase]

What are your thoughts on Jacques as a character? Do you have any?

“you think running off like your sister is going to make the schnee name stronger? it won’t. siding with her only divides us.”

rwby does a neat thing in v4 of utilizing slimeball-in-chief jacques to do the heavy lifting of foreshadowing ironwood’s tailspin into fascist tyranny—which is, of course, a bit of emotional sleight-of-hand to misdirect unwary viewers, because ironwood has hitherto been framed as sometimes misguided but having his heart in the right place, whereas jacques is a smug, child-abusing bastard of a capitalist and we don’t want to agree with him when he calls ironwood’s power-grabbing self-aggrandizement what it is. this is a role jacques reprises to great effect in v7, wherein his campaign for the council seat is a cynical performance of giving a damn about mantle but also makes him one of the most effective critics of ironwood’s increasingly dictatorial regime; he is, after all, the inciting force behind the council’s attempt to take ironwood to task for his unilateral and secretive actions of late, even going so far as to literally give robyn a seat at the table.

not to argue that jacques gives a flying fuck about anything but maximizing the SDC’s profits and flexing on someone he perceived as an obstacle to that goal—because he doesn’t—but, his role in the narrative is to be sort of the canary in the coal mine for ironwood’s hero-to-villain arc.

and that makes the remark quoted above very interesting to me, because: that is the exact rhetoric that undergirds the rwbyjnorq approach to internal conflicts. how many times have we heard variations on “salem seeks only to divide us” or “we can’t let salem divide us” or the kids fretting out loud that arguing and disagreeing only plays into her hands?—and here is that same rhetoric coming from the mouth of one of the most unpleasant characters in the entire show, whose foremost narrative role beyond facilitating weiss’s character development is telegraphing that ironwood is bad news.

it’s such a breathtakingly clear illustration of how easily the specter of “division” can be used as a tool of manipulation and control, how readily it goes hand-in-hand with a cynical emphasis on the appearance of unified strength above everything else, and how division in and of itself is a morally neutral quality. jacques is, of course, not wrong that weiss stirring the pot by leaving to be a huntress and shirking her nominal responsibilities as the future CEO of the schnee dust company could rattle investors and raise some serious questions about the long-term stability of the SDC; but ethically and emotionally it is also something that weiss must do, because the SDC as it is now is not worth preserving and living under her father’s thumb will destroy her.

so she leaves—divides the family, if you will—and finds her own way, and later returns with the inner strength and emotional support she needs to reconnect with the parts of her family and the schnee legacy that she values without sacrificing herself in the process.

which all feels very, um, pointed wrt the current ozma/salem unity/division power struggle over the fate of humanity and the obvious parallels that can be drawn between jacques’ abuse of his family and the god of light’s abuse of his creations.

anyway

i also appreciate jacques as a character who is just, profoundly and satisfyingly awful. he’s very like adam in that regard; whatever redeeming qualities he once had, he left behind long ago in pursuit of his self-centered goals and what’s left is a person who has decided with total confidence to become the worst version of himself, and there’s always something enjoyable about watching that sort of character cause problems for everyone else.