#to realise how iter of a disease is going to be

[persephoneflouwers]

"This reminds me of the fandom’s narrative about ESNY. People are still convinced that song is about losing a family member to a severe disease, even if it was written way before the tragical event happened." could still be about Robin though, they knew he wouldn't make it so even if it was written before he actually passed it would still fit the situation

“It still worked in that case though, because it is a song that a posteriori you would read as a sad song for someone you lost. It’s not the type of song I can imagine someone would write a priori for that reason.”

[notwiselybuttoowell]

In 2014, the Guardian asked me to nominate my hero of the year. To some people’s surprise, I chose Russell Brand. I loved the way he energised young people who had been alienated from politics. I claimed, perhaps hyperbolically, he was “the best thing that has happened to the left in years” (in my defence, there wasn’t, at the time, much competition).

Today, I can scarcely believe it’s the same man. I’ve watched 50 of his recent videos, with growing incredulity. He appears to have switched from challenging injustice to conjuring phantoms. If, as I suspect it might, politics takes a very dark turn in the next few years, it will be partly as a result of people like Brand.

It’s hard to decide which is most dispiriting: the stupidity of some of the theories he recites, or the lack of originality. He repeatedly says he’s not a conspiracy theorist, but, to me, he certainly sounds like one.

In 2014, he was bursting with new ideas and creative ways of presenting them. Today, he wastes his talent on tired and discredited tales: endless iterations of the alleged evils of the World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab, the Great Reset, Bill Gates, Nancy Pelosi, the former US chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, Covid vaccines, medical data, the World Health Organization, Pfizer, smart cities and “the globalist masterplan”.

His videos appear to promote “natural immunity” ahead of vaccines, and for a while pushed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for Covid (they aren’t).

He championed the “Freedom Convoy” that occupied Ottawa, which apparently stood proudly against the “tyranny” of Justin Trudeau’s policies. He hawks Graham Hancock’s widely debunked claims about ancient monuments.

A wildly popular clip from one of his videos about the Dutch nitrate crisis offers a classic conspiracy theory mashup: a tangle of claims that may be true in other contexts, random accusations, scapegoating and resonances with some old and very ugly tropes. He claims that “this whole fertiliser situation is a scam”. The real objective is “to bankrupt the farmers so their land can be grabbed”. This “shows you how the Great Reset operates”, using “globalist” regulations to throw farmers off their land. He claims it’s “connected to the land grab of Bill Gates” and the “corruption of companies like Monsanto”.

In reality, the Dutch government was forced to act by a legal ruling, as levels of nitrate pollution, largely from livestock farms, break European law. Its attempts to curb this pollution have nothing to do with the World Economic Forum and its vacuous rhetoric about a “Great Reset”. Or with Bill Gates. Or with Monsanto, which hasn’t existed since 2018 when it was bought by Bayer. So why mention them? Perhaps because these terms have become potent click triggers.

Brand is repeating claims first made by far-right conspiracists, who have piled into this issue, claiming that the nitrate crisis is a pretext to seize land from farmers, in whom, they claim, true Dutch identity is vested, and hand it to asylum seekers and other immigrants. It’s a version of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, itself a reworking of the Nazis’ blood and soil tropes about protecting the “rooted” and “authentic” people – in whom “racial purity” and “true” German identity was vested – from “cosmopolitan” and “alien” forces (ie Jews). Brand may not realise this, as the language has changed a little – “cosmopolitans” have become “globalists”, “aliens” have become “immigrants” – but the themes have not.

On and drearily on he goes. He manages to confuse the World Health Organization’s call for better pandemic surveillance (by which it means the tracking of infectious diseases) with coercive surveillance of the population, creating “centralised systems of control where you are ultimately a serf”.

Some of his many rants about Bill Gates are illustrated with an image of the man wearing a multicoloured lapel badge, helpfully circled in red. This speaks to another widespread conspiracy theory: those who wear this badge are members of a secret organisation conspiring to control the world (so secret they stick it on their jackets). In reality, it shows support for the UN sustainable development goals.

Such claims are not just wrong. They are wearyingly, boringly wrong. But, to judge by the figures (he has more than 6 million subscribers on YouTube), the audience loves them.

Some of his theories, such as his recent obsession with UFOs, are innocuous enough. Others have potential to do great harm. There’s the risk to the people scapegoated, such as Fauci, Schwab and Pelosi: subjects of conspiracy theories often become targets of violence. There are the risks misleading claims present to public health. And bizarre stories about shadowy “elites” protect real elites from scrutiny and challenge.

While I’m not suggesting this is his purpose, it’s a tactic used deliberately by powerful people to disarm those who might otherwise hold them to account. Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, had a term for it: “flood the zone with shit”. As Naomi Klein has shown, the Great Reset conspiracy theory was conceived by a staffer at the Heartland Institute, a US lobby group that has promoted climate denial and other billionaire-friendly positions. It’s a bastardisation of her shock doctrine hypothesis, distracting people from the malfeasance of those with real power.

[eimearkuopio]

Hozier - Nobody's Soldier (Official Audio)

If I am a prophet - and it feels like I am, but I might be wrong - then I am not the only one currently stirring. I have told the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church that I am not a prophet for the world, just for them. I have given them my message first, pointing it out to them in every place I found it, taking the shattered pieces of myself that their failures left me with and choosing to remake myself into something that may not be what God intended, but that is at least a sound vessel that can contain something without leaking!

I believe the Roman Catholic Church realised in the 1970s just how wrong they were, but the bureaucracy threw their faith in God out along with their faith in themselves, because if Jesus Christ is not the risen Saviour then their faith is in vain. Mine is not. They declared there would be no further general revelation because they lost faith in general revelation as a concept. I believe Vatican II was their attempt to resolve their issues, but they lacked sufficient enlightenment. I believe the present effort on synodality is an attempt to iterate further into something worth being, to get the world out of this Hell that their good intentions have led us into; but I also believe that it is an attempt to abdicate responsibility without abdicating power, and I will have none of that. If you will not listen to the Word of the God you claim to follow, you will hear me instead. Change, or die. It's a prophecy, not a threat. I spent too long building a life I could bear to live in spite of their best efforts to silence or ignore me to give it up just to save their miserable hides. I have been saying for decades that I am still a Catholic so that, if the time comes when I feel the need to speak to them, I will have sufficient cachet that they will listen. I prayed that time would never come, and yet it has. I have just about survived 40 years of my mentally ill grandmother and the hierarchy of the Church reenacting Two Girls One Cup with their mutual worship of one another. I am sure that disgusting analogy has been going on the world over, as people who have no faith claim to nourish people who believe, without anyone bothering to truly change the system and while children starve because none of the adults can be bothered to check whether they are handing out bread or stones - each of which has their place in our lives, but I think we can agree they are not interchangeable! Just because you got lucky enough to mostly receive bread, doesn't mean the current system hasn't resulted in an unnecessary number of cracked fucking teeth!

I believe that I am, at worst, a livestock guardian sheepdog whose instincts are so strong that I have learned their language so I can teach them to do better even if I can't teach them the true will of the One whose sheep they claim to nurture. I believe that the previous generation of sheepdogs have good instincts, but were trained by bad shepherds and hoodwinked by false prophets and wolves in sheep's clothing. I'm not here for the whole world. I'm here to sort the sheep from everyone else, to care as best I can for the domestic animals these shepherds have rustled from other farms and the wild animals they have caged; to give them permission to put down the truly rabid before their disease can spread, and to rehabilitate and release the caged predators whose niche in the ecosystem they failed to recognise when they paved this road.

It doesn't matter if I'm right or not. What matters is, if they believe in God and want to do what He wants, they should listen to what I have to say and then make up their own minds; and if they don't believe in God but they think they know better than everyone else, well, I've read Animal Farm.

[backupblogforjg]

The racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and cruel tropes in Voltron

So, it’s the anniversary of the ending of Voltron. And I’m getting really, really tired of people saying that only shippers hated the ending. There were many issues with Voltron, and they were neither limited to shipping nor to S8.

So, I’ve decided to compile a list.

It gets LONG. Turns out there was a hell of a lot of racist, sexist, ableist and cruel tropes in VLD.

In fact, I had originally planned on writing a list of both the terrible tropes and the plot holes. But there just wasn’t enough room for both. The post is huge as it is, and with the plot holes, it would have been twice as long, so I had to focus on only one thing.

Salt, obviously. So, so, so much salt. I could turn a lake into a sea here. You’ve been warned.

RACISM:

1) The Alteans are genocide survivors. Out of all the Alteans, only the black Altean was used for a Reverse Racism story where she resents a teammate for belonging to the race that exterminated hers. The white Alteans are totally cool with him, and with his race in general, and only hate the bad people. But the black one had to be taught that hating people because of their race is wrong.

2) VLD Allura is also the only version of Allura who is black. In every other Voltron media (several different cartoons and comics), Allura is blond with blue eyes. All the white versions of the character get a happy ending, while only the black version ends up dying to save the world.

While "hero sacrifices their life to save the world" is not a bad trope in and of itself, it becomes bad when it kills off one of the extremely few black female characters in leading roles. You kill off a white male hero, there are 463278462387 more. You kill off the black female hero, you are kinda screwed. Making it worse, Allura had been portrayed as suffering from depression throughout the latest seasons, so that her death comes across less as heroic sacrifice and more as suicide.

3) The brown Cuban kid who dreamed of being a pilot, and never once in 78 episodes ever expressed anything but sheer love for an exciting life, in the final two minutes of the final episode ends up realizing that the place for him is a farm.

4) As told in interviews, Lotor was meant to be a bad example of mixed-race person, to contrast him with Keith as good example of mixed race person. Do I even have to point out how messed up this is?

5) Even before they became Space Nazis, back when they were still on the side of the angels, the Galra invaded and conquered planets. This is portrayed as totally cool when they happily name the prince after a "hero" who invaded and conquered a lot of worlds, and the peaceful Alteans think the guy is just as heroic as one of their greatest scientists. Apparently there is such a thing as ethically killing people to steal their land.

6) They whitewashed Keith, a character who is poc in every other iteration of Voltron.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to get angry here, claiming that I hate Keith. Let me assure you, I don’t. I love Keith, and I hate what was done to him. I hate that they took a traditionally poc character and went to frankly ridiculous lengths to erase that part of his character. Keith should be Asian, and it would be incredibly easy to make him so in VLD (seriously, all they’d have to do is update the freaking bios, an intern could do it right now in 5 minutes). But they refuse to do it.

A lot of people don’t realise that the surname “Kogane” in VLD is fanon.

I’m serious. Check his official bios page. Keith is not actually called Keith Kogane in VLD. Fans started calling him that in fanfiction, and it stuck, but it’s not canon.

In every other Voltron media, Keith is an Asian guy. But in VLD, they:

- went out of their way to always avoid giving him an Asian surname

- gave him a Texan father

- refused to confirm his race, even when every other character had a specific race. Again, check his official bios. All the other characters got a race, Keith gets “human.” It got so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren’t sad. It pretty much went like this:

Fans: Keith is half alien, but about his human half, what is his ethnicity? EPs: oh, we couldn't possibly say, because the story takes place in the future, and in the future, everybody is mixed up! So, Keith is HUMAN, we can't give him a specific race because there are no specific races in the future! Fans: ok. And what are the races of the other characters? EPs: Pidge is Italian, Lance is Cuban, Hunk is half-black half- Samoan, Shiro is Japanese. Fans: but Keith...? EPs: HUMAN! There is no such thing as race in the future!

Some people at least hoped that Keith's Texan father had Asian ancestry because he kinda looked like Shiro, who is Japanese. But the EPs confirmed that the resemblance was just a coincidence, they never meant for the dad to look Japanese.

At this point pretty much the only evidence that Keith is Asian is that he is voiced by an Asian person. But then, Josh Keaton is not Japanese, is he?

7) After whitewashing Keith, they claimed he is the best leader of Voltron, better than his poc predecessor, because he has Galra blood.

So, instead of bringing up any sort of legit reason to justify why Keith should be in charge (like his empathy or pilot skills), they go with "the half-white guy is also half space-nazi and that's why he should give the orders instead of the poc guy."

If you think I’m bashing Keith here, please ask yourself why you are getting angry at the person pointing out the whitewashing instead of getting angry at the whitewashing. Especially when, again, making VLD Keith canonically poc could be done anytime with zero cost and zero effort, and DW just doesn’t want to.

- Hunk, the half-black half-Samoan guy, was going to be killed and replaced as Paladin by a blue alien. The EPs were pissed when DW forbade them to, and complained in the interview about it.

SEXISM:

Every single woman who is ever put in charge ends up going insane, making terrible decisions that endanger her planet, or losing all of her authority.

Allura starts out as co-leader of Voltron and leader of the Coalition. Ends up as a foot soldier who takes orders from the new leader and his right-hand man, and is treated as a cadet by the Earth military.

HOMOPHOBIA:

1) Dreamworks, Netflix and the EPs very, very, very heavily promoted S7 as GLBT-friendly. The EPs gave whole interviews about the past relationship between Shiro and new character Adam, retweeted a ton of posts celebrating Shiro’s homosexuality, and enthusiastically sent tweets like "you are going to see more of Adam in S7! :D" from their personal accounts after they showed the episode that introduced him.

In S7:

- Shiro's homosexuality is so ambiguous that even the Brazilian voice actor didn't realize that he was supposed to be gay. Just by watching the show, without knowing the World Of God, you can’t tell he and the other guy were engaged.

- Adam gets about 30 seconds of screentime after that one episode they had already shown. Then he dies screaming in pain and terror in a fire.

A lot of people claimed that it was okay to kill Adam because Shiro was supposed to be our rep, not Adam, who was a brand new character we knew little about. And, out of context, that would be true. Adam was pretty much a NPC, why would his death matter?

But the problem here is the context:

- Shiro is closeted in S7, you need to read interviews to know he is gay. So, if only Shiro is meant to be the rep, they couldn’t even do that right.

- They very heavily marketed both Shiro and Adam as gay rep, and specifically talked at length about Adam in several interviews.

In THAT context, REGARDLESS of what you ship, killing off Adam revealed a complete willingness to manipulate the audience to the point of outright lying. Even if you hated Adam, even if Adashi is your NOTP, the clear evidence that the creators had absolutely no problem making empty promises was NOT a good sign.

2) The moment Shiro is revealed to be gay in interviews, he is practically quarantined from the Team.

3) Shiro is also given a Totally Not AIDS deadly disease.

Making it even worse, Shiro never actually gets cured in canon. We are told he is cured in interviews, but the show itself drops the topic entirely. Depending on where you lean in the Word Of God VS Death Of The Author debate, Shiro may be doomed to die.

4) A female villain is revealed to be a lesbian. 30 seconds later she gleefully tortures a little girl. Then she, too, dies in a fire.

(Fan outrage about pulling two Bury Your Gays in the Season that had been very heavily promoted as GLBT-friendly caused DW to retcon her death and bring her back in S8, but she was originally meant to die in the explosion)

5) Shiro ends up marrying a random character who doesn’t even get a name in the show.

ABLEISM:

1) Shiro's PTSD magically disappears offscreen. In interviews, the EPs claimed that he "got over it" between S6 and S7 because "he is a professional." Wow! Who knew being a professional magically cures mental illnesses!

2) Shiro is an amputee. The EPs admitted that they never put any thought into his status as disabled rep, they just wanted a character with a cool-looking arm. It literally didn't occur to them that making him lose his arm (TWICE! First up to the biceps, then up to the shoulder) meant anything. Also worth noting that Shiro’s new arm makes him look like the guy who tormented him.

3) Shiro is systematically robbed of his agency.

- He is the only Paladin who never gets to use his bayard.

- He loses his bond with Black for no given canon reason (and the reason they give in interviews makes no sense, they basically say that transferring his soul out of the Black Lion makes her stop loving him. But she still lets Zarkon fly her!).

I know that Keith is traditionally Black’s pilot in Voltron media (although that shouldn’t matter, because VLD made a lot of huge changes to the traditional status quo). But if they wanted Black Paladin Keith that badly, they could have given some non-insulting reason for it. For example, say “because Shiro has spent so much time within Black, their bond is now so strong that he will get absorbed again if he flies her again.” Or co-pilots in Black (if Pidge can co-pilot with Matt, why can’t Shiro co-pilot with Keith?).

- He is defeated not only by Sendak, but also by a bunch of random Alteans. He basically can’t win a fight anymore unless it’s played for laughs.

- His new robot Atlas is bigger than Voltron, but also much weaker, and can only buy a few minutes for Voltron to come save the day.

- Every single enemy he ever defeated comes back to be finished off by somebody else (even the friggin' Gladiator from S1 comes back in S8). In the epilogue, he retires in his twenties.

4) Narti, the disabled General, is fridged shortly after her introduction. For a while at least it seemed like her death had affected the remaining three Generals, but then it turns out that the "For Narti" line was a trick and they never actually planned on avenging her.

CRUEL TROPES:

1) They intentionally baited the fans by pushing the plot thread that Lotor would be redeemed. They named the episode where he defects "A New Defender," they kept saying in interviews that they come from Avatar and they are very familiar with Zuko *hint hint*, they showed his family as incredibly abusive and Lotor himself as desperate, they showed that Lotor was a victim of severe racism (he is mixed race, and as stated above, the Galra are Space Nazis and are pretty obsessed with blood purity).

Then, after revealing him to be a villain, they gave an interview where they practically dislocated their shoulders by patting themselves on the back as they gleefully bragged that "we made them think we would give them a Zuko, but we gave them an Azula!"

(Nevermind the fact that Azula herself was a 14-year-old child, not a monster, and that Aaron Ehasz himself confirmed that he always wanted her to be redeemed).

When fans who are survivors of child abuse told them that the bait-and-switch was really hurtful, they laughed it off, and claimed that Lotor was just beyond redemption. Then they proceeded to redeem Lotor's abusive parents, who were objectively much worse.

2) Shiro’s clone, who sincerely believed he was Shiro and always meant well, was dehumanised, demonised and discarded like his life meant nothing. His short existence was full of pain from literally the moment he first opened his eyes, as Haggar kept torturing him with migraines to manipulate him. In the end, she brutally violates him body and mind, and brainwashes him to force him to turn on the family he was so desperate to find in The Journey. He dies in incredibly questionable circumstances, without ever getting to learn that his family survived Haggar’s plans. He is victim-blamed for the things she forced him to do against his will with mind-control, and is never mourned because the only family he ever had writes him off as a “thing” and “evil.”

In fact, the horrific treatment of Kuron foreshadowed S8. The Medium article “It never stops at one - Why Voltron: Legendary Defender's tragic ending wasn't a surprise and why more DreamWorks' series will follow suit” explains how.

The tl;dr version is that, when a story posits that the circumstances of your birth determine the value of your life, so that good intentions and hard work mean nothing, and long-established bonds can be discarded with zero thought and care, and your very humanity can be revoked over something you have absolutely no control over, and the whole sociopathic disaster is celebrated as a happy ending... it really, really can’t end well. Not just for you, but for the entire cast.

[mostlymovieswithmax]

1. Logan (2017)

Spoiler warning? Probably.

At the time, this was one of those ‘once in a blue moon’ movies. It took a character we’d seen portrayed by the same actor for 17 years over a period of eight movies and gave us something we never knew we needed. James Mangold flipped the formula on us and delivered a film that didn’t need to promote a franchise or pander to a whole host of demographics so that they could get as many people in the cinema as possible. Those who worked on it looked at the people who had followed the X-Men movies, even those who were just kids when the first movie came out at the start of the millennium, and decided to treat the audience with dignity and respect, knowing at the very least, those who had grown up watching Hugh Jackman in this role from the beginning would be old enough to view a movie like this. They gave this iteration of the character a proper send-off before he was left to stagnate and fade. It was something that hadn’t really been done in the superhero genre before and I would argue, hasn’t been done since. They gave us Logan.

How do I explain that this is my favourite movie of all time? Yes it is well-made. Yes, it ticks a lot of the technical boxes I look for in movies. It is what it is because it stems from a franchise of films based on comic book superheroes. Without the highs of movies like X-Men: Days Of Future Past, or lows of movies like X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which I still kind of find fun to watch), would Logan exist today? Or, if the answer is yes, how different would it be if we took even one of those movies away? Everything happened in the order and time it did and as a result, this movie came into being. I doubt the connection I have to Logan would be as strong or even have developed in the first place if it didn’t have those previous entries to continue the character from. I remember going to see Logan in the cinema when it was released and at the time, I didn’t think all that much of it. Characters that I had grown to love over the years from when I was a child died in front of me and when they died, they died for good. No resurrections this time. And I knew that. But I sat, stone-faced, unmoved by what I was seeing and now, two years on from watching it initially and having seen it multiple times since, I have to ask myself… why? My most recent viewing had me bawling like a baby. Why was my earliest reaction to my now favourite movie so mild? When you think of grand climaxes to beloved characters, especially superheroes, it’s not uncommon to think a proper send-off is something akin to Avengers: Endgame. I’ve seen Wolverine built up over 17 years. He fought a samurai robot in The Wolverine; he went up against the Dark Phoenix in The Last Stand and had the skin torn away from his body repeatedly in an attempt to keep her from destroying everything; he stopped an apocalyptic extermination of mutants in Days Of Future Past. So logically, doesn’t he deserve a goodbye that measures up to those standards we’ve applied to him over the years? To put him in a situation that requires him to save the world? Is this the ending I wanted when I saw the movie for the first time? Logan is small-scale. It deals with a situation on an intrinsically human level. The only goal is to protect a child and get away from the bad guys, who serve as a last middle finger to a character who has gone through so much shit and who at this point, at almost 200 years old in the year 2029, just wants to buy a boat and live out the rest of his days in peace with his oldest and only remaining friend. Logan understands the scale it conveys and uses that to its advantage, grounding the character and the story as a whole in order to give it the emotional weight and resonance it needs to serve as not just a decent end for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, but a notable, spectacular end for an iconic character in popular culture.

How original Logan is in terms of the story it tells and how it goes about certain elements is debatable, although I’m not entirely of the opinion that it’s even trying to be so unheard of in every department. Yes, I’ve never seen anything like this before in the confines of an existing character who, up until now has only been seen to operate under the restriction of what is appropriate to a viewer aged 12 or above. I’ve never seen this kind of story told in as bleak a fashion when it comes to comic book superhero movies. But no, this is not the first and only movie to tackle the themes it’s going for or the type of story it tells. We’ve all seen road trip movies; there are countless tragic hero stories and antagonists set on building armies. How many times have we seen a movie where the villain is just an evil version of the hero? This isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. Juxtaposing Logan (aka James Howlett/aka Wolverine) with X-24, a younger, stronger version of himself was a brilliant way to go. It speaks subconsciously to the characters’ fears and what he sees himself as. He is his own demon. This film takes a lot of inspiration from and pays homage to the type of stories that are told in old Westerns, specifically the 1953 film ‘Shane’, where a gunslinger hopes to settle down with a family but is forced into a battle between two separate parties. Mangold goes as far as to literally show a scene from Shane in Logan to highlight this and say that it’s not a wholly new concept for a movie, but wears its inspirations on its sleeve and even acts as a tribute.

The acting is superb, as if anyone needed to be reassured. Hugh Jackman gives maybe the best performance of his career in this. He gives it his all, as someone who clearly cares a lot about the character of Logan/Wolverine and manages to portray him in a way I never knew I needed. Patrick Stewart takes his iconic Professor X (someone we’ve known on the big screen just as long as Wolverine), who’s always been such a wise and collected authority figure, and twists him into this heart-breakingly haunted ghost of his former self, dipping in and out of sanity as he battles with the very human disease of dementia. Dafne Keen as Laura is exactly the fire this film needed to elevate itself past being just above average. A girl of few words but a presence that is felt so strongly. For a first feature and from someone so young, I’m amazed at how spot on the casting for this character was.

Violent and visceral; I now feel every emotional beat like a punch to the gut. The sound and cinematography are so well done and make for some heavy scenes that are meant to establish characters or make the audience feel horrible and upset. The first scene itself lets us know exactly where Logan is at in life and it’s genuinely one of the many highlights. The writing is pitch perfect; it is everything that I want and more and, if I’m in the right mood, has no problem reducing me to tears. The ever-memorable screenplay gives these characters a lot more depth than they had previously by honing in on what is explored in the previous movies. We always knew Logan was a pretty tragic character but never before have we seen the extent of how haunted he is. The sadness of it all comes from realising he has constantly been dealt a bad hand for nearly two centuries and is seldom given much of a break. Every time I revisit Logan I find something else to love about it. Possibly my one and only gripe is that the score could be better and really, as scores go, it’s still decent. With all the blood and action and misery and sorrow and blood (again) that is exhibited, I hang on to the small glimmer of hope that takes this movie to the end, in what is a heartbreaking finish but also an immensely satisfying one. I’m not sure I’ll ever tire of this. I can’t see myself one day feeling like I no longer get enough out of it to warrant watching it again. Logan brings a magnificent conclusion to a character I’ve followed for so long and I’m so thankful that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine wasn’t left to collect dust until retiring in a most lacklustre fashion. This is everything I love about film.

[tisthenightofthewitch]

Ghost interview: the masked metal band on their new “positive” record about The Plague

To begin, a horror story…

It’s chilling to think how The Black Death arrived in Ghost’s native Sweden. In fact, there’s a deeply upsetting story on the website Gizmodo that can be summarised thus. After marauding through Asia, by the late 1340’s, the plague arrived in England. A decade of horror followed. Then a ship left England for Scandinavia; it’s cargo, a shipment of wool. The plague killed every man aboard. The ship then drifted for a few years or so, the disease feasting on the rotting corpses of the crew, until it ultimately ran aground near Bergen, Norway.

From then the plague spread into Sweden. Then into Russia. By 1353, one in three Europeans had lost their lives. It would take two hundred years for Europe’s population to return to pre-plague numbers.

“I think this record might be the first positive record ever written about the plague,” says Tobias Forge of Ghost, describing his fourth studio album ‘Prequelle’ with just enough levity in his voice to acknowledge the ridiculousness of that statement. “Essentially, it’s a record about survival, start to finish. The record takes you through the idea of mortality, before ending on the question, ‘if you could circumvent death… would you?’ I come from the metal underground, and the subject of The Black Death has been excavated many times. But those records are about the decimation of everything, and little light is shown to the survivors. There’s an argument that mankind learned a lot of good from what happened…”

This talk of the Bubonic Plague is almost certainly allegory. ‘Prequelle’, see, is the follow up to 2015’s ‘Meliora’, the record that dug Ghost out of the metal underground, and anointed them a pretty big deal. This meant tours with Iron Maiden and Slayer, Avenged Sevenfold and Deftones. It meant acclaim from the fuzzy lips of Dave Grohl – not in itself especially impressive; like an alt-rock Bono, Grohl knows the cool bands he needs to anoint and when – the masked Foo Fighter being rumoured to have sat in on drums for the band on a variety of occasions (as we’ll get to, you wouldn’t know otherwise), as well as producing their ‘If You Have Ghost EP’ in 2013. ‘Meliora’’s stand-out song, ‘Circice’, even won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 2016. ‘Prequelle’ arrives with much expectation. It also arrives with Tobias bruised and battered by its creation.

‘Prequelle’ is a record about looking forward. But first, a look back. Early 2017 saw Tobias sued by former Ghost personnel, claiming the frontman had, “in an underhanded and shameless way, attempted to transform Ghost from a band into a solo project with hired musicians”. Tobias responded that “no legal partnership” ever existed between him and the other members, that they were paid a fixed salary to perform as his wont, that they were essentially session musicians. Like everything does now, this all played out in public, with opinion welcome from anyone. Where this gets really messy, is that unless you had an in, nobody really knew who any of Ghost were. Tobias performed as a variety of masked cardinals; three iterations of the demonic anti-pope Papa Emeritus, changing each record. The band performed in masks as the Nameless Ghouls. They were sort of like KISS if that band sang about Satanic scripture instead of shagging. Legal proceedings forced Tobias out of the shadows and shot mystique in the head”

“All things considered, a year down the line, having been through so much turmoil,” says Tobias, with acceptance that he now only has to pretend to be an actual ghoul onstage, not off it, “I’ve come to realise that what happened needed to happen. Also, I’m a big fan of rock, of rock history, and I’ve read every classic rock biography of every band I’m a fan of. You know what? The same shit takes place in every single one. A friend of mine, a very successful songwriter, said to me, ‘you’re not really in the game until you’ve been sued, so welcome in!’ and I think he’s got a point. I’ve been in lots of situations in my life where I’ve managed to turn pain into growing pains. Really, what happened was a receipt that things are going well.”

Tobias takes a deep breath.

“It’s fine. It’ll be over…”

It is unquestionable this experience shaped the record’s DNA, even if, with the lengthy process of litigation dragging along in the background, there is a limit to how much Tobias can say. Freely, that is. It’s all there on ‘Prequelle’. “The song ‘See The Light’ (a stormer of a power pop metal song, it should be said) sounds like it’s about people who’ve crossed you,” we say, thinking of lines such as, “Many a rat I’ve befriended” and “Of all of the demons I’ve known, none can compare to you”. There is a pause so pregnant, metaphysical wet towels are piling up all around us, before Tobias responds, “Yes”. We ask if it’s a song that relates to his current situation. He replies, diplomatically, “I think it’s a song that can apply to any situation in which you’re surrounded by enemies. Really, it’s a song about redistributing anger and negativity.”

As of writing, ‘Prequelle’ isn’t released for another couple of weeks, but you will most likely have already heard its lead-off single, ‘Rats’, which also debuts Tobias’ new rubber faced persona, Cardinal Copia, sort of the midpoint between a deranged Satanic preacher and a used car salesman. If you’ve seen the video, it turns out that the Cardinal can bust a move (Tobias: “Have I ever had dance lessons? I’m mobile, but not nearly as much as our promotional videos lead people to believe…”). ‘Rats’ is also, perhaps, the most direct comment on what Tobias, and the Ghost that’s now been repositioned as a vessel for his self-expression (he prefers ‘project’ to ‘solo’ by the way) have been through during its parent albums creation.

“It’s a song about public trials,” says Tobias. “Rats traditionally were what carried the plague. But they’re also a good analogy for something that’s all around you. I mean, one thing that’s annoying about rats, is they can hide in your walls. They can come up through your toilet. They sort of eat their way into your life. And so I think about the kid getting bullied, and how in the past, the bullies were just at school, or on the way to school. Now they’re there all the time. Online.”

“We look back on ancient times,” he continues, “and we like to think about how sophisticated we are now, whereas in the past we were barbaric. But in the last ten years, I think we’ve regressed back to such a stone throwing, stupid, superstitious, nincompoop way of thinking. It’s fucking horrible…”

So you’re referring to social media? I’m thinking of the line in Rats, “they’re still coming after you, and there’s nothing you can do…”

“Well, as much as I’m an advocate for whistleblowing culture in the modern era – and of course I’m for that, things that are bad for the world should be exposed – I’m not sure that’s the forum for it. All those people just… shouting…”

Does this relate to your personal experience in wake of the lawsuit? When that story broke, it felt like everyone had an opinion on you…

Another pause. Then finally, “Yes”.

“So many people have opinions based, not on fact, but spite,” Tobias continues. “There are people who just love to destroy other people. It saddens me to admit, that I think at whatever state of human civilisation we arrive at, the will to destroy other people, is something that is innate in some people.”

There are of course moments on ‘Prequelle’ that are filled with joy too. A kind of dark, sticky, oily joy, yes. But joy none-the-less. There’s a reason Ghost’s aesthetic riffs off the ecclesiastical after all. All their best songs are big, bold, searching. Take Dance Macabre. Far closer to Duran Duran in their pomp than it is Carcass, if there is a death disco somewhere, an actual one with skeletons and tasty alcoholic beverages that are slime green and taste of formaldehyde – the best night of your death, so to speak – it’ll surely be the most requested song all night.

“I really wanted to explore the use of piano on this record,” says Tobias. “Take the song, Life Eternal, the last song on the record. I wanted it be very ambitious, almost classical, and the piano gives that song air and clarity…”

He concludes. “Like I say, I wanted this to be a positive record, a record about survival…”

LINK

[gettingitwrite]

Rabid: The Virus

DISCLAIMER: While this is based in real science, I don’t pretend that it’s accurate or even possible. This is also a really long post. I tried to cut it down….but I only ended up making it longer.

What is it?

The rabid virus is not a naturally occurring pathogen. The virus was developed, intentionally, in a military research lab. It was engineered to be the most devastating bioweapon possible, capable of wiping out entire continents once it was released.  The virus’ official designation is CMD-7, and it was developed as part of the top secret Project Isolation.

Why make this kind of bioweapon?

If you’ve noticed, Australia is an island, and CMD-7 is not airborne. Anyone we happen to be at war with is going to be across the ocean, meaning that dropping the virus on them wouldn’t endanger us. The hope was that it would only ever have to be used once, and only as a last resort; once the world had seen what it could do, they’d never risk messing with Australia again.

How does it work?

Buckle your seatbelts, it’s time for some science.

CMD-7 is not just a virus, it’s a provirus. These things are nasty, because in addition to hijacking your cells to create more copies of themselves, they can integrate their DNA (or RNA) into your own. These things can literally change your DNA, and if that doesn’t scare you, it will when you hear what this particular virus does.

Most proviruses insert themselves into the host genome in order to make more copies of themselves. However, CMD-7 has been engineered to insert far more than that.

What does it do?

The idea was CMD-7 would kill by causing infected individuals to starve to death within a matter of hours, if not minutes. How does it do this? Well, that’s where the name CMD-7 comes from. It stands for Cellular Metabolism Disease (with 7 being the number of iterations they’ve gone through), and its primary function is to drastically increase cellular metabolism. This means everything the cells would normally be doing, they’re now doing a lot faster (this is what causes the increased healing ability of rabids, as all bodily functions are now occurring at an increased rate).

However, that wasn’t enough. CMD wasn’t lethal enough when its only function was to increase cellular metabolism, so the researchers on the project took it one step further. The virus has a number of secondary functions that all increase the speed at which the body’s energy stores are depleted.

First, it switches off starvation response (also known as starvation mode). Starvation response is the body’s way of trying to preserve calories when they’re being burned faster than they’re being used, and does so by reducing cellular metabolism. As this is kind of the opposite of what they were going for, starvation response had to go.

CMD-7 makes it super easy for the body to break down all its fat by messing with two hormones: insulin and glucagon. These guys are responsible for controlling your blood sugar level, as insulin takes glucose out of the blood, and glucagon puts it back in. Normally, there’s a carefully maintained balance that keeps blood sugar levels at a relatively stable level, but not anymore. CMD-7 supresses insulin production while vastly increasing glucagon production, meaning all those fat stores will be burning in no time (this increased blood glucose is what causes the milky white eyes observed in rabids. Glucose collecting in the lenses of the eyes can then be converted to sorbitol, creating cataracts and causing the eyes to take on a cloudy appearance. This is also why rabids can see you better when you’re running away, rather than staying still).

Now, once the body has burned through all its fat, the next natural step is for muscle tissue to be broken down for energy. However, CMD-7 has another neat little feature designed specifically to speed up death by starvation. CMD-7 not only prevents the breakdown of muscle, but also causes muscle hypertrophy, instructing the muscles to grow. (Not only does this consume more energy, but is it also the reason that rabids exhibit almost superhuman strength despite being on the verge of starving).

As if that wasn’t enough, CMD-7 goes even further to speed up the process of energy depletion. Little bit of science background (that I’m sure most of you already know), cells get their energy through cellular metabolism. Normally, aerobic respiration occurs, where oxygen and glucose are broken down into carbon dioxide and water, releasing energy. This oxygen is distributed through the body from the lungs, by the red blood cells. CMD-7 disrupts this system, causing cells to receive insufficient oxygen and turn to anaerobic respiration. Not only is this far less efficient in terms of the glucose : energy ratio, it also release lactic acid as one of its by-products, further damaging the body. (This lack of oxygen is what causes the grey skin exhibited by rabids).

What went wrong?

The plan was to turn people’s bodies against them, killing them as quickly as possible. The thing was, they still needed a delivery system. Trials of CMD-7 in animals (yes, it’s cruel, but it happens in real life) found that after a certain amount of time, even herbivorous animals resorted to straight up cannibalism of both other infected individuals and even those that weren’t infected. It was at this stage they realised two things.

a) They’d created zombies. b) This solved their delivery problem.

Now, obviously, you can imagine how bad it would be if something like this got out. And unfortunately, wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what happened. I’ll probably do a more detailed post later about the outbreak itself, but for now, there was a lab accident, three of the lead researchers were infected, and nobody realised until too late what had happened to them. They escaped, the virus started spreading across the continent, and after that, there was no coming back.

Why did they turn to cannibalism?

While the researchers never got enough concrete data to be certain, the leading hypothesis was that a number of factors (lack of oxygen, lactic acid in the bloodstream causing lactic acidosis, and the brain breaking down its own neurons for fuel) contributed to brain damage that eliminated higher brain functions and caused instincts to take over. In a situation where someone’s body is tearing through energy at an insane pace, and the nearest source of fuel happens to be another person, that’s bad news.

And, I mean, this is just the observed effects of CMD-7 on the brain. Who knows what else might be happening, things they never realised before the outbreak, things they never could’ve imagined.

Infectivity

CMD-7 is a highly infective virus. The exchange of any bodily fluids with an infected individual, even the smallest amount, is enough for infection to occur. However, not everyone that gets infected turns rabid. Some burn through their energy stores and simply die, as was the original intent of the virus. This is especially true for those who were injured in the process of getting bitten, as the healing process takes a lot of energy.

Resources

For more about viruses being used to change human genes, and how something like this could be possible, here.

More detail on how proviruses work can be found here.

Read about the effects of starvation on the human brain here.

Detailed breakdown of insulin and glucagon here.

A better description of glucose causing cataracts here.

[paumeranian]

Week 8: Refining HMW Statement and Brainstorming

To start the morning session, we were given a chance to think deeper about our chosen HMW statement and ask ourselves why it’s important to tackle (tactical) and what’s stopping us from doing so (feasible). Whenever I would write something, Keryn encouraged me to think WHY each time to get to the bottom of the problem I’m trying to solve e.g. It is important to assist patients in choosing a health provider that’s most suitable for them based on cost, distance and quality of service so they can have options - have more freedom and agency over their own health. 

I also ended up linking points from the ‘why it’s important’ and ‘what’s stopping us’ sections as from my interviews, students specifically tend to stay with their family doctors despite thinking it’s too expensive as they’re not aware of other (cheaper) options. One reason behind this is that they’ve built a personal relationship with their doctor from continuity of care and switching doctors can be a hassle due to the transfer of medical history and records plus having to develop another relationship with a new doctor etc. So these were linked to what’s stopping me from doing this as well. 

At first I was still somewhat stuck between two HMW statements:

1. How might we assist patients in choosing a health provider that’s most suitable for them based on cost, distance and quality of service?

2. How might we help patients feel more in control of booking appointments and seek medical advice at a time that suits them?

After thinking about the importance and factors that might hinder me from going forward with each statement, I ended up writing more about the first one - proving that there’s more to work with in terms of challenging the status quo and solving complex user problems. Since it is a big idea I can always unpack it later and choose features that would be most valuable through user testing and other forms of getting validation from my target audience.

Final HMW:

When it came to thinking of ideas for that HMW, I then realised the way it’s worded was stopping me from thinking more creatively and turn to digital concepts as default solutions.

So I iterated it to “How might we inform people on the different options available for health providers based on their needs?” which allowed me to think of other ideas like awareness events, a nurse bot to help patients remotely seek medical advice including home remedies, prescription meds side effects and overall other holistic methods of self-care. I used lateral thinking and a simple brain dumping method for my initial brainstorm as I wasn’t sure how to use post it’s at this stage to categorise my ideas. The famous saying “Prevention is better than cure” also goes into this as I thought of educating students how to prevent certain diseases e.g. flu in the winter. One way of doing this is through brochures but I thought ‘what are the chances of them actually being picked up more than once and read/digested?’

[terryballs]

What I Did In My Midlife Crisis by Sally Sparrow, Chapter 3

Blamley placed his eye on the scanner and opened the door onto a dark basement. The room was lit by what seemed to be a giant rectangular light, itself larger than Sally’s bedroom. Grizzled old men and women stood around facing the light intently. Sally could even make out a few of them: a large black woman was showing the contents of her clipboard to a skinny Asian man with a goatee, their faces lit up by the large light. As Sally’s eyes adjusted, she realised that it wasn’t a light at all, but a glass box which just happened to be full of bright white light. And at either end of the box…

There was no mistaking them. Sally gut fell. They were Angels. Their arms were raised above their heads and their teeth were bared. The first unusual thing that struck Sally was their facial expressions. Both statues looked as if they were in agonising pain. Then she saw the giant nails holding them onto the wall. Then, last of all, she noticed the wires hooked up to those nails.

“You’re torturing them,” she said.

“They’re heartless unstoppable predators. They spend most of their time as stone. This isn’t torture, this is the minimum it takes to restrain those things,” Blamley said, emotionless.

Sally knew what the Angels could do. She noticed that her breath was racing, so she slowed down, counting to six on each inhalation and exhalation. Her heart was still thumping away. “Doctor, let’s leave.”

The Doctor pulled her close and whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry, this must be hard for you, but I will keep you safe and I will find Larry.”

“It’s L- thank you.”

The Doctor pivoted back around. “So, Blamley, I have three questions. Question one – why do you have two Weeping Angels under your Cardiff distribution hub? Question two – why are the leading researchers at a major tech company exclusively people who are well past pensionable age? And question three…”

“Doctor, you’re embarrassing yourself. I didn’t become a trillionaire by explaining the obvious to idiots. Surely you can work out the answers to those questions on your own?”

And then Sally remembered. She remembered Kerblam! investing huge amounts of money into Cardiff so they could build their European distribution centre in the city They had created thousands of jobs. Of course, they’d had to knock down a few dilapidated houses to build their distribution centre, but they’d paid so much in business rates that the council had been able to approve several high-density blocks of flats in the city centre and homelessness had plummeted. Sally and Larry had objected to the development, but their objections fell on deaf ears. In hindsight, Sally couldn’t blame the council for thinking they were just NIMBYs, afraid of having their business undercut by a superior competitor. But she realised that the staircase to the cellar didn’t just remind her of the one in Wester Drumlins. It was the same staircase.

“Doctor, these are the same Angels that came after me.”

“And that’s how you always beat the competition, isn’t it, Blamley? You use the Angels. Your researchers aren’t old because you only hire old researchers, they’re old because you’ve fed all the young ones to the Angels so they can help your past self.”

“Very good, Doctor, very good,” said Blamley, a thick smile upon his face.

“It’s monstrous. I can’t allow it.”

“Allow it? Doctor, you should welcome it. Firstly, I pay my employees extremely handsomely for their services. It’s all fully consensual. They are aware of the risks and freely agree to be sent back. I’m not engaged in temporal kidnapping. I was the first one sent back – that’s how I was able to set up Kerblam! before Bezos could get in my way. I lived life a second time with the knowledge from the first, consistently beating the stock market, pre-empting every technological trend and innovation, and even betting on sports results that I already knew. Sending more people back allows me to iterate further. I send someone back to the 90s who has knowledge of 2040s technology and they introduce it early. I estimate that I have accelerated human progress by at least two centuries. I have prevented wars and pandemics and terrorist attacks. I have established permanent human colonies on the Moon and Mars and established liberal democracy in China. I have ended world hunger and eliminated five major infectious diseases. Homosexuality is legal in every country on Earth and I have abolished the gender binary. In the last iteration I made the UK carbon-negative by 2015, in this one I developed general AI by 2012, and in the next I imagine medical science will progress far enough to make humans biologically immortal by the 2030s. I am not only the richest man in human history, I am the greatest man in human history.”

The Doctor paced, fidgeting with his hands. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Doctor, I plainly know exactly what-”

“No, you don’t.  From where you’re standing, you can only see the good. You’ve done a lot of good for a lot of people, but when you messed around with Weeping Angels you altered the web of time. Humanity is not supposed to become an interplanetary power – a proper interplanetary power – for centuries, and you’re not supposed to become even a limited temporal power for at least three millennia. You’ve used the Angels to bootstrap an entire civilisation forwards by thousands of years. Humanity with general AI, biological immortality and Martian colonies in the mid-21st century is a terrifying prospect. A couple more goes around and you’ll be developing interstellar and intergalactic travel within the century.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“In a word, yes. You’d spread across the galaxy and engage in cosmic colonialism. All the evil you have prevented would go spilling out across the stars. The disasters, the genocides, the wars, they’ll all spring up in ways that you can’t foresee. You’re doing a tiny little bit of time travel in one tiny corner of one tiny planet, and you’re saving billions of lives. You can’t imagine how much good you’ve done, because human minds can’t think in billions. But if humanity spreads across the universe before the universe is ready, you’ll cause death and destruction on a scale that makes a billion Earthlings seem like a drop of water against the sun.”

“It’s not much of a desert any more. I’ve re-greened it.”

“Great! Well, mostly. But your philanthropy needs to stick to what is humanly possible. I can’t let you play around with time travel.”

“You also can’t stop me.”

The Doctor didn’t have an immediate response. Everyone had stopped working. They had turned to watch the argument. Sally realised she was the only one still looking at the Angels, and she wasn’t going to stop now.

“It’s OK,” said Lisa. “They look at each other except when we want to use them.”

“I’m more comfortable looking,” said Sally.

“You’re right, of course”, said the Doctor. “I can’t stop you. But now I have warned you about the dangers of time travel, hopefully you can guard against them.”

“I’ll do my best, Doctor.”

“That’s all I can ask for. Well, actually, I did have a third question before you interrupted.”

“And then you’ll leave here?”

“You have my word.”

“Then please, ask.”

“Where is Larry Nightingale?”

[colonel-crapshot]

Island Episode Three

You were all not waiting for it, because lets face it, who really likes looking at the trash? BUT BEHOLD MORE SHIT TALKING ABOUT ISLAND

It's been more than a week and I've entirely forgotten the little not-vampire's name

Well at least it explains why you're the one cleaning it

I was about to give your employers shit for sending you out on what should be the duty of the Island's administration

Then again I suppose Mona the Vampire IS technically part of one of the three Ruling Families as was

DROP KICK OUTTA NOWHERE

RKO

WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM POOFY?!

Where did you even come from?!

You just appeared as though summoned by the need to make a shitty relationship joke

I do not trust any discussion that ends with "Let's discuss the plan"

Oh. The plan was to bunk off work and go for a dip? I presume our lady who dost lack Vitamin D gave her blessing for this?

So she DIDN'T, her name is RINNE and this is BAIT! GOT IT

Aight poofy. But we aren't trying to lure out Amano-Iwato. We're trying to lure out someone with a severe lack of Vitamin D since she hasn't been terribly on board with accepting injections if you catch my drift

Granted I suppose this has SOME merit. Since these are probably among the few friends she has and I don't think many people really gallivant about on her family's PRIVATE BEACH to make her feel jealous of such

I just hope this doesn't wind up with her docking your wages

Because FUTURE MAN or not, you're going to need fiscal resources of the present for the time being boyo 

Part of me wonders why Poofy has a card with "Kya kya Fufufu" on it. Part of me thinks I don't care and just want to see how badly this ends up

I WANT TO PURGE THAT IMAGE OF POOFY IN THAT SWIMSUIT FROM EXISTENCE

DEAR FUCKING GOD IT'S TERRIBLE

MY EYES! MY DELICATE EYES

You have weird dreams. You know that, Rinne?

Yep. We usually call such things dreams. ALTHOUGH THAT WAS A NIGHTMARE

Seriously though, I don't even like that kind of Bikini on women built more like future Poofy. LET ALONE ON PRESENT POOFY

Oh, they're scripts

YOUR ACTING IS TERRIBLE KAREN

Your Seiyuu's acting however is fucking fantastic, it takes good shit to be able to act a character acting badly

OH BOY. BACK TO RINNE NIGHTMARE LAND

Also her curtains aren't drawn, door is open and light flooding in over an unblanketed Rinne

Nice reinforcement without secondary iteration that she DOESN'T have Vampirism... or the Soot Blight

I've even forgotten what the sodding Not-Vampirism disease is, that I called Setsuna wouldn't be able to read properly when he first encountered it

... I WILL BURN THE ISLAND TO THE GROUND. FOR EVEN GENERATING A SHITTY DREAM THAT RESULTED IN SOME STRING BIKINI POOFY GETTING ANIME FALLEN INTO

DEUS VULT ISLANDERS

WHY IS THAT IN THE SCRIPT?! IS THIS INFLUENCING RINNE'S DREAM? POOFY'S NAME IS SARA?!

Y'all are terrible

JUST FUCKING PLAY ON THE BEACH! ACTUALLY DO SOME VOLLEY BALL! SWIM! MAKE A FUCK ASS SAND CASTLE! DO SOMETHING!

snrk This is good too

Rinne is awake, and after nightmare fuel like that why wouldn't she be?

YES! RUB THE OIL ON HER SETSUNA

REALLY KNEAD IT IN

It sounds actually well acted up by Rinne

Which I'm not sure how terrified I should be

RINNE MARCHES INTO BATTLE. SHE CHOOSES THE CORRECT BATTLE GARMENT

YOU NEED ONE THAT IS CONSERVATIVE YET MAXIMIZES YOUR APPEAL POINTS. I suggest the blue one of the options currently before me. Modest, yet accentuates your finer aspects without seeming like a blatant attempt to do so

THEN DO SOMETHING SARA

ACTUALLY GET SOME SUN TAN OIL GOING?

PLAY SOME ACTUAL VOLLEY BALL

SAND CASTLE

BURY SETSUNA

MELON SPLIT

Bury a melon and split Setsuna! ... wait

I applaud your dedication to pretending you have not-vampirism Rinne, I really do

Was the space suit REALLY necessary? Where did you even HAVE that?... okay YES the space suit was probably necessary since even a glance of sunlight on a victim of Sootperism could fuck their day up

But still, goddamnit Rinne

And then she fucking died. The end

That's good. Try it next time WITHOUT THE SPACE SUIT

I'M RELEARNING SO MANY THINGS

GOOD TIMES

I'm actually kinda into this seriesI'm just terrible at keeping up

D'aw this is kinda sweet. I like Rinne

Abandoned shack, this only spells good things

I mean heck, when have abandoned shacks been ANYTHING but signs of good will, friendship and the undying spirit of familial love in the world?

I love Sara's and Karen's dedication to their game. Creepy abandoned shack? Stick to the RP and investigate

Actual bonus points that their immediate reaction wasn't to scream, summon Setsuna and run off after telling him that they wanted to know what was inside

Naturally Setsuna would be needed to prise open the door

Granted, why ARE we so set on waltzing in? What happens if somebody is actually in? Or this is like Rinne's old forgotten store house of beach shit?

Oh good, Setsuna quickballs the idea that this is probably owned by the Ohara family

RINNE IS HAVING A VIETNAM FLASHBACK

RINNE HAS EXPERIENCED AN UNKNOWN ERROR

FORCE SHUT DOWN HAS OCCURRED

QUICK! Unplug her for a bit then plug her back in and turn her on

Well Nam flashbacks don't tend to happen to people who've lead wonderful fairy tale lives of excellence and splendour Karen. So yeah, I suspect some shit went down in or around there

Setsuna, Karen's already seen it and Sara is waiting to honey trap murder you. This is not the time

Oh. A diary of strange shit that's happened whilst he's been on the Island

Sensible thing to have in all fairness, especially for an amnesiac

I'd give them some MAJOR bonus points if the connections aren't apparent when we start finding things out but then a last piece of the puzzle falls in and all the points connect

Granted I don't think that'll happen

Rinne, honey. I'm not done in the open bath yet! The sign is set and everything!

Ah, of course they're rich enough to have two outdoor baths

Because it isn't suspicious at all to have met a boy named Setsuna in a shed at night

Oooh? Montage time?

It's probably for the best in some ways to allow some time to pass and to put Setsuna on even footing with everyone. Since he has an inherrant bonus with Rinne

Even montaging past a FESTIVAL? Interesting, that's usually a crucial flag raising moment

It even has the hand hold moment, which is again, another usually critical moment

What IS your game plan, Island?

Setsuna, get of your high horse. Remember her daddy issues?

Wow. Sounds like she's got some interesting familial relationships just generally, not limited to Daddykins

Christ dude, Let what little hair you have down a moment

I don't see the problem with her working part time for the Ohara family

This could be a quirk of Japanese culture, it could be the more likely thing of this guy being a dickwaffle so dickish he was banned from waffle house for fear of tainting the waffles in his vicinity

Staring at the machine will reap no benefits Young Sara

No. She just wants to make a lot of money, piss her Dad off and then bow and scrape to him for the rest of eternity. HAVE YOU MET KAREN? OF COURSE SHE WANTS OFF THIS BUMBLEFUCK ISLAND

... On one hand, you have a point. On the other, I think there is a bit more to it than that

Perhaps the realisation hit that she would need currency once she blew this Popsicle stand and vied to get some before setting sail?

Those girls will always tilt me when they go off in perfect sync

Manly ass slippers Setsuna

Not that I don't approve. They look great

THAT WAS QUITE THE TUMBLE

... I HAVE A LOT OF QUESTIONS

Link: Island Episode 3