#was that just a continuity error thing or is there some sort of narrative significance that i missed

[isdalinarhot]

they dont have red sports cars on roshar so sadeas had to make do with changing his shardplate from gold to red when he had his midlife crisis

[talenlee]

Transformers: Starscream's Trans Dream

There is literally nothing useful in describing the idea of the ‘canon’ of a Transformers character. They are toys, and every bit of lore for them is an advertisement. There is no coherent characterisation and merely a sort of iconic familiarity, often owing mostly to the significance of a name and in some cases, literally translation errors, than anything to do with a coherent and consistent characterisation across a greater narrative space. Talking about the character of any given Transformer character is trying to collapse together a sort of advertising mascot into their wholehearted and protracted vibes, as best remembered by 45-year old nerds who invest in the secondary toy market and help to indoctrinate the children the brand exists to supposedly monetise.

But Starscream’s really gay, right?

Starscream is one of the longest-lasting Transformers characters, present in Generation 1, and appearing in almost every episode until his voice actor was too much of a pain to keep around. Then his being written out in the Transformers Movie proved, like many choices in that movie, to be things the audience didn’t want, which is why he came back as a ghost in multiple other continuities, until the character of Starscream wound up being one of the boundary fences that Transformers fans tend to look for to indicate whether or not you’re actually watching a ‘proper’ Transformers show.

Like Optimus Prime and Megatron, Starscream is one of those things every series includes, perhaps out of habit. In Generation 1 he was Megatron’s scheming offsider who failed to overthrow him. Then he came back as a ghost to attempt to overthrow Galvatron. In Beast Wars, he was a ghost that overtook the body of Waspinator, and failed to overthrow Megatron. Different guy that time. In the Armada Continuity he was reimagined as Nightscream, a brooding outcast from the Decepticons who wound up having to reconsider the ideology that failed to match with his nobility, a society that did not respect him or his identity. In Animated he was a scheming second in command who Megatron wisely blew out the airlock the first opportunity he got because of, y’know, the overthrowing. In Prime he was Megatron’s second in command until he was replaced by Shockwave because of his attempts to overthrow. Then in Robots in Disguise he was the villain of a plot arc who was out on the odds from Megatron because of some light overthrowing attempts.

This is half of everything you need to know about Starscream.

The other half is that Starscream is mincing.

I’m not reading into this, okay? Like, Starscream’s a character whose performance back in the first generation was absolutely the kind of thing where Chris Latta told the director ‘I’m gunna try this one again but more faggy.‘ Once Starscream’s character was being dialled in, the writers tried out alternate nicknames for him that included the Silver Snake and Pretty Poison. There’s a longstanding joke that Megatron only keeps Starscream around because he’s really good in bed and that justifies all the, y’know, overthrowing, and that joke is nearing on forty years old. In Prime, Starscream’s design literally included stiletto heels!

But okay, okay, that’s just the way the guy acts and behaves and the community talks about him.

Or…

her?

As with so many of these things, Transformers Animated took an existing thing in the Transformers continuity and by trying to approach it in a way that hadn’t been handled before, they did something that was both more interesting and somehow made Starscream even queerer.

Here’s the setup. In Animated there are just fewer Transformers. Rather than the whole army arriving on Earth at once, the Transformers are a smaller group who are trying to find one another on earth, hence the use of disguises. This smaller cohort has a direct effect in that it makes disguises more important but it also means smaller forces are much more capable of being more relevant to the conflict. Armies are over there, on Cybertron, Terror Cells are happening there, but on Earth? It’s like, twenty guys! And yeah it is guys.

But wait–

In this period, Starscream overthrows Megatron and it uh, it kinda works? Then when Megatron comes back from it, years later, he first up kills Starscream, because Starscream sucks and this Megatron isn’t an idiot. Starscream doesn’t die, because – look there are reasons, it doesn’t matter so much – but basically Starscream discovers he has rolled the Bullshit Awful Jesus traits for a Decepticon and after many, many attempts to attack Megatron, he starts having to compose alternate methods of attack.

His eventual scheme involves stealing a bunch of un-formed Transformers to make himself an army, building them with the best template he has: Himself. Starscream makes a bunch of copies of himself, which creates this story’s version of the characters known as the Seekers. Seekers, if you’re not familiar, is a grouping used to refer to a bunch of toys that were essentially just recolours of each other, and all of them more or less being ‘Starscream, but.’ They had names and powers that almost never showed up in the story, but y’know, someone filled out their name cards, and now they’re iconic parts of the narrative.

They’re named Dirge, Ramjet, Skywarp, Sunstorm, Thundercracker, Thrust, and Slipstream, with some wiggle room for some oddballs like Acid Storm, who isn’t important here but look, I’m linking to my own content. These names are then presented in Transformers Animated as the identities of these Starscream clones. Each of these represents a different constituent part of Starscream’s personality that they then express in how they behave, with Dirge being greedy, Ramjet being a compulsive liar, Skywarp being a coward, Sunstorm being a toady, Thundercracker being an egomaniac, Thrust being jealous, and Slipstream being…

an girl.

Not joking.

Not exaggerating.

When asked what she represents, while Starscream is hitting on her, she states, very simply, don’t ask.

This is a funny bit. This is probably a bit from a writer who wanted to mix up the formula, thought it’d be a good joke, added some voice acting variety to the scenes with all the Starscream clones, and threw her in. And it’s a lot of an afterthought about this character, because calling her ‘Slipstream’ is kinda a post-fact thing. Her actual name, if you believe the credits is Female Starscream.

What does this mean though? Is there some deep, intricate explanation for this choice? Was there something the writers were trying to say, beyond what’s actually there, in the text?

Well, the good news is, whatever you want, because this particular point was something the Transformers fandom ruined by being absolute tools. Specifically, the story says exactly what it does about it. Slipstream’s origin, what she means, what she represents about the character of Starscream, does it mean this? Does it really mean this? Does it really really really mean this? And as a result, the showrunner wound up, after trying to tell people that he didn’t have an answer for them, simply agreeing with every single explanation brought to him. Because that’s the point.

These are characters built around vibes.

It’s fine.

Does this mean Starscream is trans?

Sure, why not.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[demonologist-in-denim]

Okay, let’s get into this, because I have put off talking about Crowley’s cut monologue from 12x23 for long enough. If you haven’t already, you can read it here, or in this great gifset.

I absolutely see why this was cut. And I’m only acknowledging it here to talk about why I not only think it doesn’t add anything to Crowley’s story or our understanding of him, but how it actually detracts from it. After that, I intend to ignore it and let it fade away into the ether of the spn fandom. That being said, deleted scenes and cut scripts live in a sort of canonical limbo – you can choose for yourself whether to accept them as canon, consider them glimpses from some alternative universe, or do away with them entirely. I’m choosing the latter in this instance.

(This was meant to be a post, but it turned into an essay.)

Whomever wrote this was either unfamiliar with Crowley as a character, or was intentionally twisting the character in such a way as to fit into the convenient narrative that removed him from the show. Blame it on Chuck in text, blame it on the showrunners outside of text, whatever your preference – this doesn’t read like Crowley.

There are very few parts of this monologue that felt in character, that read like something Crowley would say. Not just in the tone or the choice of words, but the openness of it. And that’s coming from someone who writes reformed and/or human Crowley, with his admittance to remorse and shame and love. In this cut script, he is uncharacteristically vulnerable, sharing self-reflections he would never have shared aloud at this point in his character development. His dialogue lacks the layers of meaning or deflection that Crowley would normally employ, that he employed everywhere else in the show, even when being emotionally vulnerable.

That’s not to say that Crowley didn’t think or feel these things – I will argue to the end of my days (in spn fandom) that after the cure, Crowley hated himself. He hated that he was alone and unloved. Some part of that was due to being a demon and the horrible, evil, messy things he’d done, and some of it he believed was due to his inherent lack of worth. And I think this monologue was written in part to have Crowley make that final confession out loud. Final because, if that’s the case and he’s willing to admit it – to his former enemies and now the only people he really has in his life – his story can only take one of two directions: redemption or death. Embrace the desire for change and move forward as a reformed demon and full Winchester ally, or dramatically (and unnecessarily) sacrifice himself.

And there is a way to write that, but with Crowley properly in character and with the emotional complexity we know him to possess, not this blatant declaration. Maybe the line would have worked depending on how Mark Sheppard played it, and it only falls so flat because it’s just a script – I’m willing to allow for that. But this moment, facing down the boys after letting Lucifer loose, in front of an audience of Mary Winchester that he doesn’t know well and isn’t comfortable with, it doesn’t feel like a moment for Crowley to be this open, this vulnerable, about something so personal and so monumental.

I’ve no doubt that Crowley expected the Winchesters would one day kill him, “for good this time.” He was a demon working alongside a pair of hunters; there was always going to be that risk. Crowley was intelligent, one of the smartest characters on the show. He had to know that was how things would play out – either that, or he would die on their behalf, or because of their actions, even if he had ended up leaving Hell and joining Team Free Will. That was what happened to people around the Winchesters. Crowley warned Kevin of that himself. “They use people up, and leave them to die bloody.” Crowley knew. And as he internalized more and more of his blood-born conscience, Crowley had to believe on some level that he deserved it, especially if he hated himself and what he’d done.

But once again, if Crowley was going to say something like that, that’s not how he’d say it. It would be as a dismissive aside, or a knife in Dean’s gut in a moment of intense emotion between the two of them, or as a rebuke that the Winchesters badly deserved. Or better yet, as something remarked between himself and Cas, who Crowley likely suspected would outlast him but also ultimately die in service of the Winchester cause. Words like those have power. And it’s unlike Crowley to lay them down in supplication like this. It doesn’t even feel like a heart-felt confession, like his monologue in 8x23. It reads like someone wrote what was meant to be under Crowley’s words, the intention behind his dialogue, the much-exalted subtext, but failed to add all the layers on top of it, to put it in actual character.

I’m just going to bundle the whole beginning of the monologue together and toss it out entirely. Firstly because I’ve argued more than once that Crowley is an unreliable narrator when it comes to his human life. What we know of it from Rowena comes with an agenda, and what we know of it from Gavin comes from a man who had a difficult relationship with his father. It’s about as reliable as young Dean telling stories to Sammy about their parents’ time together. And there’s canonical errors in this monologue to back that up – we know Crowley wasn’t buried in a pauper’s grave, because we saw it 6x04. The “dying in a puddle of his own sick” is a great detail in terms of storytelling, but it’s almost directly repeated from Rowena, who said it as a belittling comment to a young Fergus. It’s too forced. And we know at least Gavin came to the funeral, because he tells us so in a deleted scene in 12x13 (remember what I said about getting to pick and choose when it comes to cut scripts and deleted scenes?).

But more importantly – and this is the part that really grates – Crowley’s iteration of his human life reinforces the narrative of absolute morality in the spn universe. It supports the argument that if a character becomes a demon, it must be because they were a terrible person. There is no room for human flaws, for characters to have made mistakes – and that doesn’t just hinder characters in terms of backstory, but in character development and emotional growth moving forward. It’s a stance spn takes more than once, and especially with non-human characters, though never in regards to the Winchesters. The Winchesters can become soulless or demons, but they were “always good” before that, so they are deserving of redemption. If Crowley or other non-humans were “always bad,” that absolves the Winchesters from seeing them as people deserving of help, or of their ability to change, or even to be seen as beings deserving of any level of respect or agency. And it absolves the showrunners from writing a character capable of development, of being able to grow beyond their previous flaws.

That’s not to say that Fergus MacLeod wasn’t some or all of those things. But if he was a complex character – if he was a person, as all stories should aim to present their characters – then he was all of that and more, just as the Winchesters are their virtues and their faults all wrapped up in an individual person. And if Crowley had brought this up some other time, in reference to his human life, none of this discussion would be necessary. It would be easy to say: he’s an unreliable narrator, and this provides us with insight into how Crowley feels about himself, and it would be interesting and valuable. But here, it’s used in justification for Crowley’s status as irredeemable – which is not true – and as part of justification for what happens next.

Crowley’s death was written by the showrunners as an excuse to remove him from the show – attribute that to budget costs for the show, or running out of story ideas for Crowley, or creative laziness, whatever you want. And within spn, it can be attributed to Chuck not wanting another character like Cas muddling up his Winchester Brothersᵀᴹ grand narrative. I’ve written before both in posts and in fic about how Crowley’s character-central instinct for self-preservation crumbles into depression after losing Hell and the seemingly-irreversible depletion of his and Dean’s friendship in 12x23. And that this ushers in a desire to End in such a way that achieves revenge against Lucifer (not a significant motivation, in my opinion, you’ve got to outlive your enemies to win against them), earns him the appreciation of the Winchesters, saves the world (proving his capacity for good), and brings about an end to his waiting. Glory through death, redemption in death – tropes that are hard to associate with Crowley unless you buy into his character’s devolvement in the latter half of season 12, but which the writers do their best to smooth into place and the fandom was forced to choke down.

And I won’t argue that Crowley didn’t wanted an end to his waiting – I’d argue the opposite in fact. This blatant preference for suicide, however, is antithesis to everything Crowley. What Crowley wanted in that End wasn’t an end of himself, but an end to existing in a state of perpetual limbo. Be accepted by the good guys, embrace his more human aspects, or return to the full dark depravity of demonkind. An end to the emotional rollercoaster, to continuous and destructive self-doubt, to striving to be both the king Hell needed and the ally the Winchesters refused to admit they benefited from having. That’s entirely different than wanting to end himself. As much as Crowley hated himself, he would never have considered death to be a preferable option – not unless some outside force, be it Chuck or the spn showrunners, decided otherwise for him.

Even if that had been the case, and I am wrong about Crowley’s characterization and his motivations, I still do not think he would have been as open about that motivation as is written in this cut script. It is just not like him. It is too vulnerable, too self-pitying. Crowley was always concerned about the others around him, and especially the Winchesters, thinking less of him. He never would have said something like this to them, not as this is written. Nor would Crowley have gone to the Winchesters with the intention of them killing him. He might have known it was a possibility, once he confessed his actions, (and from his perspective, there was the chance the Winchesters didn’t know of his involvement in Lucifer’s escape anyway), but it would never have been his intention. It’s not unknown for Crowley to encourage abuse from those he’s wronged, and to revel in the attention and emotions of it (here I’m thinking specifically of Kevin beating him in 9x02), maybe considering the punishment just and due. And Crowley at this point likely suspected he would eventually meet his end in some way involving the Winchesters. But death by their hands in this moment would have involved none of the justifying benefits of death by his own hand only a few scenes later – glory, revenge, redemption, a sense of closure.

Compare this cut monologue and its potential death – at the hands of the Winchesters after confessing his role in Lucifer’s escape – to this cut line of dialogue from later in 12x23. “Tell Dean he was right – you bloody fools have rubbed off on me.” This is Crowley. This is emotional complexity, admittance to a change of heart, self-awareness, and a brave act of equal defiance and sacrifice, with his usual smug, snarky dismissal. This isn’t suicide brought on by depression, by an uncharacteristic vulnerability. It is resolved, determined, if reluctant. This is Crowley choosing the greater good and the boys, even if it means sacrificing himself.

For me, this small addition smooths over much of the unevenness in the showrunner’s attempts to justify Crowley’s death. He has lost Hell, he believes he’s had an irreversible falling out with Dean – all of which could be overcome, grown beyond. But then a rift opens, and Lucifer is an immediate danger, and it requires a life to save the day. Crowley knows it can’t be either of the boys – that tends to have world-ending effects – and it can’t be Mary Winchesters or Castiel, because of “Winchester man-pain.” So that leaves Crowley. And having exhausted all immediate alternatives, Crowley does what internalized Winchester logic and conscience tells him is right. It would still require a moment of hesitation, a moment we see him combatting his deeply imbedded trait of self-preservation. But at least that would have been in character and show definitive character growth on Crowley’s part.

So yes, I completely agree with the decision to cut this monologue in 12x23. It doesn’t tell us anything about Crowley that we don’t already know, and is uncharacteristic of him, and provides out-of-character justification for his actions that wasn’t needed. You don’t have to agree with me, obviously. And I’ll end this rather long rant of an essay by saying what I always say: that Crowley deserved better. He deserved better than the mangling of his character’s motivations in the latter half of season 12, and he deserved better than this monologue. I’m glad it was cut from the final script.

[amazingflyingdick]

encrypted.

WHO: Dick @amazingflyingdick, Jason @thatsjasonfkntodd & Tim @redrobin-timdrake, mentions of Slade @terminator-deathstroke WHERE: The batcave WHEN: May 15th, 2020 WHAT: Tim and Jason uncover Dick’s past with Deathstroke.

Tim: Tim didn't pay Jason much mind as he scrolled through Dick’s file. It all looked pretty standard. It wasn't like Dick kept secrets from Tim, really. He didn't know about Jason so much, but he knew what he and Dick were like.

At least, he thought he did. But when he reached that line of code Tim blinked. "Uh. This can't... mean what I think it means." If it did, then he supposed he could see why Dick was preoccupied with Deathstroke. Jason: "What do you think it means?" Jason definitely wasn't inept, but he wasn't so sure that he was seeing whatever Tim was seeing, judging by that reaction. It looked like nonsense to him, but he was willing to venture a guess that that was the incorrect assumption. Bruce was too anal retentive to put something meaningless in there, or not to know if there was some kind of error. Tim: "Hold on one sec," he said as he pulled up the source box. "Bruce has a highly sophisticated cipher that he uses in some of his files. In the less encrypted ones, which I cracked a while ago, a lot of it just looked like gibberish. I sat there scratching my head for ages trying to figure it out." He began typing the key into the source box, fingers flying across the keys. "When you enter the key, it all becomes plain." He paused for a moment, fingers hovering over the 'enter' key. Should he expose Dick like this? Well... it was too late now. And there was a part of him that was desperately curious as to why Dick had never said anything to him.

Entering the key, he sat back from the screen as the code changed to display: Confirmed physical relationship with Slade Wilson, codename Deathstroke, circa December, 2010 to November 12th, 2011.

"Confirmed..." Tim furrowed his brow before entering a few more things and nodding. "Yes. There's a link here. He hid it." Biting his lip, he glanced to Jason. "Should I... I guess I should open it, right?" They had come this far. But it felt like an invasion almost. Did he care? He was sickly curious, but what would Jason say? Jason: Jason read the line of text twice, looked at Tim, looked back to the screen. There was a stretch of silence from him as he heard Tim ask about the link. He didn't reply to it right away, but eventually he did fling his hand in the general direction of the computer to say, "What the fuck is this? Click it." If Tim hesitated, he was going to do it for him, because no way in hell was he just going to walk away like he hadn't just read that with his own two eyes. Tim: Tim swallowed before biting his inner cheek. Pulling up the photos, he took in a clear image of Nightwing sitting on a roof with Deathstroke standing behind him, hand in his hair. “What the hell?” He swallowed. “This was in Blüdhaven,” Tim said, clicking forward to Nightwing looking up at Deathstroke. “Taken by Black Widow...” Raising a brow, he looked at Jason. “Why would Black Widow be taking pictures of Dick and Deathstroke? These have to be staged.” He clicked over again and paused. “Bruce took this one.” And it was definitely not staged. “The date is Dick’s birthday.”

A clear image of the two men in suits, Dick’s arms wrapped around Slade’s neck as they... kissed. “Is it bad that I... kinda wanna throw up?” Deathstroke? Why Deathstroke? Glancing at the year, Tim’s mouth fell open and he pushed to his feet. “This was when I was Robin! I used to visit him. 2010-2011, I spent so much time with the Titans then.” Jason: The dates were significant to Jason in the sort of way that he had no memory of them. Not in the “forgotten” kind of way, but just that most of it had been in that period of time where he was no longer in the ground but not exactly a complete person yet, either. He’d been half alive and Dick was off fucking Deathstroke? Notorious assassin and all around bastard, Deathstroke?

“Obviously you weren’t paying much attention.” He couldn’t immediately place why it was anger that he felt, rather than just disgust, but it was. “Call him.” Dick: There was the familiar sound of someone entering the Batcave from above, followed by Dick's ringtone, and he was fishing his phone out of his pocket when he came into view. He laughed when he saw Tim's name on the screen and glanced at him. "Perfect timing, I guess. What are you two working on?"

Leaning against the edge of the desk, his brow furrowed as he studied the image on the screen. People kissing? Okay. "Who a -" The question died in his throat. His hand against the desk clenched and all the color slowly drained from his face as he realized what he was looking at. Narrowing his eyes, he looked at Tim and then at Jason. "Where did these come from?" Tim: "Why don't you tell us?" Tim asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "Is this why you wanted me to 'look into Deathstroke', Dick? Because that's pretty messed up." He shook his head, looking at Jason. He did anger better. Was he angry? Or wasn't he? Was Tim being a jerk? Well... he was mad anyway. Jason: “What does it matter where they came from?” Although he had no intention of leaving out that information for long. “You get to ask zero questions right now. What the hell is this?” He gestured toward the screen again, his movements sharp, and got up to move until he was standing right beside Dick. “Except for the most hypocritical shit I’ve ever seen, I mean.” Dick: Dick was still in shock. He knew when and where that picture was taken even though it was years ago. Seeing it here, in Bruce's files, when he didn't even know it existed left him cold. This was his file. He recognized it. There was no footnote. Did that mean Bruce took this picture?

He was silent as Tim spoke, but the tightness in his jaw and the rigidity in his body signaled his slow, rising anger. Jason's accusation made him jerk back, as if he'd been burned, and he snatched a paperweight from the desk. Without warning he hurled it at the center of the screen. The image shattered into a complex spiderweb and most of it went black. 

Dick turned to Jason, pointing at the broken computer as he moved right up in his face. "Fuck you, Jason. You don't know anything." Tim: Tim literally flinched when Dick lifted the paperweight. "Dick no!" he tried as the smashed the screen. "Are you serious?!" He cried. As he swore, his eyes widened, darting to Jason and standing stricken. How were they going to explain the broken computer to Bruce or Babs? Babs was going to kill him. Jason: The busted screen was the least of his worries, and it didn’t erase anything besides. Everything Dick was running from was still going to be waiting for him, even if they weren’t standing there looking at it.

When Dick got close to him, Jason felt a shot of heat run up the back of his neck. He’d take that challenge. He took advantage of the lack of space and grabbed the front of Dick’s shirt in one fist. “I know a few things. Two really important ones. You were fucking somebody who kills for a dime and crawling back up on your pedestal when you were done. How’s the view from way up there, Dickie?” Dick: Even though Dick could hear Tim yelling, he could barely make sense of the words. His ears were ringing and he still wanted to hit something. He wanted to hit Jason, but as soon as he felt the impulse he shoved back against him. "Get off of me."

He laughed, but the sound was forced. "So that's how you want to frame it, huh? You have no idea what it was like back then. So weave whatever narrative you want. I'm tired of trying to be something I'm not. I'll gladly take hypocrite." Tim: As he watched Jason grab Dick and then the resulting shove, he darted forward to put his body right between Jason and Dick's. "That's enough. We're not getting into a fist fight in the Batcave." One hand rested on each brother's chest, keeping them apart.

Looking over at Dick with a sharp gaze. "What the fuck is going on, Dick?" He could tell it was important, because of Dick's immediate reaction. He had needed a moment to process what was going on, but now he had. He could tell that this wasn't just embarrassment. This was something else. "Explain." Jason: “Yeah, I was busy being dead and then wishing I’d stayed that way. Super sorry I didn’t have time to get the details on your love life with Deathstroke, bro. I get to write my own narrative because you,” he raised his finger at him again, “never said shit about any of it. You don’t get to be pissed at us.”

There was a moment where he genuinely considered just shoving Tim out of the way. He certainly didn’t give a damn that they were in the Batcave. What better place for it, really? It was Bruce’s files that broke the news anyway. He only chose not to because he still wanted an answer. Dick: Tim's palm on his chest was the only thing that kept him from shoving Jason back again. Dick's fists were clenched, but he was shaking hard underneath Tim's hand. Maybe they did only want an explanation, but that wasn't what he was hearing. It was all accusations and anger.

"You're right, you were dead. You died months before any of that ever happened. You think you died in a black hole, Jason? It just didn't affect anyone else? I'm not playing your I suffered the most because I actually died and then came back and went through hell game. Why should I tell you anything? You don't care to know anything about my life or about me. You never have. Just because you get the chance to call me out for shit that I..." He suddenly found it hard to continue, so he switched focus. "I don't know what I expected. The benefit of the doubt, maybe. From Tim, at least."

He turned and went back over to the computer. By the time he got there he was starting to feel overwhelmed by what this all meant - not only for him, but for Bruce and the rest of the family. He rested an elbow on the desk and leaned his forehead against his hand, his jaw tight. Tim: Tim swallowed, looking at Jason as Dick walked away, watching him sink into the chair. What was going on? He swallowed before giving a breath. He wasn't going to be able to be outward in his emotions. It was better he didn't. So he schooled himself. If they wanted any information, they were going to have to let up. It was clear that Dick was freaking out, and maybe they should ask.

When he was calm, Tim moved over to the chair, resting a hand on Dick's shoulder. "Dick... what's going on? Can you just... explain it?" Jason: He could have continued yelling, and that was both his first instinct and what he wanted to do, but he wasn’t going to give Dick the satisfaction of feeling right about fucking anything. So he didn’t. He bit it back, quite literally, and chewed at the inside of his cheek.

Let Tim be empathetic if he wanted to be. Let him worry. Jason wasn’t going to. He didn’t make a move toward either of them again, and instead stood apart with his jaw set. Dick: Dick lowered his hand when Tim touched his shoulder, exhaling softly. He could explain it even though he didn't want to. They deserved to know something that had the potential of affecting them directly. "I made a mistake, Timmy," he said quietly. "A big mistake. You remember what I told you recently? About how Bruce and I were estranged for a year? I barely ever saw him. I was angry with him, that he didn't..." He stopped, his gaze shifting to Jason briefly. "It made me... confused about what I believed in. What I should believe in."

Bringing up Slade was the difficult part. A long silence passed before he continued. "I know it's hard to believe now, but there was good in Slade. He helped the Titans and things were changing, I thought. Bruce's black and white thinking didn't make sense to me anymore. Nothing he said made sense. I was convinced he was wrong about everything, and... it got out of hand." Tim: "So what? You just... it was an accident?" How could it have lasted for a whole year, then? He shook his head before pulling back. "That doesn't make any sense, Dick. And Deathstroke is more than just 'out of hand'." How could he have let this happen? Deathstroke was a really bad guy. Murder for money. No remorse. And it wasn't like Jason. Jason killed but only really bad men. Deathstroke killed whomever got him paid the most.

Looking over at Jason, he blew out a breath. "Dick moved to Bludhaven before you came back. I remember because Slade Wilson used to help the Titans train. I remember meeting him." Jason: For once, he continued to keep the roll of thoughts in his head trapped there, rather than speaking all of them. If he had it all wrong, Dick did, too. What was he going to do, though? Assuage his anger and say that he had cared, had wanted to know. It wasn’t as though Bruce and Dick hadn’t been good enough for him. He hadn’t been good enough for them. Hearing it that twisted was a joke.

“Yep. Put that together,” he said flatly. Dick had been in Bludhaven by the time Jason made it back to Gotham. He’d done his research, connected the dots. “There’s dates in that file. Over a year. That’s not out of hand, that’s a relationship.” He was still angry, desperately angry, but his tone was ice cold. Dick: "No, it wasn't an accident. It was a mistake, that whole year. I made a mistake when I believed Slade could change. I made a mistake in trusting him. I made mistakes over and over and over again. I just didn't know they were mistakes at the time. I believed in him. Almost like..." He stopped, deciding against making that comparison.

It was harder to justify the part about Deathstroke. "I know, Tim. I know. But he had his moral codes, he just..." It wasn't like Jason's. Dick knew that. He closed his eyes for a second and shook his head. "A relationship, fine. It was still a mistake to have it. I was still stupid to want it. I was naive to believe in it. What else am I supposed to say? I was wrong about everything." Tim: "Almost like what?" Tim asked. He wasn't about to let that lie. Dick had been about to say something, and he wanted to understand. He needed Dick to be open. No sensoring.

This was all too much. Tanya had been weird enough. At least she was repentant. He didn't think Slade Wilson had ever once felt bad about a contract. "What good did you see in him? I knew you let him train the Titans, but I always thought it was more of like a needs must, enemies closer situation." Jason: “Are your mistakes the reason you’ve got us chasing him all around the fucking city?” Dick had said it was because Slade would be there to kill someone, and while that had made perfect sense at the time, now he was hard pressed to believe there was a single simple layer to it. Jason knew as well as anyone that you didn’t hand someone a year of your life and then actually walk away entirely. That wasn’t how it worked. Some piece stayed, even if it was tiny, and if that wasn’t true then Dick wouldn’t have had such a meltdown over being confronted with it.

“Say the rest of it. All of it. You think nobody wants to know you, Goldie, but here we are asking.” Maybe he wasn’t reigning it in as much as he’d thought. Dick: Dick just shook his head at Tim's question. It wouldn't sound right if he said it. As desperately as he wanted to be open with his family, it was because he wanted acceptance. But this entire conversation only highlighted all the reasons why he shied away from it. The only reason he kept going was because they asked for answers and he was doing his best to provide them. "He helped people when he didn't have to, when there was nothing in it for him. He didn't take all contracts. I knew he wasn't evil."

Jason's question made him grit his teeth. "No. And I didn't ask you to chase him, Jason. I asked you to let me know if you heard anything. I told everyone to say away from him. I just didn't think you'd be too dumb to do it."

The nickname made him jump to his feet. "You know what? I'm sick of hearing that. You force this image on me and you put me on a pedestal because you need me to validate your complex. And Bruce, Bruce puts me on there and pretends all that -" He gestured to the computers. "Doesn't even exist. You know he never even talked to me about that? Ten goddamn years and I had no idea he even knew. It's more important to him to hide the truth than it is admit that I'm not who he wants me to be." Tim: He nodded. Dick had been young. Tim remembered when he had been young. Tim, of course, had been young too. He remembered that Dick had believed harder. It disappointed him that Dick didn't go back to the train of thought he cut off, but he could tell that this was hard. Tim just really wished he understood why.

He winced as Dick talked about the expectations on his shoulders. And about Bruce. Bruce did this to all of them. They all had the desire to please him. Dick had to be perfect, Tim had to prove he was worthy of following Dick and Jason. Jason tried to run from his desire to please Bruce, but none of them could really escape it. "Dick... it's okay. Really. We're your brothers. We're just trying to figure out what's happening?"

He swallowed, trying to think. "He's not here in Star City for you, is he? Are you afraid that's it?" Jason: “I put you up there? You think I wanted to spend all that time trying to get to you to satisfy my complex that I didn’t have yet? I wanted a fucking father, I wanted to give Bruce what he wanted, and all he wanted was you.” And Dick had been too busy not wanting a real part in any of it anymore to give a damn about what that had looked like on the other side.

It was almost a shame Dick had already shattered the screen, because it would’ve been a perfect moment to do it himself. Instead, he swiped a hand over his mouth and just shook his head. “Maybe I don’t know anything, but neither do you. And Bruce knows all of it and doesn’t care.” Dick: Dick sighed, but shook his head. "He isn't here for me, Tim. It was ten years ago. It has nothing to do with me." He still wasn't sure why, unfortunately.

Everything Jason said eliminated his anger instantly. Dick stared at him, shocked and devastated to hear aloud some of the things he always feared were true, but never knew how to ask. There were things he wanted to tell Jason about his death, but he wasn't willing to turn it back around to be about himself, not after hearing that. Instead he said nothing.

"I want to know," he finally said quietly. Tim: That was good, at least. Because Deathstroke was... strong. He had beaten Bruce. He was smart, too. Maybe smarter than Tim. Dick would be compromised if Slade came for him. Because he was clearly compromised just talking about it. This was something that Tim didn't know. He didn't understand but he wanted to, as he wanted to understand and know all things so he could process them. This was true for Dick and Jason both.

"We can know," Tim said. "But I told you once that we can't lie to each other. Remember that, Dick?" He blew out a breath and looked between his brothers. His family. "Fighting about our greater issues isn't going to do anything. Jason is right that Bruce does know. I'm sure he does care, but even if he doesn't, he knows a hell of a lot more than we do. Even if we read all the files. It's just words on paper."

Pushing a hand through his hair, he sighed. "You know that we should work together. No secrets." The reason he had come back to the fold after Bruce had returned to the cowl, even when he had kept Damian on, was because he knew that the family fought better together. Even with their pain and their trauma. Because all of those things fit together like a puzzle piece. The three of them, especially, made a balance that was unstoppable. The head, the heart, and the fist. "When we hide from each other, things like this happen."

His eyes turned to Jason and then to Dick. "I know I don't have the same issues with Bruce that you guys do, but our relationship isn't perfect either. The three of us are always going to understand each other better than anyone else. No one else in the world has quite had what we did. Not even Dem--" He paused, stopping himself. "Damian."

He was trying to be the voice of reason here. Dick's conviction about the strength of their bond, the knowledge that they were a better weapon joined as one than separate to keep Jason, and his own gratification that there was some insight to be gained here.

"Dick... I think you should start from the beginning of all... this. And you can't leave anything out. If you want us to know, we have to know. I said to you before that sometimes I have trouble being open. I learned it from Bruce. But we--the three of us--have to have each other's backs and interests. We can't do that if we're at each other's throats." He hoped that sounded fair. "We can't do that if we don't know everything." Without knowledge, they could miss important connections and patterns, misconstrue things. End up with pain like Jason and Dick were expressing. Tim needed to channel them. This was an opportunity. And Tim very much wanted to understand. Jason: Jason had said more than he’d really intended to already, even in the context of pointing out even a fraction of what Dick didn’t know, and if he could have pulled the words back into his mouth he would have done that. He couldn’t, so he let Tim rattle off his speech about brotherhood instead and let the moment die. If Dick was fine being labeled a hypocrite, then he was fine going along with the idea that he coveted whatever complex he supposedly had.

He put a little distance between himself and the two of them until he had his back against the wall and his arms folded. “All ears,” was the only comment he offered up. He’d said plenty. More than plenty. Dick: Dick was still looking at Jason, frowning, but he didn't interrupt what Tim was saying. It made sense and he was proud of him for taking on the role he usually fell into. "I know. You're right." It never should have been a secret. At some point he should have told Bruce, at least, even though he knew now that Bruce had been aware of what was happening the entire time. 

It occurred to him that Bruce must have found out before his birthday if he'd been able to get the photo. Suddenly all the tension from that time made a lot more sense.

After a long pause, he slowly took a seat at the computer chair. Running a hand through his hair, he winced when Tim stressed that he start from the beginning and not leave anything out. It was the last thing he wanted to do, even if he understood why Tim would want to make sure every detail was covered and nothing important slipped by him. "Um... okay.” It surprised him that Jason was still there, but he was grateful despite how he didn't want either of his brothers to hear this. He still needed them there.

But he struggled to start. He wondered how clinical and brief he could make it without Tim forcing him to backtrack and elaborate.

“So…” His throat already felt dry. He kept his gaze down and spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact way, and continued to tell himself that he owed Tim and Jason this information after keeping it to himself for so long. “Deathstroke was in Bludhaven. I tried to stop him from a hit, but I got there too late and she was already dead. I was mad, so I went to his safehouse. And I was even angrier than usual because… by then, I had seen how he was capable of doing good things. He asked me to train Rose because he wanted her to grow up with morals. I saw him lose his son, his wife, and we’d worked together. I cared. And I didn't understand why he would choose Deathstroke and abandon the good things he had in his life. So, I went there to yell at him, or lecture him, I don’t know.” He laughed softly. “I was an idiot. Just showed up in the middle of his kitchen with some morality lesson.” It was funny in retrospect, sort of. It was a miracle Dick was still alive. “We argued. I wasn’t getting anywhere. At some point he wanted me to give him another reason to change. I don’t know why I said it, but… I cared. So I asked that he do it for me. He agreed, and that’s how it started. Okay?” He was fine giving details about the conversation, but he wasn’t about to explain what happened after they stopped talking. Tim: As Jason closed off, Tim bit down a sigh. He could have some time with Jason later. He thought that Jason needed it and perhaps he should have tried to have some time with him earlier. He had known, of course, that Jason felt displaced, and Tim did understand the feeling of trying to be good enough. It wasn't quite like Jason's, and he wouldn't claim that it would be. Regardless, he didn't want Jason leaving this heated and then deciding to just fall off the planet. He was finally here with them.

But this was about Dick right now. Dick and Deathstroke. Thankfully, as Dick started talking, Tim listened and the other seemed willing to tell them what had actually happened. This all sounded wild. Hard to believe. It wasn't really that Tim thought Dick was lying, so much that he didn't think it was possible for Deathstroke to agree to any level of change. What was Dick to him that he had agreed to that? It must be some kind of game that Slade was playing, or some manipulation he had concocted for Dick to believe because he was naive enough at eighteen that it had just was bound to happen. Already, Tim's mind was work. Did Dick know why he did it? What had Deathstroke really wanted?

He nodded, crossing his arms over his chest in almost a mirror of Jason, though that was unintentional. He just needed to think. "How did it go from a conversation to a relationship?" He asked. "Was he just... lying? Or did he actually change?" Tim hated that he didn't remember the details, but he hadn't really thought to focus on Deathstroke at the time. He had just believed Dick when he said that the threat he posed was more or less neutralized thanks to the alliance he had with the Titans.

Jason: Jason had never looked into Deathstroke's entire record closely enough to know if there was really a period where he'd stopped taking contracts. It seemed difficult to believe that the guy would just drop off the entire map for a year with the reputation he had, and had worked up for essentially as long as either Jason or Dick had been alive. If he'd actually put that aside for an entire year, even if he went right back to it after the date in the file, he was going to be genuinely shocked.

"What'd you get out of that whole thing? Just the gratification of thinking somebody turned it around for you?" If he wanted to take that as a hateful question, Jason didn't really care, though he hadn't entirely meant it that way. It would't have exactly come as a shock to learn that Dick god off to the idea that he could fundamentally change someone, though. Dick: "Yeah, Tim. He was lying," Dick said simply, his tone direct and oddly emotionless. "But he seemed to change. He didn't take many jobs. He spent most of his time helping the Titans. It was different." He was about to continue, but stopped at Jason's question. At this point his rage had already been snuffed out and the question stung, but he tried not to let it show. "No," he replied quietly, but another silence stretched on before he continued, with effort. "He knew me, and he never asked me to be anything more than what I was. I didn't have to be perfect or put up an act. I could just... I don't know. Exist."

He realized he'd never explained how it went to a relationship, but he didn't know how to. "A lot of things led to it, Tim. I don't know how it happened. It was too gradual. It wasn't ever... officially anything." There was one big incident that he was inclined to skip over, but he remembered what Tim said and he knew he couldn't leave it out. "At one point I found out Joker was in Bludhaven. Happy's, remember that place? The casino? I made a plan to go after him. By myself. I didn't want to involve the Titans." Or Bruce. "I thought I was prepared, but Joker pretty much handed my ass to me. I wouldn't have made it out if Slade didn't show up." Tim: Tim swallowed, glancing to Jason. If Slade had made Dick feel secure, he was sure that had meant something to him, but... of course Deathstroke had lied. He was a liar. A murderer. He wondered what his angle was. All Tim remembered was that suddenly he had left the Titans, Rose tried to kill Dick, and then there was the whole thing with the fake Titans. He didn't know that much, but he knew he enough.

His breath caught, though, when Dick said he went after the Joker. He had said that in front of Jason? Like Dick had thought the Joker would just go down after he had murdered their brother without a thought? And what was Deathstroke doing there anyway? He didn't want to say anything out loud, but why would Deathstroke have dated Dick, allied with the Titans, and saved Dick from the Joker? There was a part of him who wondered if he hadn't collaborated with the Joker to gain Dick's trust. Dick wasn't an idiot, and Slade probably knew that. Still, he kept his mouth shut about that. "You went after the Joker alone? After... what happened to Jason?" Jason: Whether he believed that answer completely or not, he wasn’t incapable of seeing what the appeal of it was. He wasn’t unfamiliar with the relief that came with being someone who didn’t have the same expectations of you that everyone else did, even if he’d been at least partially incapable of figuring out the first time around that he had that with Roy. He didn’t really want to compare the two, similarities or not. Dick had still expected a change out of Slade in the same breath that he said Deathstroke just let him ‘exist.’ He wasn’t fully willing to withdraw his hypocrite accusation yet.

His concern over Deathstroke wavered at mention of Joker, though. Unwilling to listen to another implication that he was making the conversation about himself, he settled for letting his nostrils flare rather than immediately speak. There was a long delay before he finally did. “Was he keeping tabs on you or was that just a coincidence that he could swoop in and save you?” Dick: Dick was a little surprised by Tim's reaction, but he looked at him for a moment before shaking his head. "I went up against the Joker plenty of times before then on my own, Tim. Plenty of times after, too." He wasn't going to bring up one particular time and he hoped Tim wouldn't either. This wasn't the time for it, especially because there was a lot more he needed to talk about with Jason after he answered everything they wanted to know.

"It wasn't a coincidence. I told him what I was doing." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Dick realized how it sounded. "I never even..." He had to stop again. It was too much to go back and analyze it, look at it in a different light, and make new revelations that he was't prepared to handle. "Joker was expecting me. You're thinking Slade tipped him off, right? That he set it up." How did he never even consider that? "You're probably not wrong. I never... even suspected it. Not until right now. The thought was never in my head." Tim: Tim swallowed. It wasn't that he hadn't known that, but the times that Dick had squared up with the Joker had always been dangerous. He would worry about Dick regardless. But Jason had been freshly dead then. And he knew about Dick's bullet wound. Dick had told him about it not too long ago. So the times he had gone after the Joker before that had been dangerous too. Just because he did do it didn't mean he should. But they shouldn't dwell on what they should and shouldn't do. They had all done things they shouldn't have. "You're right," he acceded. "I'm sorry. Go on."

Dick was quick to catch on to what Tim and Jason were both thinking and Tim pressed his lips together. He didn't want to say that to Dick because... it was clear that Slade had made him believe something. It was clear to Tim that talking about this hurt Dick, but... it wasn't unlikely that Slade had had something to do with it. "Bruce once said that Deathstroke plays games. His manipulation is in his files. And you remember how he was with Terra before everything got better and he allied with the Titans." He had made a team member turn again the Titans. Dick and the team had apparently forgiven him--even Gar--but it was a prime example that it wasn't unheard of that Slade might have been in league with the Joker or might have at least told him.

He sighed before running a hand over his face. "What does all this mean now, Dick?" He asked. "How should we deal with him? Because I'm not letting you deal with this by yourself." Jason: What had Dick really thought? That Deathstroke was going to turn hero for good? Most people were incapable of turning over a new leaf that thoroughly, and more than that...not many wanted to. Jason didn’t exactly have the same gooey moral center than Dick and Tim did, but despite how vehemently they often got opposed he did at least have moral guidelines. But Deathstroke? Not even Dick could just manifest something that wasn’t there. “If he’ll throw in with somebody like Black Mask, there’s nothing stopping him from doing it with Joker, too.” He’d accused Dick of being naive with Tanya, and he’d been right, but this was even worse.

“What do you think you’re going to do, Tim? Nicely ask him to fuck off? I used bullets and the only way I got him down was because he was poisoned.” Apparently. That had been the claim he’d made at the docks, anyway. Dick: "I know. I wasn't really listening to Bruce anymore, Tim." The only reason Dick went to Gotham was to see Tim, check in, and he rarely even saw Bruce. They avoided each other for an entire year. He knew now that Bruce had been right, but he couldn't silence the nagging doubt completely and he was frustrated, tired. At some point he knew he would have to accept what everyone was showing to him and not be so naive. "He was convincing. Even now, I..." He quickly stopped and shook his head.

This is where he knew the conversation was headed. Dick winced and held up a hand. "No. It was ten years ago. Nine. Whatever. It was a long time ago. We need to find out who he's here for. That's still the plan. But if it comes down to a confrontation, then he's mine. I know how he fights. I know him better than both of you, and I deserve to be the one to take him down." Tim: "Even now what?" he asked. He was certainly aware that there was something else to this. Dick wouldn't still be so weird about it if there wasn't. He had a thousand questions he wasn't asking just yet because they weren't relevant even if they would burn through his brain if he didn't eventually ask. But that one he wouldn't let lie. Even now what.

"I'm not actually an idiot, Jason, much as you like to say 'I thought you were the smart one'. There are ways to deal with a guy you can't beat with a gun." Deathstroke was all about his bottom dollar. Tim could drain him dry without leaving the batcave if he wanted to. "Plus the three of us are stronger than just you, me, or Dick." If they wanted to take down Deathstroke, he could put his research to use, Dick's understanding of his emotions or at least an intimate understanding of the way his manipulation worked, and Jason could beat the hell out of him. He was confident they could do it and Bruce wouldn't need to be involved at all.

Tim set his jaw. "That's a bad idea. He knows how you think, Dick. And he helped train you some when you were with the Titans. He probably knows how you fight, too. We can help with this." Jason: “So you can go alone and get your ass kicked? Or killed? Unless you’re banking on the idea that he wouldn’t do that.” Which was even more stupid than practically anything else he’d heard. “If you know him, he knows you. Probably better.”

He lifted one hand in an impatient gesture. “I’m sick of going back and forth about this. If you want Deathstroke out of here, we can’t exactly do that without getting him. If he’s got a contract in the city, he can’t complete it if we get his ass out of here before. Lure him out and we’ll deal with it.” Dick: Dick shook his head and made a gesture to indicate it didn't matter. It didn't, really. The confusion he still carried over the events of so many years ago made no difference. It didn't help to talk about it.

What he didn't want to consider was how well Slade knew him, even though it was true. He couldn't deny it. "I'm not the exact same as I was when I was eighteen, Jason." The years made him a better fighter. Even though he wouldn't bring it up, fighting against Jason had played a big role in that. He had also beaten Bruce. His skill and ability wasn't at question, but he was legitimately unsure if he would be able to go through with it. He wanted to think he could.

"Lure him out? How?" Dick frowned, looking between Jason and Tim. "I don't want him dead."

Tim: Tim was definitely cornering Dick after this. He kept pushing things off and Tim didn't like it. He wasn't having it, but now wasn't the time to call Dick out. He had things he wanted to know but he could wait.

"Well... there a number of ways that you could do it. But... have you considered just flipping the switch? He made you believe he cared for you..." He didn't like suggesting it and he didn't know if Dick would go for it, but it would be one way to make Slade lower his guard. If he already thought Dick was manipulable, then it would be a good way to go about it. Dick had used his charms before but never quite like this. Jason: "What, you think Deathstroke hasn't paid attention in those ten years? Come on, man. Don't be stupid. He didn't forget you exist." Especially because they'd all crossed paths with him at least once since then, including Bruce.

He couldn't keep himself from rolling his eyes. "You don't have to prostitute him. Christ. I'll set up a fake job and make sure he knows the buyer is out for Deathstroke. Surprise, you're the buyer." Dick: Dick shook his head immediately. "No, I'm not doing that." The thought of manipulating Slade in that way made his stomach turn and he recognized the feeling: guilt. Setting up a trap didn't feel any better, but he knew it could be the only way to prevent Slade from killing someone. That was why he was here. There was no other reason that made sense.

After a long, long pause, he sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk and rubbing his head. The thought of pitting his brothers against Deathstroke and the very real possibility of them getting seriously injured gnawed at him. It made him feel sick. "No killing. No lethal force. We just get him down and bring him in." He never seemed to wind up in prison, but at least he'd be in jail while awaiting trial. That bought them a lot of time. Tim: "I wasn't saying prostitute him--which is a valid life choice by the way, Jason. Get woke." It was a bad joke, but the entire room was incredibly tense. He blew out a breath before sighing. "It would have worked, though."

He paused at Jason's suggestion. It was... actually a good one. Not that he thought that Jason wasn't smart. He just... wouldn't have thought of it that fast. But he supposed the Dark Web was more his world. "We're actually doing this?" Tim did have the money, if they needed it to be legit. But... jeez. "Should we... I'm guessing we shouldn't tell Bruce?" Jason: Jason just stared hard at Tim, but since he wasn’t close enough to him to respond the way he wanted, he elected to not acknowledge it any further. Asking Dick to manipulate Slade because they’d been involved was actually worse, as far as he was concerned, but since his idea was markedly better he was just going to pretend like Tim’s hadn’t existed at all.

“We do it or risk Deathstroke completing whatever contract he took to get here and then bailing.” Besides, when was the last time Jason had a real challenge? Even if Dick was insisting on no lethal force, taking Deathstroke down in any sense was going to take some planning. “Fuck that. He gave up his right to be involved ten years ago.” Dick: Dick shook his head slightly, but he didn't say anything. If Slade truly had lied to him all those years ago, then he wouldn't even have any incentive to meet up with him for a reason like that. Not unless he thought he could use it to his advantage.

"It can't happen," he said quietly. If Slade did follow through with the contract and someone died because he dragged his feet, he wouldn't be able to live with it. "And we're not telling Bruce. He knows Sl - Deathstroke's here. He obviously knew everything and never said a word." Leaning back in the chair, his gaze caught the second screen that had the words from the file instead of the pictures. "He wrote it down. Like it's kryptonite or something."

Annoyed, he ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. "If we do this, if we plan it all out, then I'm going in alone. He'll use both of you against me. Like you said, he... knows me. If I hesitate, it risks your lives. I won't do that." Tim: Tim scoffed. “No. Sorry, but that’s not going to work. I’m not letting you and Jason is good at this stuff. He actually runs in this world. You’re not going alone.” Tim would literally create an annotated file, with footnotes, as to why it was a dumb idea for Dick to go alone. So help him, he would. And they ought to expect that of him.

He looked over to Jason. “Back me up here, Jay.”

Jason: “Yeah, not happening. If you were going alone you would’ve already done it.” He hadn’t. He’d been chasing ghosts. Now that he and Tim were involved, there was no way in hell he was going to set the whole thing up and then twiddle his thumbs while Dick did whatever he thought he was going to do. Fight him? Or try to reason with and persuade him again? Not even Dick could be that naive.

He uncrossed his arms and stood up straight. “We’re helping. You can have the first word and the last one if you want it. I don’t care.” Dick: This was exactly how he knew they would respond. It made it even more difficult to explain why he didn't trust himself to carry this through without putting one (or both) of them in danger. Gritting his teeth, he shook his head slightly. "Jason." His voice was strained and almost pleading. He breathed in to continue, explain, but he knew there was nothing he could say that would alter the plans set in place - and if he disagreed entirely, there was no doubt someone would die as a result of his hesitation. Tim: Tim reached out, putting his hand on Dick's shoulder, tipping his head back to look him dead in the eye. "Not this time, Dick. If we work together, no one's going to get hurt." He shook his head, looking at Jason. The expression was set, firm. This was something they could do together. They didn't need Bruce. They could get Deathstroke.

Jason: “That’s it then. Get me a timeline. I’ll figure out details for the job.” It had to be believable. It wasn’t like Slade was an idiot; he’d be able to sniff out something obviously fake. Tim could take it from there. “Unless anybody else has some feelings to share, I’m done here.” And even if they did, he’d had his fill of them for the day.

Dick: Dick knew things didn't always work out that way, but he didn't argue with Tim. He wanted to believe that it would all go to plan. If this were anyone else, he would, but the situation was too unique - and too raw, even after a decade. He seemed about to say something, but then he just nodded instead, not looking up from the desk. Tim: Tim nodded, pulling away from Dick completely to look at Jason. “I can help you put out the pings. And any kind of financial justifications... I can be that guy if you need?” He could create an encrypted account so it wasn’t traced back to him and allocate his trust. He blew out a breath. “We don’t tell Bruce and... we handle this quietly. Deathstroke won’t hurt anyone.” Least of all Dick.

Jason: “Sure, Timmy. Later.” For the time being, he was done. He needed time to process that didn’t take place near either one of them, and he had nothing else to say that was going to get anywhere. He glanced briefly to the two of them before making his exit. He was stuck in the manor for the time being, but he could go claim a different part of it.

[smartbutuncertified]

Movie Review: NoBody’s Perfect (2008)

I watched the movie noBody’s Perfect, filmed in 2008, by Niko Von Glasow. The main stars are Fred Dove, Kim Morton, and Bianca Vogel. It’s about a man who has a major birth defect due to Thalidomide trying to find others who have a Thalomide birth defect to make a nude calendar. The film largely concerns body image issues, but also touches on the idea of disabled people being whole and how abled people often disregard disabled people’s privacy and dignity for their comfort and curiosity. The act of participating in the calendar seems to be a large step forward for many of them, to seeing their bodies more kindly. It also has a large section devoted to discussing how little responsibility was taken in Germany by the company who distributed the drug, and continued to do so even after they knew what it did to fetuses.

It talks a lot about acceptance of your body and your differences, a subject that is very topical in our airbrushed world. Having a major birth defect is about as far from classical beauty as can be, and yet they find beauty and joy in themselves. So as a member of the general population living in the same cultural climate of our bodies never being good enough, it connects on that level. “My (short) arms are a part of me, they’re a part of my life, and that’s all right. But I am not ‘short arms’.” Sofia declares.

It hits home in a closer way as well. I also had a birth defect. Like a terrible country song, I was born with a broken heart. It was entirely internal, but saving my life left me with a distinctive scar on my chest nearly a foot long, distinctive enough that people who work in cardiology sometimes ask what I had fixed. I don’t think about it too much, but sometimes people mention it when I wear a top that shows where it starts. Perhaps I should be prouder of it. I survived.

Then there’s the abled people feeling like disabled people have some sort of duty to disclose their disability, another personal sore spot. Fred Dove, while being interviewed on a radio show, had his disability disclosed to all the listeners by the interviewer as a bit of -  color commentary. I cannot politely express how livid that made me, but I wholly understand why Fred only spoke about it for a few seconds before changing the topic.

Sofia, an actress, recounted a disturbing event from her childhood where she was often forced to strip naked in front of a number of doctors, usually male, for inspection. “It was awful. I was surrounded by about 20 white coats” This reinforced my belief that it’s incredibly important to preserve the privacy and dignity of disabled people, children, and disabled children. There is no reason why a child not having an immediate medical emergency needs to be stripped naked in front of so many adults at once.

It’s stunning that Kim’s mother up and left her religion entirely when the minister refused to have Kim in church due to her visible disabled status. That shows remarkable integrity. It also illustrates a much larger dynamic present throughout the film, the importance of the individual over the system. Systems are useful, but if they no longer serve their intended purpose, for example, a holy place turning away an innocent child for looking odd, they need to be abandoned for the sake of those they should have helped, and didn’t. This aligns wholly with my view of how our relationships with institutions should work.

It’s notable and painful how differently the Vogel siblings were treated by their families, with the one not affected getting much more attention and praise from their grandparents. However, this doesn’t seem to have affected their relationship, they seem quite close. This defied the general narrative of the spoiled child becoming cruel to the maltreated one, and makes me wonder how much truth there is to that idea.

About forty percent of the way through, they reveal a horrifying fact. The company that made the drug knew what it did in 1961, and still kept selling it. Even worse, the pioneer of the drug knew that one of the ingredients was of a group often referred to as “monster makers”. The company compounded the error by having no female trials before releasing it to the public. The company has also never even apologized to the victims, let alone settled with them. One interviewee puts it best when he says “[…] let’s call them criminals, who committed their crimes in the greedy pursuit of profit.” I absolutely agree with that, the film is not the only thing making me want justice for the models.

I’m not sure how I feel about the constant presence of smoking in the film. Since it’s reality, it’s important to represent honestly, but I wonder what this says about addiction among the disabled. Either that, or smoking rates are much higher in Europe. That would have to be a whole other paper, honestly. I don’t agree with smoking, but vulnerable people pick their pleasures where they can get them.

I take exception to one interview where they talk about how when they talk about their issues in a public forum, the issues become detached from them. The interviewee seems to feel that in order to express oneself clearly, detaching yourself is the only way to do it. I would argue that this in fact muddies the issue, making it less about what is important: the people.

I was surprised by the interview with the gardener, which talked about another of the disabled models sexually assaulting women, and about him beating up kids his own age and older in school. It’s generally not considered that the physically disabled are also capable of assault, but they are whole people in every way, not just the positive ones.

I have very mixed feelings about the astrophysicist who reportedly grabbed women’s chests being presented sympathetically. I’m aware that this was a single report from another person, and that that isn’t the whole of who he is, but it still discomforts me that the film seems to brush over what it’s reported that he did. The film mentions that Thalidomide disabled about 7,000 children, surely there weren’t exactly twelve that were willing to pose nude?

It must be mentioned that nobody from the drug company was present in the film for any significant part, but that was not for want of trying on the director’s part. He did his best to loop them into the film for their side of things, and they refused to participate.

It addressed the whole topic of body issues incredibly, letting people speak for themselves about what made them uncomfortable and what didn’t. As one interviewee put it, “[My insecurity] is in my mind, it’s not in your perception, is it? It’s like, you look fine to me, but you’re probably unhappy about something that I don’t care about.”

The presence of ableism is felt throughout the film in many of the conversations and in how several of the models think and behave in regards to themselves. All of the models have varying levels of comfort with themselves and their disability. The director, Niko, is one of the least comfortable. It was interesting to hear that for Doris and Niko, they stayed away from other Thalidomide children for quite a while because they didn’t want to see themselves in them. They didn’t want to relate to others who were clearly different and know that they were just as different. It’s also mentioned that several of the models have had difficulty with romantic relationships because of their disability. But there are only two shown incidents. A child making fun of a wheelchair using model and a man and the end who is being interviewed on the street about the art installation saying that it’s “tasteless” for a disabled person’s naked body to be shown in public. Thankfully, both of these are framed with an immediate counterpoint by people who weren’t hired by the producers, showing that times are changing. These scenes were handled with care.

There was an interesting conversation where an interviewee that uses a powered wheelchair admits casually that he’s considered killing himself. It’s moved past quickly, but there’s something about the framing that makes it feel less like they did it to dismiss it, and more like they don’t want to dwell over it and overshadow the other complex facets that this person has. As someone who has struggled with suicidal impulses, I loved that.

The inclusion of the lesbian art teacher served as a pointed reminder of the intersectionality of disabled issues. Past the obvious, she also mentions founding a group working to protect disabled women and girls from sexual violence, something that’s not often thought of as an issue concerning the disabled specifically. But they are a uniquely vulnerable population to predation.

It passed the “who cares?” test with flying colors, framing the issue as one of pain and justice that crossed communities. I would say that it said that “who cares?” ought to be everyone who wants the world to be a safe place, for companies to be held accountable for their mistakes and “mistakes”, for people to be able to not fear what others think of them for things that are out of their control. Of course, the film may not hit like that for everyone who watches it, but it was good enough to win the German Film Award of 2009, so it’s clearly not just me.

The film opens on a scene of a man talking candidly to his daughter about being afraid to be naked in front of anyone because of his malformed arms. It was a good tone setter for the film, encapsulating the main issue, the joking, yet honest air, and how these people are not curiosities or strange creatures, but humans with lives and families. It was a beautiful way to ease into the film, and it flows well from there.

The theme of showing these people as complex and whole is possibly the strongest one in the film, arguably the film’s thesis. It was hard to hear that some of these people, as babies, were taken away from their mothers by the doctors with no explanation for days. One for two, one for six, and we don’t know about the others. I would understand wanting to monitor babies with a severe birth defect for further issues, but it isn’t that hard to keep the parents in the loop. They chose not to.

The film was art, but not art that is intended to make the viewer feel good. The art is put into making you understand, as much as you can, what happened to these people, and how they have continued on with what they have. You are allowed to have whatever feelings you like, but you must understand that they are whole human beings. They look incomplete to people who don’t know them, but they are anything but. You don’t need a certain amount of body mass to be human.

I must disclose that I personally watched the film largely in 20 minute increments, but that was largely because I kept stopping to note things down so that I could write this as well as possible, with plenty of accurate examples. If I was watching this for pleasure, I would absolutely have gone through it twice over without pause. I may very well do that at a later date.

Add to that that this film launched a successful campaign to increase German benefits for Thalidomide victims, and it’s done the thing all art sets out to do- made a notable mark on the world. I hope that all of the models benefited from this, as it’s hard to find out what happened to people whose last names you mostly don’t know. However, it was easy to find out that Niko is still thriving as a film director.

I thought that this film was stunning. I would view something by these people again in the future, because I love how things were addressed. I loved how they presented everything, how compassionate and thoughtful their framing of delicate issues was. But I would only recommend this to individuals above the age of fifteen who were okay with artistic nudity. There is explicit nudity, which may make some individuals uncomfortable, but it isn’t pornographic, just beautiful people being brave and naked. If you’re at all interested in disability issues, body issues, corporate accountability, or even all three, I would highly recommend this film.

[kcwcommentary]

VLD3x06 – “Tailing a Comet”

3x06 – “Tailing a Comet”

This episode is a mess. 

This commentary is long because I have a lot to critique.

Lance is in some Galra base. He’s looking through the scope of his bayard-turned-rifle. The red of the bayard and the blue of his armor looks so dissonant. I don’t know how the visual of the colors not matching resulting from the lion switch plot ever felt right to the EPs. It might match for whatever nostalgia they have of the old 80s Voltron, but it looks like an animation error.

Keith rushes in, taking out sentries. All the Paladins are there, including Allura, whose bayard is manifesting as a whip. A very inconsistent whip. Sometimes it acts solid, like a normal whip, wrapping around sentries. Other times, without anything to suggest a change, it acts like a blade, cutting sentries apart. Purposeful inconsistencies like the nature and behavior of her bayard make it difficult to track and anticipate how anything works in this show. It’s disorienting to watch. Just another absurdity of this show’s production.

Pidge does something to a computer and all the sentries shut down and fall over. That is a serious security vulnerability that one would think the Galra, with their 10,000-year old universe-wide empire, would have figured out and built their systems so that every sentry didn’t have a singular, unified off-switch.

Given what Pidge and Keith say at the end of the scene, the Paladins must be going around taking down various Galra bases before turning them over to the Blade of Marmora.

The sequence ends, revealing itself to be just an action set-piece. There was no narrative relevance to the scene, no reason for the scene to be in the story. It was solely there as pointless spectacle.

Back on the Castle Ship, Keith is talking to Shiro. Shiro remembers the battle with Zarkon, he remembers the Black Lion telling him to use the black bayard, and the next thing he remembers is waking up on a Galra ship. While Shiro could use a haircut, him in his white tank top is nice. Initially, I was just going to write that as a side-note in parentheses, but looking at Shiro’s bare arms, seeing precisely how the prosthetic connects to his arm is important. This won’t be relevant to some of my criticism for several seasons, but I want to point it out very specifically now so that I can come back to it when Shiro gets his new arm in season seven. It’s something I suspected, but I couldn’t remember any absolute textual evidence for what I have long thought. Seeing him in this tank top now, I know for certain, I’m right. This makes the new arm he gets in season seven even more abhorrent. I’ll wait until I get to those episodes to point out specifically why.

Keith points out that Shiro had “just unlocked the Black Lion’s ability to teleport.” He suggests maybe Black was trying to save Shiro by teleporting him or that maybe Zarkon somehow made Black teleport Shiro into Galra hands. This would have at least explained what happened to Shiro’s body. But since we know from future episodes that this isn’t Shiro, and that Black did not teleport Shiro to the Galra, the show leaves us with no explanation for what happened to Shiro’s body or how he died.

“Hey Keith, how many times are you going to have to save me before this is over?” Shiro asks. “As many times as it takes,” Keith answers. I love that they care about each other. And that makes the fact that they don’t talk to each other in season eight, acting as if they barely know each other, more infuriating.

Hair cut and face shaven, Shiro joins the others on the bridge. The first thing he says to them is to congratulate them on the work they’ve done in his absence in fighting against the Galra. Pidge interrupts with information she’s gotten from data she’s analyzed about Lotor, saying his most recent sightings have been in a particular “quadrant.” Shiro comments about the quadrant being huge. As I complained about the use of the word in 3x02 “Red Paladin,” I really don’t like that “quadrant” has become some go-to word for miscellaneous area divisions of space. The show remembers that Hunk is an engineer and intelligent, so they have him and Pidge go back and forth discussing a way to try to track the “comet.”

Lance actually comes to Keith’s room to talk to him. “You’re the leader now, right?” Lance says to Keith. This is an unnecessary, uncomfortable situation the show chose to put itself in. Lance talks about how they have “one Paladin too many.” Lance doesn’t want to take Blue away from Allura, so if Shiro resumes as Black Paladin and Keith goes back to Red, Lance thinks he should step aside. If the EPs of the show didn’t want to contort this show to fit their nostalgia of the old 80s Voltron, then this wouldn’t need to be an issue. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with having Allura as an admiral-level commander stationed on the Castle Ship. There she could be written as a leader, but as the Blue Paladin, she’s just kind of there, following orders instead of giving them.

Keith tries to convince Lance to just focus on the missions instead of worrying about it. To a small degree, Lance talking to Keith about this is Lance revealing some of his significant insecurities. With the unexplained rivalry between these two characters, character growth for them could have been built around Keith helping Lance learn to deal with his insecurities. This scene would be a step in such development, so Keith not recognizing here how severe Lance’s insecurities are makes sense. But the character development would need to continue in the future, and I think the show thinks that they do keep working on this character development, but they don’t ever really resolve the arc. It just sort of fizzles. At least, I don’t remember the show explaining how Lance deals with his insecurities.

Once again, the mice are shown having gone into the same (or similar) area of the ship’s systems with the two small crystals that they went into in 1x03 “Defenders of the Universe.” Like then, I don’t understand why the system was designed so that a technician couldn’t access it, thus necessitating using the mice to do so. Hunk promising the mice a “mouse shower” is cute though.

Hunk hitting the panel to make the ship send out whatever energy ring that is shown beaming out from the Castle is cliché, and, given the command input interface of this system, not really sensical. They detect the “comet” and begin pursuit. Their system locates the “comet” on a standard Galra ship, not Lotor’s, at a planet. Once again, the planet does not look like a planet.

Both Keith and Shiro simultaneously go to give the team commands. Keith defers to Shiro. I guess it makes sense that a readjustment like this moment might be realistic given the plot as it’s been this season, but I can’t watch it and not think about how the EPs wanted Keith as Black Paladin and wanted Shiro dead. Shiro thinks that the Galra must be transferring the “comet” to the base, but the ship ends up blasting the base. Shiro says they need more information, and Keith tells Shiro to take the Black Lion, that he’ll stay on the Castle with Coran and help provide support.

This suggests something that bothers me throughout the show. The Castle is a large ship and must have been designed with the intention of a larger crew than what Team Voltron has. They never do staff the Castle with such a crew though. Despite the show telling us about people joining the Voltron Coalition, none of those who join work on the Castle. The Olkari are a culture significantly made up of engineers, yet none join the crew. Slav supposedly helps on the Castle Ship at the end of season two, but he’s nowhere to be seen now. That the crew is never realistically staffed annoys me.

The Black Lion won’t respond to Shiro, so he tells Keith he’ll have to lead the mission. “It looks like you’re its true paladin now,” Shiro says. Ugh. Contextualizing this with the clone storyline, this is supposed to be a hint that this Shiro isn’t the real Shiro. The problem with that is that just last episode, Black specifically reacted to this clone, detected him, roared for him. There is literally no explanation for why Black would be interested in directing Keith to this clone last episode only to reject him now. Black wanted the clone last episode, but for Black now to not want the clone: the show is just ridiculously inconsistent. It’s like those in charge of the story cannot make up their minds about what the story is from one episode to the next.

The show expects us to think that somehow Black has bonded with Keith more than Shiro? That Shiro’s right in saying that Keith is Black’s “true paladin now.” That attempt by the show to make Keith Black Paladin is an act to delegitimize Shiro’s character entirely, including to degrade him from seasons one and two. The only explanation the show ever gives for Black choosing Keith over Shiro is that this is not really Shiro but a clone. But then, even once the real Shiro is put in the clone’s body, the show still has Black choose Keith over Shiro. That’s still the show delegitimizing Shiro in seasons one and two.

I can’t help but to feel insulted and offended by this storytelling decision. It’s like the show is ridiculing me for having thought the unified story of Shiro and Black in seasons one and two was good. This is the show calling me a fool for thinking Shiro and Black’s joint story in the first two seasons of the show meant something.

Shiro still tries to give leadership from the Castle Ship (there’s no narrative reason this couldn’t be Allura like it had been in the past).

Lotor’s generals bust in the base. (I still think Ezor’s sock head is an absurd design.) The Galra commander of the base shouts, “Lotor sent you to finish what he started!?” The episode doesn’t explain what the Galra commander meant by this.

The Paladins board the Galra ship, but there’s no crew. Even if Lotor is trying to act outside of the knowledge of the other Galra of the Empire, why wouldn’t there be sentries on the ship? They’re just robots, which means their allegiances should be programable.

Narti takes psychic control of the Galra base commander. She makes him shut down base security, which again makes all the sentries turn off. This again emphasizes what a severe security risk it is for the Galra to have all the sentries effectively have a singular off-button. Narti has him open the base’s roof, and inside is part of the teludav Team Voltron used to transport Zarkon’s ship in 2x12 “Best Laid Plans.”

The Paladins track down the “comet” to find instead a ship that’s been made from the “comet.” Wow, Lotor was fast. (So fast that it doesn’t feel realistic.) Episode 3x04 “Hole in the Sky,” wherein Lotor steals the “comet,” takes place between when Voltron fights him at Thayserix, seen in both 3x03 “The Hunted” and 3x05 “The Journey,” and when they find Shiro. Shiro loses consciousness during his pursuit of Voltron in “The Journey” seven days after Thayserix. Assuming a day or two of recovery on board the Castle before Keith and Shiro’s conversation at the start of this episode, that would mean Lotor would have had the “comet” processed and the ship constructed start-to-finish within maybe a week-and-a-half?? That is an unrealistic manufacturing timetable, especially if he’s doing all this relatively covertly.

Allura thinks that the Galra would never be able to operate the teludav without an Altean, and then she remembers that Haggar is Altean. This is written like Allura had forgotten and only just now remembered. The way she reacted upon seeing that Haggar is Altean at the end of season two, there’s no way that that would not have been something that was at the forefront of Allura’s mind. That’s why it’s weird that the show never made that revelation about Haggar a topic of discussion among Team Voltron before now.

Keith and Shiro have a disagreement. Keith thinks they should find and attack Lotor directly, thinking that stopping him will stop everything. Shiro thinks the most important problem to deal with is to prevent Lotor from having this ship he’s built and the Paladins should return to the Lions. Allura argues that Shiro has a point, Keith doesn’t exactly disagree, and says everyone else should return to their Lions while he looks for Lotor. Shiro tells Keith they all need to stick together. The rest of the Paladins concur. Keith gives in to the group.

As they move to leave, Lotor’s generals return and attack.

Keith and Axca fight, and for some unknown reason, it makes Keith think of the helmeted, unidentified Galra he ran into in the Weblum in 2x09 “The Belly of the Weblum.” There is literally nothing the episode presents about this moment of combat between Keith and Axca, nor about the Weblum meeting revisited in a quick set of flashbacks, to explain why Keith connected the two here and now. This moment of recognition is absolutely contrived.

Allura uses her bayard whip and wraps it around Zethrid’s rifle. Why she doesn’t use the whip to cut through the rifle, as we’ve seen her clearly cut through sentries with it, I don’t know. I know this is a show for a younger audience, so they can’t have Allura cut through Zethrid herself, but she could destroy the gun. Also, Hunk could have used his big gun to lay down a lot of suppression fire, but he never does. This fight does not feel well crafted.

The Paladins regroup and flee. Zethrid wants to pursue, but Axca orders her not to.

The Paladins discuss everything as they make their way back to the Lions. Keith confirms he knows Axca from the Weblum, but again, there is nothing about this fight now that would explain his realization. There’s worry about Haggar using the teludav to create wormholes, but honestly, I don’t see how this is an increase in Galra ability. Despite the Castle Ship’s having used wormholes in trying to distance themselves from Zarkon, Zarkon’s ship was able to traverse the same distance easily and quickly during his pursuit of them in season two. The distances traveled in this show are huge. We’re not talking from one star to another, we’re talking across the universe. Galra ships would have to have some form of travel comparable to wormholes to be able to do so, even if they don’t have teludavs specifically. Allura’s more concerned with Lotor having a ship made from the “comet.”

Pidge finally brings up something that’s at the core of this episode’s conflict: if Lotor has taken over for Zarkon, then why is he attacking a Galra base. I honestly would have expected this question to have been asked way earlier in the episode, like as soon as they detected the Galra cruiser firing on the base.

As Shiro and Coran bring the Castle Ship toward the planet to try to stop the Galra cruiser, Lotor’s “comet” ship attacks them.

A few words about the visual design of Lotor’s “comet” ship: to me, it looks silly. It looks clearly like a pair of legs. While I know that it eventually combines with other ships to form Sincline, and this ship is Sincline’s legs, it would have been nice if this ship didn’t look so obviously like legs.

When Voltron shows up, the “comet” ship takes off. Keith orders Voltron to form sword, and he uses the black bayard to do so. This doesn’t make any sense since in the past it was the red bayard in the Red Lion that formed the sword. This demonstrates another problem with the Paladins switching Lions: inconsistency of how Voltron is operated. We learn that Axca and Narti are piloting the “comet” ship, not Lotor. He’s off somewhere else, communicating with his generals here.

Shiro, Keith, and Allura kind of argue about attack priorities: The “comet” ship or the Galra cruiser with the teludav. “I thought taking down the ship made from the comet was the most important thing,” Keith aggressively says. It’s within character for Keith to become narrowly focused on something, so it’s not that it is unreasonable that Keith would find the need to deal with two targets in this situation difficult to think about. It does feel though like the show is purposefully trying to put Keith and Shiro at odds with one another in team leadership. Shiro yells to Keith that the Galra ship with the teludav is getting away.

Here’s another problem with this moment that reveals the whole dilemma to be contrived: While Voltron is fighting the “comet” ship, and Shiro is calling for Voltron to stop the ship with the teludav, the Castle Ship is doing nothing. The Castle Ship has been shown to be able to take out Galra ships many times before on this show. So why doesn’t it go after the ship with the teludav? Because the narrative is being forced to artificially manufacture contention between Shiro and Keith.

Shiro tells Keith to “lower your shield, shoot the cargo ship, and deal with the consequences.” Keith still thinks they can deal with the “comet” ship first before the other. Shiro yells, “There’s not enough time. You need to make a decision.” This is even writing Shiro’s character badly. If the decision is up to Keith to be made, then it’s clear what Keith’s decision is, so then Shiro shouldn’t be arguing otherwise. Again, this whole dilemma is totally contrived because the writers think that they’re making some big statement about how you can’t have two leaders. It feels like such a false, unnatural conflict between Shiro and Keith.

Keith eventually orders the team to execute Shiro’s plan: lower the shield and shoot the ship with the teludav. Given Lotor’s communication with the “comet” ship, he somehow knows that Voltron is going to do Shiro’s plan of lowering the shield to shoot the cargo ship. There is no reason that Lotor should know this.

Voltron drops its shield, brings up the shoulder canon, and Lotor orders the “comet” ship to “Fire, now!” Where is he that he can see this battle in such precise detail to order a ship to fire at such a specific moment? With the Paladins having said the cruiser was empty when they were on the planet, and with the way Lotor has been talking during this fight, he’s not here, so he wouldn’t be able to make such precise orders.

Keith seems to sense the “comet” ship firing, so he maneuvers Voltron out of the way, and the “comet” ship’s blast hits the teludav. That is a very precise angle that Voltron would have had to create in order to ensure that the “comet” ship’s blast would hit the teludav, so Voltron’s maneuver being purposeful to result in this outcome is highly unrealistic.

Voltron, now out of the way, just sits there, giving the “comet” ship time to re-aim and fire on them, this time hitting Voltron. The “comet” ship goes over to the cruiser so Zethrid and Ezor can board the “comet” ship. They then flee. Keith wants to pursue, but Shiro tells them to return to the Castle, that they need to figure out what is actually going on with Lotor’s actions/plans.

Shiro talks to Keith alone, apologizing for “stepping in.” Keith says he “thought he had it under control.” Shiro tells him, “You need to learn to pick your battles. Sometimes you have to make hard choices.” But Keith’s problem wasn’t that he wasn’t picking a battle or making a choice, so I don’t understand this supposed wisdom from Shiro. Shiro says that it was Keith’s “quick thinking that prevented Lotor from getting away with the teludav.” This confirms that we’re supposed to read the moment earlier when Keith maneuvers Voltron out of the way of the “comet” ship’s blast and the blast hits the teludav as being intentional, but setting up the necessary angle for that to happen is not something that could have happened as quickly as it did and in as stressful of a situation as it did, so again, that moment was highly unrealistic.

Shiro then again says, “The Black Lion has chosen you.” Ugh. It’s one thing for Black to chose Keith when Shiro’s unavailable, but it’s another for Black to choose Keith over Shiro. At this point, we’re supposed to think this is the real Shiro, so that’s explicitly what this scene is saying: that Black has chosen Keith over Shiro. Setting aside that this is a clone, the episode gives no explanation for why Black would choose Keith over Shiro. Shiro did the work of freeing Black from Zarkon’s influence. Shiro did the work to acquire the black bayard. And here the show is telling us that that strong bond Black had with Shiro that was necessary for it to be freed from Zarkon is now meaningless? Recontextualizing to view this as Black rejecting the clone, then the show needs to explain why Black was so connected to the clone last episode that it sensed the clone and directed Keith to go get him.

The Galra base commander is being interrogated by Haggar. He says he can’t remember anything other than whoever came had the correct landing codes. Narti must then be able to erase memories with her psychic powers. I’m still surprised that she’s not seen as a threat to Haggar. Haggar says she believes the commander, “but [he] still must pay for his failure” and she uses some miscellaneous purple energy to make him scream. Standing a short distance from her is Lotor, looking smug. For the commander to be there now, this scene has to have been some notable amount of time after the battle at the base.

And the episode ends.

So much of this episode is unexplained and contrived. Keith knowing Axca was the Galra he met in the Weblum. Lotor’s real-time awareness of the battle despite not being there to observe it, and his knowing precisely what Shiro’s attack plan is to relay that information to his generals. Shiro and Keith butting heads. The Castle Ship completely dropping out of the fight instead of attacking the one ship so that Voltron can attack the other. While there are a couple of good, yet brief moments in this episode, the vast majority of the episode is contrived or incoherent or disrespectful of past story.

[jungkookie-saranghae]

The Difference with GCF in Saipan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dFi8mStt2E

Okay I need to talk about this because something extremely interesting came up. I suggest watching the video first and if possible re-reading the Director’s review on GCFs too made by @thebangtankaijuu. The post will make more sense that way. I also would like to thank her for allowing me to quote her post ^^

This is essentially me thinking out loud. I am in no way saying I am right or anything. I just have some thoughts and would love to hear your thoughts as well. I have no problem whatsoever if someone disagrees with me or thinks I am wrong. No bother at all just say it in a respectful manner and we’re good fam.

So I have quoted the video and review here first and talk more towards the end. Let’s just point out a few things first.

At 4:42 Pd says “Jungkook chose a very different path to go with”. This would be in agreement with what our director friend (Dr) has said in his review. He noted that this was completely different than his other works and almost as if there are 2 stories. One he wanted to tell and one he ended up telling.

“It looks like this time he has omitted the story line and focused on the cinematography instead. This is in stark contrast to the previous video he posted.“  - Dr

“First of all, I don’t think this is the video that he originally intended to post. When I saw the preview he released I thought he would be continuing the narrative of his very first video (GCFt). This product is completely different. Looking at the preview, it seems like he had already finished the pre-final cut and was working on the post production, which is when he took the clip and shared it to the views, as a ‘teaser’. Naturally one would believe that the full video would be focused on the narrative he indicated in the preview, so I am quite surprised to see this result instead.” - Dr

He mentioned the significance of the cinematography rather than story line or narrative. I think most of us can agree there wasn’t very much story line, it was a well put together bunch of clips.

So we have 2 professionals telling us that this video is different. Okay.

Why?

1. The colour grading was off, which is his signature and what he knows how to do best.

2. It lacked narrative which all his other videos had and focused on the cinematography instead. Yet still there was an error in that.

“Now with Jungkook the thing I see most is he experiments a lot with colour grading” - Pd

And he indeed does, he said this in his V live. “Other than my colour grading I don’t have my unique thing.” - Jk

“and the colour grading here is a little all over the place, but it’s consistent” - Pd

“So it looks like Jungkook coloured it based on the sky and he wanted to make the sky look as rich and blue and beautiful as possible. But in doing so in certain lighting conditions it looks like he probably didn’t adjust the levels because in certain lighting conditions it either looks too blue ( mentions J-Hope’s car scene)……because if you look at the opening scene with V his skin is a little bit too pink but then when you move to Jimin it’s not that pink anymore”

Now let me fill in that ….. up there. Because I think this is it. This is how Jungkook speaks to us. Through his art.

Firstly I just want to say Jungkook is artistic. Extremely artistic, and not only that he’s shy too. Jungkook most definitely speaks through the medium of art (the Dr even mentioned this in Osaka I believe) and the predominant ones being cover songs and GCF. This is how he gets across his emotions. That is where some of the pushing and pulling comes from with GCF. Some Army’s say it’s just his hobby and to stop reading into it, and there are the others, not specifically just shippers, but they are included who believe Jungkook is trying to convey a message, After all if Jungkook just wanted to edit for fun why edit the way he did. In the comeback show he even said he edits to recharge himself. It’s how he relaxes, it’s his passion. And from watching the video you can clearly see how detail oriented he is. This is very important. Jungkook is no fool. But I digress.

I want you to read this next paragraph very carefully because I think he hit the nail on the head.

“…Jungkook’s colour grading was probably based on the shot with Jimin when he’s outside on the beach, that outside beach shot is much more over exposed it’s brighter so when you bring that colour scale inside the car (referencing Hobi’s scene) it’s a lot different it’s a lot bluer it’s like a harsher teal whereas when they are on the beach the colour looks the most clean, right so I think Jungkook probably graded only one scene and then applied it to the entire sequence. Because if you look at the opening scene with V his skin is a little too pink then when you move to Jimin it’s not that pink anymore you still see slight hints of it.” - Pd

So the colour grading was already decided for the scenes based on Jimin. If he had edited the video with all members first don’t you think he would have made sure that the colur grading suited the whole video and not just Jimins scenes? Is this just another coinsidence? How many are we on now? Four million and twelve? Riiiight. Anyway.

“But given how quickly he busted this out I feel like it was a choice, a deliberate choice he probably didn’t have time to go to each individual different coloured clips and then colour graded accordingly because that would take a lot more time I don’t know exactly what his thought process was but when it comes to editing everything is done with a purpose so I’m sure he noticed that V was way too pink, that in certain scenes the colour grading is off , but in his mind there was some sort of trade off he had to make and I am interested to see what that exactly is.”

I am so shocked with this. Okay so we, the producer and the director thought that Jungkook had made a video just for Jimin like GCFt and it was done and finished. That is why he teased the GCFs clip. It makes complete sense for many reasons. Jimin had the whole first verse and pre-chours in that teaser which would just throw the whole video off if included all members. 27 seconds of one member in an OT7 video? With no b roll seen and no other shots than Jimin? It just doesn’t make sense. Out director friends goes into details about why he thought it would have been a Jimin centric video just like, if not a continuation of GCFt.

I believe Jungkook shot edited and finalized a GCF in Saipan for Jimin. I do. I believe he edited it to make the sky strikingly blue as the majority of the film would have been Jimin by the sea with the sky in the background.

However, for some reason after teasing Jimin in Saipan he puts out GCF in USA…odd timing I have to say and then not too long after posts Saipan.

Now what are we to make of this?

I have 2 reasons. 1. No tinfoil ver 2. Tinfoil ver

1) No tinfoil

Jungkook had not finished editing Saipan. He teased it because Namjoon had asked him on Twitter about that exact moment as he had a video and Jungkook just posted a clip of that moment that Namjoon was referring to.

Jungkook then just felt like putting out a more OT7 GCF maybe as a present to his hyungs or was in the mood. He couldn’t release GCFs yet because it had not come out. So he gave us this to pass the time. Or he just felt like putting it out no big deal. The package was then released and he saw it as a good opportunity to make another OT7 centric vid. Simple.

But things are rarely so simple in life.

Hell it’s never simple!

Now here is a *warning* the next segment is 100% tinfoil. It is my own personal opinion and if you disagree with some or all of it I have no problem whatsoever just tell me in a nice and respectful manner please because I genuinely love to hear different sides to things. We good? okay let’s continue…

2) Tinfoil

Jimin and Jungkook’s black and white performance was taken down and they were more than probably told the behind the scenes would not be shown. Essentially their work is gone. Namjoon also knows this so posts a vid of Jimin and Jungkook innocently playing as a small form of solidarity for them or a little nod to them. The behind the scenes were coming out at that time.

Jungkook then says a big fuck you to Bighit and posts the teaser of Jimin for nearly 30s of a 2 and a half minute video laughing his ass off and Jimin thrusting and shaking his booty.

Now I ADORE Tae. I am not an anti let me make that crystal clear.  I adore Kim Taehyung. I do find it odd though that once that was posted Tae flooded and I mean flooded the timeline with videos and pics for the next 2 days almost as if trying to push the teaser down the timeline. You cannot deny the fact that we got spammed fam. And coincidentally juuuuust after Jk posts that clip.

I think some staff thought it may have been too much, and may and I say may not for definite but maaaaaay have told Jungkook to release something non Jimin centric to calm it down and then release the same vid but with the other members to dilute the seriousness of that video.

I don’t think you understand. That song. THAT SONG. If Jungkook had posted a GCF in Saipan with JUST Jimin, there would not be any questioning anymore. He got away with it being a clip and throwing in b-roll like Dr mentioned.

The Dr even said he did not intend to put out USA and Pd said that Saipan was rushed due the colour grading.

“Now I cannot judge his character for certain, but all of his videos up until now have shown me that he is someone who narrates his story to the truest form. The production of the third video indicates that he may have half-assed it. Despite the 70/20 focus I mentioned, he did not want to put this out. I’m thinking he had this prepared beforehand and released it now for some reason. Comparatively, the first video remains, to me, his strongest narrative. He wanted to show that film to the world. The second one could also be said the same, more or less, but he was clearly happier then than now.” - Dr USA

“But given how quickly he busted this out I feel like it was a choice, a deliberate choice he probably didn’t have time to go to each individual different coloured clips and then colour graded accordingly because that would take a lot more time I don’t know exactly what his thought process was but when it comes to editing everything is done with a purpose so I’m sure he noticed that V was way too pink, that in certain scenes the colour grading is off , but in his mind there was some sort of trade off he had to make and I am interested to see what that exactly is.”  - Pd

So we have an expert saying USA did not want to be put out and 2 experts saying Saipan was rushed. This really fits with the covering up a mistake theory.

And you might ask what is the big deal? It was just a clip its not outting anyone. But you see we don’t officially know if they’re together. When you know or you believe that 2 ppl are together you notice things. Damn you notice everything and just go “OMG could they NOT BE SO LOUD LIKE AHHH glass closet approach much?”. But to others they don’t see any of that. Like, at all.

This teaser however was flat out dangerous. I have seen Taekook stans being converted and that was because of the edited version of GCFs. Imagine a whole video of Jimin with THAT SONG!!! GO AND RE READ THOSE LYRICS RIGHT NOW THAT IS AS BLATANT AS YOU CAN GET.

So it is my opinion that as a mini revenge or more likely a substitute for Black or White not being released Jungkook released a teaser to a Jimin centric GCF in Saipan he had already finished.

This was much more dangerous than he expected and he was told to put out something to calm the waters and then edit that particular video to dilute the situation and cover his tracks. That matches up with Dr and Pd comments also.

And in this video in order to get across what he wanted to say he left the colour grading matching Jimin. He left is signature matching Jimin  to let us know in his own way this is not the video I wanted to make, look closely thiiiis one is. By allowing Tae’s skin to be pink and Hobi to be too magenta he is indirectly telling us that these clips don’t belong in this video. These people don’t. It is really for Jimin.

Now you might ask “well what about Namjoon and Hobi at the end? The colour grading was fine for them? What’s that mean then?” Well firstly it’s midday so the lighting is perfect but also because Jimin was in that scene too. Evey scene that Jimin was in was coloured perfectly to match. Namjoon and Hobi just happened to be colour graded right because of the sun and the fact it was the same place as Jimin.

Jeon Jungkook is using his skills in editing and in particular colour grading to let us know he had intended a video for Jimin like GCF on Tokyo. He is so intelligent wow.

[lacktastrophe]

I always wanted to write about this sometime earlier this year when ‘High Expectations’ and Mutual Assurance was being released. Now I’ve given myself the chance, let’s go back and talk about how good this chapter was for Paulo.

Six months waiting for the girl of your dreams to come back to you only to find after so many years of trying and six whole months of anguishing over her sudden disappearance, she doesn’t reciprocate your feelings at all and she’s only interested with hanging out with some other jerk-ass loser, and “Heh” is the only thing you find you can say. And immediately minutes after, instead of lashing back or letting the situation pass over with someone who took out their anger and frustrations on you, you instead take an initiative and apologise for pushing them to a breaking point and losing their cool.

There’s something to be said - if there ever was a time to become a fan of Paulo, it was at both of these crowning moments where the results of Paulo’s numerous trials and errors over the last few years could be properly showcased - having started out as an immature kid with an insecurity of their softer side, who was mean and violent to others - to having reached a point where he was not afraid to be able to hug and beg for forgiveness from someone who he envies, and also once considered a rival for Lucy’s affection.

Suffice to say, none of it would’ve been truly possible if Lucy didn’t take her leave of absence. Her absence allowed Paulo to develop in so many different ways. It’s not to say it couldn’t have happened without her; their reunion in ‘After you’ would help Paulo develop further in consolidating the last few remaining lessons in the problems he still faces. But Paulo would’ve never have been able to get to the place he appears to be at now without meeting new people and going on a spiritual journey towards developing a sense of maturity, something he just didn’t have at the start of the comic, progressively building up an understanding of what it truly takes to be a real friend as the story unfolds.

Paulo has shown some powerful character development in his darkest time.

Why stop at just those two chapters?

Welcome to the Paulo Masterpost - Where we explore Paulo from the start of their journey to where we are now.

This has taken two weeks of on and off writings between train trips to and from work. It’s by far the largest sub-project I’ve undertaken. 

I’ve played with a number of different ideas in how to explore Paulo’s development, and I’ve settled on adapting ‘The 12 stages of the Hero’s journey’ to explain it. 

If you haven’t heard of this structure before, it’s a very popular storytelling formula for character development.  You’d find the most prolific examples employing this structure in most literature and movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The general premise of the formula consists of characters moving out of what would be considered their normal life, going on a journey, encountering some crisis, and coming back renewed with some sort of knowledge or awakening. 

As an example using the two examples I alluded to above; Luke and Frodo become aware of a higher purpose, both have a mentor, both leave their home in pursuit of this purpose, both meet all sorts of new characters who may join them on their journey (some we can call friends), encounter trials and return with some experience that changes them. 

You can see an example of the 12 stages in the image below.

The magic of this formula is that it can be adapted to most narratives even if it wasn’t a forethought originally. Certain events in the story mark certain stages in the above graph. 

But these events are all up to own own perspective, which is why this formula is very adaptable. For example, in the case of Bittersweet Candy Bowl, depending on how we choose to look at it; the Call to Adventure could be the kids as they make their way through high school. It’s something they all have in common. On the other hand, the kids going to school could be the Ordinary world, the call to adventure could well indeed be for an object or a person; be it Lucy, or even Tess, Jasmine, Rachel. It all depends on your perspective.

There may be a point where the hero chooses to refuse the call. Like in StarWars when Luke goes back to his farm, only to find it razed to the ground.

Mentors include best friends with unwavering loyalties, thresholds include new environments, challenges are friends or new ideas, there is a dark period for our characters, but some of them will come back changed from these events, for better, or worse.

Keep in mind this is not a comprehensive guide to all-things-Paulo. It’s not possible to analyse everything that happens. Instead, we are only going to be touching on significant events that we know have had an effect on Paulo, pushing him ever more forwards towards his goal, whatever that truly is.

Let’s get started.

We’re first introduced to Paulo as early as in Chapter 1; he’s introduced as a young orange-furred Somali who appears to have one thing going in his life; his affection for Lucy. He’s known for his playfulness, boldness and his boyish-charm...

But we come to know Paulo more through the negative traits he possesses; he’s rude, crass and condescending to people around him, he’s particularly violent to Mike. Most importantly, Paulo is a womaniser. He will seemingly pull the moves to charm any female (bar a select few such as Daisy, Sue or Amaya). Compared to most of his friends and the kids around him, Paulo comes off as being rather immature. There’s no need to sugarcoat this piece of knowledge, every bit of anguish and tragedy that will befall Paulo will generally be the result of his immaturity, and it would continue to plague him well into the comic.

Daily life for Paulo appears to revolve around appearing cool, masculine, and being a real charmer to girls. He can get nearly anyone....

...But just not Lucy, someone he has a strong affinity for, who are also somewhat abrasive to his advances. In fact, a lot of Paulo’s advances on Lucy are reciprocated with violence. This is par the norm happening time and time again. Even when he’s chasing other people, he’ll always go back to Lucy. It becomes an obsession. 

Despite such an introduction into what would appear to be a very troublesome character, we are met with a juxtaposition early in the comic. We learn quickly in ‘The Burden of Parenthood’, where the kids tasked with nurturing a mechanical baby, a different side to Paulo; a softer more caring side which appears to exist out of compulsion for caring for a mechanical baby. This different side to Paulo manages to achieve him the highest mark in the class.

There is an irony that exists behind Paulo’s development throughout the comic, and this makes it all the more tragic; for a brief period before the start of the comic, Paulo is capable of displaying more maturity than a lot of his kids in his year (as seen in BCI comics like “Baby Blues” ). We learn more about Paulo in later chapters, we learn when he first moves into Roseville he starts out no different from any of the other kids. While initially becoming interested in Lucy having met her for the first time, he lacks the confidence to speak to her. His eagerness to overcome this first hurdle results in receiving ‘Confidence Lessons’ to gain the needed confidence to speak to Lucy by an older kid who’d later be known as Alejandro, and being influenced to believe that girls are dead-crazy for masculinity. This sets Paulo’s character foundation for the majority of Volume 1, with his softer effeminate side becoming an insecurity he feels uncomfortable sharing. Time and time again, Paulo’s immaturity puts others and himself at certain risks, and routinely butting heads with people of whom he cares about. 

Without looking too deeply into Paulo, we really initially put in a position where it feels his place in this story is to act like the third wheel in this love triangle between Mike and Lucy. We believe on this initial read, Paulo’s real goal is Lucy.

This isn’t the case; Paulo’s real journey is about growing up and attaining a sense of maturity.

With this hypothesis we can assume perhaps the refusal in the 12 stages is Paulo’s reluctance to continue exploring his softer side as seen in ‘The Burden of Parenthood’.

Paulo is not alone in this adventure, one of Paulo’s closest friends since moving to Roseville is Daisy. Despite being originally paired with Lucy in “The Burden of Parenthood”, she would become his replacement partner. She would be the first to become acquainted with Paulo’s softer side.

We would assume that Daisy is this mentor as per the 12 stages. These mentors are people who form a close, supportive relationship with the main character, and their dedication towards them are unwavering. We know that this is the true state of their relationship through their interactions, and how they both support each other in and outside each other’s company throughout the comic.

For example, in the below, Daisy supports Paulo’s caring capacity having saved a bird in “Helping Hands”, telling him girls are attracted to the same caring attitude he showed during “The Burden of Parenthood”.

Could you imagine how things could’ve panned out had he listened?

When talking about relationships, Daisy tries to convince the other girls that a softer side of Paulo exists.

Daisy chooses Paulo’s side of the events against her then-boyfriend.

This relationship isn’t one-sided. 

Paulo gives support to Daisy about an insecurity she has with her appearance.

Paulo is still supportive about Daisy’s happiness even if it means restoring the relationship she had with a person he himself can’t bring himself to accept.

And the consolidation of Daisy’s constant support to Paulo observed in his thoughts in ‘After you’, in the very presence of the girl he believes he mindlessly loves.

It’s kind of a shame neither of these characters just get together, they’re admittingly perfect for each other. Unfortunately, this wont come to pass since neither of them can admit their true feelings for one another. Paulo thinks of Daisy like a sister, it’s the reason why he simply wont pull the moves on her or simply pop the question.

But there’s also a problem from Daisy’s side that needs to be addressed that may prove to be an inhibitor:

But let’s get back to Paulo.

Paulo’s character development really starts to kick off as soon as the kids become freshman in Highschool, officially reaching a point in the 12 stages called the ‘threshold’ - where the characters are put into a different environment and come against challenges that question, or reinforce their values. Here, Paulo starts encountering numerous Trials in the form of people and concepts that challenge the beliefs he grew up with. Such early trials for Paulo includes Tess; a girl he finds himself interested in, who wont take him. This relationship is played with often, particularly throughout volume 2. At times it’s hinted it might be because she’s not going to be around in their final year. But ultimately, it’s because she finds him too immature. 

Paulo also faces interpersonal challenges with his friends, even clashing against ideals with Daisy who’s now struggling with an inferiority complex about her inability to find a romance and her appearance. 

One of the more significant events includes when Abbey, an acquaintance Paulo doesn’t get along with, enters a relationship with Daisy. With Daisy’s attention going to her new boyfriend. Paulo no longer has the close support he once had. Now he’s on his own.

Added complications to the challenges these trials possess, are the temptations which seek to divert the hero from their goals. What these temptations are comes down to your own interpretation. In BCB, I feel these are other people at their school. In fact, characters can be all of three things in this context; trials, temptations, and goals. For example; Tess is certainly a Trial for Paulo, the result at the end of the rainbow could be either Tess’ love, or deeper understanding into himself. But she is a temptation from Paulo’s supposed original goal; Lucy. But goals also shift, so it may have been possible Tess could have been an end goal realised for Paulo, had he been able to fulfill requirements to succeed.

Certainly, a lot of potential for different outcomes and ways to interpret BCB. You might be wondering then why settle on maturity, but this can only be answered much later.

In context with BCB, many of these trials don’t have resounding conclusions. As per the title of the comic - they are often bittersweet, as is the case with the majority of Paulo’s. Because of this, some of the hard lessons in the chapters are not put into practice until much later in the comic.

It’s worth noting Paulo’s first ‘victory’ (depending on your viewpoint), is when Paulo chooses not to sleep with Lucy during ‘Another shoulder’, choosing not to take advantage of the situation in the state she exists in having confessed to Mike and having her feelings rejected. 

Despite having Lucy right on his doorstep, something he’d been wanting all this time, Paulo proves he’s not a scumbag who’d use her weakest moment to his advantage. 

Paulo’s interaction with David afterwards however sets Paulo up for consecutive and significant failures when Paulo’s insecurities are called into question. Paulo’s ‘are we/are we not in a relationship?’ with Tess is already on rocky ground and is being pushed to its limits every time Paulo goes to chat up other girls. The final straw almost immediately when Paulo is used by Jessica and Rachel to get revenge on Tess, angering both Tess and Lucy. The trial with Tess is forever lost when Paulo consigns himself to another temptation; Jasmine, causing him to abandon (temporarily) his quest for Lucy.  The lessons learned from Tess’ trial will not be recognised for quite some time.

 Around this period, Paulo’s character development stagnates while with Jasmine. Despite a loving, friendly, non-sexual relationship, it’s an easy going relationship with no real challenge to Paulo’s character. But it’s far from perfect; cracks start to develop when Jasmine’s penchant to be involved in extra curricular activities draws away the time they can both spend together. When Paulo confronts Jasmine about this, the results are not pretty.

It simply comes down to both of their needs, but Jasmine takes this the wrong way and goes straight for one of Paulo’s insecurities. Leaving in a huff, this gives time for Paulo to rethink what he really wants in life. Paulo resolves to terminate the relationship and go back to just being friends if she just can’t manage to make time for him. Jasmine would end up resolving this by giving up her violin lessons, but having spent the following whole day babysitting Lucy with a bus trip gone wrong moments prior, Paulo begins to rediscover his affinity for Lucy. Eventually, these feelings become realised and Paulo concludes it’s unfair to keep stringing Jasmine along. After consulting with Tess, Paulo displays the needed maturity to decide to break off his relationship with Jasmine, setting him back on his quest. It comes to naught as the time lost from the diversion comes at a great cost — his quest moves away. 

Any chance to have these two get back together is immediately marred by certain events one after the other, first by a fit of jealousy...

and Paulo allowing another person to be all over him immediately, even if it wasn’t intended.

To rub salt in the wound on their breakup, Jasmine reflects on their time together.

Jasmine’s good at finding those insecurities. These two could’ve gotten along forever had Paulo been able to display some patience and maybe some empathy. But the damage was done long before, Paulo had determined there was someone else.

~

With Lucy gone, this seems like lowest point in Paulo’s life.

Paulo encounters Mike, his supposed rival for Lucy hanging out by the old Tree in the park, and he takes out his frustration on him.

These two are not the best of friends. They have never really quite gotten along and frequently Paulo has used Mike to his own advantage; such as convincing him to buy him drinks on the supposed chance Paulo can win him a bike. Deep down, Paulo is envious of Mike, he’s the opposite of Paulo in a lot of areas he’s insecure with; he’s intelligent, and all the girls like him without having to try as hard as Paulo does. More importantly, Lucy would always hang around Mike, even when she couldn’t stand him.

Expecting the worst, Mike prepares for a beatdown. Paulo had done so earlier whenever he became so agitated with Mike. Instead, Mike witnesses the unexpected for him; Paulo uncontrollably breaking down in front of him, spilling his feelings onto the floor. 

Unable to bring himself to Daisy, who is now spending more time supporting Abbey, Paulo has no means of accessing direct support like he used to. While it’s possible he could have gone to someone, he feels there’s no one else, there’s no comfort zone anymore.

He confides his feelings with his rival, and Mike, even without needing to owe anything, shows sympathy in their darkest times.

Despite this brief moment, Paulo is still too insecure with his softer side to allow any strong support from another male at this time. His values towards masculinity keeping him at odds with Mike. 

This moment is significant. It’s a direct contrast of where we ended up in Mutual Assurance. Lucy’s disappearance marks the point where Paulo undergoes some rapid and progressive development. 

Paulo is not without help during this otherwise dark period. As per the 12 stages, by this time the hero receives some form of critical help, whether it’s friends or items that helps them on their quest. For Luke, this was the Rebel Alliance, or for Frodo, the group of races forming the Fellowship of the ring in LOTR. 

In Bittersweet Candy Bowl, this helper character turns out to be Rachel, who Paulo runs into by coincidence after splitting off from Mike. Paulo somehow finds himself in her bed and quickly in a relationship with her.

Not to confuse anyone, but it could be argued even at this stage going back to what I said much earlier about the events around the 12 stages, it’s entirely possible to look at this moment and suggest that Rachel is the mentor that Paulo was destined to meet, and not Daisy. It’s certainly appropriate, she doesn’t shy away from telling Paulo when he’s done wrong to his face.

Regardless of either option, this relationship serves as a ‘friendship with benefits’ in more places than one; the biggest benefits of Rachel for Paulo are the people she surrounds herself with; Matt, Jordan, Jessica and Madison, all of them a year older than Paulo, wiser, and are able to lend their experiences and help define and re-evaluate Paulo’s sense of values. Like before these lessons come in the form of trials, as the result of Paulo’s actions up to this point start meeting breaching points between old and new friends.

We stay in this period of new trials between friends and enemies for quite a while. Furthermore, this period is defined when, seeking advice for that stage of their relationship; Daisy pops the question to Paulo what it was like when he lost his virginity.

This event marks the period of reflection for Paulo. While it’s a long and slowly drawn out process, Paulo slowly starts to make considerations of his actions and their consequences through interactions with his and Rachel’s friends, leading up to Lucy’s return.

With Lucy gone and no safe space to head back to. All that Paulo can do is search for another meaning to live for.

And Paulo struggles to accomplish this. There was only Lucy. He has nothing else.

Tensions begin to rise in the group following Lucy’s disappearance with the blame game being shifted around and friendships are pushed to their breaking points. Paulo is not immune to these trials, in fact, almost becoming central to them, as they begin to appear to pit him against his friends. Worse still, these chapters really push Paulo as nothing appears to really go his way. 

Paulo takes out his frustrations on his friends, is grilled by them in return, and makes critical decisions that will affect relationships in the future. Nothing appears to go right. And unchanging, like before; these trials end on such a bittersweet note where Paulo is neither the winner or the loser.

We only learn upon review of BCB chapters during this point aren’t so much about Paulo against his friends or the world in general, but Paulo against himself. As sad as it is, the results of these trials do not have an immediate effect on Paulo. But they’re there, and slowly redefining his sense of values and character as time goes on.

An example of such understanding can be observed in Critical hit. 

Critical Hit was one of those chapters where it felt like nothing was attained by the conclusion. Even at the end of Sue and Paulo’s fight, it didn’t feel like there was a resolution. Despite the mean things Sue and Paulo said to each other, their friendship was neither improved or diminished. It was all an argument, a misunderstanding. 

 Looking beyond the fight and to the last page, we only begin to understand the devil in the details once everything was said and done:

After explaining his reasons for only dealing with the problems he wants to, Paulo comes to realise upon staring back at the black picture the error with the words he said to Sue; If you only pick and choose which problems you want to face, the result might not be what you really want.

There was some sense in the words that Sue said to Paulo; if he wasn’t so scatterbrained and kept his attention on Lucy, maybe he’d have gotten what he really wanted. Paulo lacked discipline.

Other chapters contained a lot of important life lessons for Paulo.

Paulo found his sense of humour put him at constant odds with his friends. Even David in this scenario wasn’t laughing when Abbey was hurt in Happy Hour.

Some things heal with time.

Paulo found him putting aside his selfish hatred of Abbey for a close friend’s happiness, even at the cost of his own.

You need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes before you can judge them.

One of Paulo’s defining moments is meeting and getting to know Matt. Similar to how Lucy confided in Zachary - an outside observer about her relationship with Mike. After mistakenly encountering him as a threat to his relationship with Rachel, and then later taking out his anger and frustrations on him due to his friendly and welcoming character, Paulo opens up to a stranger about his insecurities and the feelings he suppresses. The result is knowledge and reassurance that he’s got plenty of time, and he’s already on the right track by being able to admit when he’s wrong.

Despite all this acquired knowledge and different perspective to challenge his own over the past few months, Paulo still makes frequent mistakes and shows no sign of changing. In fact, Paulo still acts like he does years before; he acts without thinking, he says stuff without meaning it. Paulo has yet to make giant steps towards change for himself. Paulo does not show the fruits of the experiences he’s undergone.

Something crucial is missing.

At this point in the comic Paulo starts displaying interpersonal issues; Paulo tries to avert his own change. He does not take the need to change well especially when he feels he’s the only one changing and his friends are not. Paulo is deathly envious of his friends who are both academically well off than he is. Paulo has the knowledge on how to fix his problems, but Paulo can’t bring himself to simply do this like how everyone else does. Instead, Paulo relies on his old behaviour to make up for his inadequacies.

But this will not stand for long.

Paulo has been avoiding a few notable trials which are reaching boiling points, such as staving off serious tension between Daisy, Abbey and himself. After Abbey assaults Paulo in the bathroom during “Guest of Honour”, Paulo is particularly evasive around Daisy. Unable to bring himself to talk to Abbey directly or seek assistance from someone else about this problem (Paulo is far too prideful to victimise himself), Paulo attempts to appear distracted when Daisy tries to talk to him by chatting up other girls. This callous behaviour having multiple repercussions across all his friends. It causes Daisy to feel isolated and alone, causing Abbey to uphold his misconception that Paulo is nothing but a bad person, and more importantly, his attitude is starting to rub against Rachel’s friends, particularly Madison in a very very bad way. As far as she is concerned - Paulo and Rachel are in a relationship even if Paulo considers it a FWB friendship. 

Madison calls out this behaviour.

Madison sets up probably the biggest lesson to Paulo yet, which also happens to be the missing thing from earlier; Paulo lacks empathy - Paulo is unable to understand and regard the feelings of those around him, particularly how his actions affect those around him. Paulo found himself as the odd one out when Abbey was hurt at Rachel’s party. He’s unable to bring himself to regard Rachel’s feelings. By extension, he’s unable to understand exactly why Abbey harbours such a deep hatred of him. He’s not even able to realise how Daisy feels when he ignores her.

Lucy will come to consolidate this point when she returns and the two go onto a date by letting Paulo know that Abbey doesn’t have it all out for him, and sometimes his actions are the cause his own grievances. Paulo never once considered things from Abbey’s perspective - the same mistake Lucy made with Mike from her ribbing, and look where it got her?

-

In the same chapter where Madison cooks Paulo, we learn Lucy has returned back to Roseville. 

In the 12 stages, at some point the hero has to go into ‘the cave’, a point towards the end of the journey where the hero faces an interpersonal crisis’ or a terrible danger. (Death Star battle in Star Wars, or Mordor/Shelob’s Lair - LOTR).

We are at that moment, and this cave is dark - Paulo is lost as fuck. Nothing is sacred, friendships and relationships are on the line as Paulo encounters his harshest trials of yet.

Immediately after, Paulo will need to face the Ordeal, the physical test Paulo has to win against in order to survive. (Trusting in the force - Star Wars. Separating from the ring - LOTR)

Lucy is that Ordeal. The remarkable progression Paulo has made is threatened with Lucy’s return. Paulo displays the same behaviour he did in Volume 1 in her presence.

To Paulo, Lucy represents familiar ground - something from the past that doesn’t challenge him. Nevermind the fact that in the six months where Lucy had disappeared from Roseville, she made no attempt to keep in contact with any of them in that time. Paulo is looking to look past this, for them to be together again.

There is a deeper meaning to this relationship that Paulo cannot overcome, and it is indeed appealing to him; tired with being the only one forced to have to change, and faced with an opportunity to have things go back to the way things used to be, Paulo is willing to go all-in for a taste of nostalgia. 

However this is temporarily impeded when Sue intervenes and stops him from following Lucy outside during Lunch that same day. Nothing else is sacred to Paulo at this point, after taking his frustration out on Mike having suspected he is the reason for her avoidance of the group, he then takes it out on Daisy, angering Abbey. When Abbey demands Paulo apologise to Daisy, Paulo reveals Abbey assaulted him in the bathroom at the con. Faced with choosing a side, Daisy chooses to side with Paulo, and Abbey ends their relationship.

It’s a bittersweet moment, a long standing issue is dealt with, but only at the expense of Daisy’s happiness. It’s only out of sheer coincidence since their relationship was already on troubled waters already that this would be for the better. 

On the following day, Paulo is still giving Daisy the cold shoulder. Paulo feels the need to blame Daisy for a lot of the hardships he’s been facing. Daisy finally lets Paulo know how she feels.

Whether or not Paulo is justified in thinking this, Daisy doesn’t want to break off their friendship. Paulo is her closest friend, she admires Paulo too much. And deep down, Paulo doesn’t want to break off this relationship either. He feels so upset at himself for getting between her happiness, they really shouldn’t be friends. But Daisy won’t have that. Daisy’s happiness is by being friends with Paulo. 

Feeling sorry for Daisy, and maybe understanding her feelings a little better, Paulo promises he’ll see about changing his shift so he can attend her birthday.

But then there’s another problem that needs to be dealt with, someone else’s feelings are at the breaching point. 

Paulo has a chance to fix this but unfortunately, time runs out on this relationship.

A very bittersweet end to this trial. It is a question at this stage whether not this breakup needed to happen in the first place, or if it was in vain.

Having missed his chance to talk to Lucy personally the previous day, Paulo is desperate enough to skip a class in order to catch her around her house.

He invites her to a date at the carnival that evening, and Paulo can’t contain himself.

Paulo is more than happy to throw everything away. The only thing he ever wanted in his life was Lucy, everything else was secondary.

Things are going well, until they start talking about Daisy and Abbey’s relationship. Paulo starts feeling some guilt over Daisy’s happiness.

We get from the following pages that there are some some issues in Paulo and Daisy’s relationship.

Paulo is very caring deep down inside and is willing to go beyond for his friends, having helped Daisy time and time again with her relationship. In the same while, we understand it’s Daisy who is the reason Paulo relents against change. Indeed, Daisy has had little reason to change over the last few years despite her obsession with Mike. And that’s grating to Paulo. 

On the Ferris wheel, Lucy cannot keep up this charade, while embracing Paulo, Lucy finally reveals to Paulo there was never any intention on coming back to Roseville.

Lucy reveals it was her idea to leave Roseville, only staying around because she didn’t want to ruin the year for Sue, and she was only trying to win Paulo - maybe as an excuse to get back to Mike or to at least have someone who had fond memories of her. Lucy doesn’t feel she’s any better than Jessica, but Paulo is willing to look past that.

Without considering his relationship to Rachel for even a second, Paulo tells Lucy he’s waited, but Lucy is with the belief Paulo is cheating himself out of his own happiness by having to for her. 

Lucy starts dropping hints by telling Paulo that she feels she had played with his feelings. Even despite making out backstage during the play, Lucy reveals that even if she didn’t leave during January, she never would’ve taken Paulo.

Paulo cannot bring himself to agree to this revelation. He is reluctant to believe there is nothing between them. Lucy is forced to be blunt with him.

He’d been chasing a dream, they would never get together.

A question for the ages.

We are not out of the cave, nor done with the Ordeal yet.

Before they part, Lucy demands Paulo go to Daisy’s party, not for Lucy, but for both Daisy and himself. Sadly, karma is not without a sense of humour as Paulo’s past decisions....well....

Paulo reflects during the party by himself for a while, before Daisy, his childhood friend and/or mentor finds him, and they talk.

It’s a lovely reunion, especially when their ex’s bring each other’s ex’s to the party. It’s followed by a heart to heart.

Time will tell if this reunion will bare its fruits.

-

In High Expectation, despite Lucy telling Paulo that Abbey doesn’t have it out for him, Paulo begins to freak out during lunch after being stared down by him. Paulo begins to fear that there will be a retribution.

Having too much of his own personal problems reaching the boiling point, Mike starts reaching his threshold and tells Paulo to knock it off. Out of character for Mike to suddenly act this way, Paulo inquires about his problems. Mike doesn’t walk to divulge, Paulo being Paulo takes his phone away and tells him his real thoughts about Sandy...

It earns him his face into the table. When Mike runs off, Paulo refuses assistance from Daisy and runs outside, still having an inability to display ‘weakness’ to those around him.

Outside, he runs into Augustus and Lucy. Things do not work out well at all, as Paulo tries to search for the logic behind this encounter.

Despite Paulo’s best attempts, but Lucy does not offer him an explanation.

Consider these pages from Paulo’s perspective; none of this is making sense: Lucy chose to hang out with him at the carnival where they talked about what happened in her absence, she allowed him to come close, before...suddenly changing and breaking off the relationship for good. Paulo is trying to understand why she doesn’t hang out with them anymore, and Lucy offers him nothing, just more questions. 

Things start to click and Paulo begins to break down amidst the realisation from the date before.

These revelations really lift the lid on how much of a shortsighted selfish man-child Paulo can really be at his core, particularly when it concerns Lucy. Paulo has the audacity to state that he gave himself to her even though he was still dating Rachel in her absence, even if you want to consider that Jessica, Rachel and Jasmine were mistakes, Paulo is willing to throw anyone under the bus, so long as they can be together.

While these selfish desires are aired, so too are his real feelings for her. Indeed, why did you come back if you didn’t mean to be with me?

It’s a desperate, but vain effort.

Edit: Felt the need to return to this after months having been corrected that Lucy did indeed have sex with Paulo in the dressing room shedding a different perspective on the whole part of this chapter. It’s understandable why Paulo is upset having realised he’d been taken advantage of by the girl he actually loved. 

Finally understanding everything that Lucy meant on the ferris wheel, but unable to come to terms with his broken heart right there to continue to seek answers to the questions from earlier, Paulo abandons them, and leaves.

It’s possible to believe that the Ordeal is still on-going, but I have a feeling it might as well be over:

When we next find Paulo we find him at his locker talking to Daisy, we expect he’s still going to be in tears, we expect that for someone after YEARS of chasing this person, it’s hard to let go. For someone like Paulo, an immature kid, how is he going to move on, only having acting like the way he did just before?

But instead there’s a revelation...

An eye opener, none-the-less.

We’re not done however.

Without looking too deeply into Paulo’s revelation we easily suspect when Paulo comes across Mike again, we expect he’s going to take out this frustration on him, for Lucy, and for earlier just like when Lucy first moved.

But instead, we’re met with a surprise, he embraces him.

We’re now met with an imposter, this isn’t Paulo. This Paulo is able to show empathy and consideration.

It’s a turning point.

Well, I suppose we can’t quite expect that Paulo will become a new person all in one day. But maybe one day, Paulo will get over that insecurity.

The page ends with two once would-be rivals showing solidarity in their friendship. 

-

I’d want to think the old Paulo who refused to change died back on the sports oval when Lucy finally told him the truth(?) for a second time. The Paulo who clung to Lucy like he did in Volume 1 may be as good as over. Time will only tell.

We don’t know why Lucy is acting in the way she’s acting. Is it because she believes the people she hung out with aren’t really her friends, is it possible she’s trying to protect them from Alejandro and Toby because of her association to Augustus, or is it because Lucy saw that she was a catalyst for the problems in her circle of friends? 

The answer could be one of these, it could be all of these.

I want to feel that Lucy was ultimately trying to do Paulo a favour by breaking off the relationship for good; Paulo could not grow up without her leaving and discovering that he has more to live for than her. Even in Lucy’s presence there was nothing but a feeling of ownership and entitlement that plagued him and Lucy couldn’t help but notice it. She could have refused to date Paulo back when he offered to take her to the carnival, but I suspect Lucy began to recognise such regressive behaviour particularly when Paulo boasted about having skipped a class to beat her to her home. Paulo does not regard his education, and by extension, his future. 

Lucy needed to know if Paulo had changed at all in her time away, she wanted to learn more about what happened when she left and whether or not she made the right decision deep down. This is why she put up with him until the ferris wheel, the signs were all too obvious. Paulo needed other things to look forward to. Paulo still needed to grow.

The face Lucy shows near the end of their confrontation makes me want to believe that she saw an affirmation in her decision when Paulo exploded the way he did. There wasn’t a consideration in what Paulo said that ever indicated there was a thought for what was good for Lucy, it was only what was good for him.

There are hints in some of Lucy’s expressions that may give an impression that Lucy is initially against what she’s doing, that she may be lying about this whole thing in order to protect or really urge Paulo to try and live for himself for a change, and not for her.

They may well indeed be guilt instead. We just don’t know at this stage.

-

Lucy struggles the entire way, but the shock after hearing Paulo ask ‘Then why the fuck did you come back’ is a realisation that Paulo did not grow in the time Lucy was gone, and the harsh decisions she’s been making are the correct ones to her.

Paulo can not grow while there was but the slimmest chance they would be together. It’s what Paulo ever wanted from as far back as Volume 1. There have been times where Paulo has displayed the ability to grow, but it was only when other potentials, particularly those more mature than him came into the picture; Tess being the earliest example.

When Lucy returned to Roseville, every volume 1 trait of Paulo came back with it. Paulo was more than prepared to throw everything under the bus, even continue giving Daisy the cold shoulder for a chance to be with Lucy, although Paulo’s own feelings prevented this from happening.

Lucy did not want to be responsible for Paulo’s refusal to grow. Lucy does not want to deal with the same turmoil Tess had to put up with from Paulo himself. Lucy recognised she is a symbol of nostalgia to Paulo. Having had nothing to chase when Lucy moved away initially, Paulo went on a journey of self-discovery which challenged him over and over again. But constantly failing over and over again and experiencing multiple heart-breaks has its toll. When Lucy returned to Roseville, Paulo saw his out, and he went for it. If he were to have her, then there’s no more reason to change, he can be absolved. 

Lucy needed to end it. And she did, maybe at the cost of her own happiness deep down. Time will tell.

-

For Paulo, the ending of that chapter made it evident that Paulo likely expected this turn out from the beginning. This is why Paulo isn’t crying by the locker scene. Paulo knew the truth as far back as Acapulco. He was more than aware, he just needed it to be beaten into him. There was but a slither of doubt in his mind from that one time back in the play, he just needed it confirmed.

Maybe he’ll thank Lucy one day, but who knows for sure?

Paulo has now exited the cave having encountered the ordeal, whether he succeeded or not is anyone’s guess. But from that darkness he has returned with a gift; some semblance of maturity. We know it’s maturity because Paulo has already displayed the fruits of his labours; repairing his friendship with Daisy and regaining his mentor, and friend. And instead of showing violence and frustration to his would-be rival, Paulo has instead displayed empathy and begged for forgiveness from him. Mike is no longer his rival, Mike is his close friend. 

Appearing to be over Lucy once and for all, Paulo really appears to be a free man - He’s been seemingly reborn. We can only wonder what he will do with this gift. Paulo’s next stage in the 12 stages will be the road back, but back to where? Where will it take him? Will we go back to exploring the Burden of Parenthood again where Paulo’s deeper talents lay? Or will we go off on some larger journey?

Paulo is not infallable at this stage; he’s still a kid, he may yet struggle with his newfound knowledge and understanding. There are still trials and repercussions Paulo’s previous behaviour that still needs to be accounted for. Paulo appears to have been resurrected but is there another resurrection in the future? Maybe Paulo is still not complete as seen in Mutual assurance. 

Indeed, what about the Elixer the last stage promises, may there be a possibility that Lucy and Paulo will get back together again, or Paulo will see the biggest gift to him was in his best friend from the start?

We can only wait and see where we go from here. Time can only tell.

[alexchristin]

A Different Approach to Difficulty

The problem of difficulty in games has been debated to great depths for a long time. Various alternatives to the traditional approach with different difficulty modes at the beginning of a particular game have been proposed, analyzed and implemented. And yet, as much as they patch up the errors of the traditional approach, within them arise numerous inherent problems and difficulties. As such, I would like to propose another alternative–not so much a mechanical solution that requires implementation, but rather a different approach to difficulty design.

One thing I’d like to stress is that, this has been applied in various games quite successfully before, and I’ll mention them later on, but not to the extent to which it can deservedly become a central design philosophy, in my opinion. This I presume is due to a lack of a rather clear and deliberate approach to difficulty design.

But first, let me attempt to briefly summarize a few popular criticisms of the traditional difficulty modes approach and its alternative.

Problems with Difficulty Modes

Picture yourself coming into a brand new game, only to be asked to choose a difficulty mode that’s suitable for yourself, and presented with a number of different menu options. And frankly, they don’t do that good of a job at giving you sufficient information to make such an important decision. This is how many games in our history have done difficulty, and it continues to be fairly prevalent among modern games.

Here are its common criticisms:

Asking the player to make such a decision right at the beginning is not exactly a good idea. To select a difficulty mode before the game even starts is to make a major commitment based on very little information available (e.g. a short description). Once the player has selected a difficulty, they are probably going to live with it for the entire playthrough.

Even if the game allows the player to change the difficulty mode later on, it is, in itself, still not a very good idea. For one, explicitly selecting a difficulty mode in a menu-based manner is certainly not an interesting choice that games strive to offer their players. They do not have to weigh anything against anything. They do not have to analyze the risks and rewards coming as a result of each option. And generally speaking, players are not going to be good at weighting short-term convenience against long-term enjoyment. They just do not know the game enough.

Such approach would defeat the entire point of progression through unlocking higher and better tools to enhance and assist with gameplay. It would go against the intended gameplay experience from the game designer. And most importantly, it would make the player feel judged for not choosing a higher difficulty.

There have been several solutions to negate these issues, of which Mark Brown has gone into depths in one of his videos. However, not one of them was able to solve them all and still maintain immersion.

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment

The idea of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (or DDA) hinges on the theory of the player’s Flow State, in which the player is completely immersed, and the game’s difficulty feels just right. Any more difficulty will cause frustration and break immersion. Any less difficulty and the player will quickly find boredom, and you guessed it, lose immersion. Therefore, as designer Andrew Glassner put it in his book Interactive Storytelling, games “should not ask players to select a difficulty level. Games should adapt themselves during gameplay to offer the player a consistent degree of challenge based on his changing abilities at different tasks.” Or in other words, games should be implemented with a performance evaluation system as well as a dynamic difficulty adjustment system in order to adjust itself to accommodate the infinitely different and ever-changing characteristics of players. More on the technical details of DDA can be found in Robin Hunicke’s 2005 paper The Case for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Games.

However, while the Flow State theory admittedly has its merits, the DDA approach doesn’t go without its numerous downsides:

Some players, when they find out about DDA, hate it. Especially when DDA cannot be turned off, the player ends up feeling patronized, and not respected by the game as an adult, capable of taking on challenges and improving him/herself.

Players can, and will, learn to exploit DDA by pretending to be worse at playing than they actually are. And oftentimes, a DDA system will require some sort of break time in order to avoid revealing itself to the player, thus not able to quickly adapt itself to the player’s ostensible skill level.

DDA inhibits the player’s ability to learn and improve. As soon as the player improves, the difficulty ramps up to match their skill level, thus eliminating the possibility of positive results. If the player cannot see some sort of feedback from the game regarding their performance, they cannot know whether any changes in their approach to gameplay were effective.

DDA may create absurdities. One of the popular example of DDA going awry is the rubber-band effect in racing games, where opponents speed up and slow down seemingly for no reason in order to adapt to the player’s performance.

DDA is incompatible with some forms of challenge. If the challenge in question is numerically-based, then DDA can work easily. However, when the challenge is symbolical, with pre-designed elements that are nakedly visible to the player, often having only one or a few intended solutions, then DDA cannot work.

There are many interesting and nuanced approaches to DDA that I won’t mention since that’s beyond the scope of this segment. While I imagine there are going to be a lot of way to make DDA functional and sufficiently inscrutable through clever algorithms and implementation, I am rather discussing the fundamentals.

Organic Difficulty in Games

There seems to be a number of different terms to address this approach, but just for this article I’m going to use the term “Organic Difficulty.” This is something that has been tossed around in the last decade or so.

The basic idea of Organic Difficulty is that the game does not ask the players to select or adjust their preferred difficulty via GUI-based commands, nor does it automatically adapt itself to match with the player’s performance and progress. But rather, the game allows the player to interact with it in certain ways to make it easier, or harder, for themselves. These take the form of tools, approaches, strategies, input sequences or methods, etc. which should often come with some sort of trade-off.

This is something that has been implemented in a number of games including From Software’s Dark Souls, which Extra Credits has dedicated an entire episode to, and which everyone should take a look.

In Metal Gear Solid V, for every mission the player has completed, there’s a score rating system which provides a rough overview of the player’s performance based on a number of factors such as stealth, lethality, accuracy, completion speed, whether the player has completed any mission tasks, and what tools they used. While the player does get minus points for mistakes such as getting detected, raising enemy alert, taking hits, etc. some other factors are not as clear-cut as to how they constitute minus points aside from narrative reasons. The player can always go on a lethal rampage, tossing grenades at everybody in sight, or calling a support helicopter to airstrike the entire enemy base. The player is provided the tools to do exactly all of those, and they’re always just a few buttons away, and the worst they get is a C rank, provided they completed the mission, and a slight dip in their earnings.

Another example of this can be found XCOM: Enemy Within. There’s a “cheesy” tactic in the game that can almost ensure victory, which is to have a unit with the Mimetic Skin ability to safely spot the enemies, thus enabling a squadsight-sniper from across the entire map to pick them off one-by-one safely without any real repercussion. This strategy is extremely effective in virtually every mechanical aspect of combat, with the only risk being that the spotter must not be flanked for they would instantly lose invisibility. The actual problem with this strategy is that it’s incredibly boring: your snipers just simply shoot every turn, and you can only take a few shots every turn, not to mention reloading. This strategy is best suited for beginners and people who have made mistakes and want to get out of the downward spiral. While on the other end of the spectrum, there are players who understand how the game and the AI of every alien unit in the game work, so they are more confident about moving up close and personal with enemies with minimal armor. Because for them, it’s not about defending against the enemies, but about manipulating, “nudging” the enemies into behaving the way these players want them to (e.g. nobody needs armor when enemies are only going to attack the tank; nobody needs to take good cover when enemies are too scared to move to flank in front of an Opportunist-overwatch unit; etc.)

The above examples seem to imply a few important points regarding difficulty:

Difficulty should not only be designed around the mechanics of a game. It should also take into account the aesthetics or elegance of those very mechanics.

Punishment does not always have to be tangible or significant, as long as it is enough to indicate to players that they are straying off the intended experience. A good analogy would be physical pain. The pain itself is not what’s causing harm to your body. The physical wound is. Pain is merely a bodily signal to let you know that what’s happening right now is pretty bad and you probably shouldn’t let what just happened happen again. But remember, the choice is ultimately yours!

It may not be a good idea to put people on the linear graph of “gaming skill” where some people are simply “softcore, not-so-good at video games” and some other are “hardcore and always challenge-seeking.” The idea alone is absurd, because players on such a graph would move up and down constantly, even during a single playthrough. Some people pick things up faster than a game can predict with its tutorials’ pacing. Some people due to real life reasons have to abandon the game for some time, and they lose a bit of their touch when they come back to it.

Instead of judging the player’s skill and trying to accommodate every possibility, games should be judging player interactions instead, using a spectrum between Effectiveness and Aesthetics of Play (or what I shall humbly name Ludoaesthetics).

The Effectiveness-Ludoaesthetics Spectrum (ELS)

On the Effectiveness-Ludoaesthetics Spectrum (ELS), difficulty exists only at the lowest technical level. Each end of the ELS represents what each player wants at a certain point in the game with certain conditions. On this spectrum, games are designed with the player’s interactions, approaches and strategies in mind, each with its own degree of effectiveness and ludoaesthetics. These are not solely defined by mechanics or the player’s skill level, but rather the way in which they are experienced and perceived by the player.

Effectiveness refers to how well the player can progress and achieve their goals in a game using the set of tools they’re given and the strategies they’re allowed to formulate. How easy those tools are to use, and how good they are at helping the player progress towards the game’s intended goals, primarily constitute Effectiveness. Players who aim towards and stay on this end primarily look for the most effective ways to achieve the intended goals of the game (which of course include playing the game the easy way).

Ludoaesthetics refers to the perceivable aesthetic appeals of the aforementioned set of tools and strategies given to the players. Players who aim towards this end do not necessarily look for the most effective ways to achieve the intended goals. But rather they tend to look for the added intrinsic benefits derived from unconventional play. These benefits include:

Superficial Attractiveness: Visual and auditory appeal of using the subject matter or the subject matter itself. It can be represented by any entity the player can recognize in the game such as a character with great visual design, a badass-looking weapon with satisfying visual and sound effects, etc.

Competitiveness: a.k.a. bragging rights. This is rather self-explanatory. There is always that portion of players who keep seeking greater and greater challenges to prove themselves to the world. They may even go as far as handicapping themselves with arbitrary limitations to heighten the challenge.

Greater sense of satisfaction derived from greater challenges that may go beyond the goals intended by the game. People who have been through heights of overwhelming odds know about, and may expect, the immense amount of satisfaction that comes with them.

Narrative Fantasy: Players may look for things that may not be effective or productive in terms of gameplay because they would align with the narrative better (in games that understandably contain some degree of ludonarrative dissonance), or they would add an extra layer of depth and intensity to the narrative and thereby enhancing it. Essentially, they’re sacrificing gameplay optimality to elevate their narrative fantasy.

Design for Ludoaesthetics

The point of designing for ludoaesthetics is NOT to create increasingly harder challenges in order to accommodate the player’s increasing skills (though that is not to say such approach has no merits whatsoever). But rather, it is actually to encourage players to strive for aesthetics in their gameplay and to lean more towards the right side of the spectrum.

Here are a few suggestions on how to go about it.

Creating more depth

Depth refers to the amount of space the player is allowed to make interesting choices using the set of tools they’re given by a game. For a more detailed explanation of what Depth is in comparison to Complexity, you can take a look at Extra Credits’ episode on Depth vs. Complexity.

Essentially, Complexity is the amount of constituent elements that make up a game, and Depth is the degree of interactivity between those elements. The very nature of ludoaesthetics has to do with the deviation from the default, intended approach (a.k.a. Playing “by-the-book.”) Therefore, the more those elements “talk” to one another, the better chance it is for ludoaesthetics to emerge, because then the player will be able to find more different ways to control or manipulate each element.

[Also read: Design for Theorycrafting]

Depth is pretty much the prerequisite for ludoaesthetics even as a concept to exist. Without a lot of depth, the window of opportunities for ludoaesthetics get significantly lower or completely non-existent.

Creating patterns suggesting the possibility of gameplay aesthetics

Adding more depth is not only about simply adding more stuff in a game and making them as obscure as they possibly can be. It is also about leaving breadcrumbs to suggest that there is more than meets the eye, therefore encouraging players to explore further possibilities. What kind of depth to even add? And how does one go about communicating it?

Below is a conceptual representation of a set of challenges typically found in video games.

Each challenge is represented by a window of failure and a window of success. These windows can be spatial, temporal, symbolic, strategic, or a combination of all. They are the spaces in which the player enters by behaving in a certain expected way. Secondly, the black line represents the player’s interactive maneuvers: where to get across and which direction to turn to next, in order to overcome the set of challenges without stumbling into the windows of failure.

For example, say we have a situation in a 3D platformer game where the player is facing a pit, and across the pit leaning towards the right side there is a narrow platform. In such a scenario, we can assume that the window of failure includes any and all sets of behaviors that lead the player plummeting down the pit, and the window of failure includes those that lead the player to landing on the platform across the pit safely.

Now consider the same representation of challenge above, but this time with a slight deliberate arrangement.

As you can see, the sizes of the windows of failure and the windows of success stay exactly the same, but the positions of the windows of success have been altered so that they align somewhat (but not exactly aligned to the point of being too obvious). You can see that nested within the windows of success is a narrower window where the amount of the player’s maneuvers stays extremely minimal. Stepping into this window offers the opportunity for a non-disrupted gameplay flow, where a deliberate and guided set of behaviors will let the player “breeze” through the challenges seemingly almost with ease. This window is where ludoaesthetics occur.

Of course, the downsides of it are aplenty: it can be extremely difficult to realize such a window exists in a real scenario. And in order to stay inside such a narrow window, the player has to be extremely precise and/or smart in their gameplay. You can think of this window of non-disrupted flow as an intended “weak point” of the challenge, where a single and concentrated attack will break the whole thing apart in one fell swoop. But the process of identifying such a weak point, and delivering the finishing blow with great accuracy may require a lot of trials and errors, and can be extremely tedious and/or difficult.

An Example from Master Spy

A common manifestation of ludoaesthetics comes in the form of speedrunning. Finishing with speed is, for the majority of games, not the primary intended goal. Games are rarely ever designed to be speedrun, and most players do not have to finish any games at high speed in order to not miss anything. So speedrunning has always been a sort of arbitrary self-imposed challenge by those who seek greater sense of enjoyment from their favorite games.

However, there are a few exceptions. And you can find the above mentioned window of non-disrupted flow in levels like this one from Master Spy by Kris Truitt.

In this game you play the role of the Master Spy, to infiltrate ridiculously well-guarded buildings, palaces and fortresses with a huge number of different enemies, hazards and contraptions standing in your way. And you are given no tools whatsoever but an invisibility cloak that can help you sneak past the eyesight of certain enemies while halving your movement speed.

In the example above, your goal is to retrieve the keycard on the other side of the wall slightly to the right of your starting point, and then to escape through the white door right above your starting point safely. And while your cloak can get you past the eyesight of the guards, it is of no use whatsoever against the dogs, who can smell you even when you’re cloaked and will sprint forwards to attack you at horrendous speed as soon as you’re on the same ground as them.

So what you have to do as a sequence of actions in this level is first to cloak yourself, then drop down from the first ledge past the the first guard, then quickly decloak to regain speed as the cloak is useless against the incoming dogs. Then before the first dog reaches you, move forward to the right, then quickly jump up. Keep jumping to retrieve the keycard while avoiding the second and third dog. Cloak up, then get on the ledge with the three moving guards. Finally, jump to the left to reach your destination.

However, as you can see from the footage above (courtesy of a speedrunner nicknamed Obidobi), as soon as the player reaches the ledge with the three moving guards on the right, the guards turn to the other side and begin moving away from where the player is, effectively freeing the player from having to cloak and having their movement speed halved. And then right before the player reaches for the white door, the guard on the far right is about to touch the wall and thereby turning back to the left. This is such a tiny window of success that should the player not have begun moving right after they start the level and stayed uncloaked at the end, they would have failed. The level is designed in such a way that it can be completely solved without wasting any moment and action.

Is it significantly more difficult to play this way? Yes. Was this arrangement absolutely necessary? Not really. But the designer made the level with the expectation that people are going to speedrun the game and will be looking to optimize their timing with each level. Thus, the levels in Master Spy are designed so that should the player start looking to speedrun the game, they will easily recognize that sweet, sweet window of non-disrupted flow. It is an immensely satisfying experience to discover it.

Ensure Usability

As usual, it is easy to get too extremely logical about design and forget all about the equilibrium, which is almost always what design is about.

In this case, it is important that designers must ensure that whatever tools they’re making for their players to achieve ludoaesthetics, MUST have at least some sort of usability, even if it’s incredibly niche or extremely difficult to pull off. Things that serve nothing and mean nothing are NOT aesthetic. Say you have an RPG, and one of your players goes out of their way in order to build an unconventional character because they see some sort of future potential from this build, only to find out later that when they’re finished with the build, the meta of the game has changed and the window of opportunity for such a build has long passed. This means that the entire amount of depth you added, and the ludoaesthetics you might have intended by allowing that player to go in such away, is utterly useless and entirely wasted. So always remember to ensure usability for everything you add in your game.

Conclusion

Organic Difficulty and the ELS are not only, and not necessarily, an alternative solution to the whole difficulty problem. But rather, they represent an entire paradigm shift away from the idea that games should find more and more complex ways to serve players with different skill levels, and towards a design philosophy where players are given integrated tools within the context of games to set their own difficulty at any point without breaking immersion and perhaps the extra baggage of shame. It is not enough to have your players stay at the same level of difficulty throughout the game, or dynamically adjust the difficulty on the fly to suit them. It is best, in my opinion, to let your players cook to their palate. Just make sure that the process of cooking and the game itself are one and the same.

[mild-lunacy]

The Trouble with Sherlock's Humanity

Thinking about my post about Gatiss's quote on Sherlock's sexuality from yesterday, I think it didn't quite hit me immediately what really bothered me. It's not like I was surprised; in fact, you'd wonder why I bothered reblogging something like that at this point, even. So it only hit me now that it's just that when you think of how Gatiss referred to Sherlock's increased *humanity* (thanks in part to his experiences with Irene and in Series 3) that it slots together with similar statements Ben C and Moffat have made many times. Sherlock is the way he is and Johnlock isn't an option essentially because Sherlock isn't quite human, by his own choosing.

With TFP and the revelation about Eurus, with Mycroft saying she's the reason why Sherlock's chosen to be the 'high-functioning sociopath', I assume that the implication is clearly that Sherlock's thrown off some of that legacy now. That's his arc. It's just, by tying Sherlock's romantic entanglement so closely to his humanization arc-- both in the show (with that conversation at the end of TLD, once again) and in interviews about Sherlock's potential romantic and sexual interest in John-- the narrative is essentially saying that at the end, Sherlock's *still* not quite human. By choice. A lot of people have called this an issue of 'Chekhov's gun' after Series 4, in that this is a major question that is left hanging. The thing that occurred to me, however, is that from the creators' perspective, this whole thing-- this questioning-- is meant to highlight that this continues to be Sherlock's choice. He is a brain, and he still chooses to remove 'distractions' even as he learns to accept and integrate sentiment so that it's more useful to him, less of a danger. But (the implication is) he remains a being apart. That's the idea.

The problem is, of course, that Sherlock is (and always has been) painfully, ridiculously human. Gatiss acknowledges that during the show, Sherlock becomes 'slightly more human', but it seems... odd to say that there's a stopping point. Let alone a stopping point for Sherlock with John. I mean, he's literally lost his mind for John in TLD. He was so high, he was walking on walls. He's killed a man in full view of the British government. In what way is he still supposed to be protecting himself? In what way does that really work? That's the thing that frustrates me. It's that they all apparently think you can write such a deeply emotional Sherlock and then keep the lid on, so to speak.

The thing is, about humanization arcs, it doesn't make sense to go 99% of the way and then stop. That's not how it works. That's what I was talking about with the post on gay jokes in Sherlock-- alone, these narrative elements aren't damning or overwhelming, but the full story creates its own momentum. The biggest force of momentum has always been Sherlock himself, because of his arc. If you think of other humanization arcs in stories-- say, Spock or Data, or even Pinocchio-- you'll see that the stories generally *emphasize* the character's incremental growth and development. There's no way to do it without going 'all the way'; the idea of stopping at a point where the main character is still not entirely human at the end seems ridiculous.

Note, and I really want to make this clear, romantic entanglement isn't automatically necessary for humanity. In fact, neither of the three characters I mentioned above are known for their romantic arcs. Friendship is certainly enough. The problem mainly arises when you highlight or use the character's difference as a *reason* for why they're not relationship material. This doesn't just happen in interviews but also on the show, of course. Sherlock outright says he's married to his work. It's just that by Series 3, particularly TSoT, this is obviously no longer the case... and fundamentally, I get the feeling that Moffat and Gatiss don't see the conflict being created, because Sherlock could simply keep making the conscious choice to abstain at any point. Even when the *reasons* for it look increasingly flimsy and largely pointless, because he's suffering the consequences of excessive attachment without all of the potential benefits.

With John and Sherlock's conversation at the end of TLD, it becomes explicitly textual that Sherlock thinks of both himself and John as only human. Someone prone to 'human error', someone to be understood and accepted, to be forgiven for their flaws. It's no longer just a subtextual implication is that Sherlock is human: it's so factual that the twist is that *John* is, too. And yet... Sherlock is apart, never going all the way. Oh, he's certainly human: he texts Irene back! And look how he cares about John Watson! He's happy now, really. What else is he supposed to desire but a nice, juicy murder?

In the end, I feel frustrated and confused by the underlying understanding of 'humanity' here. I have to insert canon Johnlock just to make sense of the Sherlock's arc, even though I've essentially said I can see the story as intended, mostly platonically, overall. I just can't reconcile their Sherlock with the Sherlock we are actually shown.

Essentially, without the humanization arc being front and center, if I squint I can see the show and characters more or less as Mofftiss intended (though I grumble about Mary, I can let it go). And I can let Johnlock go on the shippy level; I can usually divorce my emotions from my analysis almost entirely. It's just, I can't dismiss my issues with the main character’s arc, with romantic entanglement being a significant part of it. Without inserting canon Johnlock, you're left with a sort of volcanic explosion of devotion and self-sacrifice that starts in TRF and continues, like Sherlock's pumping out arterial blood for all to see. It only gains force all through TLD, and then... then he's still the one comforting other people, in the end, with both John and Eurus. I'm not even a Sherlock-centric fan, but it's hard not to feel the drama is too much. To suppose that his humanity is still... somehow not quite the same as it would be by others' definition is preposterous. Sherlock has a heart, and it's not just satisfied with texting Irene, or even the cases. If you'll note, most of the S4 cases were surrounding the needs of other people (for Mary, for John, for Eurus, not for Sherlock's own sake). I suppose that by TFP, the idea is that Sherlock's heart is filled by family bonds: he has John, Rosie, and his closer bonds with Mycroft and even Eurus. Family really was the theme of Series 4, as that review said, and mostly I'm satisfied with that. It's just, that is *why* including any arbitrary limits or conditions on Sherlock getting 'involved' doesn't work. It simply doesn't *work*.

[newmayhem]

Demon In My View Reread Review

Check out my other Den of Shadows reviews HERE.

Pre-read

I haven’t read this in over a decade, guys! I remembered really looking forward to reading this after I had first finished ITFOTN. At the time, I was just dipping my toes into my middle school goth phase, I really wanted to be a writer, and I was also hard core thirsting for Aubrey, so this book was all the way up my alley. I also remember really liking Jessica because she was very different from other YA heroines that I had been reading about at the time. I liked that like Risika, she was not a ‘nice girl’. She was confident and beautiful and had a bit of a mean streak. And, of course, I swooned at the romance. Also, it had a cool cover.

Specific scenes/images I remember:

Jessica being really hot and having black hair, pale skin, and green eyes

Jessica noting that the kid who made fun of her is reading her book

Jessica seeing Alex/Aubrey for the first time and he's wearing his upside down cross

Caryn offering Aubrey her blood

Jessica coming across a black rose bush

Pregnant Jazlyn at her husband's grave

Fala's in this, too

The ending scene where Jessica's says that she can't write without her laptop

Post-read Thoughts

I liked it. It has its problems and I’m definitely well beyond the target age range that this is intended for, but it was a fun time.

In terms of its formal qualities, I think that it was a good call to write this in 3rd person pov in the past tense (as opposed to 1st person pov in the present tense in ITFOTN). I think the 1st person narration was fine in ITFOTN because it added an extra layer to the story in having the reader question Risika’s reliability as a narrator, but DIMV would’ve been kind of insufferable if told from Jessica’s pov just by virtue of her being an abrasive teenager.

Even though, like ITFOTN, a lot of the relationships and characters needed more time to be fully fleshed out, and I noticed that the storyline did feel more complete than ITFOTN’s. I think this is mostly because it was all told sequentially (as opposed to being told in flashbacks), so it was necessary for the plot to have a clear arc.

There are a lot of digressions that explain more about vampires and witches and the histories of certain characters, and while I appreciated that as a fan of the series and as someone who’s doing research on it, it did distract from the story and I wish it had been folded in more seamlessly. There’s a lot of telling when there should be showing.

As with ITFOTN, I liked how fast-paced it was, but I also wished that it was maybe a hundred pages longer so everything could be better developed and there would be more room to show rather than tell. Like, I wished we could’ve had more time with Caryn and Hasana so that we could learn more about the witch world through their experiences rather than through all these digressions. I also feel like Fala (notably, the only unambiguously nonwhite character in the book) got shafted. I’m all for letting villains be villains, I don’t think we needed to give her some sort of sympathetic background or anything, but it felt like her motives were too petty to take seriously. She only popped up in the book to give some quick over the top threats or taunts a few times before the big showdown to remind us that there was a villain, and that made her feel very cartoonish and less like a real threat.

I also didn’t really buy the whole Jessica/Aubrey relationship. I mean, I could definitely buy it as a really strong attraction/infatuation, but once it was labelled as ‘love’, I got confused. Maybe vampires/immortals have a different definition of love? Like, maybe they take love less seriously (and use it as a catchall term) because they’ve been around for so long and they know that relationships don’t last forever? I might do a post on that actually.

I think both my favorite and least favorite part of this book was Jessica. She’s an asshole and a half, I hate her as a person but I kind of love her as a character. I love a good mean girl and for me, it made sense that she would be really abrasive as a reaction to the chronic rejection she felt from the community she grew up in. I normally hate reckless/impulsive characters, but I liked that Jessica was able to back up her impulsiveness with being smart and having some sort of survival instinct. On a side note, I also appreciate that all of ahar’s heroines so far are confident, unapologetically hot, and know that they’re hot.

That said, I really wished the narrative called Jessica out on being a menace rather than constantly give her what she wanted without having it cost her anything. I think it would’ve been better if the story showed that Jessica’s whole abrasiveness-rejection thing became its own self-fulfilling prophecy rather than blaming everything on the vampire blood and always justifying Jessica being an asshole to everyone. I also think that it actually doesn’t make sense for her to reject her adoptive mother and treat her so terribly. This was the one person who ever made an effort to get close to her, after all. I think that developing this relationship further would’ve made Anne’s death much more impactful. And generally, while I liked that she was this cool, snarky badass...she lacked nuance and complexity, which ultimately made her less interesting.

I’m not going to call Jessica a Mary Sue, but I do think that she’s overpowered (which, I guess is fine because boys get to have their ridiculously overpowered characters). I don’t like how Jessica never had to give anything up in order to get what she wants. I mean, she loses her adoptive mom, but they weren’t even that close. She had no other ties to the human world, no human friends or anything, so she didn’t really have to give that up, either. There's even a loophole for her to get around the big caveat of needing to fight the change/be changed unwillingly in order to be a strong vampire. Generally, she didn’t have to go through any real character development to become the person she needed to be in order to get her happy ending. It makes for a less satisfying/compelling story. Like, the reason why the ending of ITFOTN was satisfying was because (even though it wasn’t perfectly executed) Risika had to finally give up the last vestiges of humanity that she had been holding onto (the only thing she had left of her brother) in order to win against Aubrey and get her revenge and it actually hurt her to do that.

You know, this gives me a fic idea. I’ll do a separate post on it.

My other favorite part of this book were the references to how it’s been a few years since Aubrey lost against Risika but he’s still not entirely over it. Like, all it took was seeing a somewhat accurate artistic rendering of Risika on the cover of Tiger, Tiger to get him so angry that he had to leave the room. Just one quick taunt about it from Fala and he’s ready to kill her over it.

Speaking of Risika, this book also gave some insight into Aubrey’s involvement with Risika’s story, revealing that Aubrey had been drawn to Risika before Ather had even taken notice of her.

Additionally, I noticed some interesting parallels between Jessica and Risika:

They both have mysteries surrounding their birth mothers

They, as natural-born supernatural beings, grew up in an all-human community

Aubrey was drawn to both of them because they exuded a great strength that mirrored his own and because of that, he played a big role in their respective vampire origin stories

Most importantly, they both slapped Aubrey and lived to tell the tale

I’m not sure if this was intentional on ahar’s part or what I might do with this information, but it feels significant. And I think that it’s pretty significant, too, that Aubrey used Alex as his alias, even though I (and apparently ahar, according to the Nyeusigrube discord) don’t know exactly what that is.

Also, I just thought of this- has Risika read any of Jessica’s books? If she’s read Tiger, Tiger, does this mean she now knows about what happened to her mom?

And to close this out, I spotted a bunch of continuity and factual/logical errors:

In ITFOTN, Risika walked by Jessica’s house and called her ‘Concord’s young writer’ and saying that everything she writes is true. How would Risika know this if Tiger, Tiger was Jessica’s debut novel and was just published at the beginning of DIMV, which takes place a few years after ITFOTN? Also, Jessica doesn’t start writing until after she moved to Ramsa.

Kala’s death via vampire hunter was noted in ITFOTN, which doesn’t make sense because DIMV made it clear that it happened recently and as a result of Jessica’s writing, which hadn’t been published until the beginning of DIMV, which takes place a few years after ITFOTN.

If Ramsa is so full of vampire energy, as Caryn states, then why are the humans not used to it? Why do they reject Jessica because of her vampire energy?

Moira is stated to be ~500 years older than Aubrey, who, according to Word of God was from Sparta (which stopped being a thing around 192 BCE)...only the text says that shortly after she was changed, she ripped out the heart of an Aztec priest. The Aztec empire didn’t exist until the 1400s CE.

But that aside, this was all in all a fun read and it gave me a lot of valuable info that I can use in the fanfic.

[aikungfu]

When Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would stop accepting political advertising in the week before the US presidential election, he was responding to widespread fear that social media has outsize power to change the balance of an election.  

Political campaigns have long believed that direct voter contact and personalized messaging are effective tools to convince people to vote for a particular candidate. But in 2016, it seemed that social media was amplifying this threat, and that invasive data-gathering and sophisticated political targeting had suddenly created a recipe for democratic disaster. 

The idea of algorithmic manipulation schemes brainwashing large swaths of the US electorate online is a nice way to explain the polarized nature of American public opinion. But experts say it’s actually pretty unlikely that targeted political advertising has had much influence on voter behavior at all.  

“Very quickly you get absolutely nowhere” 

Much of the reasoning behind the ban relies on the idea that social media can convince undecided voters. This has been the narrative since the 2016 election, when Cambridge Analytica claimed it used “psychological warfare” to manipulate vulnerable undecided voters on Facebook into believing fake news and convincing them to vote for Donald Trump. The Guardian reported extensively on the Cambridge Analytica’s idea “to bring big data and social media to an established military methodology—‘information operations’—then turn it on the US electorate.”  

But in reality, campaigns still can’t persuade undecided voters much better than they could 10 years ago. 

Some suggest that associating certain online attributes with voter profiles allows campaigns to group target voters into smaller, more specific groups that care about particular things, which might offer an avenue to getting them to vote a certain way. For example, you could assume all independent first-time Minnesota voters who have liked the Bass Pro Shop are likely to care about gun rights.  

But Eitan Hersh, an associate professor at Tufts University, says these assumptions get layered with errors. A campaign might assume that “the person who watches Jersey Shore has X kind of personality traits,” he says, but “those things aren’t going to be perfectly correct.”     “Then I’m going to try to make an ad that is focused on that personality trait. Go to any ad seller: how easy is that to make an ad just right for that personality trait? And then it has to come at exactly the right moment on your timeline where you’re receptive to it. When you add all of these layers of error atop each other, very quickly, you get absolutely nowhere. It’s just all noise.” 

Even if these errors didn’t exist, it’s nearly impossible to measure whether ads were effective in changing somebody’s voting behavior. Voting, after all, is secret. 

That doesn’t mean advertising can’t be effective, however. In fact, the online targeted political advertising system has advanced in two meaningful ways: first, it has allowed campaigns to more accurately sort decided and undecided voters using data, and second, messaging has gotten more effective as a result of sophisticated A/B testing. 

The bigger problem 

But the true strength of online political advertising has been in sowing discord. Social-media networks function by running powerful content recommendation algorithms that are known to put people in echo chambers of narrow information and have at times been gamed by powerful actors. Instead of getting voters to switch their position, political messages delivered this way are actually much more effective at fragmenting public opinion. They don’t persuade voters to change their behavior as much as they reinforce the beliefs of already-decided voters, often pushing them into a more extreme position than before. That means the ads being banned—the ones from the campaigns—are not what is changing democracy; it’s the recommendation algorithms themselves that increase the polarization and decrease the civility of the electorate. 

Sam Woolley, the project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, says that while he’s “glad that Facebook is making moves to get rid of political ads,” he wonders “to what extent the social-media firms are going to continue to take small steps when they really need to be addressing a problem that is ecosystem-wide.”  

“Political ads are just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “Social media has horrendously exacerbated polarization and splintering because it has allowed people to become more siloed and less civil because they’re not engaging as much in face-to-face communications, because they’re behind a wall of anonymity and because they don’t really see consequences for the things they do.” These algorithms may seem mathematical and objective, but Woolley says the system is “incredibly subjective,” with many human decisions behind how and why particular content gets recommended. 

So Facebook’s ban ahead of November 3 won’t do much to change voter behavior. Indeed, since Facebook’s algorithms give more weight to posts with some time and circulation behind them, Zuckerberg’s ban might not have any significant impact at all. 

Tackling the rest of the iceberg requires a total reframing of what social-media networks actually are. 

“There’s no denying that the fundamental alteration of our media system from broadcast to social media has irreparably changed the way we share information, and also the ways in which we form opinions, and also the ways in which we get along—or don’t get along,” he says. 

What does this mean for democracy? 

This is not an entirely new problem. The American political system has used targeted political advertising for decades, long before the internet. In the 1950s, before cookies tracked your online behavior to create detailed logs, campaigns would send canvassers to specific addresses that were home to undecided voters. In the 1960s, before online advertisers started serving custom-made ads that convinced you your iPhone was listening to your conversations, data scientists were engineering messages aimed at small groups of persuadable voters. 

Social media’s role has not been to dramatically change the direction of this system, but to intensify the polarization and fragmentation it causes. On top of this, larger and more extreme groups also become vectors of misinformation and propaganda, which accelerates and worsens the problem. These challenges go far beyond Facebook’s ban—they challenge the whole online economic and information ecosystem. 

“Social-media networks, in particular, have challenged what we think of as democracy,” says Woolley. “They’ve undermined our democratic communication system in a big way, contrary to what we thought they were going to do. That being said, I do believe that democracy is a work in progress.” 

from MIT Technology Review https://ift.tt/2ETFuQj via A.I .Kung Fu

[teeky185]

Author’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series.To answer the question posed in last Tuesday’s column, Yes, Kevin Clinesmith did plead guilty Wednesday. Sort of.Well, maybe it was a smidge better than “sort of.” After all, it did happen in a federal-district-court proceeding (via videoconference) on Wednesday. And Judge James Boasberg did accept the plea after eliciting it in accordance with settled criminal-law rules. Sentencing is scheduled for December 10. So it’s official.But I’m sticking with “sort of.” If Clinesmith’s guilty plea is legally adequate, it is barely so. And neither a judge nor a prosecutor is required to accept an allocution sliced so fine. In “admitting” guilt, Clinesmith ended up taking the position that I hoped the judge, and especially the Justice Department, would not abide, in essence: Okay, maybe I committed the crime of making a false statement, but to be clear, I thought the statement was true when I made it, and I certainly never intended to deceive anyone.Huh?I don’t mean to make you dizzy, but in my view, Clinesmith is lying about lying. His strategy is worth close study because it encapsulates the mendaciousness and malevolence of both “Crossfire Hurricane” (the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation) and the “collusion” never-enders who continue to defend it. A defendant’s lying about lying does not necessarily make a false-statement guilty plea infirm as a matter of law. The bar is not high. Still, his story is ridiculous, in a way that is easy to grasp once it’s placed in context.So let’s place it in context.‘Page Is a Russian Spy’ — the FBI Plants Its Feet on a Fantasy Our point of reference is spring 2017.While indignantly denying news stories portraying him as a clandestine agent of Russian, Carter Page asserts that, actually, he’s been an informant for a U.S. intelligence agency. FBI officials should know that Page is telling the truth. They have already heard the same thing from the CIA and from Page himself.The CIA told the bureau ten months earlier, in a memo dated August 17, 2016 (i.e., two months before the FBI sought the first FISA warrant against Page). Page had been a CIA source who provided information about Russians. Page told the bureau about at least some of this work during voluntary interviews in 2009 and 2013, during the period when the CIA had authorized Page for “operational contact” with Russians. The FBI, meanwhile, actually used information from Page in a prosecution of Russian spies. (See my 2018 column, discussing of United States v. Buryakov.)And it’s not as if the CIA’s acknowledgment of Page’s informant status was the only exculpatory fact the FBI knew. Not by a long shot. Page was pleading with the FBI director to sit down with the bureau and explain himself, as he had done on other occasions over the years. More to the point, in August 2016 (again, two months before the first FISA warrant to permit spying on Page), Page had credibly insisted to a covert FBI informant, Stefan Halper, that key allegations about Page (derived from the bogus Steele dosser) were false: Page did not even know Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, let alone act as Manafort’s intermediary in a Trump–Russia espionage conspiracy; and Page had not recently met in Moscow with Putin-regime heavyweights Igor Sechin and Igor Divyekin.Thus, (a) Page had not done the very things that led the FBI to accuse him of being an active anti-American spy, and (b) Page’s prior contacts with Russians, on which the bureau further rationalized its overwrought suspicions, overlapped with Page’s years as a CIA operative. Weeks before the FBI and the Obama Justice Department first applied for a FISA warrant on the theory that Page was a spy for the Kremlin, the FBI team conducting the investigation had information showing the theory was untenable.Yet the bureau chose to plant its feet on the daft theory anyway. Apologists for the bureau and the Obama administration would now have you believe that this is because a single one of the FBI’s crack counterintelligence agents, Stephen Somma, dropped the ball -- that he alone knew Page was a CIA informant, but held out on his chain-of-command. Really? If they dropped as many balls in Times Square as Somma did -- purportedly without anyone noticing, in one the most significant investigations in the FBI’s history -- we’d have New Year’s once a week.The fact is, top officials were drinking the “Donald Trump must be colluding with Russia” Kool-Aid, so the story was too good to check. And once the farcical Steele dossier grabbed the investigators’ attention in late summer 2016, the bureau was off to the races, framing Page as a key cog in the Trump campaign’s “conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin.But that was autumn 2016. Now, remember, we’re in late spring of 2017. At this point, the FBI has been monitoring Page for over eight months. The Page-is-a-Russian-spy theory is in tatters. The surveillance turns up nothing. Halper has nothing. Steele’s dossier, a shoddy product on its face, is now a hot, steaming mess. Not only is it uncorroborated and unverifiable; Steele himself is dismissing it as “raw” information that needed to be investigated, and his “primary subsource,” Igor Danchenko, has discredited it as fiction and rumormongering.But alas, the FBI is dug in. This was not just office banter. The bureau had taken the claim that Page was a spy to court. It was the linchpin of the hypothesis that the Trump campaign was a Kremlin influence operation. This theory, bereft of supporting evidence and resistant to exculpatory evidence, had the imprimatur of FBI headquarters. By June 2017, in conjunction with the Justice Department, the FBI had made this claim under oath to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), three times: a first application in October 2016, and renewal applications in January and April 2017. Each time, based on the FBI’s representations, the FISC issued a 90-day surveillance warrant against Page.Disclosure Would Mean Epic Humiliation The warrant issued by the FISC on April 7 was due to expire in early July. By mid June, then, the bureau was well into its preparations to submit yet another renewal application.This is the salient time frame for Clinesmith’s case. His defense counsel and apologists would have you look at it as a snapshot. But it wasn’t just a moment in time. It was a moment shaped by the preceding ten months, since the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation (i.e., the Trump-Russia probe) was formally opened on July 31, 2016.By June 2017, it would have occasioned epic humiliation for the FBI to admit that it had on three occasions made false assertions under oath in order to persuade federal judges to issue classified surveillance warrants against an American citizen. Not just humiliation. FBI leadership had publicized the existence of the Trump–Russia probe, consciously promoting the media-Democratic political narrative that the president was beholden to the Kremlin. An admission that court warrants had been sought on false premises would have led to certain administrative discipline and potential criminal inquiries.This was not at the back of the bureau’s mind. It was front and center. Just read the FISA warrants. Read the in-the-interest-of-full-disclosure footnotes massaged into gibberish as the case was collapsing. And bear in mind: These laborious rationalizations did not come close to revealing the mounds of exculpatory information that the FBI was withholding.To hear FBI and Justice Department officials tell it, the FISA process is so well designed and diligently executed that, at all times, they are profoundly aware of their heightened duty of candor, of their obligations to submit only verified warrant applications. Of their duty to alert the FISC promptly if they discover that something they’ve represented to the court is inaccurate. They know, they tell us, about the imperative to be transparent regarding exculpatory information. And even if officials were ever to lose sight of these weighty responsibilities, even for a moment, we’re to take comfort that their recollection would quickly be refreshed by the multiple, high-level FBI and DOJ approvals the FISA statute mandates. These have spawned an infrastructure of lawyers, analysts, and verification procedures to ensure that the bosses don’t embarrass themselves by signing off on FISA warrant applications that are fraudulent, or at least recklessly irresponsible.That’s how it’s supposed to work . . . on the drawing board.Down here on Planet Earth, though, in all of government’s sprawl, there is no institution more self-conscious about its image, more energetic in promoting its pristine reputation, than the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And thus there is none more resistant to damaging disclosures.At the bureau, officials are keenly aware that, when a misrepresentation is discovered, it is often just the visible part of what, on inspection, turns out to be a train of errors, oversights, poor judgments, and, occasionally, misconduct. The disclosure of a single glaring inaccuracy elucidates that investigators, analysts, or lawyers -- or all of them -- were aware of information that should have set off alarm bells, yet they all turned a deaf ear. Alarm bells, after all, signal underlying misfeasance . . . and sometimes malfeasance. If a judge gets spun up by one embarrassing disclosure, it can soon become two . . . then four . . . And then, next thing you know, a case is unraveling as a scandal unfolds.Clinesmith’s Motives Mirror His Superiors’ MotivesIn June 2017, on the thin line between business as usual and epic embarrassment, stood Kevin Clinesmith.He was then a 30-something assistant general counsel in the bureau’s National Security and Cyber Law Branch. It is part of the FBI’s Office of General Counsel (OGC), then led by James Baker.Among the branch’s responsibilities, it reviews FISA warrant applications. The Carter Page applications, however, were handled in an unusual way. Details of the applications were scrutinized at the highest levels of the FBI and the Justice Department, to the point that the National Security branch’s once-over became superfluous.For example, Trisha Anderson, the OGC’s former deputy general counsel, told the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 testimony that, though she normally reviewed FISA warrant applications before they went to the upper ranks for statutorily required sign-offs, she did not do that with the October 2016 Page application. By the time it landed on her desk, it had already been reviewed “line by line” by such superiors as the FBI’s then–deputy director Andrew McCabe, as well as by then–deputy attorney general Sally Yates at Main Justice. It had even been perused by Anderson’s OGC superior, General Counsel Baker. Baker conceded to the committee that it was unusual for him to review a FISA warrant application, particularly at an early stage, as he did with the Page application.In the chain of command, Clinesmith ranked a few notches lower than Anderson: He reported to the National Security branch chief, who reported to Anderson, after which the chain ascended to Baker, McCabe, and ultimately Director James Comey. That is, Clinesmith was a junior officer -- support personnel. The decision to represent to the FISC that Page was a Russian spy had been made way above his pay grade. The bosses were so invested in it, they were relying on it to investigate the sitting president of the United States. And just a few weeks earlier, when the president fired Comey in May 2017, a special counsel had been appointed to take over the investigation. The Mueller team’s mandate from the deputy attorney general was to get to the bottom of links between the Russian regime and former Trump-campaign advisers, such as Page.This was not a train Clinesmith could have started or stopped on his own. Nevertheless, he was all in.We learn from the Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s FISA abuse that, from the very beginning, Clinesmith was in on OGC deliberations about seeking FISA surveillance of Page. Even before September 2016, when he first learned about Steele’s reporting, he told the IG he believed that there was a “50/50” chance of establishing probable cause that Page was a clandestine agent for Russia. For that assessment, he relied on “Page’s historical contacts with Russian intelligence officers.” At that point, he says he did not know that the CIA had told the FBI that Page was a CIA informant when these contacts took place. So, when the first FISA warrant was sought in October 2016 (and the second in January, and the third in April), he agreed that the probable-cause standard was easily satisfied by these contacts, weighed in combination with Steele’s (uncorroborated) claims about Page, as well as Page’s statements to Halper (as bowdlerized by the bureau).Echoing his bosses, then, Clinesmith adopted the “Page is a Russian spy” fantasy from the get-go. If subsequent developments ever called for scrutinizing the kamikaze portrayal of Page as a spy, Clinesmith was sure to be on the hook. And while the higher-ups would take most of the heat if the bureau proved to be embarrassingly wrong, it is always the underlings like Clinesmith who get hung out to dry for misinforming their superiors. That is how Washington works. Clinesmith, a Washington creature, realized this only too well.‘The Predication of Our Entire Investigation’ Is at RiskOf course, Clinesmith was not putting himself personally on the line with the FISC. That was to be the responsibility of the affiant, the FBI agent assigned to swear to the truth of the warrant application. This difference in the duties of that agent and Clinesmith, along with an obvious integrity disparity, explains the very different way they approached the matter.This affiant-agent is identified only as “SSA” in the criminal information filed against Clinesmith. (This affiant-agent is “SSA 2” in the IG report, one of several unidentified “supervisory special agents” who appear therein). Though nominally a supervising agent, the SSA operated at some remove from the rubber-meets-the-road investigating. In the bureau, the agent who signs a FISA warrant is not the supervisor of agents investigating the case; he is a headquarters “program manager.” Furthermore, the SSA was not assigned to Crossfire Hurricane until late December 2016. That is, he was not involved in the initial deliberations over whether Page was a Russian spy and whether to seek FISA surveillance on that theory.Having inherited sign-off responsibility in an ongoing surveillance that his superiors had already green-lighted, the SSA went with the flow, at least at the beginning. The IG report indicates that, in signing the first and second renewal applications (in January and April 2017), the SSA performed only a cursory review of the file. He assumed that other agents had done their work properly.It was only in June 2017, as the third renewal application was being prepared, that he became concerned. It was around that time that the SSA heard about Page’s vehement public denials that he was a Russian spy and claims that he had engaged Russians on behalf of an American intelligence service. It dawned on the SSA that he would be expected to swear, under penalty of perjury, that he believed there was probable cause to conclude that Page was a clandestine agent of Russia, working against the United States. Page’s public protestations gave him pause. They also created a potentially catastrophic problem for the bureau, which the SSA later summarized for the IG (I’d italicize -- but I’d have to italicize every word):> [If Page] was being tasked by another agency, especially if he was being tasked to engage Russians, then it would absolutely be relevant for the Court to know . . . [and] could also seriously impact the predication of our entire investigation, which focused on [Page’s] close and continuous contact with Russian/Russia-linked individuals.If Page had been a CIA operative during meetings with Russians — meetings that the FBI had sworn to the court showed Page was a traitorous spy — then the FBI would have some serious explaining to do. And if it turned out that, before applying under oath for the warrants, the FBI had been informed by the CIA that Page was a CIA operative, then the FBI would be humiliated.Bear in mind: The incumbent Democratic administration had opened an election-year investigation of its Republican opposition, and the FBI had heavily relied on bogus evidence generated by the Democratic campaign to claim that Page was a spy for Russia. With that as background, there would be only two possible explanations for the FBI’s failure to inform the court that Page was working for the CIA when the bureau had claimed he was working for the Kremlin: willful abuse of power or monstrous incompetence.End of Part 1.

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[assignmenthelp125-blog]

The Way To Compose An Autobiography Essay

Essay Assist You'll find respective kinds of creating which can be useful for unique functions.  Certainly one of this type of producing is really Auto Biography essay writing.  Thus, what is an Auto-Biography?  The sort of supplying an outline of someone's own lifetime is called an autobiography.  Various varieties of autobiographies have various functions. The 4 most Big Form of the Auto-biography are:Memoir: A memoir can be a sort of autobiography that is targeted to some specific event from the writer's lifetime. economics homework help  Even a memoir might possibly be on a specific occasion, a specific place and sometimes maybe a partnership which the creator may have distributed to somebody else and that abandoned a enormous effect around the life span of this writer.  Memoir is the part of a writer's life that the writer deems match for your earth to browse .Auto-biography: An autobiography can be a more in depth description of their creator's lifetime.  An auto-biography may function various functions.  Someone could produce an autobiography because of their personal utilization or they may compose it get really is released to get your earth to browse and then receive motivated.Private article: An individual essay is ordinarily an emotional and personal narration of somebody's everyday life.  It might possibly be about a function that has a fantastic emotional effect around the creator's lifetime.  Such essays is tremendously amorous in character. Every auto-biography broadly speaking contains two features for this.  Certainly one, the private description that mcdougal provides and also the 2nd and most essential could be that the impression it had about the writer's lifetime and purpose of viewpoints. Let us give attention to just how best to compose an autobiography essay.  The complete structure of the Auto Biography essay commonly is composed of an introduction, the most important human body and also in end.  Intro: exactly enjoy every customary bit of composing, make it an argument issue or perhaps a study document, the most most frequently occurring and plausible direction of opening an Auto Biography informative article is always to compose a debut.  In a debut, the writer stipulates the reader by having a concept in regard to what things to anticipate from this write-up.  Introduction fundamentally"introduces" this issue into this reader.  The paragraph ought to really be interesting whilst to continue to keep the reader suspended with the chairs.  It ought perhaps not be exceedingly much time should it become overly brief.  The most important goal is always to supply the reader with colorful details on your own.  Additionally, it may become your era, pastime or visual appeal.Key human anatomy: That really is the section of the autobiography at which in fact the in depth tale is prepared.  It comprises all of the advice and content relevant to the narrative's sake rates.  The creating while in the home human body may be farther accomplished in sentences that are sub as a way to rise the readability.  The grade of plausible paragraphs that associate to all the readers however at an identical time maintains the integrity of their compose, would be the principal notion.  Therefore in the event the most important figure includes other sub par paragraphs afterward there's is no logical connection needs to be kept in between these paragraphs.Decision: Decision is really a exact significant part a Auto Biography.  It's the final paragraph that, right after the debut, gets got the ability to make a desired effect on your visitors.  In decision ought to really be captive.  It will induce your reader to consider your narrative.  Decision ought to really be written such a way to ensure it participates at your brain of whomever reads itafter reading through it for a short time.  It might incorporate the alterations you lurks following the clarified incident happened.  It may possibly be all about the courses researched.Prior to composing an autobiography, then you can find plenty of ideas to stay at heart.  They can be:Examine until you compose: so as to compose some thing very good you first have to read some thing excellent.  As a way to compose a fantastic autobiography, then you will need to learn a fantastic autobiography.  Reading previous to writing might supply you having a better notion of a Auto Biography needs to really be composed.  Additionally, it can provide you a sense concerning the easy do it and do not.  Read through the autobiography of the individual who motivates you personally and also whose narrative you may associate solely to.Introspect and also consider your own life: Consider this episode or perhaps the individual who abandoned a enormous effect in your own life.  Attempt to bear in mind the minor details about that particular person or even the occasion.  Now review the way that episode or man influenced your own life span.  Just how can you shape your own contour and put into exactly what you're?  The fluctuations which arose then episode happened.  Arrange your thoughts: Because of this particular, building alist will undoubtedly be useful.  You will earn a set of most of the essential memories along with also people.  The functions can possibly be coordinated depending on the day that they required put on.  The checklist may resemble a deadline of most the essential items that took place on your own life span. Brain-storming: brain-storming denotes the action of pouring out each one your thoughts you might look at a sure issue at the time.  If you're a older school afterward catch a newspaper and pencil, sit and consider the event.  With no filter and editing, compose all words visit the thoughts.  Additionally, it isn't important how arbitrary those phrases are all, and sometimes maybe if they're erroneous, simply write down them.  In the event you would rather typing, then you definitely certainly can employ your mobile or some other other apparatus to write those down thoughts. Proof-read your compose: proof-reading refers into this action of fixing the mistakes, if any, contained from the compose. Macroeconomics Homework Help  It's a rather significant part a kind of producing.  The glitches can possibly be quite a grammatical mistake or an easy spelling error.  A fantastic structured sentence leaves a fantastic impression about the reader and also infact boosts the possibility to obtaining a writer to release your compose.Fair remarks: Once you believe that you're completed along with your compose, it's consistently beneficial to permit some one else see it and also supply you with opinions.  In case the feedback is bad, then aren't getting worry and worry within it.  Request the individuals frank comment and after that proceed to really make the necessary changes which is should you'd like to attract all those fluctuations on your autobiography.

[joel-tann]

Bloodied/Unbowed - A Review (Of Sorts)

It's been six years since we last heard new music from Oh, Sleeper, and longer still since the band released their previous full-length album, Children of Fire, in 2011. In that interval the band apparently came close to calling it quits altogether, with guitarist and clean vocalist Shane Blay taking time off to perform with his side project Wovenwar, lead vocalist Micah Kinard exploring a career in real estate, and the remaining members of the band going their separate ways for some time. And yet, on the back of a couple tours and an agonisingly slow trickle of singles, Oh, Sleeper have unequivocally asserted their place in the heavy music scene once again with one of their most compelling releases to date, Bloodied/Unbowed.

Oh, Sleeper's discography has so far been comprised almost entirely of concept albums, from the universal struggle between God and Lucifer on Son of the Morning, to the microcosm of vengeance and mercy in response to evil expressed in Children of Fire's Father/Daughter narrative. In this respect Bloodied/Unbowed is no different. Continuing the story established on the band's 2013 EP, Titan, the album's lyrics explore themes of individualism, faith and the human condition, as well as the personal struggles of the band members over the years, through the metaphor of a dystopian transhumanist future in which resistance fighters battle a powerful corporation for control of their own bodies. Clearly, there's a lot to unpack here, so let's get into it.

The album's blistering first act opens with Let it Wave, a bold manifesto for the resistance, which segues seamlessly into its second track Decimation & Burial. Both these songs tread familiar Oh, Sleeper territory in their heavy use of military imagery, and serve to establish the ideal of the rebel soldier, the fearless lone warrior whose survival depends on his own effort and whose worth is determined by his courage in battle. The album's strongest lyrical ties to the Titan EP are found here; from the doubling down on the theme of militant individualism established on The Rise, to lyrics about "a flawless blade" which tells "no stories" echoing Titan's lament for a "sword that sees no war", and praise for battered armour that "speaks of blows received standing for honour", to Decimation and Burial's opening lyric "The blind don't rely on the light, they just fight/I curse my sight", a nod to Titan's protagonist, who ultimately carves out his bionic eyes as a symbol of resistance.

Musically, the opening tracks are classic Oh, Sleeper at their absolute best. Blay's frantic, chromatic guitar parts create a palpable sense of tension and urgency, alternately complementing and contrasting with the equally hectic, driving rhythms fans have come to expect from drummer Zac Mayfield. The production values are phenomenal as well - the mixing on these tracks is easily some of the best in Oh, Sleeper's already respectable catalogue.

A noticeable shift in tone occurs over the subsequent tracks, as the brash call to arms we've heard so far collides uncomfortably with the gritty reality of conflict on Fissure (Do Not Revive Me). "The desperate/They can learn from the fall/We could catch them/But it's not what they want" Kinard screams in the song's second verse. Once again, there's a lyrical parallel here with Oh, Sleeper's earlier work, this time a reference to Claws of a God's chorus "Keep close things you learned from the fall/Cast your wounds to heal without flaw". Yet, there's a point of contrast - while Claws of a God pleads with its subject to embrace the healing that comes from acknowledging the error of his ways and accepting the help offered to him, the defiant self-reliance of Fissure's wounded warriors leads them to reject life-saving aid even in the face of death.

There's also potentially some pretty heavy spiritual themes on this track, so this seems as good a point as any to talk a bit about one of the elements that makes Oh, Sleeper's songwriting so great - the dynamic interaction between the worldviews of Shane Blay, who is atheist, and Micah Kinard, a professing Christian. In addition to sharing vocal duties, Blay and Kinard also co-write most of the band's lyrics, resulting in songs which often feature profound, almost conversational exchanges around the themes of faith and doubt, belief, and unbelief. While this has created issues for listeners seeking to pigeonhole the band into the "Christian" or "secular" categories, Kinard and Blay's genuine, heart-felt presentation of the perspectives of believer and skeptic alike is refreshing in a genre often characterised by views which are either totally hostile or entirely favourable towards religion.

Given the history of Blay's songwriting and his prominent vocal role on the track, there's a fair argument to be made that Fissure's imagery of battlefield medics and wounded soldiers serves as a metaphor for God and humanity, with its central theme of refusing medical care representing a rejection of the Christian faith and its promises of resurrection and new life. This is perhaps most clearly expressed in the song's chorus, in which Blay sings: "Are you the one to raise the dead in me?/I'll give you anything/Let's start with my body/I hear you chasing, don't give up on me/But if you reach me/Oh, do not revive me".

Speaking of Blay, Kinard is on the record as stating that the next track, Of Bane & Disease, was inspired by his experiences leaving Oh, Sleeper to tour and record with Wovenwar. Through the imagery of a lone, war-weary soldier breaking ranks to fight under his own banner, Blay asserts himself, defying his critics: "I alone in the scar-crossed armour/Running back to the line we left/I'd never leave, so far from over/I'll fly my own crest". Once again, the music on this track does an excellent job of fitting the mood set by the lyrics, as chugging guitars and driving percussion give way to a poignant, minimally accompanied guitar solo to close out the song's bridge. The rarity of this kind of instrumentation on an Oh, Sleeper track really serves to emphasise the significance of the "lone warrior" image, and makes this song really stand out as a highlight of the record.

Of Bane & Disease's mellow climax sets the listener up for the transition into Bloodied/Unbowed's second act, beginning with the ambient opening of Two Ships. Here, the military theme of the first four tracks is replaced with nautical imagery, as Blay and Kinard launch into what is arguably the album's most overtly spiritual song. Two Ships appears to be written from the perspective of God, and its place in the album's tracklist makes it feel like a response to both Fissure's wounded soldiers and Of Bane & Disease's defiant lone warrior, which makes even more sense if we understand these characters as a metaphor for Blay's own experiences. The titular ships, "Passing in the night/One gilded with gold/One slowed from the cold", appear to represent the disconnect between Blay and the God who is supposedly close at hand and yet remains invisible to him.

The final verse of Two Ships abruptly builds from the relative minimalism we have heard so far to a climactic, full-band breakdown, during the first half of which Kinard trades his usual mid-range screaming for deep, guttural growls. The musical contrast is at once jarring and familiar, and makes the song feel like something of a sequel, both musically and thematically, to Reveries of Flight from Son of the Morning. "Set your sight on me", Kinard finally pleads, as though on behalf of God, "But if you never turn and face me/You'll live adrift alone/Live your life in the night/And die with my light sitting right beside you". It's an intense conclusion to an extremely poignant song, which effectively sets the scene for the tracks to follow.

The centrepiece of Bloodied/Unbowed's second act, The Island, carries on the nautical theme established on Two Ships, in a song Kinard describes as having been inspired by his experience trying to create a new life for himself on his own terms during the band's hiatus. Kinard's frustration, determination and desire for control take centre stage here, as he screams: "We built this ship from the wreckage/Now I'm gonna build my own damn throne/Even if I have to melt the one we built to make one".

On another level, The Island's hook "No gods/No masters" also functions as a clear rejection of the spiritual challenge expressed on Two Ships, reaffirming the defiant individualism of the album's first act. Even in the midst of this defiance, however, there still remains a sense of tension, clearly articulated by Blay in the song's clean-sung chorus "Why leave the fire to chase an ember?/Why would you sunder your mast for tinder?". Where is the wisdom, Blay contends, in abandoning something you love and have worked hard to build, whether that be your career, your faith, or anything else of value, just for the sake of your pride? "That life is over, it's over", Kinard replies.

Blay's words of caution appear to have been on the mark, if the following track, Mutinous, is anything to go by. Once again we find ourselves aboard a ship, but this one is lost at sea, set adrift by its crew in defiance of its captain, caught in the tension between the mutineers' insatiable lust for power, and their growing recognition that their attempts to take control have sent them terrifyingly off course. Once again, significant parallels between the song's narrative, Kinard's life, and Christian theology start to emerge. "We made a monster of Him/Deserter of you/Impostor of me/Bastard of our dreams" - in taking hold of power out of self-interest, the mutineers, Kinard, and the unrepentant sinner alike ultimately end up corrupting their view of God, of others, of themselves, and even the very goals they set out to pursue. Ultimately, each ends up paralysed by their own choices; caught between his raging desires and their looming consequences, Kinard manically snarls "I'd rather die than to give up control/Why the hell did we ever take the wheel?".

Here we enter the climax of the album, and at the outset of its final act a blistering breakdown signals the beginning of Pulse Over Throne, Bloodied/Unbowed's eighth track. Short, brutal and powerful, Pulse Over Throne sets the scene for the fury to come as the rebel soldiers from the album's first act descend into their most primal nature, becoming more beast than human. The song references several past Oh, Sleeper tracks, including We Are The Archers, Children of Fire, and The Fire Dawn, in the line "We are the moving wall, the armoured march/The archers, the medics, the fire-born resistance/Immortal, we'll face them one on one thousand". However, we see the meaning of the original lyrics subverted in a twist echoing Romans 1:23 - "They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." - as words which once referred to the armies of Heaven are used to describe "Men evolving to gods" through regression into an animalistic killing frenzy.

That frenzy is unleashed on Oxygen, as the armies of the resistance clash with their transhumanist foes. "If it blocks your path, burn it down/Pile it on, I'll burn it all/Fire crawls any wall in its way/So when there's nothing left to burn/I'll set myself ablaze", Kinard growls, vividly depicting the suicidal ferocity of beast against machine. With lyrics like "Black out the sun/You'll see I can be the light", and the repeated line from the previous song "Tonight, on hell we dine", the album's climax consciously conjures up images from popular depictions of the three hundred Spartans, outmatched but defiant, bloodied but unbowed, ready to fight and die in a blaze of glory.

Not only is Oxygen lyrically epic, it's also musically phenomenal. Though Mayfield's drumming absolutely shines throughout the album, his performance on Oxygen, particularly the seamless switches between emphasis on either the up- or down-beats at different stages in the song's verses, stands out as a real musical high point, building tension, keeping the listener from getting too comfortable, and providing the perfect complement to Blay's relentless riffs and Kinard's downright bloodthirsty screaming.

And just like that, it's over. The dust settles on the battlefield, smoke rises from the banners of both armies annihilated in the fray, and Blay is left to sing against a musical backdrop of symphonic swells, from the perspective of a dying soldier overlooking the carnage. The Summit is an opportunity to reflect on the ultimate futility of the conflict the album has been building towards. "I hear they could see the fire for miles", Blay muses "But I don't know, if you'd known the cost, if you'd ever light it/If you knew you'd die alone, would you ever stand to fight?".

In a sense, The Summit views the whole narrative arc of Bloodied/Unbowed through the lens of the Sisyphean struggle, a picture of humanity in the absence of God, seeking to create meaning out of ultimately meaningless things. "Every man has a mountain/And every day is spent climbing", Blay reflects, observing that reaching the peak of his mountain brings no more satisfaction than the struggle to reach it, and inevitably leads to the desire to return to the bottom, a cycle to be repeated until death. There is no true hope to be found in this view of things, but without the means to believe in the transcendent, Blay is left alone to contend with the Absurd.

It's an evocative closer to a powerful album, brought even closer to home by the bridge: "I don't want to close our eyes/I don't want to go our separate ways/I don't want the story that brought us here to end today". If these lyrics are, as I suspect, an expression of hope for the future of the band, then count me among the many fans who want to echo that. Oh, Sleeper, it's good to have you back.

[jewishandmore]

Forgiving the Unforgivable

“Forgiving the Unforgivable” Rosh haShanah Morning 1 Tishrei 5779 Monday, September 10, 2018 Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, New York

Every year at this season people come to rabbis asking this question: “How can I forgive this person who has done the unforgivable to me?” How can we forgive those who don’t seem to even know how much they’ve hurt us? This turns out to be the same question. In both cases we are dealing with situations when no apology is likely to arrive or ever be good enough. How do we forgive without apologies?

Earlier in this season of repentance, I was reading about John McCain’s life, in the wake of his funeral. Charlie Pierce told this particular story as he reflected on the Senator’s life:

In 1998, when I was traveling with McCain for a profile in Esquire, I asked him if there was anyone involved with the Vietnam War that he couldn’t bring himself to forgive. By then, he had made his peace with the antiwar movement; he delivered the eulogy for an antiwar activist whose speeches from Hanoi had been piped into his cell. He – along with John Kerry – had succeeded in normalizing relations between the United States and Vietnam. He had taken Walter Cronkite on a tour of his old prison. He’d even forgiven the guards who’d beaten and tortured him. A couple of years earlier, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, one of the architects of that bloody misadventure, had written a memoir in which he confessed that he'd known the war was un-winnable as early as 1967, but that he had kept his mouth shut while the country slid more swiftly toward disaster. As it happens, October 26, 1967 was the day that John McCain's fighter jet had taken an anti-aircraft missile over Hanoi. So, I asked him if there was someone he couldn't forgive, or at least talk to, about that awful time. He got all quiet and took a long time to answer.

“McNamara,” he finally said. “That's the worst to me—to know you've made a mistake and to do nothing to correct it while, year after year, people are dying and to do nothing to stop it, to know what your public duty is and to ignore it. I don't think any conversation we could have would be helpful now.”

[From “John McCain’s Funeral Was a Council of War – Just as He Meant It to Be”, by Charles P. Pierce, appearing in Esquire, September 1, 2018]

What about McNamara - did he ever try and apologize? In the Fog of War, a 2003 documentary he said: “I'm very sorry that in the process of accomplishing things, I've made errors.” As annual Season of Atonement visitors to the art of apologizing, all of us here do not count this as an apology.

While he never issued any other formal apology for his role in the quagmire, McNamara, who died in July 2009 at age 93, made clear he was haunted by the blunders made under his watch that cost the lives of thousands of U.S. troops. “People don't want to admit they made mistakes,” he explained to the New York Times. “This is true of the Catholic Church, it's true of companies, it's true of nongovernmental organizations and it's certainly true of political bodies.” We can see him continuing to not apologize here by explaining it away instead of owning his part and his responsibility.

Here, on the scale of thousands of lives, is a massive mistake, a transgression that hurt so many people - how is this different from what we’re asked to do on this day, at this season, by our tradition?

Maimonides makes the clearest and most thorough Jewish description of atonement. The process starts with confession, leads to a sincere apology, culminates in an agreed upon course of making amends, that finishes up with atonement, the return to a state of peace between the wronged and the transgressor. The transgressor’s transformation needs to be significant and remarkable so that when faced with the situation a subsequent time the mistake is not repeated. The person who is wronged needs to believe this in order to participate in granting full atonement. Atonement is the arrival at a new state of repair and wholeness after the tearing apart that happens with an injury done by one person to another.

This time of year asks a lot of us. Just look at the to-do list even before we get to the prayerbook and its lists of confessions:

Prepare our nice clothes

Put in the brisket

Get or bake challah

Ask for forgiveness from everyone I wronged.

We really want to fit forgiveness into a list - it would be so convenient if we could check it off.

Since there is an expiration date on this command to seek forgiveness - we’re supposed to get it done before we come back to worship together on Yom Kippur - the calendar itself may help us reinforce the idea that there is a storehouse of forgiveness that we can easily hand out to people offering a steady supply of apologies from their own box.

Our feelings are not commodities. There is no storage cabinet containing trust, forgiveness, friendship, sisterhood, or brotherhood to dispense at will. And since there’s no storehouse, and while we give ourselves these rigorous times and dates to try and make it all work better, there is no neat and comfortable working out of emotional difficulty.

And this is really very difficult.

The transformation that is required of the transgressor is difficult, and so is finding a way for the wronged person to feel forgiveness towards even a sincere seeker of apologies. When the transgressor comes to us, hat in hand, confessing, apologizing, and offering a path of making amends, it is still difficult to forgive. What do we do when no one comes apologizing, and for all we know, they never will?

You can’t go to someone and say “I’m sorry you made me so angry, apologize, and I will forgive you.”

When you can’t do anything about the person who has wronged you, you feel powerless. You feel cut off from any sort of relating. Again, you are not being asked to apologize in this situation - you want to receive an apology.

We are not commanded to go to someone who has wronged us and ask them to apologize because we did nothing wrong. It’s not our responsibility. Still, you suffer the injury as the person who was wronged.

In order to re-establish our sense of self, our sense of control, we want to reach out and confront that person.

Otherwise, you are stuck with unresolved feelings.

And while the High Holy Days ask us to take responsibility as a transgressor - a doer of wrongs - we who feel wronged are left with a passive role. We are non-actors in a drama that seems to keep on picking on us.

We need to retake control of this story. 

We cannot forgive someone who has not apologized.

Forgiveness, like trust, is not a gift. We cannot open up a box a forgiveness and give it away.

What we can do is explore our anger and our hurt.

We may be attached to the idea that we have to give forgiveness because we want to reassert some control over whatever happened. We want to stop feeling resentful, upset, hurt, and offended. We want our minds to rule over our hearts which continue to feel even when we know it is irrational and we should just heed everyone’s good advice and let it go, let bygones be bygones, and admit that we cannot make changes to relationships and interactions by ourselves.

What we’re looking for is some internal relief. We may call it forgiveness but forgiveness is about the progress between two people not the progress inside my soul. I want to feel “not powerless “ in the face of my own sense of being wronged.

On the other hand, forgiveness could actually be the right word. Maybe we have been applying forgiveness in the wrong direction.

I don’t have to forgive the person who never comes and apologizes.

I have to work on forgiving myself in the face of my own powerlessness.

This is the act of forgiveness I need.

If the formula for atonement requires confession plus apology plus making amends and then leads to atonement, to becoming whole, and we are on our own for the whole process - we are stuck at confession - then we have to work this process in a different way because the expected partner, the transgressor, is not participating.

We start here. We confess to being hurt. We own our own sense of injury.

We apologize to ourselves for judging ourselves so harshly. We didn’t deserve the injury. It came from outside of us. And while we may have been victimized, we don’t have to be victims. 

Think of John McCain - may his memory be for a blessing. He made his peace with the anti-war movement, normalized relations between the United States and Vietnam, and then he resolved to not allow this to happen to other people and fought for it. McCain turned his victimization into a campaign against torture in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when many people all over the political spectrum were entertaining the idea of “enhanced interrogation” as justifiable. McCain stood up as a former victim on behalf of other victims.

To turn our injury into making amends with the world creates a process of atonement, of forgiveness, that liberates us from the person who did us wrong.

Between Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur we say that our fates are written and sealed for the New Year. We are in the in between time when we still can make changes before they get sealed, and the gates close at the end of Yom Kippur. I can’t help but feel that we need to give ourselves a little bit more time, and a lot more personal power, to take over this process.

We can be the ones who author our own fates.

Our personal growth and progress is independent of other people’s inability to take responsibility for their actions, and how they impacted us. Let us free ourselves from the people who hurt us.

We can begin this by changing our seasonal greetings a bit.

Instead of “may you be written and sealed” I offer you, “may you find ways to write yourself a better year.”

May we all take control of our stories, find the forgiveness we need for ourselves, and create a narrative that gets us past the people who will never apologize.

May we write ourselves a better book of life, for a better New Year.

L’Shanah Tovah.