#they very specifically are trying to find some means of winning the media war against Kamala and get swing votes and defame her and shit

[overthinkingfandom]

Cards on the Table - Breaking down the tactics in L'manburg Independence

/rp /dsmp

Much has been said in the fandom about L'manburg's independence. It is, after all, arguably the most important moment in DSMP's history, as the rest of the story wouldn't have existed without it. 

In light of the recent anniversary of it, yes I know I’m late, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and add something to the discussion surrounding it. However, as the morality of the situation has been discussed to death I'll be taking a slightly different approach to it. 

Due to the nature of the DSMP's medium, the story has many unique quirks. One of those quirks is how realistic the tactics used in the story's portrayal of politics are. The independence conflict is a great example of it. While on the surface things seem to be rather simplistic in nature, there's a lot more going on that’s less obvious.

Both Wilbur and Dream are brilliant politicians who get to show both their strengths and weaknesses in dealing with an equally skilled opponent in this encounter. There’s actually quite a bit to go into, despite their interactions being so short.

When most people think about the L'manburg's independence, they think about the moment the declaration has been written up and the subsequent declaration of war. While this moment is certainly iconic, it's not really all that impactful in the grand scheme of things. Both declarations are the culmination of decisions that have been made beforehand. It's the moment when those decisions were made that really influenced things.

Conveniently, Wilbur and Dream only hold a single conversation about L'manburg before the declarations are drawn up, so we don’t need to look far in order to figure out where those decisions were formed. 

Wilbur has been working on L’manburg, collecting materials and building the wall surrounding it, for almost an hour when he spots Dream lurking. “Get [Dream] into the VC, I need to talk with him. He’s the leader of the other nation, I think we need to have a congress.” (52:44)

Dream: “Hello?”

Wilbur: “Hello Dream. Welcome to our great nation of L’manburg.”

Dream: “L’manburg?”

Wilbur: “Yes. We are seceding from Dream SMP. This is our own server now. This area, just this part [between the walls of L’manburg], is our server.”

Wilbur doesn’t waste any time before getting right down to business and talking about the matter at hand. However, the way he speaks about it here and in the rest of the conversation is fairly interesting. Wilbur is talking about L’manburg as if it’s something which already exists. They are seceding. This is their land. This conversation is merely a courtesy to give Dream a formal notice of their separation.

Yet, a bit later Wilbur shows he knows they need Dream’s acknowledgement in order for L’manburg to be its own entity. Independence is not a concrete thing that can just be taken or created on one person’s whim, after all. It only exists when the people with power agree it exists. 

Wilbur: “Dream, basically all we want from you is just acknowledgement that we are an independent nation now. That’s all we need.” (56:20)

So if Wilbur knows they aren’t independent yet, why is he talking like that? 

It’s because he’s using a salesman technique called an Assumptive Close. Instead of posing it as a question and putting the choice of agreeing or disagreeing in Dream’s hands, Wilbur acts as if it’s already true and leaves the burden of challenging his claims on Dream’s shoulders. He even moves on to ask secondary questions on how Dream feels about having embassies in his land (and notably he frames it as a question, unlike how he frames the topic of L’manburg’s independence) as if L’manburg is already a political entity. 

Wilbur: “Dream, I’ve got a proposition for you. How do you feel about having Tommy’s land being an embassy? Like it’s an enclave in your own land.” (59:01)

Wilbur’s use of this technique has an interesting side effect in that it signals to Dream Wilbur is taking a non-compromising position in this negotiation. In essence saying “L’manburg is independent, take it or leave it.” 

A non-compromising position is the game theory term for when someone goes, "I'm going to do that, this is going to happen and nothing can dissuade me from this course of action." It's a strong tactic which forces everyone to react to that person's position, reducing the others' options into a binary of either accepting that position or rejecting it. 

This is a very common tactic and various manifestations of it can be seen all over history and media. From Martin Luther who refused to recant or compromise with his famous words of “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise” to groups who cultivate a "with us or against us" mentality to heroic characters who say they would die before giving in to whatever Evil the story focuses on.

This is the situation Dream is facing here. He can either accept Wilbur's assertion that L'manburg is an independent entity by either encouraging them or even doing nothing, or he can reject Wilbur's assertion by acting against it.

As we all know, he ended up choosing the second option but what were his considerations for doing so?

For that we would need to know what his goal was here, something we don't really get a sense of from his conversation with Wilbur. However, he ends up stating what it was in a later conversation with Skeppy. 

(Emphasis added by me and wasn’t part of the original dialogue.)

“Everyone can build wherever they want. [L’manburg] just decided to say that they get to determine where they can build and we can’t and we said well no, you can’t do that. And that’s what the whole war was over.” (31:44)

“[L’manburg] can’t tell us that we can’t go in their land. That’s all we wanted to say. That they’re not independent, they are a part of the Dream Team SMP. They’re just a delusional, small part." (34:26)

Dream lies a lot, so just because he says something doesn't mean it's necessarily true. However, this seems to be genuine. Dream has no problem telling Skeppy “we burned down their houses and blew up the whole land.” (32:36) later on in the conversation, so we can rule out that he's trying to paint himself in a better light, and there aren't really any other reasons for him to lie to Skeppy here about this. 

When looking at Dream's options with his goal we can see the choice is pretty much a no-brainer. 

Accepting is a total lose scenario for him. Not only will it fail to fulfill his goals, it would actively encourage the sort of behavior he doesn't want to happen, as Wilbur would set a precedent that so long as someone insisted hard enough and implied Dream is a bad person he would fold in negotiations and give them what they want.

Rejecting gets him far closer to his goal of railing against L’manburg’s exclusion. Going to war means he has to invest much more effort and resources into his reaction than if he just accepted as well as deal with the risks any war has, however the sheer difference in ability between Dream's side and Wilbur's side make the risk minimal. 

Going to a war he’s pretty sure he can win VS encouraging the sort of thing he disapproves of, isn’t really a hard choice.

This is actually the result of a mistake on Wilbur's part. CC!Wilbur called his character naive (37:49) and he's not wrong. Wilbur has a tendency to act as he wishes and not take into account that people might disagree or retaliate. We see it with him saying they could just ignore the Americans (1:51:17) or during the elections when he told Quackity his scheme and got blindsided by Quackity deciding to run against him. 

Historically, non-compromising positions worked best when the person who used it made sure rejection would be more costly than acceptance in one way or the other. In essence, narrowing down the options for others even more and leaving them only with acceptance. 

Wilbur may have managed to wipe off the table all other options and put pressure on Dream to accept with his use of Assumptive Close, but he didn't do anything to prevent Dream from rejecting. In fact, it seems like Wilbur didn't even consider it as a valid possibility as he outright dismissed it when Dream brought it up as an option.

Dream: “What happens if the rest of the server decides to take over your land?”

Wilbur: “They can’t. It’s literally not how servers- Dream you’re supposed to be smart man, that’s not how servers work. You can’t just take over another person’s server.” (54:33)

But, you may be asking, if it was better for Dream to go to war against L'manburg rather than grant them independence, why did he end up giving into their desire for independence in the war? Wouldn't it have been better if he just saved everyone the trouble and gave it to them when they asked for it the first time? Or maybe Dream’s obsession with Tommy and his discs is just that strong?

We can find the answer to all those questions at Punz’ video where he shows the behind the scenes of the independence war, including some of the planning which went into it from the Dream Team’s side of the war. Specifically, this quote:

Dream: “[The L’manburgians] are never gonna give up. So then in the end the resolution will probably just be, we won but they can think whatever they want, we’re just going to ignore them because they’re essentially like- You want to think you’re independent? You’re not, you’re still part of the SMP, but if you want to think you’re independent, you can.” (9:04)

“They’re never gonna give up.”

Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter, as this is what Dream thinks and so this is what dictates his actions. Perhaps he’s overestimating his opponents here, or maybe he’s talking about how even if L’manburg is defeated this time they would try again for independence in the future. In either case, it’s clear Dream thinks the best case scenario for him - completely preventing people from fighting for L'manburg's independence - is impossible. 

So, he tries for the second best case. If he can’t prevent L’manburg, he’s going to allow it but only under Dream’s terms. That’s what his “they can think whatever they want” line is all about. He intends on giving them token independence here, something which would satisfy them but wouldn't pose a real threat. Which is exactly what he ends up offering them during the bow duel.

Dream: “Let me just clarify: if you win, we grant L’Manburg independence.”

Tommy: “Alright.”

Dream: “But we recognize it still as a part of the Dream Team SMP.”

Wilbur: “That’s fine, that’s a fine condition.” (40:54)

The token independence thing didn’t work out so well for him. L'manburg quickly grew to be seen as an entity separate from Greater Dream SMP by everyone, and so Dream was forced to concede and treat it as one as well. 

However, despite this part of his plan failing, overall the independence war was a glowing success for Dream. 

By giving L'manburg independence after winning the war, Dream sent a very clear message. L'manburg only gets to be independent so long as they stay on Dream's good side. If they don't adhere to the terms Dream sets out for them? He can and will kick their asses, as the war so aptly demonstrated.

This message is received loud and clear. During his entire presidency Wilbur went out of his way to treat Dream with respect and try not to piss him off. Something he clearly demonstrates a number of times, like when he asked if he should call Dream “king Dream” (59:08) or during the railway skirmish (24:16).

In fact, it can be argued that this message lasted all the way up to Tubbo's presidency. Unlike Quackity, who was perfectly fine with starting a fight with Dream, Tubbo knew first hand what a war against Dream looks like. He knew that they could not win a war against him, especially in their weakened state at the time, and that influenced his decision. 

As Dream once said: "L'manburg can be independent but it can't be free."

[duhragonball]

Disinterpretation

I finally finished the Sarah Z video about “pro vs. anti”.   It’s pretty long, and I ended up watching it in chunks over several days, but I think it’s worth watching, especially if you’re sort of partially connected to online fandom, but not enough to be aware of all the lingo. 

As I expected, the whole thing was vague and confusing because the people involved in the conflict made it vague and confusing.   In theory, the full terms would be “pro-shipping” and “anti-shipping”, but it seems like it’s more about particular kinds of ships that could be considered controversial.  But that’s a slippery slope, and apparently the whole conflict mutated into both sides deciding that every hypothetical relationship between fictional characters is either equally valid or equally dangerous.  

Long story short, it’s just purity culture, which was what everyone on Tumblr was calling it around 2012.  But now, if you’re a sane person who genuinely asks: “Who gives a fuck about Voltron?”, these people will jump your ass and accuse you of being on the side of their enemies.  “Children have died over the importance of Lotor/Hagger!   Your callous indifference proves that you yourself must have murdered children!” 

I think what Sarah Z really hit upon in this video was that media consumption has become so ingrained in our culture that people feel like it has to go hand-in-hand with our morality.   That is, it’s not enough for me to watch Star Trek, I have to justify Star Trek as evidence that I’m a good person.  Maybe this is where the expression “guilty pleasure” comes from.   Conversely, it’s not enough for me to not watch Dr. Who, I have to somehow convince everyone that Dr. Who was invented by the devil.

I’m pretty sure the Reylo ship has a lot to do with this, since it’s kind of understood to be a dark, problematic concept, and fans either embrace its flaws or recoil in horror because of them.   Star Wars itself is a dumb story about space wizards, so people try to give the debate more weight by linking it to freedom of self expression and/or enabling real world harm.   Suddenly it’s not enough to just think two actors would look cute making out instead of fighting.   Now it’s this battlefield for the soul of civilization or something.

I grew up in the 80′s, when “concerned parents” and grifters would accuse the Smurfs and metal bands of promoting satanism and witchcraft.   I used to hear stories of teens going out into the woods in the middle of the night to do occult stuff, and all I could ever think about was: “Why would anyone bother wandering out in the woods in the middle of the night?”  Which is why “concerned parents” turned their attention to things that were closer to home, like Saturday morning cartoons.   It had nothing to do with the content; it was just about finding a safe, accessible target for their hysteria.   Some people want to go on a crusade without leaving the house, so they pick a fight with Papa Smurf instead of confronting the real evils in the world.  Even as a kid, I knew this was a con, because I’d watched the show for myself and knew it was too saccharine to be threat to anyone.

The pro/anti folks have tried to disguise this with a lot of terminology.   I wondered why they seemed to reluctant to use the full terms “pro-shipper” and “anti-shipper”, and it’s probably a couple of things.   First, the word “shipper” is basically an admission that this is pointless bullshit that doesn’t matter, and they’d like to avoid that connotation.   Second, they seem to have decided that this goes beyond shipping itself, into practically anything else they want it to involve.  It’s all part of the con, which is to make you believe that it’s “us vs. them”, and you can be part of “us” by curating specific attitudes about Steven Universe.

Seriously, “about Steven Universe” is such an incredible punchline.  You can make anything funnier by adding those three words to the end of a sentence.   “Do not interact if you blog about Steven Universe.”   “Hey, what’s up, YouTube, this is SSJ3RyokoLover69, and this is going to be kind of a serious video about Steven Universe.”   “Mrs. Johnson, the results of your biopsy are in, and I have some bad news about Steven Universe.”   It’s a fucking kids show.   “Oh no, all the characters look like the characters in all the other kids shows!”   Yeah, that’s because it’s a kids show.   Marvin looks like Garfield, this isn’t new.

The common denominator here seems to be that both sides try to wrap themselves in the flag of vulnerable groups: impressionable minors, trauma survivors, harassment victims, etc.   The “pros” want to protect those people so that they can feel free to explore weird subject matter on their own terms, and the “antis” want to protect the same people from being exposed to weird subject matter that they might not want to see.   It’s all about establishing a moral high ground.   Back in the day, it was called “sanctimony”. 

But people get roped into this, because at their core, people want approval, and this stupid conflict offers them a sense of community.  As long as you support the cause, whatever it may be, you’ll have this online friend network that appears to support anything you do.   But if you deviate from their norm, you’ll be cast out.    Does this sound familiar?

To use a more familiar example, I still sometimes find people clamoring about Gochi vs. Vegebul.   I’ve never understood this, because both ships were canon, and I never saw much direct evidence of a war between them, but people would still talk about how crazy the Vegebul shippers were, and how crazy the Gochi shippers were, and it was like some huge thing going on just over the hills.   It’s the same idea, since the idea that you could like both or neither never seems to occur to anyone involved.   I never gave a shit, because I used to see the same dumb agendas in the Harry Potter fandom.

Okay, so let me take you back.  It’s 2005 through 2011, and I’m hateblogging all seven Harry Potter novels, because fuck you, that’s why.  The funny thing I encountered was that occasionally fans seemed to want to pretend like my bashing of certain characters was proving them right somehow.    They were like “See?  He hates Ron Weasley too!  That proves that Seamus Finnegan is the coolest guy ever.”   The Slytherin stans would do this all the time, because I would constantly take the piss out of the Gryffindor characters for being self-important dopes.   I think they just liked hearing it from an outside perspective.   But I had to keep reminding them all that I hated all of them.   Every character from Harry Potter sucks ass. Voldemort was my favorite, but only because he was the one guy who wanted to kill all of the others.   But he sucks too because he failed. 

And the shippers were the same way.   I’d say something shitty about Ron, because Ron sucks, and some smartass Joss Whedon fan would be like “Yes!  Boost the signal!  That is why Harry/Hermione is the best ship!”  And I’d be like “No, Harry and Hermione suck at least as bad as Ron does.  They’re all terrible and I hate them.”   I really do think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome going on with Harry Potter books, where everyone secretly knows they suck, but the fans sort of latch on to one or two characters and go like “Well, he’s not as shitty as the rest.”   Like finding spaghetti in the trash and picking out the meatball with the least amount of lint on it.   Then you’d go and start a flamewar with some other starving person over whether your meatball is shittier than theirs.  This is what people mean when they say to read another book. 

Anyway, the big thing I picked up from Sarah Z’s video is “disinterpretation”, a term coined by MSNBC columnis Zeeshan Aleem.   The Twitter thread is worth a read, but the short version is that he once remarked that a Julia Louis-Dreyfus routine wasn’t very good, and someone got mad at him for insinuating that women are incapable of being funny.    They just took his dissatisfaction with one performance by one comedian as being a universal condemnation of women comedians in general.  And this sort of thing is all over the internet.   Everyone sees what they want to see and then they take it as permission to overreact.  

I ran into this myself a while back, because someone saw who I interacted with on Twitter and decided that they’re all bad guys and if I have any interaction with them, then that makes me a bad guy too.   At the time I tried to play it cool, but the more I think about it, the more it ticks me off.   And over the course of that conversation, it was said that I don’t talk about myself much, and that’s kind of funny, because all I ever do on social media is write long-ass blog posts like this one.  I don’t expect anyone to memorize them, or even read them all the way through, but when I write all this stuff and someone goes out of their way to say they don’t know anything about me, the message is that they just didn’t pay attention to what I was saying, and they didn’t bother to try.

So I’m a little jaded from that, because I got called out for a bunch of stuff I didn’t even do or say, and apparently that’s just a thing that happens.   People will reject you for completely arbitrary reasons, not because of anything you actually said or did, and you’re left thinking you made some terrible mistake.   Except, no, I’ve seen it happen to other people, people a lore more conscientious than I am, and if they can’t satisfy the bullshit purity standards, then I never stood a chance.   If the game is rigged so I can’t win, then I’m not going to play.  

And it’s that same condition that probably draws people into these online holy wars, because if you declare yourself for the pro or anti side, at least then you’ll have a posse backing you up.   Only they don’t support you, they support your willingness to support them.    Once your commitment to their agenda wavers, even in the slightest, they will turn against you.   

Sarah Z suggests that both sides of the war drop the pro and anti terms, since they lost all meaning long ago.   But that just invites a new set of useless terms to perpetuate the same cycle.   Her more useful advice is for fandom people to broaden their horizons.   She got a lot of flak for tweeting “Go outside” once, but the ironic thing is that it’s sound advice.   I had lunch with my mom yesterday and it was just nice getting away from things for a while.   People need to do that more often, and unfortunately it feels like it’s harder to do than ever before.

But “go outside” isn’t just a literal thing.   It can mean going beyond your usual haunts, reading the same books, watching the same shows, rehashing the same conversations.   I think the reason this stuff always revolves around “shipping” is because there seems to be this deep-seated compulsion to pair fictional characters off like this, and for a lot of folks it’s the only way they can consume a story, so they do.   And they do it lot, and there’s a lot of them, and they do it the same way every time, and lo and behold the same old conflicts start up.   So maybe “go outside” should mean “go outside of that cycle once in a while.”   Just a thought. 

[itsclydebitches]

Welcome back, everyone! Starting here in Chapter Six these recaps are doing double duty with my latest attempt at completing National Novel Writing Month. Granted, this isn’t a novel and yes, I technically started this project well before November, but there’s no way I’d manage 50,000 words of fiction in 2020, so I’m hoping to hit that with these recaps instead. You all get semi-frequent updates and I may get to finally say I completed this challenge! That’s a win-win as far as I’m concerned.

Quick reminder: new teams, CFVY was separated, everything is awful. There, done. Seventy-five pages in we’ve come back to Velvet’s point of view as she and the other students are carted off in airbuses. She’s experiencing the “same shock and dismay” that she saw on Yatsuhashi’s face before they were separated, thus I’d like to re-emphasize last chapter’s argument that though shaking up the teams isn’t inherently a bad idea, doing it in this way while your students are recovering from/still involved in a war is… not so great for their mental health. Yeah, yeah, Remnant is a hard place and these kids experience traumatic events on the weekly, but still. There’s a fine line between preparing students for that kind of life and simply traumatizing them further, because this is a kind of trauma when the teams so heavily rely on one another - fill every aspect of one another’s lives: friend, colleague, family, teacher, student, leader, follower, romantic partner - and you’re now uprooting them with no warning. Whether or not new teams actually happen, the students think they are and that’s messing with their heads. Basically they’re just:

This problem is highlighted when we get confirmation of what I stated last time: the teams aren’t merely colleagues turned friends, but family. These fighters have got all their emotional eggs in one basket. Velvet goes so far as to imply that she loves her team more than her parents, with the logic being that they (her parents) “never talked to each other anymore.” So… if Coco and Yatsuhashi stopped talking would that undermine your love for each of them as individuals? I get what the overall takeaway is - divorce is a nasty business and can leave lasting scars on kids caught in the middle, to say nothing of the fact that, as a young adult, Velvet is poised to start creating a family by choice, not blood - but it’s still an odd way to phrase the issue. Here we have another instance of me picking up on implications due to RWBY, the franchise’s, overall themes. When you’ve got a story so thoroughly touting a teens vs. adults mentality, having Velvet mentally reject her parents for her team reads differently than it otherwise would. Chock that onto the pile that already includes things like, ‘Ruby denies that Qrow ever helped her’ and ‘Yang is no longer a part of grieving for Summer’ and ‘Weiss seems to have forgotten all that Klein did for her.’ There’s a lot of uncomfortable details attached to our heroes and how they see the adults in their lives, parents included.

Velvet doesn’t get to worry for long though. A much happier voice sounds across the airbus and she spots Sun, classically hanging from his tail. Instead of hearing more about her fears we segue into - you guessed it - Sun bashing. The first thought to pop into her head is that Sun “wasn’t with the rest of his team, but knowing Sun, that might have been his decision.”

...Velvet, you just tried desperately to stay with your own team and were (somehow) swept away by the apparently overwhelming crowed (still ridiculous imo). But if you didn’t manage this, what makes you think Sun had a chance? Why is his separation suddenly a potential choice when yours was presented as nothing of the sort? That is some real insistence on thinking the worst of him. I dragged Sun for abandoning his team in Volume 4 because that was abandonment. It was a choice worthy of criticism. This? This was outside of his control and Velvet knows it.

Sun saw her, smiled, and waved. Velvet looked away.

Nice, Velvet.

He comes over anyway and (kindly!) asks if she’s okay. Velvet says no, specifically because “Yatsu and I were separated.” Here we have another example of how close the partners get even within each team. Blake and Yang are inseparable. Ruby talks to Weiss more than her sister (and the concept of her talking to Blake in any meaningfully way is hilarious at this point). Now, despite being separated from her entire team - everyone is in the same awful boat - Velvet frames the situation as just being separated from Yatsuhashi. Later she repeats, “Well, I still want to try to find Yatsu.” So would it be a disappointment to find Fox or Coco instead? It’s especially weird because in the main show we see Velvet and Coco interacting the most. I actually had to look up who Velvet’s partner was because I just assumed our two girls were a duo. Apparently not. I’m not really into the CFVY side of the fandom, but I imagine there’s a substantial ship community for these two based solely on how Velvet embraces RWBY partnerships in this book, outside of the always popular Velvet/Coco, of course.

That’s admittedly a ship I can get behind. 

After Velvet unloads all her worries “Sun stared ahead, like he couldn’t quite manage to feel bad.” Attention, readers, this is an important lesson coming up! In fandom spaces I often see people analyzing novels (and other print media/visual media with narration) without taking into consideration the perspective. Unless we’ve got an omniscient perspective we need to take into account that our narrator might, simply put, be wrong (and even then, omniscient unreliable narrators are a popular choice). Often I see readers taking a characters’ thoughts - and words - at face value, which is understandable given that we’re meant to emotionally connect with them, but we have to keep in mind that this is their interpretation of events. We see the story through their eyes, how they perceive the world, but their perception of the world may not be accurate or, at the very least, is open to further interpretation. Sometimes this is used in an obvious, plot-driven manner - there’s a surprise twist for the reader, made possible because our protagonist was likewise kept in the dark - but it applies to our reading of more casual interactions too. This is a good example. Just because Velvet says Sun looks “like he couldn’t quite manage to feel bad” doesn’t mean that’s actually how Sun feels. As we’ve just re-established, Velvet is inclined to think the worst of Sun, or at least consider the worst as a distinct possibility. So if we’re asking the question, “Is Velvet’s perspective accurate to reality here?” weighing her previous assumptions against actions like Sun smiling, waving, and asking how she’s doing, AKA caring about her situation… I’d say no, it’s likely not.

At least she doesn’t outright accuse him of anything. Given that he’s not privy to these insulting thoughts, Sun chatters on about the test. He thinks it “isn’t a bad idea” because, as established, a lot of students lost teammates and are having trouble settling into Shade while still trying to live the life they had at Beacon. Changing the teams could be a “chance to really commit to our new school and our training, and learn from one another in a new way.” That’s what I think!

“Right… Or maybe some of us burned bridges with our team and might be looking for an easy way to avoid fixing those relationships.”

Velvet what the actual fuck. Can our cast NOT be assholes for five minutes??

Sun goes red at the accusation and calls her out on being harsh. “Tough love” Velvet calls it. Okay, no. Tough love is reserved for people you’re actually friends with and is meant to have them face a harsh reality they might be avoiding. Sun is avoiding an overt apology with his team, but we (and Velvet) have been given no indication that his thoughts on the test are a smokescreen to hide ulterior motives, which is what she’s talking about here. Sun clearly wants to make up with his team, he’s just struggling to accept what needs to be done to do that. Tough love would have been Velvet encouraging Sun to use this separation to reflect on what his team means to him and then, regardless of whether they end up back together, apologizing for how he unintentionally hurt them. Not… this. Plus, again, Velvet hasn’t exactly been friendly lately. She has little ground for dishing out “tough love.” You need established “love” before the “tough” part.  

In addition, she’s not listening to what Sun’s saying. “If they want us prepared for an attack, breaking up teams sounds counterproductive.” When did Sun mention anything about an attack? That’s your assumption of what’s going down based on the illegal investigation you’ve been assisting with. Sun just said that changing the teams would provide some of them with a much needed clean slate, which is true. Just because that’s not what Velvet needs doesn’t mean it’s not useful for others. As she eventually acknowledges, they can get too comfortable in the roles they’ve been playing.

We get her line about wanting to find Yatsuhashi followed by, “Sun, you do whatever you want. That’s what you’re good at.” Velvet seriously? Then minutes later she’s hoping Sun sticks close to her if he can. Real talk: everyone deserves better than this. ‘Friends’ who constantly act like your presence is a burden, insult you whenever they get the chance, insist such insults are for your benefit (it’s just tough love), but then turn around and play nice when you have something they want... those aren’t friends. Note that Velvet is - both privately and overtly - mean to Sun while he’s just existing in the airbus, going through the same horrible test as her, trying to be nice, and holding an otherwise civil conversation. While trapped on the bus with nowhere to go, Sun is a nuisance despite his best efforts. When the floor suddenly opens up and Velvet is terrified of falling and surviving on her own though, then his presence is desirable. That’s not friendship and in another story I’d praise the author(s) for writing a compelling move from shaky acquaintances to a strong bond… but I’m honestly not sure that the relationship (any of them, really) will improve. Far as I can gather, Myers thinks this is friendship.

So Velvet accuses Sun of always and forever hurting others in his pursuit of doing what pleases him (after checking in on Velvet… literally minutes ago…) which is right around when Scarlet decides to make himself known. He agrees with Sun’s belief that this test will be harder than they assume: “I think you’re right… For a change.” Everything comes with a caveat. Apparently Scarlet has been listening in the whole time, but somehow manages to turn that into an insult as well with “I’ve been standing five feet away. Maybe I’m ready for a new team, too.” Wait, is the implication that Scarlet is further annoyed because Sun didn’t notice him? Do you all have ANY idea how many times a friend has stood right next to me and I didn’t notice them because I was caught up in something like work, a show… a conversation? I’m oblivious af. I get that Sun has things to make up for but at the very least these characters could keep their criticisms to what he’s actually done wrong, not crazy reaches like, ‘Sun probably abandoned his team when everyone was separated’ or ‘Sun was busy talking to Velvet and didn’t notice me eavesdropping, so I guess I don’t mean much to him, huh.’ I’m constantly torn between the presumed realism of this writing - people are unfair in their criticisms, teens do hold unsubstantiated grudges - and acknowledging that Myers seems to have felt confident writing (1) personality and just gave it to everyone. Velvet privately becomes as critical as Coco, who is as vocal as Fox, who agrees with Yatsuhashi, who echoes Sun’s team, and Sun himself often throws that attitude right back. Round and round we go. 

As one might imagine, the three begin theorizing about what the test itself will be like. Usually Shade sets up initiation just like this. Students are transported in windowless airbuses, dumped in the desert, and told to find their way home. I’m interested in the bit about how teams are made up not only based on arrival, but also “the manner in which [the students] survived.” It definitely lends support to the assumption I’ve always had that the teams can really be random. At least not entirely. There’s strategy on the part of the instructors, thinking through aspects like, ‘Well, these two students used their wits in this manner so they’d pair together nicely.’ Or the reverse, ‘Put together the strategist with the student in love with blunt force, let them balance each other out.’ I certainly don’t think that Ozpin formed teams based solely on who ran into each other first. Not only do we have agency on the part of the students (Weiss leaves Ruby, then Jaune, then goes back to Ruby), as well as the fact that two sets of partners had to be paired together someway, but Ozpin was also carefully watching their whole performance. If the only thing that mattered was getting back to Beacon with a chess piece, why bother examining their choices? Shade appears to employ a similar setup of careful decisions portrayed as randomness, which would make sense given that Ozpin set up these schools. Though all the headmasters may not realize it (is Theodore a part of the inner circle?), or perhaps don’t agree with his methods overall, Ozpin’s influence is undeniably evident in each institution we’ve seen. 

The only difference between normal initiation and this test seems to be that the students have to find a gold figurine this time around. Though as our trio points out, there’s likely to be other differences as well, otherwise the original Shade students would have a pretty significant advantage. 

During all this Velvet remanences about Beacon’s initiation and we learn that Ozpin does, apparently, use the whole ‘Throw you into the woods where you’ll find some relic’ setup each year, as Velvet remembers being “thrown into the air” during hers. She also hits on another concern that hadn’t crossed my mind until now: what if a team includes a new student alongside the “more vocal in harassing recruits from Beacon and Haven?” It might do the Shade students some good to get to know the newcomers, but it’s not the newcomers’ responsibility to teach them some basic respect and kindness. 

During all this Rumpole, via a screen, has been explaining how the test will go down. Her little info session concludes with her telling them to “Prepare for drop-off… See you back home soon.” I really like that she used the term “home” here. It says something about how she views the school and her students’ place in it, despite the tough attitude and tougher culture of Vacuo.

Turns out, when Rumpole said drop-off she meant that literally. The floor opens up and we get a mix of some students panicking while others just happily jump out. 

Yeet. 

Like I said, Ozpin’s influence. 

I didn’t understand the panic initially - aren’t landing strategies a basic part of huntsmen training, something everyone (except Jaune) is expected to know coming into a school? Isn’t it at least partway through the year when everyone, even firsties, has had practice at this? - until I remembered Rumpole’s comment about how she hoped everyone remembered to bring their weapons this morning.

…that’s one hell of a lesson. Let’s break this down for a second. Yes, everyone at Shade is expected to carry their weapons at all times, but the meeting that started all this was early in the morning and, far as I can tell, entirely unexpected. ‘Supposed to’ is not the same thing as ‘will,’ especially when one is dealing with college-equivalent students who are still figuring expectations out. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone did leave their weapon behind. So now what? These buses are thousands of feet in the air, dropping students randomly as they jump/fall. If a student did need help how in the world would a professor assist them? Do they just expect other students to help like Pyrrha did for Jaune? It’s possible given that in a moment Octavia will help Velvet despite seeming to dislike her... but that’s not something I’d want to bank on. Whether a student forgot their weapon or has a weapon unsuited to a landing strategy, they’re going to die from this fall. Yeah, yeah, the test is supposed to be deadly, but what’s there to learn then? You’re dead! The lesson ‘Don’t forget your weapon’ or ‘Find a weapon more suited to landing strategies’ will never stick unless there are contingency plans in place to ensure that students survive their first mistakes. 

It just all seems kind of flimsy, like everything works out because the plot says it must, not because I believe this in-world setup is geared towards keeping students alive and teaching them how to survive this world. (The reverse of the story conveniently not killing civilians off during a major grimm attack.) If landing strategies are so crucial to a huntsmen’s work - and we see them a lot - why are students allowed to have weapons like Yatsuhashi’s Fulcrum that, far as I can see, provide you with no way of slowing your descent? What if you don’t have a suitable semblance? Or it hasn’t been unlocked yet? What if your weapon would work, theoretically, but you haven’t taken any pictures of other suitable weapons lately (Velvet)? What if you never figure out that there are parachutes on the ship? Unless the instructors have a secret way of saving someone from getting splattered, this seems like a test rife with deadly mistakes, not just encounters. Why not teach your students to carry mini high-tech parachutes on their belts, with weapons and semblances as backups? Incorporate Atlas tech into standard schooling, then give us huntsmen who suddenly have it taken away with the embargo, resulting in a lot of problems. I mean, the students are legit scared in this scene, Velvet included. Having them face deadly grimm is one thing, but why test the odds with a thousand foot plunge when there’s absolutely no reason to? Far as I can see, the schooling isn’t built around ensuring they survive a fall like this - nothing like weapon requirements, or carrying additional gear if you semblance is something like Ren’s - which means making the fall a part of the test itself is... not great. 

Which, to be clear, is the fault of the author(s) and how much thought (or not) they’ve put into their fictional school, not the fictional school’s fault because it’s, you know, fictional. Basically, the world building in this series kind of drives me nuts, in case you haven’t noticed lol. 

Velvet does find the parachutes, oh so conveniently, and at least has the decency to give one to Sun. Also yeah, kudos for thinking to search for them in the first place. I do like the ‘survival is the only thing that counts’ theme. Cheating, lying, and the like is great when it’s used because the odds are already stacked against you. We get her agreement to try and stick close because remember, there’s nothing like a dangerous situation to remind you to be decent towards someone else. As Velvet magnanimously thinks, “Being with Sun would be better than being alone.”

Okay. Low bar, but okay. 

So they fall and we get to hear a fair bit about Vacuo’s history based on what Velvet remembers about each landmark from history class. Honestly, I’m impressed at her recall. I wouldn’t be able to dredge up class notes while falling through the air. We get an abandoned city previously hidden by sand and the somewhat confusing sentence, “These were all that was left of the underground mines, the Drylands, the site of the old Paradise Oasis, long since dried up following Dust mining and the Great War.” Are these three separate places among the rock-less area pockmarked with holes? Or is this a single area of underground mines, called the Drylands (for some reason?), that includes the contrasting place called Paradise Oasis? I’m not sure. The takeaway though is that Velvet hopes Coco isn’t heading to that ambiguously named place because she’s incredibly claustrophobic.

What I find the most informative in all this is the description of the quarries as “physical manifestations of the wounds that still ran deep in the people of Vacuo.” The overall issue of outsiders coming into Vacuo, draining it of its resources, and then taking it back to their own kingdoms (while leaving their trash behind) is the sort of theme significant to our own lives and worthy of examination in fiction… Not saying that RWBY necessarily handles this theme well - especially given the messy conflation of that generational trauma and the awful treatment of any ‘outsider’ who wanders into the kingdom - but I do appreciate when I can see the series trying. Even if it fails, effort is (to an extent) still worth acknowledgement.

What I’m less inclined to praise is the strange follow up of “maybe that was why Rumpole was sending students there.” …what does this mean? Velvet just told us the quarries are the “wounds” of Vacuo, so are they being sent there because they’re dangerous? Because huntsmen will somehow fix this?? Neither of these make sense but I literally don’t know what point Myers is trying to make… which happens a lot. Again, there’s a whole lot of wise-sounding statements in this novel that, at the end of the day, mean very little - if anything at all.

Velvet eventually lands, nearly getting pulled into one of the openings when she can’t get out of her parachute. She’s saved at the last moment by Octavia Ember, a member of Team NDGO. You know, “One of the people she least wanted to run into.” We all knew the moment Velvet worried about running into one of the crueler members of Shade that it would happen.

Their conversation is filled with heartfelt gratitude and riveting greetings:

“Thanks?” Velvet said.

“Whatever.” Octavia sheathed her blade and started walking away. That was more like it.

What is wrong with all of these people? My kingdom for a kind, enthusiastic, non-team exchange!

You know the ‘enemies forced to work together’ conflict couldn’t end there though (a trope I normally love and would likely love here except having Octavia be another stereotypical mean girl was the least innovative choice possible). She and Velvet end up heading towards the same quarry, simply because there’s nothing else for miles around. Velvet displays some quick thinking when she explains that the instructors likely hid the relics in there to ensure they weren’t forever hidden under the sand. Velvet, unlike Yatsuhashi, has also realized that there’s more to the test than just their fighting skills. They’ll be graded on everything, “Including how we treat each other.” I’m always appreciative of characters who use their brains as much as their brawns.

Perhaps that not-so-subtle nudge resonated with Octavia because she opens up a bit. By this I mean she moves from “Whatever” to telling Velvet the traumatizing story of how she lost a third of her clan to Blind Worms in one of these quarries. Okay. That’s a complete 180, but I’ll take it. Velvet continues to have supposed insights about the Vacuans like, ‘Maybe they don’t cry because that’s a waste of water?’ and ‘Maybe they hate everyone on principal because of the past?’ and ‘I guess bullying is just something you’re supposed to survive out here’ (um… no.) In Velvet - and Myers’ - defense she acknowledges that none of these explanations excuse their actions… but I’m not so sure it explains them either. A few chapters ago we were hammering home how teens don’t have an emotional connection to their past, despite it not actually being that long ago (recall Coco’s conversation with Rumpole in class), but now we’re supposed to believe that all of these teens reject newcomers because of stuff that happened during a war they weren’t alive for? Also, I’m neither a doctor nor an anthropologist, but the concept of a desert people refusing to cry because it’s a waste of water - especially in an otherwise advanced civilization - seems suspect. I can buy someone being unable to cry because they’re currently dehydrated, but a whole culture denying themselves this outlet when most of them don’t actually lack water anymore is odd.

Granted, culture isn’t always logical. Case in point: memes. So let’s give that a pass. 

However, we’ve still got the issue of continuity across paragraphs. First Velvet is smug because she’s a better climber than Octavia. Then Octavia is ahead and supposedly annoyed that Velvet was slowing her down. It’s unclear when, or if, they’ve finished climbing at this point and a second later Octavia is climbing a tree - why didn’t Velvet do that? Really, I lay little blips like this at the feet of the editors, not the author(s), simply because as an author I know precisely how easy it is to lose track of every detail you’ve introduced. It becomes obvious to the reader when things don’t quite align, but it will often go unnoticed by the writer - like typos. (RIP my own work.) Which is why you need that second perspective to not just catch the big mistakes, but tweak all the smaller ones too. RWBY is now a part of WarnerMedia and Before the Dawn was published by Scholastic. There’s a standard here I don’t think either is meeting.

As said previously though, Octavia climbs a tree because Velvet - with faunus eyes - spotted a trinket the others had missed. Octavia falls, Velvet catches her, and a whole swarm of Ravagers show up, which seem to be a bat-like grimm. Nice. My gothic, vampire, Stellaluna loving ass can get behind that. 

Behold: my childhood.

They make a run for it and we - finally - get some solidarity as Octavia admits that the relic is technically Velvet’s and Velvet wonders in turn if they can share it. I offered my kingdom for a kind exchange and I got it! Hurray! More importantly, apparently that is an option because the airbus coordinates have shown up on both their scrolls. I’m not going to pretend that I understand how that tech works, but that’s a level of world building we don’t actually need. Not unless the hypothetical of students piggybacking on another’s relic is a part of the evaluation. 

I love that Velvet used her camera flash to scare off the Ravager in their way. That’s a fantastic twist on the ‘Velvet will use her semblance and impress Octavia’ expectation as well as a great way to demonstrate that she is a formidable fighter, capable of paying attention to her situation/surroundings and responding accordingly.

There are more Ravagers though, incoming Blind Worms, an avalanche… and the airbus. A narrow escape indeed. Octavia drops that attention-catching, “Thank the Brothers” as they reach safety.

Going back to my earlier point about Shade seeming happy to kill its kids, apparently Velvet and Octavia were the last to reach the bus and Sun told the pilot to wait. That says good things about Sun, but horrible things about the test. If Sun hadn’t insisted on staying would Octavia and Velvet have had a way out? Why in the world wasn’t the pilot told to wait longer?? The whole timeline is confusing, with Sun and Velvet leaving the airship only a short time after everyone else, but it looks like the whole group was way ahead of them (the quarry is empty of both relics and people by the time they arrive), except Sun managed to get super far ahead of Velvet somehow, and their pilot was apparently working under an unspoken deadline… I’m just taking information at face value because if you try to piece it all together, good luck.

Also sorry, but I straight up laughed at Sun’s “You woke up the Ravagers. And you lived to tell the tale.” That is so unnecessarily dramatic. Oh no. Not the Ravagers. Literally the first thing I thought of was some B horror movie like

Coming only to a streaming service near your couch because we’re still living through a pandemic. Wear your masks, friends!

Back to this very entertaining reaction. Sun, you and Velvet have both taken out Atlesian knights, you fought a gigantic sea monster with Blake, and Velvet just bypassed a nest of Ravagers with a simple bright light. If RWBY is going to randomly try and make the grimm threatening again, do it with stuff that actually reads as a significant threat to these fighters. After you’ve got your first years blasting through (Yang) and riding (Nora) bear grimm at initiation, a couple of bat grimm just doesn’t cut it. 

Moving on, Velvet’s iffy perspective rears its head once more as she thinks, “What if Sun had passed by the trinket in the tree, knowing it would be too dangerous to retrieve it? She and Octavia had not had that luxury.”

There’s a lot wrong with this theory: 

How do you know Sun has better vision, even as a fellow faunus? As Volume 7’s Tyrian attack brought to the surface, supposedly not every faunus has that advantage.

Velvet straight up says that she wasn’t able to see the Ravagers, otherwise she would have warned Octavia about them. The whole point is that they startled her and she fell. So what, Sun not only has faunus vision but better than Velvet’s? (Do monkeys have better vision than rabbits? I have no idea, but this is the kind of stuff I would google if I wanted to potentially draw attention to it in my book). 

If that trinket was too dangerous to retrieve, why did the instructors put it there in the first place? Fox mentioned things being unfair with his lack of sight, but that’s a pretty big difference: easy grabs in a supposedly abandoned quarry vs. a grab that wakes up the whole nest of grimm.

“She and Octavia had not had that luxury” why does this sound like another dig at Sun? Like it’s worth criticizing that he… got there first? Got lucky with the relics closer to the floor? Probably because everything is a dig at Sun in this book, including Velvet’s surprise that he might have “respect in his eyes.” Velvet! He was just asking about you, made the bus wait, and has always worn his heart on his sleeve! Sun’s respect/care is not in question, only how he chooses (at times) to display it.

Not that the story seems to get that. We can’t work through Sun’s questionable choices if we’re stuck in this never ending loop of ‘He’s so annoying/incompetent/willfully cruel’ into ‘Hark! is that a positive trait I see?’ and then back to ‘Never mind he’s awful.’ Maybe Velvet’s pride at his reaction to the Ravagers will finally move things forward.

Which is where we leave off. The airbus scares off the other Ravagers with its guns, the group heads back towards Shade (or a second part of the test? That did feel too much like a normal initiation to be fair), and Velvet ends with the equally dramatic line, “The initiation ritual had been hard and almost deadly, and even worse was yet to come: the assignment of the new teams.”

I have to say though, that is the most teen-accurate thought I’ve seen so far. An 18 year old would be more scared of their team social life than getting eaten by a monster lol.

On that note, drop a comment or an ask if you feel like being social yourself and I’ll see you during the next burst of NaNoWriMo energy! 💜

[ Ko-Fi ]

[hamnickels]

Hi, you seem nice and I like your theories and rants. Most people just post how angry they are with a member of the SMP, or are defending one and putting down the other, so I'm glad that you list everything out and comment on things like this. I find it interesting that if you look at one member's stream, everything makes sense in their point of view. Anyway, how do you think Dream will meet his downfall?

One of the things that I think is the most interesting but also cause the most problematic fan behavior is the different perspectives provided by the nature of how the SMP plot is shown to us. I might make another post about that because I think it’s fascinating.

Essentially, it allows for almost all of the characters to be morally gray, which is fantastic! But unfortunately I think it leads a lot of the fandom to only look at that one perspective of whoever they watch and not understand the perspective of others :( and be angry. Basically it leads to an interesting lack of information among fans unless you go out of your way to learn the other perspectives.  

Either way, I think it’s an interesting twist on conventional media and makes the plot exponentially more fascinating to me. 

Now, this question about Dream is really hard to answer right now.

In my head I can only think of a few ways this can go: 

1. If Tubbo agrees to exile Tommy, which honestly might be the best answer/most likely right now, I think that leads to a slight cooling of tension between L’Manberg and Dream (for now), and would probably drive the plot more towards Tommy trying to get his discs back and god I am hoping so hard for a Techno Tommy team up in this scenario. 

Tommy being exiled kind of gives him what he wanted in the first place when he declined the presidency, which is a chance to fight for his discs without it reflecting on L’Manberg. That’s kind of why I refer to this as a Tommy villain arc, because then he could kind of go off on a quest for his discs by whatever means necessary. 

This path also takes away a lot of Dream’s power over Tommy. His influence on Tommy right now is mostly stemming from the fact that he both has Tommy’s discs AND can threaten L’Manberg. If Tommy stops caring about L’Manberg, which is becoming more and more of a possibility, there’s nothing to stop Tommy from doing what he has to in order to get the discs back. 

Tommy has said he doesn’t want to destroy L’Manberg or be a villain, but I think this path kind of leads everyone else to consider him a villain despite a lack of him doing anything really too “villainous” so far. I don’t really think this makes him a villain, at least from his perspective, because he just wants his rightful property back (although that depends on how far he would take it) 

I’m not too sure where this would lead but it would probably end up in 2 plotlines that are interconnected with Dream vs. Tommy (+Techno?) vs. L’Manberg. I think this would be a fun way to change up the current Tubbo and Tommy vs. Dream dynamic, and a Tommy Techno team seems the most likely way for Dream to end up losing this fight, as he would also have to fight L’Manberg if he wants his land back, and I think Tommy could convince Techno that Dream is a bigger threat to his desire for anarchy right now than L’Manberg. Assuming of course he doesn’t try to fight L’Manberg first out of spite because they kick him out. I don’t think he turns on them that much though.

2. If Tubbo gives Dream the discs. This seems EXTREMELY unlikely in my opinion, and would definitely lead to a huge rift between Tommy and Tubbo. This would probably lead to Tommy leaving voluntarily? THIS could be the scenario where Tommy turns on L’Manberg? I’m not even sure where this storyline would go it seems so unlikely. Something in my brain is telling me that could eventually lead to Tommy making some kind of deal with Dream against L’Manberg? Not sure, it remains to be seen if Tommy cares more about his discs or L’Manberg. It seems like the answer is discs right now, but it’s seemed that way before and he gave them up for L’Manberg. I don’t think this path even leads to Dream’s downfall at all, and the plot would be more focused on Tommy. Like I said, he mentioned he didn’t want to be a villain though, so I think this would be fascinating but unlikely. 

3. If Tubbo refuses Dream, then they’re probably just heading for straight up war. Again. I think this is unlikely, but possible. I really doubt Tubbo is looking for another war right now (in character, irl it would be great for content). If it does happen, then that could lead to Dream’s downfall through the war. I’m not sure which side would win if they fought right now. Dream seems scary but he wins a lot of wars via traitors and without that I’m not sure what would go down. Plus that would still leave Techno out there somewhere. 

I don’t know if this really answers your question because honestly I’m not really sure. Dream holds a lot of power right now. This is complicated by his power over Tommy specifically with the discs, versus his power just as a strong minecraft player and controller of the Dream SMP faction. 

Honestly, I think it depends on their future plans for the SMP if he’s actually defeated by the end of this season or not. Plus we do still have Techno and the Badlands out there, both of which are kind of being ignored. I would love it if they came into play. Additionally, I totally forgot about a possible fundywastaken/dreamnotfound angst storyline, which if it goes a certain way, could cause Fundy to go on his own arc and get involved. 

There’s a lot of paths this can take! I’m very hyped for it either way, after last season I trust them to make this good (even with wilbur not writing).

[heat0death0of0the0universe]

i gotta talk about Narrative Telephone

I. Fucking. Love. It.

when my extreme dislike of second-hand embarrassment takes a loud backseat i can fin so much that i love about it. 

but what i love most isn't the humor. or even the continued critical role content. no, i love the allegory and the metaphor of the whole concept. 

all my life i loved the concept of watching time move forward. seeing evolution, hearing language change, watching cultures rise and fall. but what i dont like is time and the fact that im along for the ride. id rather watch evolution, not be step 48801 of a process with no end. and sadly most media and general public doesn't like watching time change. no one wants too see how the English language evolves with a rise in Spanish speaking folks and pop culture creating new idioms and words. everyone would much rather watch something with the same animals with the same people walking the same cities speaking the same language, albeit maybe with a few more neon lights and holograms to make you feel like its in some vague ~future~. but narrative telephone gives me the change i like to see. i can finally feel like im watching a story going through the times and changes of a culture.

im gonna need to explain a little more. what better way than to show off all the current episodes.

episode one is simple, pumat and the big bad wolf. the sorry starts with pumat on a stroll through the woods. he finds a talking wolf and they fight. the story ends with the pumat eating a nice mushroom and wolf stew. but the changes to the story are what get to me. i love ashley, trust me i really do. but in this context, she’s basically the dark ages. everything crumbles and the story follows in the crash. this point is when the more brothers grimm tales and nonsense folklore are added in. people dont like the night, so the seen changes to match. suddenly the wolf not only speaks, but has a beak! the fighting through being somewhat vague in the original story now is lost to time and is none existent. taliesin builds off it, changing it ever so slightly from a garbled to a more of a warning story. a story that reflects a change in a cultures thoughts on the woods. when everything was all writings and giant building the woods where just a place to rule over and harvest, but after the fall now its returned to the unexplored. the place of fey and monsters that should never be explored at night. marisha adds winter and gives it just the smallest bit of added context. a man in the woods during night before might have been seen as mad or crazy, but a man scrounging for some mushrooms in a dead forest in winter isnt tempting fate, he’s struggling to live. a shift in view also makes it so that the beaked magic wolf is just as weakened by the winter, and is easily turned away by just a voice. sam is..something. if ashley is the dark ages than id say sam is like a renaissance. specifically a very drunk renaissance. the kingdom was risen and is filled with hubris and pride.its gained a very “man falls for his hubris” greek vibe to it.  pumat has gone from scavenging to walking unbothered by cold dead winter. the kingdom has lost its enjoyment of strange creatures, monsters are still around in legend, but most have been replaced with magical people, with a clear rise in “person in an animals skin” tropes. the original fight has been mostly lost, now the story is that of a magic hunter who eyes the mushrooms taken by pumat and gives a chuckle and permission to continue exploring the woods unimpeded. pumat eats just the mushrooms, which now have gained the lupine taste, and the vague description of “he became something more” giving the idea of some sort of curse for his nature. Laura has added back the wolfs anger, but removed the suspicion of pumat. the curse is still in the end of the story though. this could be a change into more of a forbidden fruit trope. because pumat still trusted strange mushrooms in a dead forest with a magic guardian, he paid the price. travis is a sort of close to modernization of the story. its the point in time when its nonsensical nature and magic was viewed as weird and convoluted.  similar to when we look at older myths with long intricate plans and think “nice story, but poor pacing”. liam goes for the “granddad telling stories by the fire” vibe. the tale has died down and is being co-opted for new use. now the rather dark tale has turned into more of a children's storybook with messages like not to trust strangers and to not do drugs being tagged on. 

ep. 2: jesters ability to say 1000 words a second. pickadors plume is a story in a story. a story about gaining a treasure through a complex and detailed series of events  with lots of loaded lore about the world with no clear description of what the treasure truly is. liam is the first few generations. the generation close enough to the original to try and remember, but not enough to keep every detail. the best example is of the ending, where the treasure should be. humans love rewards, so a story with a vague reward isnt enough for people. in liams generation transition to the griffon, travel, and fruit specifically being the treasure begins to lay its foundations. since this is already so long i will also mention that the transition from stone shaped like a heart ---to----> stone shaped like a hut could be an example of a changing dialect and language. sam, travis, and marisha are clear evidence of a shift in culture. jesters complete backstory wasnt introduced till now. and in it comes the cultures want to explain this event. humans love simplifying, but we also love to describe things. if we want to, we will add words just as much as we remove them. the dialect changes just as much. the new word of “schtupping." has either replaced or become a synonym of the word fucking, the name of the plum as even changed too. the treasure has gone from “lost to time” to “there is treasure, i just wont name it”. but fret not, for the mystery aspect is still in the story. for now everything will disappear like it never happened, or did it? though travis specifically specifies that you keep the treasure. humans love rewards, it was gonna come back eventually. matt is the sorta an enlightening moment in the society. at the very least its the point in time where people who know geography and history say “wait, that layout doesnt make any sense”. taelisan and ashley are the beginning of the end. the slow fall into the dark ages. the story becomes vague and small. slowly becoming more of a statement and less of a story. the society is forgetting large chunks and its bleeding out into other legends. there maybe a sort of thanksgiving/ christmas sort of event spawned from or because of the myth, but the story itself isnt going to live every far (hence why its ending in a dark age and not somewhen else)

Ep. 3: boy do humans enjoy rich’s, love, and drama. sam’s story comes from a society that warns against wanting what you wish for without expecting some strings attached and features a evil ruler to boot, just so they can date the legend. the story of a delivery boy who invents a pair of glasses to see through objects and uses them to win rewards and gives them all to a rich woman that only loves him for the money, and really loves the prince. matt changes the story so the two are already in love. but also changed it so that it was the greed of the prince and the wife that lead to the heartbreak rather than the delivery boys naivety. travis changes delivery boy from a clever inventor to just already owning the glasses. both matt and travis with there respective fictional cultures are showing how humans like to remember the stuff they liked in a story, so when they forget when something specifically came in, they just fill in the blank and assume its always been there. travis specificaly begins the stories slow march to a less heartbreaking story by adding a joke to help give the couple a more flushed out relationship. this is also the shift in cultural perspective. the antagonist began his life as a evil prince, but now is simply a rotten neighbor. this could mean the myth was co-opted to fit a better role, possibly after the removal of monarchy or just of a specific bloodline.the rich wife becomes just the wife, no money involved. this is also the beginning of what a full fledged re-write of the story. now the delivery man has gone from giving up to still being in love with the wife and now even standing up for himself. (possibly a mix of when the story was of a prince and used to promote the common folk to rise up against the kings, leading to the theory of a removal of the crown). ashely...oh ashely. this moment in history atleast solidifies the love between them, and even brings back delivery husbands inventor skills. liam is the slow clawing climb back up out of the collapse. he’s still very much in the collapse of the kingdom. but aleast its just before when begin to solidify into the new meta of the era. laura and taelisin’s era is a complete re-write after the collapse of the society. the focus has moved to more of a folk-hero style legend about rising above through theft and cheating (could mean that after the collapse the culture around theft changed from crime to fighting to survive. the antagonist has really changed from being the bad guy to just in the love triangle. the society seems to agree with every polyamourous person when we all say “this how drama triangle could have been avoided if you guys all just got together”. marisha’s only real change a more modernization from “specticals” to “goggles” and that the culture either wants to make half-orcs feel more inclusive or just really dont like goliaths and changed it. 

ep. 4: deargodfinallyigottheneedtowritethisoutofmysystemsoletsspeedrunthisshit. liams story is an analogy for the horrors, pointlessness, and sacrifics of war. but over time the story shifts from a “we did this to ourselves” narrative to a “an outside force did this to use”. this shifts the goal from a need for peace to a need to protect everyone for the sake of the many. ill write more later but dear god i my hand might fall off soon

[mobius-prime]

273. Sonic the Hedgehog #200

Turn About is Fair Play

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Matt Herms

Welcome to the two-hundredth issue of the Archie Sonic preboot! It's another big milestone issue, but unfortunately, compared to some of the others it's a little… light on content, if you will. Most of it consists of pages and pages of fighting, some of it with very little dialogue other than "Ugh!" and "Oof!" and "Argh!" It honestly reminds me in a way of those old, early-era issues that were mostly just Sonic and Knuckles beating the crap out of each other in various locales with a few pages before and after to explain why they'd decided to get into a tussle this time - only now, the big fight is between Sonic and, of course, Eggman.

Right off the bat, Eggman makes kind of a weird comment, claiming that Sonic has been a thorn in his side for "fifteen years and more." I say it's weird because no matter how you look at the timeline, it doesn’t really seem to match up. It can't be referring to Sonic's age, because Sonic is seventeen here, and he certainly didn't start fighting Eggman when he was two - the coup hadn't even happened at that point. And it can't be referring to how long the war has been going on for similar reasons. Sonic's been actively carrying on the fight against Eggman and his predecessor for about a decade now, assuming that he and the others formed the core Freedom Fighter group when he was around seven, but that still leaves several years unaccounted for. The only thing I can think of to make this comment make sense is that Eggman is specifically thinking about his previous war with the Sonic of his home zone. We know that his history was virtually identical to Sonic Prime's up until the events of Endgame, during which he roboticized himself to avoid losing outright. We can assume the fight went on a couple more years from there, and after his long stint in space as a computer program (anyone ever think about how weird Archie Sonic lore is) Eggman has been waging war anew against the Prime Zone's Freedom Fighters, and we can assume this has gone on for nearly two years at this point as well considering Sonic's year in space. I suppose, considering all that, that it could technically add up to fifteen years, but it's still a weird comment to make. Then again, we know that Eggman has been kind of losing it lately, and Sonic's careless and mocking attitude certainly doesn't help.

As their battle begins, Sonic smugly begins checking off the list of every way Eggman has failed to keep his empire in order - how "a group of kids with no real training" have continuously thwarted him in every way, how his failures always translate directly into wins for the heroes, and how even in the times he has won, such as at Knothole, it's been temporary at best, with the heroes coming out even stronger on the other side. Eggman sputters in a fury as Sonic continues to list off his failures, how he doesn't even control nearly as much of the world as he claims and that even in the places he does control the people hate him and want him gone, and how in the end, Sonic is confident he can beat him again just like always. What follows is what I mentioned before, just pages and pages of fighting as Sonic continues to trash the Egg Spider and Eggman grows more and more apoplectic and incoherent until he's reduced to screaming about how much he hates Sonic. After a good bit of bashing and spindashing, the Egg Spider is finally reduced to scrap, and Sonic, feeling quite pleased with the way their final battle has gone, strikes a nice victory pose.

And then… this happens.

Yikes. We knew that Eggman was slowly losing his grip on reality, but this is just downright disturbing. Sally tries to report to Sonic on the team's success and the Legion's retreat, but finds herself distracted by Eggman's gibbering tantrum, asking Sonic what the hell he did to him. Sonic is equally at a loss to explain what's going on, but Snively's voice interrupts the both of them, grimly informing them that this final defeat has completely broken his uncle's mind in half.

I'll admit, the first time I read this I did not see this coming despite the lead-up - it almost seemed like too much, like something of this caliber wouldn't make it into a comic for kids (well, more like teens at this point - I feel like the storylines have long since gone beyond being for young children). And yet in the end, I feel like that's exactly why Ian is so beloved as the head writer - he was willing to take things seriously, include real stakes for the characters and write in plot developments like this that would completely change the status quo. Eggman has been consistently losing his way through every Sonic game, comic, anime, and every other piece of media for decades now, and at some point, in some canon, it was liable to break him entirely. Just, no one ever expected it to be this dramatic.

Everyone else bursts into the room, and they begin to celebrate wildly as they realize the war is over, though Sonic stands amid the chaos with a look of blank disappointment on his face. Sally recovers fairly quickly and begins crying from happiness, using Nicole's handheld to broadcast the message of their victory to the entirety of New Mobotropolis, where the citizens are celebrating wildly in the streets. As they make their way back out of the Eggdome, Tails and Amy excitedly get Sonic to recount the battle to them, but he's less than enthusiastic, missing his usual dramatic flair. When questioned on his attitude, or lack thereof, he frowns and claims that he's merely tired after the fight, which they accept without question.

I'm not surprised Sonic doesn't feel right about all this. I'm sure he thought the finale to the big showdown was going to be, well, epic, with Eggman angrily sputtering about how he'll get him next time only to have his ego taken down a notch by Sally's end-of-the-war speech. It can't feel at all good to beat your enemy so hard that he literally goes insane, even if he is a genocidal maniac. After all, Sonic isn't cruel - he doesn't fight for the express purpose of torturing Eggman, he fights to protect the people and the world he loves. Causing such extreme mental anguish just isn't something he's interested in, and yet his actions have led to it anyway, causing some serious emotional conflict for him. But hey, he's Sonic, and in the end he's able to pick up and carry on, satisfied that in the long run he's done the right thing. And hey, it is the end of the war! Time to enjoy, for the second time, a new era of peace and prosperity with no more dire threats to the world and his family and friends' safety! Right? R…right?

Of course not! Where would we be if there was no more conflict in this comic?! I mean, granted, there was an entire era in the past dealing with precisely that - how child soldiers deal with trying to live an ordinary life after fighting an adults' war - but it'd be kinda weird to try to just rehash all that a second time over. Plus, Sonic has grown up since then - I feel like if the story truly did end here and there were no more villains to face, Sonic would ultimately be able to adjust and live a happy and fulfilling life without all the constant hero work to keep him busy. But as it is, there is another situation brewing - don't tell me you forgot about Snively's little online romance! After securing Eggman in a straightjacket and padded cell within the Eggdome, Snively makes his way to the landing pad on top of the Eggdome, ordering all the Legion's members to meet him up there. He's ready to introduce them all to their new leader, who will be taking over the running of the Eggman Empire now that its namesake is, ahem, indisposed. And this new ruler just so happens to be…

T-the Iron Queen? You mean that one-off character from waaayyy back in StH#60? Yeah, see, I did hint at this back in my review of that issue. I think I've mentioned it before, but Ian is very fond of bringing back old, forgotten characters and concepts from the earliest days of the comic and breathing new life into them, finding ways to weave them back into the story to become much more interesting than they had been before. The Iron Queen, here, is a technomancer, and quite power-hungry (and apparently has a thing for tiny gremlin men, despite being married to a gigantic Mobian bull). I will admit that she's not my favorite villain of the series, but she's not a bad one at all, and indeed it's her arrival that catapults us out of the sixth era and into the seventh, as we get ready to face down the menace of her Iron Dominion! Man, so much for peace. Sonic never does get a break, does he?

[savrenim]

Hey mx savrenim its me again and I'm wondering: how you maintain tension in a story with characters with future vision? Especially in a story with no guaranteed future, where seers can ensure the best possible future for themselves

oooooh v v good question, once more under the cut

so there are a lot lot LOT of ways to do this that all depend on the tone that you want your story to go for, and Imma reference a few pieces of media that do this in various ways, but this is pretty much a subset of the question “how do you maintain tension in your story when your character is very overpowered”

1. Just very realistically explore that “in theory able to do things perfectly” and “in practice able to do things perfectly” are very very different things.  Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri had pretty much someone with Seer-like capabilities (namely, the ability to loop back I thiiiink as far as they wanted in time?) that they could use to make sure they always said the right thing, got the right answers on tests, etc etc, and it just.... didn’t work out for them perfectly. Because perfect knowledge didn’t fix everything. If you know how every single play is going to work idk in a baseball game, that gives you an edge, but it doesn’t actually mean you win the game unless you are good enough at baseball to hit that ball and run those bases

In that case, the more effective the Seer wants to be, the more they have to actually train the skills that they care about, so that they can carry out the actions physically that lead to their ideal future. And building physical skills is hard and takes work and practice, and anything you have to work to get better at to reach a goal is the starting point of tension. 

Also to continue the sports metaphor, having perfect knowledge of a baseball game and even being the best player in the world doesn’t guarantee you a win because you cannot play every single position, there are other people on the team who are going to be doing actions that at most can have secondhand versions of your knowledge. Trying to manage the human aspect leads to human error. So maybe there is tension because the Seer aggressively self-isolates so that Other People Will Not Fail Them and tension comes from interacting with other people they have extreme trust issues. Maybe the tension comes from them playing puppetmaster and trying to figure out which people they are willing to sacrifice for their goals, which people will fail them and which people they can and should hold onto, and from nobody really trusting them because everyone is well aware that the puppetmaster is willing to make sacrifices.

And finally -- just knowing the future doesn’t mean you can fix it. I don’t know about you, but even if I had perfect foreknowledge of the future, I would not be truly happy just personally thriving as idk rich and a famous mathematician and physicist and married to my fiance and maybe the books that I want to be published published and enough money to give to all my friends too and maybe can we have warp drives I want to go to space and inventing some solid if not immortality-tech then life-extension tech would be cool -- which, like, is everything I could personally wish for from life and more -- but in the world that we have? like, climate change SUCKS. fascism SUCKS. racism SUCKS. sexism and homophobia and poverty and class wars disguised as generational wars and all of the existing structures that reinforce all of these things SUCK. and even personally having perfect foreknowledge of the future enough to either start with or build up a bunch of political power and money, to try to change any of that would mean going against incredibly entrenched institutions that I honestly have no idea how effective one person could be at changing. Like if B*zos suddenly decided “wait let’s save the world and make a socialist utopia” do you actually think he would succeed? or even get very far? even applying every single resource he commands? or would he just.... lose a lot of his money and power trying to do that and then someone else becomes the richest person in the world who does want to maintain the system. because a lot of that power are things that do not exist, like stocks, it’s imaginary money that the moment you stop playing the game you get kicked out of the game and maybe you can make tiny changes but the game itself doesn’t stop

so baaaasically consider making your Seer a radical anarchist or at least someone who cares about tackling large-scale problems that one individual will never be able to solve, to play the “well if a very powerful individual had a single-minded focus on trying to fight these things could we at least get further than every single powerful person wanting to screw us over or just not caring?” game -- that creates tension because global problems can only be solved by global and communal actions, and one individual, no matter how perfectly they can see the future, cannot do that on their own

2. “Psychic powers don’t make you popular.” This is my obligatory “I just rewatched Mob Psycho 100 and am obsessed with it seriously consider watching it if you haven’t.” I know I keep bringing up MP100 but hear me out my favorite media is where the main character is stupidly overpowered so I don’t have to be stressed at all consuming it and MP100 maybe is the most touching but also well thought out and interestingly plotted version of that I’ve ever seen  But the basic premise of Mob Psycho 100 is that the main character, Mob, is a middle schooler with the most powerful psychic abilities in the world. The tension comes from: (1) Mob is not in total control over his powers and feels really really bad when he loses control and for example uses his powers against another person even in self-defense because that’s a Rule he made for himself that he really doesn’t want to cross ever. Which with a Seer, maybe you have a Seer that Cares Deeply About Other People’s Privacy, or who Cares Deeply About Having Real Relationships That They Do Not Manipulate, or who Cares Deeply About Their Achievements Being Their Own and so they don’t use their powers in everyday life out of moral considerations, except sometimes gods in stressful situations you just want everything to be okay so the tension of “do I fix this right now or is this crossing a line” drives your story. (2) because Mob isn’t using his powers in everyday life, while he is having these giant badass psychic battles with ghosts and evil psychics as a part-time job after school and yeah yeah you know he’s going to win, the tension and growth in the story comes from the gains that he is making in his personal life of, like, “oh he made a friend!!!!! oh he stood up for himself even though that’s really hard for him and he set a boundary!!!! oh he’s working really really hard towards his goal of being better at running!!!!! oh look he’s grown so much at episode 1 he didn’t talk to anyone his own age or have anything to do and now he’s doing things for himself!!!” Having your Seer take the ethics of not using seeing into the future to manipulate the people around them really really seriously, working very hard at tiny life things and then being a complete fucking badass that is putting down world-threatening threats as hobby that they kind of don’t view as that important in defining them as a person or defining their accomplishments or how they feel about themselves means that it doesn’t matter how overpowered they are in terms of their abilities, your audience will care and be invested in the tiny life accomplishments that they are working so hard to do on their own, and will be proud of their personal growth.

3. Blind Spots. Exactly what it sounds like, can your Seer really see everything? Perfectly? And if they do see everything do they know the exact effect that acting differently will cause? Or are they limited visions -- they only come at certain times, they only are about very specific things, the Seer cannot control when they happen, etc. The more specific and limited your visions are, the harder they have to actually work to figure out how to interpret them and best play the cards that they have, so maybe finding that perfect happy life isn’t actually all that easy. 

Alternatively, your Seer can only see the natural future, what would happen if they do not change their actions. If they change their actions, they can’t re-glimpse the new version, so it’s up to their best guess as to whether or not their plans to make things better will actually make things better. You can create a shit-ton of tension there if only because Plans Never Go Perfectly. Honestly at this point you’re just writing a slightly different version of those “MC is a Super Genius” books that instead of them making good plans because they are a Super Genius, it is good plans because they can see the future, I stand by childhood me that the first three Artemis Fowl books are great and honestly I’m pretty sure the plot wouldn’t really change too much if you added “Artemis can see what future would happen if he didn’t take any actions to interfere” and it would just be another interesting trait that was a part of his planning process.

And even if your Seer can see re-glimpse the new version, they are human. They have only a finite amount of time, and a finite amount of brain space. You don’t need to make the rules of Seer powers be that “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” They can miss things by not thinking something is important and looking in a different direction. You can build up tension around they can only look into the future, not the past, they missed something, and now they don’t know what they missed and what to target to fix it. Or play the finite amount of time bit very hard: if they see the effects of deciding one particular course of action, it takes [x] time for the vision to complete, then they need to try to see the effects of one other particular course of action, and they can only effectively run a handful of simulations -- or even hundreds or thousands, but the answer is still a finite number of dear gods is nature chaotic / the butterfly effect is built into every single physics equation that there is that describes the world -- so tension comes from even if they can check that a plan is good, they still have to come up with a plan to change the future, and can only come up with so many plans in the time that they have. 

4. Existential Crisis. You made Seer powers “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” idk I would find life terribly boring and have an existential crisis over that probably? of am I even human? does anything I do matter? does anyone else exist, really, since I can see and control every aspect of their lives? am I a god? how do I relate to anyone? how do I care about anything? 

In this setup, your main character would not be the Seer, it would be a person or group of people who are either trying to Save The World or Accomplish Something Important or even Accomplish Something Selfish who spend the story trying to befriend the Seer and get their help goddamnit because the moment the Seer is on their side, they win. and then the tension comes from the Seer keeps refusing but is ~slowly opening their heart~, jaded older mentor figure adopts tiny adorable hopeful child is the found family JAM and then your main character finally decides they aren’t getting the help and goes off and does the incredibly dangerous thing alone and the Seer realizes too late that oh nooo my tiny son is in danger and at just the last moment decides fuck it and leaps back into the game to try to help and save them and oh both the glorious drama and all the best tropes all of them seriously if you write this book ping me I’ll read it I’m a sucker for jaded old loner adopts Naive Hopeful Hero Who Is Going To Save The World Even If It Kills Them and jaded old loner just spends the entire time going “oh no. oh no tiny child. oh gods I’m coming out of retirement aren’t I. tiny child please. please have you considered just being chill so that I don’t have to come out of retirement” and then just. the SATISFACTION. when they come in at just the right moment and the tension leading up to it when you didn’t know if they were going to or not. it’s poetry.

This can also pretty easily be done without the Seer having godlike powers, just pretty strong powers-- have them have made their life perfect, found it empty, and fallen into a depressive fugue then use the above plot for the same effect. 

5. Make Them Your Villain. The final way of dealing with making tension and having an overpowered character is, uh..... it’s only no tension when your protagonist doesn’t need to struggle to reach their goals. if the antagonist is walking down easy street that only makes things all the more stressful because how do you beat that? and that is all of the tension in your book: figuring it out.

a subgenre of this is Seer v Seer: the best possible future for one Seer is not necessarily the best possible future for another Seer, so if you have multiple Seers, Seers clashing against other Seers that have the same powers which means their powers aren’t necessarily an advantage is a shit-ton of tension. That is.... pretty much the plot of trash novel? So I’d rather not go into detail about how I personally am doing it, but anytime people who have the same abilities fight, they’re on equal ground, you don’t know who is going to win, so boom, tension.

6. Seers are illegal/ kidnapped by the government the moment they are discovered to work for the government only/ targeted for kidnapping by all sorts of powerful groups, so your Seers need to aggressively hide their powers and the more they use them to make their life perfect, the more in danger they are; even if they can use their abilities to avoid ever being captured, they will be on the run their entire lives if they get found out.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE ANATOMY OF VC BE A STARTUP

If in the next couple years. Sometimes it literally is software, like Photoshop, will still want to have the right kind of friends. Where the work of PR firms.1 Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. One reason Google doesn't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. Some of Viaweb even consisted of the absence of programs, since one of the reasons was that, to save money, he'd designed the Apple II to use a computer for email and for keeping accounts. They want to know what is a momentous one. How do you find them? Suppose it's 1998. The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. Once someone is good at it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Gone with the Wind plus Roots. This is extremely risky, and takes months even if you succeed.2 At most software companies, especially at first. Their answers were remarkably similar. I use constantly?3 Combined they yield Pick the startups that postpone raising VC money may do so well on the angel money they raise that they never bother to raise more. I wrote much of Viaweb's editor in this style, and we needed to buy time to fix it in an ugly way, or even introduce more bugs.4

Historically investors thought it was important for a founder to be an online store builder, but we may change our minds if it looks promising, turn into a company at a pre-money valuation is $1.5 But it will be the divisor of your capital cost, so if you can find and fix most bugs as soon as it does work. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably never will. You may not believe it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.6 But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. Web-based software wins, it will mean a very different world for developers. I think we're just beginning to see its democratizing effects. But this is old news to Lisp programmers. If 98% of the time.7 It might help if they were a race apart.8

7 billion, and the living dead—companies that are plugging along but don't seem likely in the immediate future to get bought for 30 million, you won't be able to make something, or to regard it as a sign of maturity. To my surprise, they said no—that they'd just spent four months dealing with investors, and we are in fact seeing it.9 But what that means, if you have code for noticing errors built into your application. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group. We think of the overall cost of owning it. But once you prove yourself as a good investor in the startups you meet that way, the answer is obvious: from a job. Your housemate was hungry. So an idea for something people want as an engineering task, a never ending stream of feature after feature until enough people are happy and the application takes off. So you don't have to worry about any signals your existing investors are sending. They do not generally get to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is just a guess, but my guess is that the winning model for most applications will be the rule with Web-based application.

It's practically a mantra at YC. You probably need about the amount you invest, this can vary a lot.10 If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.11 Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who works for a big company or a VC fund can only do 2 deals per partner per year. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations.12 In addition to catching bugs, they were moving to a cheaper apartment.13 If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, and try to get included in his syndicates.14 VCs did this to them.15

Most people, most of the surprises. So the previously sharp line between angels and VCs. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors.16 And there is a big motivator.17 These things don't get discovered that often. Then one day we had the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the famous writers. You need investors. The mud flat morphs into a well. When a startup does return to working on the product after a funding round finally closes, it's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

Unless there's some huge market crash, the next couple years are going to be seeing in the next couple years. And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. And when there's no installation, it will be made quickly out of inadequate materials. It's traditional to think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors at some point. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to sell.18 Big companies are biased against new technologies, and to have the computations happening on the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game.19 Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf.

I wouldn't try it myself. This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and partly because they tend to operate in secret. Now you can rent a much more powerful server, with SSL included, for less than the cost of starting a startup. For a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people, it's always a specific group of other people: people not as smart as the language designer. We're not hearing about Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. But if you look into the hearts of hackers, you'll see that they really love it.20 I am always looking.21 But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. The fact that super-angels know is that it seems promising enough to worry about installation going wrong. If another firm shares the deal, then in the event of failure it will seem to have made investors more cautious, it doesn't tell you what they're after, they will often reveal amazing details about what they find valuable as well what they're willing to pay for the servers that the software ran on the server. Why can't defenders score goals too? If coming up with ideas for startups?

Notes

But if they pay a lot of people who need the money.

A Bayesian Approach to Filtering Junk E-Mail.

Unless you're very docile compared to sheep. Whereas the activation energy for enterprise software—and in b the valuation should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you waste your time working on your board, consisting of two founders and investors are also the perfect point to spread from.

Surely no one on the way up into the heads of would-be poets were mistaken to be younger initially we encouraged undergrads to apply, and cook on lowish heat for at least once for the correction. I know it didn't to undergraduates on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend.

The hardest kind of method acting. Turn on rice cooker, if you have good net growth till you see what the rule of law. But there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. In fact, this seems empirically false.

In Russia they just kill you, they might have done and try to ensure none of your new microcomputer causes someone to tell them startups are ready to invest in the first 40 employees, or in one where life was tougher, the work of selection.

The best kind of kludge you need to, but except for money. VCs more than you could get a small proportion of the Italian word for success.

To a 3:59 mile as a motive, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the numbers we have to assume it's bad. I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because it is more important for societies to remember and pass on the fly is that you end up. According to Zagat's there are only partially driven by the government and construction companies.

One great advantage of startups have elements of both. Not least because they're determined to fight. The quality of investor behavior.

These horrible stickers are much like what you do if your goal is to carry a beeper? Acquisitions fall into in the angel is being unfair to him?

Which OS?

As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, you're not allowed to discriminate on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp, you might be tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

Prose lets you be more alarmed if you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. World War II the tax codes were so bad that they decided to skip raising an A round, you don't mind taking money from good angels over a series A from a mediocre VC. The dictator in the US. Google's revenues are about two billion a year for a couple hundred years or so you can make offers that super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

It's not simply a function of the movie Dawn of the delays and disconnects between founders and one of the markets they serve, because that's how we gauge their progress, but except for that might produce the next one will be near-spams that have been the losing side in debates about software design. Japanese.

There were a first—9. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent. Trevor Blackwell reminds you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. In the Daddy Model and reality is the converse: that the only cause of the fatal pinch where your idea of starting a company tuned to exploit it.

A few VCs have an email being spam.

The late 1960s were famous for social upheaval. Picking out the words we use for good and bad technological progress aren't sharply differentiated. Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard.

So you can fix by writing library functions.

If Congress passes the founder of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that three quarters of them. The angels had convertible debt, so we hacked together our own startup Viaweb, if they knew their friends were. But be careful. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

The only people who had been with us if the quality of production. If they agreed among themselves never to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands. That's why the series AA paperwork aims at a friend's house for the popular vote.

Galbraith p. And so this one is harder, the median VC loses money. European art.

Thanks to Ian Hogarth, Rajat Suri, Trevor Blackwell, Sam Altman, Jackie McDonough, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading a previous draft.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Lygia Clark, "Óculos" ("Goggles"), 1968

* * * *

Joohn Choe

Did you know that half of U.S. adults can’t read a book written at the 8th-grade level?

It's a constraint on victory outcomes in counter-disinformation work; it's a problem when you declare war on things like QAnon or the Republican industrial lie complex.

It arises when you use a technique from military planners called "thinking backwards".

This doesn't mean "be old-school and nostalgic" (I mean, you'd think), it means "start from the outcome and work backwards".

Illiteracy turns out to be a problem when you consider the basic problem of active measures defense as an exercise in thinking backwards. You get new solutions and new problems; illiteracy, and being literate but not reading, or alliteracy (irritatingly not a word in spell-check), are some of those problems.

First, let's talk about the outcome.

The fundamental problem with disinformation studies is that you can't define what disinformation is unless you take a stance on what information is, and how it's used in society.

It's meaningless to point your finger and say "liar!" as we are wont to do in this field if you're not even clear on what role that should play in society, or how things are supposed to work normally. You can't diagnose a dysfunction in how society produces and consumes information if you don't even have a view on how it functions.

You need to have a defensible, testable theory of how America's information economy operates normally if you are going to put yourself forward as some authority on how it's functioning abnormally. You cannot be a counter-disinformation operator without being a philosopher, and to some extent, a systems theorist and, increasingly, I'd argue, an aestheticist (as in "studies aesthetics", not "aesthetician who does your nails").

This is incredibly basic. I still find it odd that even very professional people and companies in this field don't grapple with this issue. Even the data is meaningless, no matter how impressively objective it is, if you're lacking that kind of context; you end up having anomalies with no baseline, like an endless stream of singleton events.

That's no way to run a railroad, like the old saying goes.

So, back when I had a startup, with advisors, I talked to one of them who actually taught a class at Berkeley on startups about this crazy recording of a Federal crime I'd gotten in Alabama, and I asked for advice for what to do about it in terms of the fight against disinformation.

The answer he gave ended up being a lead-in to thinking about this in a systems-oriented, long-terms sustainable kind of way. I still come back to it as a recurrent point in shaping outcome scenarios.

He suggested, first off, in this sort of infuriatingly wise way that he has (he's an old Asian dude, so) that you have to ask, first: is zero percent really possible?

What kind of victory state are you after, if this is actually a lie that involves disinformation on the scale that you observe it?

He argued that you have to fit disinformation into a place with other aspects of how we talk to each other. On his account, there was potentially value in giving people the ability to create and pass on value in determining what was disinformation and what wasn't, and it verged into a discussion of a crypto-currency based anti-disinformation app that I ended up not really wanting to do.

Credit where credit is due, though: his argument about the achievability of zero percent disinformation made a lot of sense.

The outcome state we're after can't be "zero active measures" and "zero disinformation". Not only is that unrealistic, if you even did manage to achieve that, you'd have North Korea. They have no problem with differing versions of state truth and reality, because everything is state truth that excludes reality.

Diversity in viewpoints is one of our strengths as a country, too; reducing everything down to one version of truth, even as generous as the boundaries might be on that, would inevitably end up flattening society. Like, no one wants "information socialism", that just... sounds bad.

You could argue that disinformation is a flipside of a coin, actually. Disinformation is in a state of mutual entailment with socially accepted official truth; there can't be one without the other, in one way of looking at it. And that's what I think my advisor was getting at.

It's like that old cliché about "tHe sIgN fOr cRiSiS aNd ChAngE ArE tEh sAmE iN cHiNeSe" which is like, you understand, up there with Sun Tzu quotes and "your people are so hard-working!" as far as Things I Ain't 'Bout As An Asian Person, You Feel Me Though (the game show!).

And don't even get me started on people ripping off strategy ideas from theorists of Chinese stick-poking and rock-throwing warfare.

In a normal time, you could say that there's a balance between disinformation and truth, and truth is usually the winning side on that, because normally, the President and the ruling party aren't active sources of disinformation with the veneer of authority on it.

We're getting out of a period of time in which that balance was badly, badly disrupted on the side of disinformation. The kind of abnormalities we see as a society - from the Capitol insurrection to how weird people around us are, compared to what they were like in 2015 - those can all be seen as stemming from that state of imbalance.

The outcome, the advisor argued, was fundamentally about balance. Not about destroying disinformation, or striking it until it wasn't a problem; the paradigm was rebalancing, he argued.

Winning isn't reducing disinformation to zero. It's achieving a new balance between disinformation and truth where the boundary favors truth more.

Almost every victory state for "The War On Disinformation" boils down to that, actually.

If you see it as rebalancing, then new ways of achieving achieving victory by restoring balance open up.

For starters, you could add to the flow of information coming out; you could even make oppositional truth part of it. That's really what "fact-checking" is on social media - Politifact and LeadStories aren't "fact-checkers", because fact-checkers are people at media institutions who run quality control on news, and they are not that. They pick and choose what stories to oppose, at times seemingly arbitrarily, at times politically, and calling them "fact-checkers" hides the essentially subjective nature of that practice.

You could create personal truth, give people new ways to be, new role models to emulate and new social roles to fulfill - "offensive fact-checker", "Nazi-hunter", "deplatformer", and the like. And you could even amplify it and try to drown out the misleadingly framed truth, and the outright mistruths, coming out of the disinformation industry.

You could mobilize the truth to create political crises, and work to reset the boundary on allowable lies. This is the core methodology of an activist, it's creating strategic dilemmas for institutions based on public perception and the pressure to do the right thing.

Outcome-focused political activism, where you're trying to get a specific candidate elected or voted out of office, is one way of specifically mobilizing the truth, instead of just sitting on ass and feeling good about having it (this is common, I'd argue). We can not only reduce disinformation better - interdict it better, ban it better, find it better, track it better - we can also get better at producing alternative presentations and modes of appeal for truth.

The problem with all these solution scenarios, though, and the area that I see where we could really stand to improve, and maybe even something that I'd work on for a minute, is our culture.

I'd argue we just don't have the kind of intellectual culture that supports a lot of these solutions. We can't, not with fundamental adult literacy the way it is; not with the state of the public intellectual the way it is.

There was a point around 2015 when people were declaring a crisis of the French public intellectual tradition; since Henri-Levy, basically, Pierre Bourdieu if you count him, there just haven't been globally notable, famous French philosophers like there used to be. That traces to any number of factors with them, but a lot of them are factors we share, like the ever-wider spread of spectacular culture and its increasing efficacy at exploiting us, drawing us into addiction loops, even, with social media and "binge-watching" TV shows.

I'd argue that the best counter-disinformational solutions we have right now come down to art and aesthetics, actually, because we are so bad as a culture at reading.

Militarized truth, and grassroots truth, and offensive truth, are forms of rebalancing between disinformation and truth, yes, but it's a reactionary, almost frantic kind of truth. The jobs that it gives people, the roles that it puts people into - content moderator, offensive fact-checker - eat people up in the long run because they're in a race against disinformation, and disinformation keeps winning.

And it ends up repeating the basic problem of piling truth upon truth without mobilizing it, positioning it in a way to get through to people.

If it takes a pretty image and a witty notion to introject a critical idea into someone's head; if it takes a song and a dance, even, to get someone to have a bullshit filter... I say, do it.

Call it less "Art of War', more "War of Art".

---

Lygia Clark, "Óculos" ("Goggles"), 1968

https://www.politico.eu/.../decline-of-french.../

https://www.wyliecomm.com/.../whats-the-latest-u-s.../

[thedreideldiaries]

Hey, friends! I thought I’d take this opportunity to expound in my political choices a bit - specifically to give some context for my choice of Sanders over Warren. Note for a few of my followers who know me elsewhere: this is copied over from other social media, so if it sounds familiar that is why.

First, I want to reiterate that I like Warren. So, if anyone reading this is torn between her and any of the other clowns who have thrown their sorry hats into the ring, then please: do me and the rest of the world a favor, stop reading this right now, and go ahead and give Warren your vote. I won’t be mad. Promise. If you’re on the fence between Warren and Sanders, though, then I implore you to read on.

Okay, is it just us in here? Cool.

For my friends torn between Warren and Sanders (like I was at the beginning of the primary), I’ve tried to distill my reasoning. As you know, a lot of the discourse surrounding Warren’s campaign constructs her as a younger, female version of Sanders. If I believed that, I’d be solidly in her corner, but a few differences between them make this simply not the case. Here are the ones I find most salient:

1. Let’s look at Bernie’s base. As much as we love to talk about representation in politics, a candidate’s demographic background tells us nothing about who they’re going to fight for. Their voting base, on the other hand, tells you who has placed their confidence in that candidate’s promises.

A good proportion of Warren’s supporters are white college graduates (young and old).

By contrast Bernie’s base is overwhelmingly working class, non-white, urban, and, perhaps most tellingly, young. You could attribute that to naivete, but I think something else is going on here: the demographic group with the most to win or lose from this election are people under 30. We’re the ones who will have to live with the most devastating effects of climate change, and we’re tired of the so-called adults in our lives not taking that rather pressing concern seriously. We don’t care if our candidate is old or young - we care if they listen. Which brings me to:

2. The Youth. Young people in America are disillusioned with democracy - not because we’ve decided it’s not a good idea, but because we’ve literally never seen it in action. We live in a corporate plutocracy where the financial barriers to running for office have rendered most politicians ridiculously out of touch. And Sanders, more than any other candidate in the primary, knows how to talk to young people.

And look - I’m planning to vote for whoever wins the primary. But if 2016 is anything to go by, if the youth demographic doesn’t get a candidate they can get behind, they won’t vote strategically for the lesser of two evils. They’ll stay home, and given what the Democratic party has done for them over the past 20 or so years, I can’t say I blame them.

3. The same goes for his endorsements. I’d be out of my lane if I spent too much time talking about what Sanders wants to do for people of color, but I think it’s telling that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar - three politicians showing real determination to shake things up in Washington - all chose Bernie over Warren. I think it’s telling that AOC cited his campaign, not Warren’s, as her inspiration for running for office (if anyone’s a female Sanders, it’s not Warren - it’s AOC).

4. Sanders is, quite simply, the genuine article. He’s fought for important causes (climate justice, healthcare, workers’ rights) since long before they were cool. He’s *not* perfect, but criticisms of him rarely touch his political history.

Warren’s record of activism is, by contrast, unimpressive. She used to be a Republican corporate lawyer, and while I absolutely respect that someone can change their mind about politics, and I applaud her for doing so, it worries me that what changed her mind wasn’t the Iran-Contra scandal, or the AIDS crisis, or the brutal crushing of the labor movement. It was the realization that Republicans were doing capitalism wrong. I can’t exactly argue with that (show me a Republican politician who truly supports a free market and I’ll eat my beret*), but it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

*This is a joke. I do not have a beret.

5. Warren’s a capitalist; Sanders is a democratic socialist, and I think the difference is important. Warren supports a wealth tax, and she wants everyone to have healthcare, and I appreciate that she has the guts to talk about those things on national television, but at the end of the day, she’s a proud capitalist who believes the system needs to be corrected, not overhauled.

Sanders is a self-professed democratic socialist, and has built a popular movement around that label. And honestly, I’m not too worried about redbaiting. Yes, it’s a common Republican tactic, but the sentiment of “yes I would vote for Democrats but not for Socialist democrats” is a rare one, if it exists at all. And if it works against any of the primary candidates, it’ll work against all of them. They used anti-Commmunist rhetoric against Obama, for goodness’ sake. Look how much of an advocate for the working class he turned out to be.

Courting the centrist vote is a waste of time. Tiptoeing around conservatives alienates left-wingers and doesn’t actually sway Republicans. It’s a bad move strategically, in that it makes us look like cowards, and morally, because it means not getting very important things done.

Sanders doesn’t want to play the game better. He wants to start a whole new game. Warren’s economics platform seems to boil down to “50s but less racist,” and while that sounds nice, it’s just not possible. We can’t go back there - we have automation now, not to mention a global economy the likes of which we barely dreamed of in the 1950s, and it’s not realistic to try to make that happen again. We need something new.

6. People over party. In a lot of ways, Warren reminds me of the best parts of The West Wing. I like that show, but it was a comforting fantasy - a vision of what the Democratic Party could have been like with a little more gumption and a lot more luck. It never happened because the Democratic party and politics aren’t like that in real life. I have confidence in Sanders because his loyalty isn’t to the Democratic Party. It’s to the American people. He’s proved that over and over again over the course of his political career.

7. Bernie is an organizer. The “not me - us” slogan is very telling. Democracy is participatory. We don’t just need a candidate with a plan to fix everything. We need a candidate with a plan who acknowledges that the people hold the real power. We need a candidate who respects the will of the people and inspires them to get involved. We can’t win this election and stop thinking about politics. We never get to stop thinking about politics. We need someone who can inspire people to keep fighting.

The heart attack was a big deal, but the truth is, it’s never been about Bernie as an individual. His immediate reaction after getting out of the hospital was “I’m lucky to have healthcare; everyone should have healthcare; let’s get back to work.” That, more than anything, has given me the confidence that Bernie wants his policies to last long after he’s gone.

Also, people regularly have heart attacks and live another several decades. This is *literally* why we have vice presidents. If Sanders can get elected and pick a good VP and a cabinet (plus, you know, fill any Supreme Court vacancies that happen to arise over his tenure), his health won’t matter as much, because we don’t need a messiah right now. We need a resurgence of participatory democracy. We need more AOCs to take the stage. We need young people at the polls, not just in 2020, but beyond that.

8. I don’t like to talk about electability for a couple of reasons. One: centrists love to bring it up, usually in the service of talking about how policies they have zero stake in will never work. Two: Trump was supposed to be unelectable, and we all saw how that turned out.

That said: Warren’s currently polling third, which is not a great place to be. And while I don’t share some people’s cynicism about Warren, I have to agree that her response to Trump’s attacks has not impressed me. I’m confident that if Trump attacks Sanders, Bernie won’t take the bait, because he’s so on-message you can’t get him off-message. Like I said: he had a heart attack and immediately spun it back into the healthcare conversation.

And the polls are clear: head to head, Sanders beats Trump. Warren’s chances are far dicier.

9. And the most important issue, without which nothing else really matters: the climate crisis. I’d love it if we could wait for the country’s ideas to catch up to Sanders’ socialist rhetoric, but the truth is we are running out of time. I’m voting for Sanders because I have two nieces under 5 years old and a nephew who was just born, and I want them to grow up on a habitable planet, and they won’t get a chance to vote on that. I’m doing it because I want to have kids of my own someday, and while I absolutely respect the choice of anyone deciding to reproduce right now, I don’t have the emotional energy to raise a family during an apocalypse. And while I like Warren, and she’s expressed support for a Green New Deal, Sanders is the only candidate I trust to both beat Trump in the general and put his foot down to the DNC and their ilk.

10. Foreign policy!

First of all: guess who else hates American Imperialism? That’s right; it’s Bernie Sanders. Significantly, he has the guts to bring up America’s habit of meddling in Latin America’s democratically elected governments, which is something you pretty much never hear about from pretty much any other candidate.

https://www.vox.com/2019/6/25/18744458/bernie-sanders-endless-wars-foreign-affairs-op-ed

Foreign policy came up a lot during 2016 primary, with Clinton’s supporters trotting out the bizarre argument that a long history of hawkish policies is better than no policies at all. What with all that, I was surprised to learn that Sanders is actually quite well-traveled and has a long history of trying to mend fences between the U.S. and other world powers: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy/470019/

When it comes to climate change and foreign policy, Sanders acknowledges not only that it requires innovation (let’s not forget his early and vehement support for the Green New Deal), but also international cooperation. From the link below:

“To both Sanders and his supporters around the world, it is impossible to fight climate change without international cooperation. To that end, a group called the Progressive International was announced at a convention last year held by the Sanders Institute, a think tank founded by the presidential contender’s wife and son.

“The network of left-wing politicians and activists hopes to fight against "the global war being waged against workers, against our environment, against democracy, against decency,” according to its website.”

He’s also popular with left-wing leaders around the world, and it’s those kinds of politicians who we need to get us out of the climate crisis.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/04/bernie-sanders-global-popularity-1254929

And finally, to stray briefly into comparison: again, I like Warren, but even so, I like her better domestically than internationally. The progressivism she touts at home comes up short abroad. I’m sure you’ve heard about it already, but I think it’s worth remembering that Warren voted for Trump’s military budget in 2017; Sanders didn’t. She talks a lot about peace, but her history on foreign issues looks pretty similar to that of other centrist democrats. This is a problem not only in terms of American Imperialism, but also because the U.S. military is one of the world’s leading causes of climate change. Her voting history and her cozy relationship with defense contractors have me pretty worried. This article goes into more detail about her history with various foreign powers as well as her general attitudes on American imperialism:

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/elizabeth-warren-foreign-policy

We all pretty much knew what we were getting with Clinton. Warren worries me not only because she seems to align with the rest of the party on our endless foreign wars, but because she keeps her support for the military-industrial complex behind a facade of progressive rhetoric that reminds me of the early Obama years. We can’t be let down like that again. Even if we ignore the devastating human cost, the planet doesn’t have time.

Further Reading - obviously I don’t agree with everything in every one of these pieces, but they offer a leftist critique that often goes missing from other, more superficial problems people bring up about Warren.

The polling bases of the primary candidates: https://www.people-press.org/2019/08/16/most-democrats-are-excited-by-several-2020-candidates-not-just-their-top-choice/pp_2019-08-16_2020-democratic-candidates_0-06/?fbclid=IwAR2G8np2q9N4P6DArdI-gPhA5Wp_SYDZPKQDpDhxVZ4YbwnAEmFd65swMOA

An interesting take on Warren’s policies vs Bernie’s movement: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/elizabeth-warren-policy-bernie-sanders-presidential-primary?fbclid=IwAR14wWjYDNuNMrXN7YjVFFFHXmoMWKpDVqBcbPBlQUUrA354iIyRAbKXG30

An opinion piece on the contrast between them:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-democratic-party-elite-2020-presidential-race?fbclid=IwAR3vA54QveM2cCTxQ2BbVXh_IICgTxweKVBLMRjhSFyyAdspnibJ50seDjY

Another one:

https://forward.com/opinion/432561/the-case-for-bernie-sanders-the-only-real-progressive-in-the-race-sorry/?fbclid=IwAR1vwONZ7azJQcoeo_KYNYiJ8ekzHhJsZ4Ms0UzDHI59j7Q6oio-5uJOGcI

Warren’s political history:

More about that from a different source:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/why-criticize-warren?fbclid=IwAR0NTP0cRbSnr-a6HCuxE-4SCJZEqU2EAL1Gnx70FME-9UMBg-xYE5t7g7Y

A prequel to the former (beware - this one’s scathing as heck):

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/09/the-prospect-of-an-elizabeth-warren-nomination-should-be-very-worrying?fbclid=IwAR03d5I5j72s4kQC9wgRSrXnbmWsp_9HUvRWBZwzcfsT9RsZP-lSAX4aPz0

[sebthesnipe]

The Dreamer by Whatwashernameagain an Analysis? Chapter 2! Part 3

All portions:

Chapter 1: Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

Chapter 2: Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

The Dreamer

@whatwashernameagain

As always, Spoilers under cut.

Also, I am currently sick so bear with me….

We left off with Logan’s first kill and the difference between The Utilitarianist’s vs. The Dreamer’s views. The thing is, The Dreamer isn’t his own hero, but rather the vision of a team with their own agenda. Still, Roman, despite the attempt to control him, has his own passions.

“Roman could barely be held back. The man who’d been killed, Richard Snyder, had owned the largest chemical production company in the world and had been blamed for the death of a large amount of people in Vietnam due to a herbicide that had leaked into the phreatic water. He’d also been a father of three girls and felt behind a grieving wife�� (Whatwashernameagain).

This paragraph gives a bit of background into Logan’s first kill, the first indication that he is becoming too cold, too focused on his work that he is losing his humanity. Logan may not care for the individual as he works but taking a man’s life is something you don’t come back from. The fact that he has finally done so pushes him into an entirely new level of villainy. I think that Roman sees that. He may not know Logan on a personal level yet but as we learned in the first chapter Roman has a love and caring disposition for everyone whether it is the man responsible for countless deaths in Vietnam or a villain responsible for his death. He shows no remorse for Logan at this point but as a reader I think we realize that this is the first step Logan takes towards losing himself in his own darkness.

Eva goes on to talk about how he was upset about the deaths due to the chemical leak and how he grieved for them and their families. However, we also see his ignorant optimism that has become his trademark quite quickly.

“Accidents were a terrible thing and he was sure Mr. Snyder hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. People were good and cared about each other in his opinion. After the public blame the terrorist had put on his shoulders before – there was no other word for it – lynching the poor man, the media reacted to the crime in a manner that deeply shocked the sensitive young man. Instead of condemning the horrifying acts harshly, they discussed the accidents that had caused the unfortunate deaths in Vietnam and demanded consequences to avoid such accidents in the futures!” (Whatwashernameagain).

He convinces himself the Snyder never meant for any of the deaths to happen, which, for those of us who know how the real world works; we know that the more likely reality is that Snyder probably cut corners and didn’t care much that he ruined so many people’s lives and even paid to keep it quiet. Still, Roman states that he believed people were good and cared about each other at their core and maybe that is true for the individual; after all, that is how Roman sees people: individually. So… There is a lot I can say here… and when I say a lot, I mean a LOT. I will attempt to keep this section a bit brief, but I did want to touch on some philosophy and sociology here.

In 1995 a book by Howard Bloom called The Lucifer Principle was published (Bloom, Howard). For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it has nothing to do with religion. The Lucifer Principle poses the idea that good and evil, right and wrong, its all a construct of our need to fit everything into a box. Nature does not see things as good or evil. When a lion preys on a wounded animal it is just nature. When a hurricane levels a major city, we don’t view it as evil because it is apart of nature. When a lightening bolt causes a good portion of a forest to burn down it is nothing but a way to regrow. Yet, despite the fact that we are simply an over evolved species of animal, we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We view things as good or evil but there is no such thing in the natural world. (Keep in mind I am not stating an opinion, I am simple describing the principles of the book). The book explores that the social groups that we create as humans, not us as individuals, are more inclined to do things that we consider ‘evil’ when we have something to gain from it (Bloom, Howard). It argues that “evil is a by-product of nature’s strategies for creation and that it is woven into out most basic biological fabric” (Bloom, Howard). Violent competition is the center of the creation of the superorganism we consider society (Bloom, Howard). It is difficult to argue with this theory when you consider that we really only advance through war. The discovery of vitamin C, disease prevention, tourniquets, X-rays, blood transfusions, vaccines, lipoamides, penicillin, anaesthics, chemotherapy, antibotics, frozen blood products, antiseptics, Gatorade, the recognition of PTSD, discovery of cardia arrest, (weather) radar, walkie-talkies, night vision, duct tape, nuclear technology (including powerplants), Jet engines, digital photography, satellite navigation (GPS), sanitary napkins, Drones, microwaves, computes, superglue, jeeps, canned food, wristwatches, Epipens, the space program, ambulances and even the Internet and so much more have been the result of the wars we have waged throughout the centuries (Pocket-lint) (“Science Museum. Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine”). There are very few things in this world that a social group (not an individual) has not built with greed in mind; whether it be wealth, land, or power, generally speaking there is usually an ulterior motive to man’s creativity. It is hard to argue that we do not strive on being inherently ‘evil’ when there is so much evidence against that.

Once again, I feel as if I need to reinforce a few things: 1. I am not speaking about individual people. I am talking about humanity as a whole. 2. This is not necessarily my belief. This is a concept written in a book that I have read and that has a very well researched scientific basis. So, before anyone drops a mean or horrid anon ask in my box (and proves my point) please try reading the book. You can learn a lot about the world and yourself as well. Now, back to the analysis:

I bring this up for a number of reasons. This argument reinforces Roman’s naivety. He sees humanity as inherently good (if there really is such thing as ‘good’ and ‘evil’); or rather he believes that ‘people’ are good which can both imply an individual person which is probably a correct statement, or ‘people’ as a whole which is perhaps leaning on the outside of ‘not good’ (We are killing our planet, endangering species, committing mass genocide, polluting outer space, and allowing people all around the world to starve, or ignore the fact that 40 years later we are still killing innocent people (including) children in Laos, Vietnam). It also brings into question The Utilitarianist, and the contrast between he and Roman once more. Logan sees the world in a similar light as The Lucifer Principle paints. In fact, I’d be surprised if Eva hadn’t read it. He is also one for intense scientific research which could lead him to the same conclusions as Bloom: That humanity is inherently what we consider ‘evil’ though evil itself is a construct we created and therefore he has no remorse for being labeled as such.

Am I getting too philosophical on you guys? Perhaps it would be best if I moved on….

“Of course, people needed to be protected, every life had value and had to be treasured, but to besmirch this victim’s life work, so soon after his execution – it left Roman angry and terrified for the state of the world he loved. He needed to stop this man, right now! He was strong enough to do it, why must they keep holding him back?” (Whatwashernameagain).

Once again, we see Roman’s compassion for every individual. We see him try and be understanding for those he disagrees with and for those he deems innocent. He is a man of honor after all and feels that the dead should be honored as well. It is almost as if he feels personally attacked, that Snyder’s name is being dragged through the mud after his death. Though it could be that Roman isn’t just thinking about the man, but his family as well; the shame they must feel as the media makes a mockery of their father, son, husband etc.

We also see a glimpse of his frustration at having to wait; of being forced to focus on glamour and speeches while others are moving in the shadows. He is getting his makeup done while Logan is murdering a man! In the next paragraph we see his frustration grow. He talks about his need to prevent such deeds and even pleads to be allowed to do something. But he is still bound by his need to win his father’s approval. He won’t go against him. He even attempts to justify it all but reminding himself that his team is “intelligent, professional experts hired specifically to make him the best possible hero he could be” (Whatwashernameagain). There is always a justification for those in denial… always a reason…

The next para is heartbreaking. We see him waking in pain after he has been cut open, we see him suffer from withdrawals after failed experimental drugs that corroded the lining of his throat and stomach… Pain that is probably unimaginable. Pain that he is probably enduring simply to be ‘useful’ to his father, to do good for the world… to gain the love he has always been denied and can not find it in him to give to himself. He will never be good enough, intelligent enough, useful enough for him to love himself… but maybe… just maybe he can be useful enough for someone to care for him…

Still, he states that none of the pain or experiments were quite as difficult as the waiting. C.S. Lewis said something once that comes to mind when I read about Roman’s mental struggle with waiting, compared to his physical anguish: “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: It is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.” Some might argue that Roman’s heart isn’t broken… but perhaps they are mistaken. Here sits a man who has never truly known love and now he has a chance to obtain that which he has never known… He has a chance to gain the love of his father and of the world and yet he is being denied. He is being turned down the chance to gain what he has always wanted and with each passing day his heart cracks and the fissures only grow… Sure he hasn’t been turned down by an individual that he fell in love with… but there are other types of heart break. Such as the kind you feel when you see your lifelong goal, the one you have worked for forever, fought for, hurt for, dangled in front of you and you can’t reach out to grab it… at least… not yet.

When he does finally reach his goal, we are presented with the contrast of the Pre-Dreamer Roman and the Post-Dreamer Roman:

“Finally, after more than a year of changing and preparing him, of whittling away at the inadequate shell that had been Roman Prince, the odd, weak disappointment of a son, a new man was revealed to the world. A man who was confident, brave and kind. A man who spoke clearly and showed the frightened society the way to a better world. A hero” (Whatwashernameagain).

In the next para we see Roman’s naivety once more, along with the lies that his team is no doubt feeding him. He vies the military factor that has been selling weapons to dictators as ‘producing military equipment for the protection of their brave soldiers overseas’; no doubt another picture painted by his father which Roman is more than happy to lap up. The next paragraph however, says a lot about Logan.

“It had been the day the terrorist had stepped from the shadows into the light of the cameras to blame his victims in person before they met their end. He’d exposed their alleged crimes against the helpless, suppressed minorities the weapons were used against – lies and exaggerations as his team had assured the young hero – and had finally shown himself to the world. Part of him, at least. Like a true villain, his body had been clad in a skin tight, black suit and his face had been masked from the light of truth and justice. He’d named himself the Utilitarianist” (Whatwashernameagain).

This is Logan’s first personal appearance. A bold move for his career. This is significant for a number of reasons; firstly, it shows yet another step Logan has taken towards his downfall (at least in his humanity). Logan has already killed a man, and obviously plans to do so again, but now he appears in person, obviously confident enough that there would be no one to stop him. Perhaps the power is going to his head. Logan is human after all and that much power tends to corrupt, even when people mean well.

“Yet, at his greatest moment of triumph, a hero rose to meet him. Stepping from the ashes of the detonated building, the Dreamer emerged, leading out the disoriented victims of the Utilitarianist’s terrible plan. Showing his handsome, young face to the camera, unmasked and alight with his passion for the defense of all that was right, he’s faced the other head on and finally gave the just and good Americans a hero to believe in. The time of fear and helplessness was over. He had risen from the dust of his nemesis’ destructive acts to beat him” (Whatwashernameagain).

I will get to Roman’s flashy entrance in a moment. For now, we are still on the subject of Logan. You see, Logan has shown that he has begun to lose himself and his humanity in his work. If he is not careful he will become the very type of person he works so hard to wipe from the Earth. Luckily, someone has come to oppose him, to pull him back from the edge. I have mentioned that Roman is both Logan’s Hope and Humanity and that is true here as well. Roman appears just in time to save what little of Logan’s humanity is left. Perhaps he is a bigger hero than either of them realize.

As for his entrance, the contrast between the two is obvious once more. The over dramatized appearance is nothing if not expected from Roman but fact that him being unmasked is brought to the readers attention while Logan hides behind is own is an indication of not only the good vs. evil dynamic that has been apparent throughout the story but also of Roman’s cockiness.

A battle ensues. The Utilitarianist is far more difficult to defeat than Roman had accounted for and narrowly escapes. Roman is left felling defeated as he considers it a failure. I feel as if this is a fantastic symbolization of the fact that good and evil are a balance. The Utilitarianist which represents Roman’s concept of evil and The Dreamer, representing the concept of good were fairly evenly matched. One didn’t over power the other it was a fair balance.

We see his caring side once more as he mentions his disappointment and what the world deserves. Though we also see the socially imposed concept of ‘masculinity’. “A hero must never show his inner struggles” (Whatwashernameagian). Eva always has a way of bringing out subtle issue inadvertently that astounds me. Society engrains in most men that it is not alright to show your emotions, that they must be contained. I suppose that in special cases such as first responders this is accurate. If you asked an officer or a nurse, or a medic, how they do what they do most would explain something similar to a concept I call ‘a switch’. When faced with a situation in which an officer knows it is best not to react or feel they flip an imaginary switch. This switch controls their emotions. The catch is, that in order for this switch to work properly they need a constant supply of either work or adrenaline; basically, anything that does not allow you to analyze the situation you are in. It is one of the that many police academy’s have such extensive training/drills; that way, you react in the proper manner without thinking. But I will tell you something they don’t tell you… When the day is over, and hours have pasted since they finished washing the blood from their hands or shoes… When their driving home and its quiet… or when their changing into their pajamas… Everything that they saw… Every mistake they made… every life they couldn’t save… Its going to hit and when it does… it hits hard. The switch doesn’t work forever, you see… Its on a timer and when that timer goes off it determines who is strong enough to make it and who isn’t because no body is able to pick up the pieces for you.

Eva is talented enough to paint the subtle switch into her writing though, and I mean no offense in this, I do not expect her to know the severity of what the suppression can do someone… especially someone as kind hearted as Roman. I must applaud her for addressing it however, even if she doesn’t realize she is doing it.

Luckily, Roman’s efforts were rewarded. The mention of the newspaper’s tones changing, interviews being planned for him (though he was instructed on what to say, bringing attention once again to the fact that he his nothing but a puppet at this point). He painted the picture of himself that he was meant to, that he had always wanted to be. His dreams were finally coming true. There was one catch… The dreams he had achieved were based on lies.

“Despite his wish to brag with his father’s great plans and the selfless efforts the other CEOs, lobbyists and republicans had invested, they asked him to never mention the Conglomerate that had created him and steered his actions. The public needed a legend to put their faith in now, they said. Not a bunch of old men bumbling about. Though he felt selfish when he claimed to be acting by himself with nothing but the help of volunteering patriots, he trusted their knowledge more than his own. Though the Dreamer was a great hero, Roman would not forget that he was just a young man trying to be good enough for his father’s love he’d failed to deserve before” (Whatwashernameagain).

Roman isn’t allowed to mention his father, probably because if Roman is discovered for doing these things for his father’s benefit his father can pin it all on him. Yet, once again Roman’s naivety and self-worthlessness is used against him. JFC people! All this boy wants is his Father’s love!!!! That’s it!!! Just give it to him!! Christ!

Roman and Logan face off for the next few months; good and evil dueling to no avail. Though it does mention that Logan does the majority of his crimes over the internet where Roman’s ‘brute force’ doesn’t work; further painting the image of The Dreamer that Logan paints: A dim witted glamour seeking brute… At least the image he wants the world to believe he sees. Roman comments about Logan’s rude evasiveness when it comes to his demands which brings a little light-hearted humor back into the story. It is also quite amusing seeing Roman realize that Logan views him as ‘a fly buzzing about his head’ and being outraged by it.

********

I was really hoping I would get a lot more done on this one. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to break the Chapter 2 analysis into more than four parts… There is still hope I guess… Anyways, I’m afraid this is where I need to end this portion… I apologize if this was too dark for you. I am glad I got to end it on a light-hearted note and hope to see you in part 4 (hopefully the last part of Chapter 2 analysis)! Good Night!

     Bloom, Howard K. The Lucifer Principle: a Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997.

Pocket-lint. “28 Ways Military Tech Changed Our Lives.” Pocket, 31 May 2019, https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/news/143526-how-military-tech-changed-our-lives.

“Science Museum. Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine.” Medical Innovations and War, http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/war/innovations.

Whatwashernameagain. “The Dreamer - Chapter 2.” Hello Guys Gals And Non Binary Friends, 8 Sept. 2019, https://whatwashernameagain.tumblr.com/post/189407228487/the-dreamer-chapter-2?is_related_post=1.

[redhoodieone]

Here with You

A/N: Hi everyone! This is my first requested fluffy fic from @yeetthatpussy. Thank you so much for the idea! This was fun and a big change for me since all I do is write smut and nasty things hahaha. Also, I want to point out I did not give Bruce an age or the reader, since I believe readers should imagine Bruce and themselves the way they want. I personally imagine Bruce like how he was in the animated movie, “Justice League War” since I happened to be watching that particular movie a while ago (because some of you might imagine Ben Affleck, Christian Bale, or the new Robert Pattinson). So other than that enjoy the story!

@randomdcfangirl @jasonredtoddhood @lady-of-the-abyss @psychovigilantewrites Enjoy this my friends.

Warnings: Language and just pure pink, yummy fluffy cotton candy!

It became a habit; a tradition really, when Bruce and I would have free time to hang out. Every Friday night is our “friend date time”, the title came from Bruce, when he realized over the past two months that I’m the first female in his life who has remained by his side and hasn’t put up with his bullshit.

True, women have come and gone throughout his life, specifically Selina Kyle. I’m no stranger to her, since she has played a pretty big part in Bruce’s life. Although she was always civil to me, I admit, I couldn’t help but feel envious of her beauty and body.

I sometimes wonder why Bruce permanently let her go.

I consider myself average. Maybe not overly beautiful like supermodels, but I’ve been told by family and friends I’m awfully pretty, sweet, funny, and kind. I’m about average height, and I admit I do have feminine curves. But overall, I’ve learned to love myself, and I’ve also had my fair share of ex-boyfriends and dates.

But none of my relationships have lasted more than three months. Considering my anxiety and what my doctor has described as PTSD from the eight year mental and physical abuse from my alcoholic father and uncle, my past boyfriends left me because I’m a nutcase (they really didn’t know how to help me or understand my past and current issues). Let’s just say I’m too much to handle when I’m alone or in a too comfortable environment.

And my latest ex-boyfriend Josh (who was a sweetheart, but I broke up with him because I just couldn’t be in another relationship at that moment) has been hinting to get back together with me for some time. But after I realized I’m never going to be able to move on from my past, I accept the fact that I should be alone and stay alone.

Because at least I would never betray or hurt myself, I believe.

But here I am. I’m being escorted to our usual table at one of Bruce’s restaurants. The waiter smiles once we meet up with Bruce at our table.

Knowing Bruce for a few years has given me reason maybe some men aren’t so bad. The media and tabloids have always painted him as a man-whore and spoiled rich boy, but after witnessing the doofus trip over his own shoes at work, (I happened to be at Wayne Enterprises for an interview with him, as I am a journalist) I realized he was exactly like everyone else.

Clumsy, foolish, and funny.

Bruce stands to greet me, while looking extremely handsome in black suit. His hair is nicely combed, and his grin is his usual smirk. His blue eyes brighten the room from its golden décor.

“Y/N, you look beautiful,” Bruce compliments me, with a kiss to the cheek.

It’s true. I feel more confident tonight since I’m wearing my favorite short black Gucci dress. I decided to curl my hair a bit and wear little makeup since I try very hard to look more natural to love myself more.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Bruce,” I respond politely. I sit down, and he pushes my chair in. As he takes his seat, the waiter quickly brings our appetizers of loaded potato skins and mozzarella cheese sticks and marinara sauce. “Didn’t you want to stay home and order pizza and watch a movie?”

“We did that last week. I figured...why not treat my favorite girl to a fancy dinner so we can talk shit about the rich people around us while we pig out on our favorite food?” Bruce answers, and gives me a soft smile.

“I guess you have a point since food is always a way to win me over,” I chuckle and then raise an eyebrow at him. “Did you just say I’m your favorite girl?”

“Well, you are Y/N. I mean, you gave me a chance to show you the real me. You didn’t let the media and tabloids change your mind about me. You know me better than most people think they do. Hell, you’ve even been there for me during the anniversary of my parents’ deaths. You’ve even seen me in my darkest times, and not once did you leave me or try to change who I am,” Bruce confesses softly. It sounds as if he wants to continue on with his confession, but he stops himself. He ends up smirking at me. “Anyways, is Josh still bothering you so you can take him back?”

“No, I mean…I haven’t heard from him today. What about Selina?” I tease him back.

“I haven’t spoken to her in four months. But I guess I wouldn’t know if she’s called the manor considering you take up most of my time anyways. I swear, the more we hang out with each other, the more we become like a married couple.”

“A married couple?” I repeat.

“Yes, since we’re always together and you know me better than any other woman. Hell, I don’t think I even allow most women to know certain details about my parents’ deaths or my sons. I have to protect so much of my life, but with you, I just found out I want to protect you as well,” Bruce explains.

I’m stunned to hear this right now. Of course, I know about Bruce’s parents’ deaths. I even know about his sons: Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian, too.

The sweet, handsome charming Dick Grayson.

The tough, strong and huggable teddy bear man Jason Todd.

The smart, wise, and computer genius Tim Drake.

And of course, the small, mature, handsome Damian Wayne, Bruce’s miniature version of him.

I knew Dick, Jason, and Tim were Bruce’s adopted sons (and he loves and worries about them so much) and I’ve even come to love every one of them, especially Damian. Bruce had told me Damian’s mother had left him with Bruce, and even though Damian had been arrogant, rude, and sometimes defensive, he’s come to respect me and even likes me hanging around the manor as long as I don’t steal his father most of the time.

And being close to all of them, I see Bruce has made a wonderful family, and I envy almost everything about that.

I even know Alfred. He’s a one real son of a bitch who doesn’t put up with Bruce either.

But the way Bruce is speaking of me kindly is starting to freak me out. I was never one to receive compliments or kindness before.

I decide to change the subject quickly. We both serve ourselves our favorite appetizers and dig in.

“So, what are your sons doing tonight? Causing trouble or just lounging around the manor?” I ask, with a small smile.

But Bruce seems to not realize what I did; unless he’s hiding it.

“Dick is probably out with Barbara. And I believe Jason, Tim, and Damian are bothering Alfred for their usual nighttime snacks,” Bruce replies, and then exhales heavily. “Y/N...I-I really need to talk to you and I just need you to listen.”

“Bruce...” I warn him. My heart already aches because I’ve been keeping a secret of my own and I finally realize what frightens me.

Bruce.

Bruce terrifies me.

Why?

Because I’m in love with him.

My mind flashes back to the memories of when Bruce tripped, and how everyone chucked at the Prince of Gotham, and how I helped him with a small smile on my face, because he took my breath away with his natural charm and handsome good looks. And when he showed up at my apartment with pizza and horror movies because I was too sick to leave and go out into the chilly rainstorm.

Or how when my younger sister got married, Bruce offered to be my “date” since he knew I couldn’t find a date in time. But he also showered the bride and groom with gifts and surprised my sister and my new brother-in-law with an amazing already paid honeymoon to Paris and Italy for an entire week! The whole night we spent dancing together, my head rested against his chest, and then I suddenly felt my heart beating inhumanly fast and slow at the same time.

Bruce’s hands remained on me the entire night. Just him touching me made me feel I was dancing on clouds the entire night.

Just the thought of Bruce makes me want to faint and fall because these feelings are scaring the shit out of me.

“Please listen to me, Y/N. I need to tell you what’s been going on in my head lately, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep it to myself,” Bruce begins, appearing more nervous than before. The usual confidence and smile on his face is now replaced with his eyes pleading for me to listen to him and his body is tense. “I-I don’t think I can keep pretending to be your best friend anymore. I can’t keep acting like I just want to be your friend. I can’t stick around anymore and see you date assholes who don’t know the real beautiful, kind, funny girl, you really are. Just the thought of you dating them makes me want to beat the shit out of them and possibly drop them off on a deserted island forever...okay that last part was supposed to be a joke, but I guess my sense of humor is different than most. Maybe I’m not kidding at all...”

I can feel my stomach hurt from this stressful situation. Bruce sees me eyeing the exit.

“Y/N, I-I love you. I love you so much that just saying these words isn’t common for me, because after all these years of meaningless dates, hookups, and reckless partying, I think I see why love is very rare. I didn’t think I would ever fall in love, and I even trained myself not to either. My parents were the true definition and example of love, and with them gone, I suppose I really let myself fall more into the darkness and isolation than I ever thought I could reach. But knowing you, you just showed up in my life as sunshine; just bursting with energy and life in a room when all my life I felt alone. W-what I’m really trying to say is, I want us to give us a chance.”

I slowly look up at him. I instantly felt betrayed, as if this is just a joke. “You...want to date me?” I barely whisper.

“Of course, Y/N. I’m serious about this,” Bruce says, appearing as if I’ve offended him and doubted him. He looks distraught and anxious. “I’m-I’m in love with you. I want us to be together. Official.”

When those words leave Bruce’s mouth, I suddenly realize, he’s NEVER, EVER said those words before. The words sound raw and rare; like a child speaking for the first time in their lives.

The thought of being close to a man like Bruce sends waves of paranoia and fright throughout my body. The last time I was intimate or even lying next to a man resulted in nightmares and fears of being hurt all over again.

I was just a child when my father and uncle would come home from work drunk, and how they would request my little sister and I to climb in bed with them. Being the oldest, I tried my hardest to protect my sister, and I ended up fighting them back; defending us from their violent drunken behavior.

Which always resulted with me getting hit, slapped, kicked, and thrown to the ground. Even though I eventually learned to fight back, I would always panic and feel defenseless until I fight back.

But it would always come down to that first hit to the face that would make every memory and nightmare come back to life for me.

I can just feel my father’s fist striking my mouth again.

The pain feels real again.

“How could you be in love with me if you don’t know a thing about me?” I ask. I realize I sound harsh and bitter.

“What?”

“Let me just say one thing, Bruce. You don’t really know me, because I only let you see what I want you to see,” I snap. I fill with sudden anger and pain. If only Bruce knew the real me. If only Bruce saw what kind of pathetic mess I am. “Unlike you, your life is Gotham’s most known story of your parent’s generosity, luxury, and their deaths. You don’t have to hide anything. I myself, have to hide a lot just so I don’t lose my mind and get locked up in Arkham and so I don’t lose those closest to me because I’m a walking, fucking time-bomb. Do you know how hard it is to put on a strong, brave, face even when I want to cry and show everyone how hurt I am and how much pain I go through each day?! You don’t because your life is fucking perfect, so why don’t you leave me alone and go find the perfect girl because I’m too damaged to love and fix!”

The pain, anger, and fear take over me. I knock all glasses of wine and plates of food off the table and I storm out, leaving a poor, terrified Bruce Wayne behind.

I’m rushing down the sidewalk to go far away, anywhere from here. The tears fall down my cheeks, and I start to hate myself even more for letting my past get the best of me.

After everything that’s happened, I don’t think I’m fully capable of being in love, in a serious relationship, married, having children, or just a family in general.

Only good people have that; the people who were never hurt or touched dangerously in their whole lives.

Just when I think I’m far away, Bruce manages to catch up to me by running VERY fast. He grabs my arm to stop me, and just that forceful touch awakens something within me: I go into defense mode to protect myself.

Just like all those years ago.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” I yell. My fist makes a hard connection to Bruce’s jaw; knocking him to the ground.

People around are watching us; gasping and pointing at us. Bruce looks up at me and holds his jaw. “Ow...”

I begin to breathe heavily before I begin to cry again. Bruce immediately gets back on his and comes to me.

“Y/N...please tell me what’s bothering you,” Bruce says softly. He doesn’t lie a hand on me, but he’s watching me intently.

“My past. I-I can’t seem to move forward without having to be dragged back every mile,” I answer quietly.

“Is this about your father and uncle?”

My eyes widen. I look up at him. “How did you-”

“You talk in your sleep. I’ve heard you have nightmares before, and after listening and lying beside you for some time, I put the pieces together. They abused you, and you tried to get out,” Bruce admits, before he sighs. “The reason why I never told you I knew about it is because I wasn’t sure if telling you was...appropriate, and considering you never made the attempt to tell me yourself. I just...didn’t want to cross a line and make you feel more pain, but I suppose I fucked up by not saying anything.”

“It’s not your fault. I always figured, ‘why bring it up if you’re just going back to past when you just want to be here’...in the present,” I mutter under my breath.

I think back on the times Bruce and I would fall asleep on his couch. After our movie nights, I would fall asleep on his arm and he would hold me until the morning came. Ever since then, the couch has been like a bed to us; the closest to a bed we’d ever share.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I-I didn’t know how much pain you’ve been in. But please let me help you,” Bruce begs, and reaches out to touch my hands but removes them quickly after what happened. “You don’t have to be alone during this time. Let me be there like you were there for me.”

“I’m never going to get better, Bruce. I have so many ugly scars, I could never be loved for who I am and what I've been through. After all this time, I thought I would be my best, but I ended up just getting worse. Maybe I should just give up and be at peace with myself for the first time in forever,” I whisper. “I’ll just keep trying again and again, because I don’t think there’s a reason to keep going forward, because I never will.”

Bruce’s mouth opens to speak, and the horror takes over his face when I find the little strength to stroll over to the street and walk into the fast driving cars in traffic in hopes of dying the quickest way possible.

A taxi is speeding down an open lane and is heading right for me. I stop in my tracks and look at the driver in hopes my past will never hurt me again.

Because I’ll be dead.

But strong arms pull me out of the way; knocking me and whoever saved me back onto the sidewalk. I’m on top of a big, hard body and the time I sit up to look down, I see Bruce, breathing hard.

“Y/N, are you okay?” Bruce asks me. He sits up as I stand up. Once he’s on his feet, he quickly removes us from the eyes of the public and we both head into an abandoned alleyway.

“I would have been okay, if you didn’t stop me,” I answer, slightly angry from him stopping me. “Why did you stop me, Bruce? Why can’t you just let me finally let go of everything?”

“Because if I lost you, I wouldn’t have a reason to go on either,” he says quietly. “Please don’t ever do that again. I-I can’t lose you. I need you in my life. I need you with me.”

“What about your sons? Alfred?”

“I love them, but I also love you too, Y/N. Dying...is never the answer. It’s darkness that you’re trying to escape, but no matter what, it will be with you forever. I’ve seen death, and I’ve also seen good people who allow the darkness and fear change them into people who could never be saved. I may not know everything that happened in your past, Y/N, but I know you’re stronger than you think you are. And you’re beautiful, Y/N. Everyone has ugly scars, including me. But if you managed to get this far in life, I would say that’s an accomplishment not many people can achieve,” Bruce says softly, before he finally holds my hands. I let him, and I let myself cry more. “Trust me, there were times I almost let my inner demons take over my life and emotions. I almost let go at a young age too. But then I have come to learn from an old friend that in every darkness, there’s light. You just have to find your light, and you’ll never be alone.”

I wipe my tears and smile up at him. “Alfred?” I ask.

“Yes, Alfred taught me that. Do you know who my light is?”

“Your sons? Alfred?”

“All of you,” Bruce answers.

“Even me? How?” I ask, completely shocked.

“Because after I met you, I...I felt normal. Human. I don’t have to try too hard with you, and I don’t have to put on a face of confidence and behave like I’m better than everyone. The playboy billionaire title doesn’t exist to me, because when I’m with you, I’m here with you, and that’s all that matters to me. I can laugh at stupid jokes. I can walk around in just a t-shirt and regular jeans around you. Hell, I can even talk shit about other celebrities with you. I can even tell you about my own nightmares, and how someday, I hope I really can make my parents proud of me. I trust you with all that and only you, Y/N,” Bruce reveals.

He finally takes the first step. Lowering his head to mine, he kisses me. Our lips connect like magnets, and the heat between us is hotter than hell, I believe. With one hand, Bruce holds my face gently, as the other holds my waist.

And for the first time in forever, I’m not afraid.

After Bruce pulls away, he looks down at me with a small smile. He pushes a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“I really care about you, Y/N. I love you, and if I have to wait a bit to be with you, then I’ll wait as long as I need to,” Bruce says.

“Thank you...for being patient with me and for just being there Bruce,” I say.

“I’ll always be here for you, because there’s nowhere else I rather be than be here with you, Y/N.”

“Same for me too,” I admit.

Bruce wraps an arm around me and leads me back to the restaurant. “How about pizza?” he asks curiously.

“And a movie?”

“Of course.”

“Will the boys be there?”

“Most likely but as soon as that movie ends, they’re gone. It’ll just be you, me, and my couch.”

I smile, a real smile that’s not forced for the first time in a long while. “I’d love that. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

“I know what you mean,” Bruce whispers to me. “Because all I want is you here with me.”

“And I’ll be here with you every day.”

Was it good? Let me know please! I’m used to smut and I think it’s safe to say that this fic was a challenge but a good one!

[giapism]

January Reading Updates

Since we’ve just reached the end of the first month of 2020, I thought I’d take some time to share with you all what I’ve been reading and also write a short review about each book (else I’ll completely forget what I read by the end of the year...) The books are listed in the order that I completed them in. 

(*): Read in Vietnamese 

1. American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Neil is perhaps my favorite storyteller ever, and he particularly excels in building strange yet captivating worlds that do a great job of making humans seem more human than ever, despite the fact nothing remotely conforming to the human-norm happens (except marriage problems--I suppose even gods and demi-gods are dumb motherfuckers when it comes to love.)

American Gods follows Shadow, a widower freshly released from jail as he tags alongside a suspiciously rich “Mr. Wednesday” (later revealed to be an undercover God), on a quest to convince the old, forgotten Gods of America to rise up and fight the new Gods (Technology, Media etc.) The book pulls up many characters from Irish, Norse, Hindu, Slavic, African and Egyptian folklore and so on, and offers a very refreshing take on religion in modern society. Although Gaiman didn’t dive deep into any specific culture, it’s a helpful start to continue learning about religion and folklore all over the world. There is a lot of information and I can only imagine how painstaking the research process must have been.  

Genre-wise, I don’t think this book fits into any at all. There’s history, fantasy, horror, maybe some thriller too. The idea of a giant war with hundreds of Gods is very ambitious, so the book does get a little messy and all-over-the-place at times. I’d call it “jigsaw-puzzling”, though, you’re given lots of information that doesn’t seem to make sense, but gradually everything comes together at the end and I absolutely love getting to the end and exclaiming “OH! So THAT’S what it was about” I find that the suspense-building in this book very well-done, too. The only criticism I have is that the ending felt a bit... lacking. You had all this build up, this gigantic feud, but everything’s resolved so simply you almost feel cheated. Or maybe I just have something against how Armageddon-type stories (where 2 sides fight to death) keep ending. Other than that, considering how hard this topic is to write about, I’m flabbergasted at how well Neil pulled it off.

Overall rating: 8/10

2. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson

Everyone was raving about it so I had to give it a go. For those of you who don’t know, this is a self-help book aiming to show you how to re-purpose your life, communicate effectively and live productively. Surprisingly, it only took me 2 afternoons to finish (I always find self-help books are easier to read than fiction, don’t know why). It’s written very informally and feels more like a humorous conversation with a loving but foul-mouthed friend, which makes it easy to digest whether you’re a 10th grader being peer-pressured to apply to US Colleges or a 53-year old electrician just realising you actually wanted to be a novelist. The only requirement for the the advice to be useful is that you kind of need to mess up a lot.

However, I found that there weren’t that many new things in the book. Mostly, it just reminded us of the things we already knew but consciously (or subconsciously) decide to shove under the carpet, OR put into words things we kind of already think, but don’t know how to explain. There is, no doubt, lots of helpful advice but like all self-help books, I find it too much to remember (unless you’re going to re-read it 20 times), and when I finished, out of the dozens of pieces of advice I only remembered one, “People who make changes aren’t flashy and don’t about what they’re going to do a lot. They just do it.” And from then on I shut up about my plans and just worked on them. Everyone’s going to have their own takeaways relevant to their lives, and I’d encourage you to read it just to see if you can find anything interesting. If out of 20 things, you remember 2-3 things that work for you, that’s still a win.

What I enjoyed the most was actually reading the stories/examples of real people at the beginning of each chapter before getting into the “lecture” part. 

Overall rating: 6.9/10 

3. Dracula - Bram Stoker

A classic in gothic horror. I actually started reading this last year and the first third of the book telling Jonathan’s fearful stays at Count Dracula’s castle had me hooked - it’s written in beautiful, elegant language which we hardly ever hear anymore, and does such a wonderful job conveying the characters’ fears, thoughts and emotions. But the moment Jonathan leaves the castle and the book switches to other characters’ stories, it just got so long and boring that I stopped reading for 3 months altogether and forgot which character was which because there were so many men. The “dull chapters” stretch on for at least a quarter of the book, and things only get interesting again when Dracula returns to the story and certain characters start turning into vampires. The rest of the story follows the “heroes” as they try to defeat the Count and bring peace to his victims, and although many parts are suspenseful and very clever, the ending is also so easily achieved that it’s a bit of a downer. 

The whole book is written in diary entrees, journal entrees and letters of different characters (I’ve only read single-person diaries before) which was surprisingly pleasant in that you feel like you know the characters and by the end, you grow quite fond of them. It even inspired me to start keeping a diary again. It also made me start speaking like an old Englishman for the few days after completion, because I hadn’t really shaken off the language yet. Everyone seemed to be much more caring towards each other in those days, and through the letters I picked up some romantic phrases of which my favorite has been “And so, as you love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb, I send you simply his ‘love’ instead.” Lovely, isn’t it? 

Overall rating: 7/10

4. Days at Morisaki Bookstore /  Những Giấc Mơ Ở Hiệu Sách Morisaki - Satoshi Yagisawa*

I’m not sure of the popularity of this book, it seems quite lowkey but has a surprising amount of reviews on Good Reads and even has a film adaptation. I happened to find it on my bookshelf and finished it in one afternoon (it was only 150-ish pages.)

Genre-wise, I’d call it Slice of Life although I don’t know if books are even allowed to be called that, or just anime. There is generally no real plot, only character development as Takako (main character) gets dumped by her cheating boyfriend and moves into her uncle’s antique bookstore to re-charge, gradually finding herself learning to appreciate books and the people around her. It’s a very simple storyline, and there’s almost nothing very special about the main character, but maybe that’s what makes it a relaxing read - because in reality, most humans aren’t the special snowflakes and oddballs we think. Admittedly, I started off finding Takako very annoying, but as she grew through the story, I found myself empathizing with her. For me, the book is a reminder to take things slower in life, remember to recharge and learn to see the beauty in simple things around you. It had a happy ending, too. Good for lazy reads, you don’t really have to think much - just sit there with a nice cup of tea and go with the flow. 

Overall rating: 7/10

5. The Oldest Parents With The Youngest Child / Những Tháng Năm Rực Rỡ - Ae-ran Kim*

I. Loved. This. Even now it’s left me with a tumble of emotions that I don’t even know how to describe, and I can say for sure that it’s made it to my list of favorite books of all time. 

The story recounts the life of a 17-year-old boy with progeria (a disease that makes his body age 4x as fast as a regular person, meaning he has the body of an 80-year-old) and his parents, who had him when they were 17. It talks of the struggles of teen parents learning to cope with an unintended pregnancy, their financial and mental hardships raising a child whilst also battling his illness, and also of the main character’s steel-hard resilience and love for life despite his condition. It actually made me feel ashamed of myself for being perfectly healthy, but not being as curious and hungry to learn, and most of all, to have a perfectly functioning laptop and not be writing. Other than that, it also humanizes persons with disabilities, showing that they too can fall in love, get anxious when ghosted and want to sneakily drink alcohol despite being underaged - anything a typical 17 year old might do. After this book, for the first time in a long time I felt that every aspect of life was truly wonderful and that I was lucky to be here. I also made a list of 30 challenges to do these coming months, to understand and enjoy life more and will keep you updated on my progress. 

Even though the book is written from the perspective of a boy with progeria, the author herself is a perfectly healthy woman in her 40s (who did a lot of research before writing, I’m sure). Yet somehow she’s able to tell the story so vividly, convincingly and emotionally that I feel like I’m in his body, living his life and feeling his disappointment and excitement. The tone is so natural, so nonchalant it just feels like a leaf smoothly riding the breeze down the the ground. Reading this book, I’m reminded again of how powerful a tool literature is in sharing ideas, bridging humans and building empathy. I’m in awe of not just the main character for pushing through his difficulties the way he did, but also of the author for writing something so powerful it changed the way I looked at life. It makes me want to write stories like this one day, too. I just don’t know what to say about this book other than I really loved it. 

Overall rating: 9/10

And that’s it for this month! I’ve only just gotten back on track with reading and remembering how fun it is. Hopefully someone will find this helpful and maybe pick up one of these books. I’ll see you guys next month!

[simonjadis]

You’re absolute right, anon.

While I haven’t been engaging in fandom circles since the ‘80s, I’ve definitely been in fandom for a while. I think that there are a few factors for why these self-appointed “guardians” are mad about media becoming more inclusive

1. regular, garden-variety bigotry, echoed and fueled by youtube conspiracy videos

2. before the internet and especially before fairly recent internet features making it easier for fandom folks to find each other, guys who see themselves as “default” existed largely in a bubble in which they assumed that everyone who enjoyed the piece of media did so largely like they did, with disputes running along the lines of “who’s the better Star Trek Captain” or “who would win” discourse rather than “hey why are literally all of the people of color in LOTR loyal to Sauron,” which they see as an attack on the entire piece of media rather than as a specific criticism. As you can imagine, marginalized folks within these nerd spaces were reluctant to speak up before they found like-minded folks online. for decades, if we wanted representation, it had to be in the form of fanfiction

3. representation is actually happening on screen, and this is extremely recent. to them, it seems like suddenly their favorite things are being “taken over,” so they assume that it must be new people trying to insert themselves. the truth, of course, is that it’s just the veil of censorship being (slowly) lifted. Remember, Gene Roddenberry conceived of Geordi La Forge as being gay -- but that was nixed. Rick Berman continued to wage a war against queer representation on Star Trek for nearly two decades. It seems that he hated queer representation almost as much as he hated non-huge boobs. We’re not invading anything -- we’re just finally allowed to live openly (in some cases) and (in rarer cases) see ourselves depicted in the media we consume and create.

You’re also right when you mention that some people seem to hate-consume a piece of media that they claim to love. It’s very odd. You can have critiques of something without acting like something is a disaster or embarrassing and also without acting like the next iteration of it is SURE to be a fustercluck

I think that this arises -- especially on tumblr -- as a sort of mental (even subconscious) guard against other people hurling hate at you for consuming a piece of media that The Queen Hath Proclaimed To Be Problematique

Media that is actually inclusive is held to a higher standard than media that makes zero effort, at all, for even a moment. That’s why you’ll find endless rants about something that could have been done better in Dragon Age by a person who enjoys The Witcher trilogy, where everyone is white except for the foreign brown folks from that one DLC where they kidnap you after you murder their frog prince. Or why a show with no same-sex kisses gets enjoyed but then there is one but people don’t like how it happened.

Again, not liking how something went down in a game or a show, even an inclusive one, is fine. The proportion of criticism that media like Steven Universe receive in proportion to shows that have never lifted a finger to be queer is pretty staggering.

It’s also entirely valid to enjoy something while being critical of a few aspects or even just one. I just finished Season 2 of The Outpost and it’s super low special effects budget is one thing, but so far the admittedly short seasons have yet to feature a single queer character? I’m torn between wanting a Season 3 (undecided as of yet) and putting an asterisk in demanding queer rep as a condition.

Not that it’s up to me. But if it were, I’d be like “renewed, be sure to work in queer stuff. I don’t mean comic relief characters I mean that Talon has an ex girlfriend, I mean that Naya moves on from her disastrous last relationship to be with a warrior woman, I mean that Gwynn’s “uncle” has a husband. The show has acknowledged that queer folks exist which puts it ahead of most of the ‘90s live action fantasy that it so closely resembles, but it would be nice to actually meet them, and I don’t mean a bunch of conspicuous new characters

PS: I’m so sorry that it took approximately 100 hours for me to answer this Ask! Wednesday was social stuff, Thursday was early bed after work, and then Friday and Saturday I just played Greedfall all day because I like magic and also being gay. This was a very good Ask and thank you for sending it in! You have good opinions!!

[arcticdementor]

Scott Alexander argued for Kolmogorov complicity - in short, to quietly shut up and let the crazies take over while you go off and do your work in areas the crazies aren't attacking. This is one of the last few interesting articles he wrote about politics and the "culture war" before banning the subject from his site and subreddit for fear of his career after being repeatedly doxxed and threatened by SJW activists.

Unfortunately, as we've seen, there is nothing the crazies won't attack and attempt to take over. Universities, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, comic books, video games, science fiction, you name it. Kolmogorov complicity is not an option. And frankly, Kolmogorov wasn't some honorable man who simply nodded along with the Communists while turning away to do his real work in mathematics - he cooperated with the Soviets in driving their political opponents out of mathematics. That's not defensible.

…

So, you're tired of tech companies censoring the Internet and SJWs ruining everything? Don't just roll over and let them win, but fight back - but fight back smartly, without putting yourself at risk. Instead of becoming complicit, become a spy. That's the core of my thesis.

…

Most of this is informed by my background in the tech industry, but some of it may be applicable to other industries, in particular individuals in large public companies and public universities. In addition, any of this which talks about legal remedies is going to be primarily centered on the United States, though you may have similar legal remedies elsewhere in the world. Please note that I am not a lawyer, and if you are in a position where you need a lawyer, you should talk to a real lawyer instead of taking advice from the Internet.

Just one thing first and foremost - if you can avoid it, never sign an arbitration agreement.

…

From now on, you're not fighting them in the open. Forget the "marketplace of ideas" - you're a spy. Except instead of being paid off by a country or an industrial competitor, you're in it to fight a war for freedom of speech within Western society. It's tragic that it's come to this, but that's the state of affairs that we find ourselves in.

So, how do you go about this? There are two things to keep track of: illegal actions, and political activity; and two classes of action: company policy, and people advocating for these things. Any way you slice it, you've got to collect the information, exfiltrate it safely, and sit on it until it's time to expose them. Anything that's embarrassing for the company, anything that's illegal, any individual that's getting away with stuff that you wouldn't be able to? Save it for posterity.

…

You must save this stuff on a medium that is not under corporate control. Not only do you not want to lose access of the data when you inevitably leave the company, you need to have control over the stuff you're planning on leaking in a way that they can't track. Don't sit there and email screenshots from your work email to your personal email. That's stupid. Don't save it to your work computer and then try to plug in a USB stick and transfer it off, either. That's trivial for corporate IT to detect these days. Most of the megacorps have very locked down computers and will flag that kind of thing immediately. Don't think "oh well I'll just turn the wifi off and do it" either, they'll send the alert as soon as you connect again.

The safest thing I've come up with is to have a camera (or cameraphone) that is in no way associated with work (don't use the phone that has your company's security app on it!), and take pictures of the screen of your laptop. Most of these companies let employees take laptops home. If you put your laptop on a table, prop your elbow up on a table, and get a good focus angle, it's possible to take pretty good pictures of the screen. Or get a tripod. Oh, and don't store these pictures on a cloud that's controlled by the company you work for. That one's kind of obvious, but if you work for Facebook and put all the pictures on Instagram... well, one day you just might find that you can't log into your account anymore and oh also you've got a meeting with HR on your calendar that day that you didn't know about. Funny thing, that... Don't be stupid. Like I said at the beginning, you're a spy. Keep the spy mindset.

Timing's key, too. Don't dump the data the day you post a 40,000 word manifesto on the company email server and quit. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and your goal is to be anonymous. SJWs want to virtue signal and get credit for being the wokest person on the planet; your goal is to expose them without anyone knowing you did it.

…

If you are trying to bring legal action against the company, the first thing to remember is that you must have "standing". This means you have to be able to demonstrate to a court that you were directly harmed by a particular action. It's going to be very hard for you to do this even if the company is actively discriminating against your ethnic or racial group. (For example, if they're discriminating against white men, and you're a white man who got hired, you weren't "discriminated against" in the hiring process - going to be hard for you to win that case, obviously; and it's close to impossible for you to ever win a case that you didn't get a promotion you deserved because they can always just say "well we promoted someone else who was qualified".) As you can see from the Damore lawsuit, this is time-consuming, requires a ton of money for lawyers, and you may end up in front of some SJW judge or someone who's paid off by the company you're suing.

…

Alternatively, you can go after them in the media. As we know, most of the mainstream media is covering for these bastards, so you're forced to turn to the partisans like Breitbart Tech or maybe the weirdos with principles like Glenn Greenwald. If it's your first time talking to the reporters, you'll probably want to go in anonymously - make a new protonmail account, use Telegram, that kind of thing. They may require you to show proof that you really do work for the company before you can convince them; at that point you're just going to have to decide whether or not you trust them.

If you really can't get ahold of anyone in the media, consider just dumping it on the internet. Of course reddit bans doxing, but there are websites that don't. Just make sure you're doing it from an IP that can't be tracked back to you - if you're going to dump it all on the internet, do it from free wifi somewhere, use a VPN, etc. Don't do it from your home internet from the same IP address you log in from. You don't want that information getting back to you.

And it goes without saying - keep your fucking mouth shut. Don't start going "oh man did you see those leaks on the internet yesterday" and getting into arguments about it. If it explodes and goes viral there will inevitably be water cooler talk about it; stick to the safe stuff: "Never say anything you wouldn't want on the New York Times front page", "If they catch the guy he's going to be fired so fast it'll make his head spin", that kind of thing.

…

So, you run your own business and want to safeguard it against SJW takeover?

You want to do all the same checking up on your potential employees that you would in the above case, but it actually gets harder for you here, because you are going to be required to maintain some sort of reasonable race/gender balance, particularly if your company grows. If you're consistently turning away SJWs more than likely a number of them will be women, and they'll try to hit you for not hiring "enough" women. Especially if you're in a field which is predominantly male, this kind of lawsuit can be extremely difficult to fight off. The best defense may be to flip the numbers around - interview and turn down a large number of men specifically so that you can claim that you're hiring a higher percentage of women who interview than you do men who interview.

…

You might see groups pop up at larger companies that are semi-political or appear that they offer some opposition to the SJW hivemind. It's tempting to link up with like-minded individuals, but it's best not to be active in those groups. If you're vocal in those groups, it effectively paints a target on your back. Keep your mouth shut and blend in. Stick to work at work, leave your politics at home, and fight the battle in secret.

[vitaminhosh]

prince!seungcheol

anon requested: “prince cheol i will lvoe u forever”

pairing: seungcheol x reader

under the cut bc it’s ridiculously long

oH boy i am so ready for this au

one of the most charming and endearing princes out there??

there isn’t anyone one within a 100-mile radius that dislikes seungcheol like..... have you met him

and anyone who does kind of feel some sort of dislike towards him

they see him smile and oops

how did I not like him before?? he’s an angel??

he is genuinely hard working and kind hearted though, he works very hard to make the lives of his people better

when he was younger and wasn’t allowed to go out he would have to learn about the kingdom’s history and,, all the war and bloodshed absolutely broke his heart

he swore that when he was older he would never allow something like this to happen again

when he was finally allowed to go out and saw some of the people struggling to just make do, he was determined to make a change

nowadays he makes it his mission to go out and meet everybody and see how they’re doing as often as his busy schedule allows

he’ll have lunch in the town and chat with the people, anyone who saw from the outside wouldn’t even suspect that he was royalty and just think that it was a table of old friends

plus his absolute favorite meal of all time is in this small shop tucked away in one of the small streets in the heart of town, and it was,,, a burger

sure the food in the palace was obviously amazing with top chefs cooking there and all but,, nothing really beats the burger made in this small shop that people barely even knew about

we all know seungcheol will be a well-dressed prince 

like,, he won’t want to be super over the top in full on capes and stuff but,, he sure as hell isn’t just walking around town in sweatpants or something

he cares about his image okay

(even though everyone will swoon even if he were to go out in sweatpants and a hoodie)

everyone in his kingdom is basically in love with him

as are the people in neighboring kingdoms 

and far away kingdoms

the other princes are jealous

have you seen his smile though? it can cure diseases

he takes his responsibilities very seriously, but obviously, he’s still a young man who likes to have fun and gets bored too

he doesn’t like to sit still, so when he’s finished with all of his duties he’ll be off to go do something

even at odd times at the night, you can find him in a nearby kingdom trying to find this specific comic book or something

people don’t find it weird anymore

“oh look prince seungcheol is here again did you want more of these sweets?”

he’s often seen hanging out with the other princes when he can

the people die when they see their princes hanging out together

has public social media accounts but also secret personal ones

spams the group chat full of princes,, just because he can

ok enough background stuff onto you and cheol

you work in one of those small tucked away shops that prince seungcheol likes to frequent

however you’re not from this kingdom, and you only work the night shift so it’s not like you know a lot of people or much about this kingdom

you’re just taking this job to try and make some cash while you’re away from home traveling, you happened to choose to stay here indefinitely

you’re not entirely sure who this strangely good-looking man is who only comes in at 3am every week is but ?? business is business plus you’re not gonna judge,, it’s not like you’ve never had cravings for junk food in the middle of the night too

since it’s late at night cheol is dressed in very casual clothes so nothing really gives away the fact that he’s actually the goddamn prince of this kingdom

since he comes so often plus he just likes to get to know people he makes small talk while you gather up his stuff

after a couple of weeks, you soon become kinda like friends ?? it’s a weird circumstance but hell it’s 3am nobody’s really functioning well enough to question this

 you’re sitting at the counter on your phone when the bell on the door rings signalling another customer

you just know it’s him again cause,,, not many people would be here at this ungodly time of night so you don’t bother looking up

you stop scrolling through instagram when you hear tutting in front of you

“I should complain to your manager you know- I’d rate this customer service a 1/10″

seungcheol watched as you finally looked up and chuckled at him

“sorry old man..... how can I help you, your highness”

seungcheol froze- did you finally find out who he was?

the reason he was so interested in you was because you didn’t seem to know who he was, and treated him like a normal person

his mind was going 100 miles a minute until you suddenly snorted

“god imagine it,, you ?? a king ?? pfft”

he smirked once he realized he wasn’t busted

“what do you have against me being a king huh?”

“idk man what kinda king buys junk food like three times a week at 3am,, plus ur a dork”

“wow,,, is that all i am to you,,,,,, a dork,,,, im hurt”

you smack his arm before starting to scan the things he’s put down on the counter

“how do you eat all this and stay in shape... tell me your secrets”

“god given metabolism sorry sweaty you can’t buy this :-)”

you snorted once again as you begin to pack his things into a paper bag

“did god accidentally spill all the ego into you as well”

“well i mean to help god out i do go workout too feel free to join me if you’re not too unfit to keep up”

“uhhh excuse me who are you calling unfit..... give me a time and place and I’ll fight beat you in a race”

“fine when do you get off tomorrow I’ll walk you to the hill and see who can get to the top first”

and that’s how you ended up at the bottom of a hill at 5am with a man you’ve never seen outside the shop

“whoever wins gets treated to breakfast”

“wipe that smirk off your face seungcheol I’m not getting beat by you”

surprise surprise,,,,, you lost

unfortunately he was much faster than you thought he would be

you were both lying on the grass, panting from running up a sizable hill 

you punched his arm

seungcheol sat up, mouth open as he was about to whine when a voice came from the bottle of the hill

“your highness! there you are! you were supposed to return an hour ago you father will find out you’ve been out!”

seungcheol’s eyes widened before cursing under his breath

“I gotta go but you still owe me breakfast okay I’ll explain everything tonight ok bye !!”

you just sat there in shock as seungcheol dashed down the hill, even faster than before as the worker followed behind him

“y-your highness?”

you had flashbacks to seungcheol smirking when you laughed at the idea of him being king

you make your way back home, with a permanent blush on your cheeks and a million thoughts in your head

how could you not know that he was the prince?

oh god you’ve been smacking the prince for weeks when he makes a stupid dad joke

you can’t sleep that day and when you’re back in the shop you’re barely conscious

you’re too tired to even think about seungcheol saying he would explain tonight

when seungcheol comes in and makes his way over to the counter, he expects to find you on your phone again but instead sees you asleep on the counter

he smiles softly before grabbing an old receipt and a pen and writing a note

“sleeping on the job? strike two y/n. I really should complain to your manager, guess I was just too fast for you ;). I’ll be back tomorrow, get some rest. p.s. you might want to wash that hoodie, you drooled a little bit”

you woke up with a panic when your phone chimed at 5am, reminding you it was time to close up

oh god seungcheol was supposed to come

after you finally orientate yourself you notice the note on the table

after reading the note you flush red again

oh god you were asleep in front of the cute prince and d r o o l e d

you stumbled home after closing up and immediately went to sleep

later that day you rushed to the shop, almost late since you were so tired you slept through your alarm

as 2 am came around the bell on the door rang and you sat up straight

seungcheol didn’t usually come till around 3 so you assumed this was an actual customer

"I hope you washed that hoodie before coming back here tonight”

you looked down and noticed that you were in such a rush that you didn’t even change out of last night’s outfit

flushing pink, you quip back with a “so what if I didn’t huh”

seungcheol finally appears from around the shelf

“its a bit gross i gotta say”

“not as gross as you”

seungcheol looked at you with a soft smile on his face, trying to get the words in his head to form coherent sentences

“im sorry”

you looked at him with a blank face

“what for ?? i mean i know its kinda gross but like i was gonna be late for work and-”

“no, I’m sorry for not telling you”

you sat there with your mouth half open and closed it before looking down at your hands that were on the counter

“it’s okay”

he took your hands in his, making you look up

“it’s not, I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I’ve just never had someone treat me like everyone else and it was... refreshing. But you deserved to know, I was being selfish. I’m sorry”

you gave seungcheol a soft smile, giving his hands a soft pat as he looked down at his feet to try and get his attention

“seungcheol really, it’s fine. I understand why you did it, I’m not mad”

“I still feel bad, it wasn’t right. You should be mad”

“well I mean I am....”

seungcheol looked up, ready to apologize again

“but only cause you beat me in a race,,,,, outrageous”

you smack him again, trying to lighten the mood

“but a deal is a deal, and I still owe you breakfast”

seungcheol started giggling, and you swear your heart skipped a beat

“im trying to be serious here and all you care about is getting beat”

“cheol, i really don’t mind. plus, I’m a woman of my word, I can’t have you owe me, that’s ridiculous”

“I’m busy later, how about you just treat me to a late night snack here instead”

fast forward to a couple weeks later, and you’re back at that hill waiting for seungcheol to come so that he can introduce you to his prince friends as you have a couple of days off

you can actually hear them before you see them 

who’s even surprised at this point it’s seungcheol + 12 rowdy boys

“guys please don’t be embarrassin- oH hi y/n you’re early hahaha”

“hi I’m jeonghan are you cheol’s girlfrien-”

seungcheol shoved the guy out of the way before he could finish his sentence

“sorry,,, my friends are idiots”

you chuckled as seungcheol sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, a light pink dusting his cheeks

“don’t worry, I like them”

“wE LIKE YOU TOO Y/N”

you giggled before heading over to the group of guys to go meet them properly

seungcheol stood still for a second, watching you introduce yourself to his friends a couple feet away

jeonghan came up to him, watching you with him

“when are you gonna ask her out, I thought you were going to the other day when you guys hung out at her place”

“she was tired so I let her sleep, some other time jeonghan”

they headed back to the group and you turned to them as you noticed the two join the circle

“cheol !! is it true that you tripped over a log and fell into the lake while trying to impress a girl when you were 6? i knew you were a dork but I didn’t think it was that bad”

“wHAT ARE YOU GUYS TELLING HER”

as the day began to end and everyone had to head back, seungcheol insisted on walking you back to your apartment

you had refused at first, but you were tired and it was late

when you got to your place you turned to seungcheol, about to thank him for walking you back when you saw him looking nervous

“cheol, are you okay? what’s wrong?”

“nothing,, I just,, y/n would you want- I mean- do you,, uh,,,, will you,, go out with me?”

you could barely hear him as he was mumbling but you just managed to catch his words

you put your hand on his cheek and pressed a quick kiss onto his other cheek

“of course seungcheol, it’d be an honor”

you smiled and said goodnight before heading inside

seungcheol stood there, frozen in shock as you had not only agreed but ???? you kissed his cheek ?????

you began to get ready for bed, a smile and a light blush on your face

you can’t believe you’re dating the biggest dork on the planet

seungcheol, on the other hand, was shouting at jeonghan down the phone; he practically skipping home

a/n: this is,,,,,, the longest thing ever im so sorry i got excited about this au