#we said this in 2016 but it bears repeating now

[dostoyevsky-official]

american politics has been liquefying for years in a way that one more election can't fix. when trump goes on a podium and says we'll expand our borders, we'll take greenland, and the crowd cheers, it's not something you can fix with a vote. when kamala said trump doesn't walk the walk on border security and told genocide protesters she's speaking—while presiding over a genocide—and the crowd cheered, it's not something you can fix with a vote. the anti-immigrant rhetoric matches that of the bush years and deportations only surpassed bush-era numbers in the biden administration. the elections in 2000 and 2004 were outright stolen; 2008 and 2012 didn't fix it. obsession with the trump rupture papers over what's been boiling for a long time (pick your favorite starting date), that there's a poison seeped through 40% of the electorate. whatever the solutions are to the current impasse, we aren't voting ourselves out of it; or, if we are, it's not happening with this party

[nihilnovisubsole]

Because of your latest post: not sure if you’ve answered this before, but how does someone even entertain the idea of writing for the game dev industry? Did you start out on indie games or just write before and show them your work? Since it’s such a subjective field etc

if i have, it bears repeating! here's a rough timeline of what i did. never discount the value of luck and the kindness of friends

2016: i was doing a random freelance transcription job when i saw @theivorytowercrumbles post about writing for voltage. they reblogged the studio's open casting call for new writers. since it was so lenient - no experience, fanfic samples allowed - i applied. they hired me for their new project, but let me go after a trial period, citing that the tone of my writing was a bad fit for that game. i foundered for a while after that. i don't take rejection well. i started dangerous crowns to try to make money from writing some other way.

2017: one of voltage's producers reached out to me and said they'd started another project that i was a good fit for. she felt letting me go was a mistake and wanted to snap me back up. i said yes, i mean, are you kidding? so i started on reiner's route.

2018-2019: i kept at it. i took on diego's route. it occurred to me that i wasn't making very much money, but i liked my coworkers, and i was building my portfolio, so who cared? i also finished dangerous crowns, and a handful of people bought it, but certainly not enough to support myself or anything.

early 2020: between the pay and creative differences with voltage's team, it started to sink in that i needed to find other work. i applied to the few open game writer jobs i could find, but with only mobile romance in my portfolio, i got nowhere. i threw in dangerous crowns samples. i tried to network on twitter. i still never made it to the interview phase. i foundered for a while again.

late 2020: the voltage writers went on strike. i gave a statement to a journalist that one of obsidian's narrative designers noticed. we became acquaintances over it. another old friend of mine threw me a life raft in the form of a different contract, better paying, on a non-romance indie game. i took it gladly. i added a twine game to my portfolio, too. i kept applying. i got a few interviews, but something still didn't click.

2021: i finally accepted that i needed formal help. i did a portfolio workshop. i got resume coaching. the coach passed my name to a writer on the company of heroes team. they liked me! they also paid me more money than i'd ever seen in my life. at the same time, obsidian advertised a narrative job opening. i applied on a lark and let my ND pal know i was doing so. why not, right? college-new-vegas-fan me would want me to. they rejected me, but not before i passed their writing test and two interviews. i had nothing to lose at that point, so i told my ND pal that i was bummed. she gave me a golden piece of advice: "you came really close. try again."

2022: obsidian had another narrative opening. i threw myself at it. i was now going to annoy them into hiring me. since i was a known quantity from applying six months before, they had no qualms about interviewing me again. this time, it worked out, and i've been there ever since.

what's the common denominator here? i met people who thought i was all right and gave me a hand up when i needed it. the standard advice is to work with a community of your peers instead of trying to get your heroes to senpai-notice you. it's not that they don't care - they just have their own thing going on, and your peers could be the heroes of tomorrow if the right project comes along. i also found the portfolio was the end-all-be-all when it came to job hunting. i went through a grieving process with that! i'm not afraid to admit it. i wish studios had held my degree or dangerous crowns in higher regard, but i just had to make games in a wider variety of genres, and that was that.

one caveat: narrative is a really saturated field right now. a lot of people want to write, and there aren't many openings. it's not uncommon for big studios to get hundreds of applicants. larian probably got over a thousand for the job they posted recently. i feel awful saying that, because i don't want to discourage you, but i'd feel worse if i didn't let you know what you were getting into. if it's something you want, you should try! keep an open mind about the random projects you may find. you never know where they'll take you.

[mariacallous]

2024 is a big election year for the world: More than 50 countries are expected to hold national polls, including large but profoundly damaged democracies such as India, Indonesia, and the United States. Anxieties abound that social media, further weaponized with artificial intelligence, will play a destructive role in these elections.

Pundits have worried that technology might doom democracy since Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president in 2016. It’s true that social media can benefit aspiring autocrats. Populists in particular latch on to social media today as a way to connect directly with people, bypassing restraints on their behavior that political parties would have provided in the pre-internet age. They can also profit from echo chambers, which reinforce the sense that a whole people uniformly supports a populist leader.

Yet social media is not inherently populist. And if populists do well this year, it will not be because there are no tools or strategies to stop them.

To combat populism, democracies need political will. They must not only push for better platform design and regulation but also work to strengthen what some consider a thoroughly old-fashioned institution: political parties that have the capacity to rein in leaders threatening democracy.

Every media revolution in history has caused a moral panic: The printing press was said to have prompted wars of religion; radio gave the world Adolf Hitler; TV enabled McCarthyism. None of these points, still repeated by sophisticated observers today, is completely wrong. But in every case, the technological determinism proved mistaken, as did the assumption that new media would empower irrational masses, always ready to be seduced by demagogues.

At first, social media was greeted with great optimism. In what now feels like a different era, promoters of democracy looked to Twitter (now known as X) and Facebook as tools to help uprisings against autocrats everywhere. But just as the Arab Spring turned to Arab Winter, enthusiasm morphed into pessimism. Panic ensued in 2016, after the double shock of Brexit and Trump’s election. Liberal commentators were quick to identify what they saw as a major culprit of the world’s twin populist disasters: social media and, in particular, echo chambers. Not only did liberals veer from cheering to jeering. They also indulged in nostalgia for a supposedly golden age of responsible gatekeeping by journalists. The wild swings in opinion and the idealization of the past were signs that we have yet to find our bearings when making sense of new media.

Social scientists today know a bit more than they did in 2016: Filter bubbles—or online echo chambers curated by algorithms—exist but are much less common than often assumed; they are not the main cause of polarization, even as they help spread disinformation and propaganda more swiftly; and our offline life is in many ways less diverse than our online existence.

What makes social media unique is that it allows for what can seem like a direct connection between political leaders and potential followers. This is particularly useful for populists, who claim that only they can represent what they often call the “real people.” This implies that all other contenders for power do not represent the people, since, as the usual charge goes, they are corrupt. It also implies that some citizens are not part of the “real people” at all. Think of Trump complaining that his critics are not just wrong about policy but that they are “un-American” or even—as he put it at a Veterans Day rally last year—“vermin.” The point of populism, then, is not just criticism of elites. After all, finding fault with the powerful is often justified. Instead, the point is to exclude people from the people: other politicians at the level of party politics and entire groups—usually already vulnerable ones, such as Muslims in India—at the level of the citizenry.

This seemingly direct connection contributes to the erosion of political parties. Populism is about denying and, eventually, destroying pluralism; well-functioning parties can push back against this and rein in populist political entrepreneurs. Some countries even require parties by law to have internal democratic structures. (The radical right-wing Dutch populist Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, which won the most seats in last November’s elections, would not be allowed in those countries because Wilders is the only official member.) Of course, parties unite partisans. But partisans often disagree on how principles they share should translate into policy. There is nothing strange about parties forming legitimate opposition to their leadership, and it has often proved crucial in providing a check on leaders. There’s a reason that populists such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban run their parties in a highly autocratic fashion.

To be sure, the sense of directness created by social media is an illusion. Social media mediates, after all. Yet the prospect of an unfiltered encounter—however misguided—promises authenticity and a sense of connection that was once available only at exceptional moments, such as at a party meeting or mass rally. The political theorist Nadia Urbinati has suggested the paradoxical-sounding term “direct representation” for this relationship: Anyone standing between citizens and their representatives seems to have disappeared.

The work of getting people to the polls used to be done differently. As the political scientist Paul D. Kenny explains in his book Why Populism?, before the age of social media, mobilization depended on clientelism or a well-organized (put more bluntly: highly bureaucratized) political party. Parties and candidates promised supporters material benefits or bureaucratic favors in exchange for votes. This was costly, and costs would rise steeply if political competition intensified or more power brokers entered the fray. Bureaucratic parties are also expensive to maintain. Party officers have to be paid, even if they can count on volunteer work from idealists who sacrifice their weekends to distribute leaflets or canvass door-to-door.

As Kenny points out, social media cuts the costs of mobilization, especially for celebrity candidates such as Trump, who can draw on their pop culture credit. In the old days, when print and TV were dominant, propaganda feedback loops would have been constructed at great costs by party strategists; today, they are created for free by companies that want to maximize engagement for the sake of profit.

As with influencers, a politician’s online presence requires constant curation, so it is not entirely costless. Trump might have written his own tweets, spelling mistakes and all, but others need to pay tech-savvy teams. Social media might work best for those who already treat parties as instruments for marketing a personality rather than developing policy. Take former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose public relations specialists created the Forza Italia party for him in the 1990s and organized it like a fusion of soccer fan club and business enterprise. It is not an accident that Berlusconi joined TikTok before the most recent Italian elections in 2022 (even if the ragazzi he tried to appeal to might have found his performance, as young adults would say, cringe).

The most successful politicians can tap into both forms of support. For instance, Modi, with his enormous cult of personality, has emerged from a mass membership party with a bureaucratic apparatus and can rely on the free labor of partisan foot soldiers. Yet he has also built a following online, where he has been able to present himself as a celebrity above party politics.

Once populist leaders establish the illusion of direct connection, they find it easier to discredit traditional mediators, such as professional journalists, by claiming that they distort politicians’ messages. That can translate into fewer pluralistic debates and fewer opportunities for reporters to ask inconvenient questions. Modi and Orban have not held a genuine press conference in many years; Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have declined to join debates before elections. Trump’s refusal to appear onstage with current Republican candidates might seem like a risky gamble: As candidate Ron DeSantis has tried to point out, the front-runner seems afraid to engage the rest of the pack; plus, he’s losing an opportunity to fully display his knack for the memorable put-down. But Trump is following the autocrat’s playbook: to appear above the fray and portray yourself as the unique embodiment of the popular will. Why stoop to the level of the competition if you’ve already told your supporters that everyone else is corrupt or, at the least, completely unrepresentative of their views?

Filter bubbles can therefore help populists sell their core product: the notion of a homogeneous people united behind the populist leader. Algorithmic curation designed to increase engagement with like-minded users amplifies this dynamic. Platforms often suggest what to watch or click on next. Anyone looking up Orban on X, for instance, will likely find an assortment of far-right content. When I recently checked his account, I was shown tweets from the Russian foreign ministry and U.S. presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

To be sure, these online bubbles do not form in a vacuum. In the United States, plenty of people do live in a far-right bubble, without any contact even with center-right outlets such as the Wall Street Journal. This bubble is not the result of Facebook or X, however. As social scientists at Harvard University demonstrated in a 2018 study, its contours were shaped by the enormous success of right-wing cable news and talk radio in the 1990s. Social media just came on top of that infrastructure. If social media itself made for a world where conspiracy theories and hate always reign, we would see the same outcome in every country—but we don’t.

Democracies must overhaul how platforms are governed to make it harder for populists to use them to their advantage. One problem with social media in its current form is that it gives too much power to a few people. Platform power—the control over the means of connecting with others online—is today’s great unchecked power. As the social scientist Michael Seemann has written, platform power stems from the ability to give access to platforms or deny it, either through outright bans or harassment from online trolls.

As Elon Musk’s changes at Twitter have demonstrated, those who control platforms and their underlying machinery can manipulate online discourse. Since he took over the platform in 2022, Musk has not only arbitrarily suspended journalists but also weakened the rules—and reduced staffing—for content moderation. As Musk has replatformed white supremacists and other hatemongers, minorities such as transgender people have become less protected.

In halfway-functioning democracies, capricious oligarchs such as Musk get to govern platforms almost singlehandedly. In countries on the path to autocracy, the state itself can successfully pressure platforms to do its bidding, as India has done with Twitter by forcing it to block politicians, activists, and even the BBC. In outright autocracies, governments are perfecting what the social scientist Margaret Roberts has called friction and flooding. Rather than simply rely on fear created by widespread repression, as traditional dictatorships would, autocracies now “flood” the web with information to distract users and use intentional technical glitches (“friction”) to make it more difficult for citizens to access certain sites. These regimes know that censorship can draw attention to scandalous content; the truly savvy make it disappear. Such techniques are ubiquitous in China, as is surveillance. Aspiring autocrats, including right-wing populists vying for power in democracies, will no doubt try to copy this repertoire.

To be sure, populists cannot be prevented from building their own counter-publics online, just as parties cannot—and should not—be hindered as they bring together followers. Freedom to assemble and associate means that like-minded people have every right to get together with others who share the same commitments. One would not want authorities to start shutting down safe spaces for groups devoted to empowering minorities, for instance, just because they happen to be insufficiently pluralistic. Ideas to combat online homogeneity through injecting viewpoint diversity into online life are well intentioned but impractical. The jurist Cass Sunstein, for example, has suggested a “serendipity button,” which could very well come out as, “Now that you’re looking at the feminist viewpoint, how about clicking on the anti-feminist one?”

A more nuanced view of online political life does not mean that democracies must tolerate the incitement of hatred. Platform design makes a difference: As the political scientist Jennifer Forestal has shown, Reddit, for instance, makes for a more diverse conversation than Facebook Groups. Reddit allows for communities to form but keeps borders between subreddits permeable; it also empowers both moderators and users to stick to rules agreed on by an online community.

Content moderation in particular should be mandatory, as it is in Germany, rather than a luxury that a platform controller such as Musk has the power to dispense. Moderation can be abused, but that is the case with any attempt to control media power. (Libel laws can be—and are—exploited by undemocratic actors, but that does not mean we should dispense with them altogether.) To forestall this, content moderation must be as transparent as possible and subject to proper oversight; the “black boxes” of algorithms should be opened at least to researchers so that they can help policymakers understand how social media platforms are run. This might sound like a pipedream. But the European Union has been pursuing these goals with its recent Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, which so far have prevented Facebook from launching its X clone, Threads, in the bloc due to its failure to comply with privacy regulations.

Legislation and education will be important tools for democracies. The business models of social media, which are based on maximizing engagement through offering ever more extremist content, are not beyond political regulation. Democracies should also invest serious resources in teaching media literacy—something that many leaders affirm in the abstract but that, just like civic education, always gets short shrift in the end, since “hard” subjects such as math are seen as more important for global economic competition. Not least, democracies must not treat social media in isolation. If they foster a healthier media landscape, including by reinvigorating local journalism, and regulate political parties, it will be much harder for populists to succeed.

[trinketprince]

All the Youkaimatsus so far

JExcept sets that have all of them as the same youkais (Nekomata, Tanuki and the various Kitsune sets from Tabimatsu)

Pinup Poster from the Osomatsu Character Book #6 (July 2016)

A classic. The very first iteration of Youkaimatsu. Kind of hard to find since it was a bonus poster from the character book, so unless you were actively looking for the book, you wouldn’t find this.

Osomatsu - Kitsune (unknown how many tails he has but is often depicted in fan artworks as 6 or 9, 9 meaning strongest/wisest a kitsune has been, Spirit Fox)

Karamatsu - Karasu-Tengu (pun on Kara, Bird Man)

Choromatsu - Dodomeki (usually a woman cursed with long arms littered with many bird eyes because of greed. Most popular one imo)

Ichimatsu + ESP Nyanko - Nekomata (Two-tailed cat, legend says that cats who live longer than a 100 years gain a second tail)

Jyushimatsu - Rokurobi (available in two flavors. Long Neck and Floating Head. He is the former. Theorized to not actually be a youkai but created for entertainment. Also used as a literary device for a wandering soul.)

Todomatsu - Yukki Onna (Also a joke on Todo being scared stiff. Yuki Onna pull tricks on humans that usually end on the person’s death via cold. Has a harsh and soft side)

Youkai Units from The Great Youkai War event from Hesokuri Wars (November 2016)

Most popular Youkaimatsu set, this baby could get milked for miles, but for some reason isn’t. Has a lot of variants (Awakened, Darkness, Snow, Sakura and Hyakki Yagyou) and connected to a lot of other sets: Denki Mystery, Colorless Overalls, Mononoke and a bunch of others. She is the top DOGG set.

Osomatsu - Shuten-Douji (Oni Leader with a penchance for Sake, literally carrying a big ass bottle of it on his back, since he is the leader of the sextuplets and the one seen drinking beer the most)

Karamatsu - Aoandon (Summoned after 100 supernatural stories are told. Originated from the blue (ao) paper lanterns (andon) that were sometimes used to give a chilling atmosphere)

Choromatsu - Daitengu (Great Tengu, Tengus were theorized to be ascended souls, but also has its origins in a Dog Beast that looked like a comet. For some reason Dog Beast turned into Bird Man. The bird man’s beak is often anthropomorphized into long noses. Tells humanity to behave by throwing invisible stones at them)

Ichimatsu - Nine-tailed Kitsune (So wise. So powerful)

Jyushimatsu - Inugami (Dog God that possesses people)

Todomatsu - Bake-Danuki (also known as tanuki, mischievous spirits, mostly known in pop culture for their BIG FAT NUTS)

Dayon is a miko, a shrine maiden. Hatabou is an Onmyoji, an exorcist, Dekapan is a kannushi, a shrine priest. Totoko and Iyami are regular civillians

Youkai Hyakki Yagyou merchandise from Animate Girls Festival (September 2017)

One of the lesser known sets, considering that it’s just designs for a line of merch but their designs are so good? Why don’t people use these designs more often.

Osomatsu - Karasu-Tengu

Karamatsu - Nine-tailed fox

Choromatsu - Shuten-Douji (A possible reference to Season 1 Episode 2 where he gets the most drunk?)

Ichimatsu - Mizuchi (Legendary Water Serpent/Dragon)

Jyushimatsu - Kamaitachi (Beast that rides on dust devils. Cuts people using it’s scythe-like nails. The wounds are sharp but painless)

Todomatsu - Ungaikyou (A haunted mirror that can be used to trap spirits. The spirits in the ungaikyou can manipulate the reflection shown on it’s reflection.)

Kitsune Servant Set from Tabimatsu (September 2017)

Ok I know I said I wouldn’t cover the Kitsune sets from Tabimatsu since there are like 5 different Kitsune sets, but this one is noteworthy cause they have secondary Youkai traits other than the regular kitsune traits.

Osomatsu - Oni’s horns

Karamatsu - Tengu’s wings

Choromatsu - Orochi around his neck

Ichimatsu - True Kitsune (Or Nekomata’s paw?)

Jyushimatsu - Wanyudo (Flaming Wheel)

Todomatsu - I don’t know, but there’s something around his neck?

Japanese Youkai set from Shimamatsu (January 2018)

Shimamatsu was such a good game, what a shame it ended so soon. The 3D models were so cute. Edit: The two designs are from before and after evolution!

Osomatsu - Enma-san (A wrathful god in charge of judging souls in the afterlife. Resides over hell)

Karamatsu - Yamato no Orochi (Eight headed and Eight-tailed serpent/dragon)

Choromatsu - Kamaitachi (wields an actual scythe)

Ichimatsu - Youkai Catman or a Bakaneko (Catboy, furry)

Jyushimatsu - Yobuko (lives in the mountains, repeats whatevers shouted into the mountain, explains the phenomemon of Echos)

Todomatsu - Yuki Otoko (Snowman, a Yuki Onna basically)

“Inn” Osoma and Choroe from Osomatsu Season 2 Episode 17

A BUNCH OF PEOPLE REMINDED ME AND HOW COULD I FORGET THE BEST YOUKAI EVER. Osoma baby,,,, I’m so sorry..... Srsly, this skit was so good, I hope they make more skits like this where they make entirely new characters out of the framework of the sextuplets.

Osoma - A Zashiki-warashi, child spirits who live in store rooms or extra rooms, they died buried in their homes. Pranksters but meeting one is said to bring good fortunes to families. Osoma gets crossovered a lot with the other Youkai sets in JP fanart. A popular pairing is Dodomeki Chorosuke (from Denki Mystery) and Osoma also Kitsune Osomatsu (from the poster) and Osoma.

Choroe - Not necessarily a youkai, in fact in the episode she’s presented as just a regular human. But is theorized often to be a Yama-uba. An old woman banished to the mountains. She provides shelter to weary travelers (in the myth it’s just a humble shelter but you know. an inn is also considered a shelter) before eating them. In one story she eats the recently birthed baby of a woman who had to give birth in the mountains. 

Mononoke from Hesokuri Wars (May 2019)

Technically they are all the same type of being, Mononoke, but they look different from each other. Mononoke can posses individuals and cause suffereing and even death. And technically they aren’t Youkais but Onryos, vengeful spirits. But Onryos can also be used to refer to youkais and truthfully I just wanna include this set cause their designs are so cool looking. This set’s attacks contain glimpses of units of other sets. 

Osomatsu - Bear themed

Karamatsu - Wolf themed

Choromatsu - Rooster/Chicken themed

Ichimatsu - Spider

Jyushimatsu - Boar

Todomatsu - Bull or Ox

Edo Rock The Great Youkai Harvest Festival from Tabimatsu (October 2019)

This set is interesting cause rather than youkai alone, they are also musicians. This set also has another set like Hesokuri called The Great Youkai NEET which is basically the awakened versions, properly showcasing more of the youkai traits.

Osomatsu - Shuten-Douji (Again, we need to stage an intervention for you damn)

Karamatsu - Karasu-Tengu (Again)

Choromatsu - Mizuchi (actually riding said serpent)

Ichimatsu - Black Kitsune (Hot Topic, Goth version)

Jyushimatsu - Frog. Just. Frog. (could be a reference to the legend of Jiraiya, the ninja who could shapeshift into a frog/ride big frogs. His mouth is cover just like a ninja is too.)

Todomatsu - Kamaitachi (could be a reference to season 1 where Todomatsu wields a scythe)

Iyami - Oni (not sure if he’s any particular oni but he does have the horns and metal club)

Atsushi - Ibaraki-Douji? (White hair and singular horn, most imporant servant of Shuten-Douji)

Promo Merch from Sega Cafe collab (September 2020)

Edit: Thank you @zenryokubatankyu for notifying me! Another set of promo youkais! You can get them by random by ordering a drink or meal at the now-defunct Sega x Osomatsu collab cafe. And the return of F6? Damn I haven’t seen you since Season 2!

Osomatsu - Oni

Karamatsu - I’m not exactly sure but he seems like a Mizuchi, a water serpent/dragon. He also could be another legendary serpent/dragon though.

Choromatsu - Kappa

Ichimatsu + ESP Nyanko - Karasu-Tengu

Jyushimatsu - I’m not sure, at first i thought it might be a crab youkai judging from the legs, but upon closer inspection he has spider webs on his robes, so they may be spider legs instead. Could be a Jorogumo, a youkai that wields fire breathing spiders with it’s spider legs

Todomatsu - Bakaneko (I think? The veil could be the napkin a bakaneko puts on it’s head)

Ayakashi Sextuplet’s Retro Halloween Cafe merch from Web Kuji (October 2020)

Thank you @gradelstuff​ for telling me about this! Ayakashi are Youkai that appear above nearby bodies of water. Although the youkais they’re dressed up as (or are?) aren’t really what you would call ayakashi? Although it’s cafe themed, it isn’t actually from a cafe collaboration. These designs are merchandise meant to be won through lottery. So if say you really love Kara and Choro’s designs (I do), then tough luck buddy!

Osomatsu - Oni

Karamatsu - Now you may think he’s Dodomeki since he’s covered with eyes, but turns out there are two other eye-relateed youkai! Mokumokuren is a youkai phenomenon where eyes appear from torn paper walls and tatami floors, initially i thought this was it given the checkered pattern he was wearing. But he might actually be a Hyakume, a youkai covered head to toe in yellow eyes specifically. Underneath those eyes is a body of flesh roughly in the shape of a man. This Youkai isn’t particularly malicious, only detaching one of it’s many eyes to follow you and survey you for criminal activiy. He might also be a BackBeard, a youkai allegedly from the US, err that would make him a cryptid I guess? A Backbeard is often characterized as a shadow with a Yellow eye with a red iris in the center. Note: Backbeard’s true origins are not known as there doesn’t seem to be any cryprid called a Backbeard, it first entered the Japanese public eye as an antogonist in the show Gegege no Kitaro. Although ever since then this “yokai” has appeared in other media and games in Japan.

Choromatsu - He isn’t exactly dressed as it (only themed as it) but the youkai he represents is the one he’s holding, a Kasa-obake, One of my favorite youkais and it’s literally iconic. Thought to be a Tsukomogami, an object that gains a spirit after it turns 100 years old.

Ichimatsu - Edit: I’m not sure but he might be a Kuchisake-Onna. In the description attached to his teaser, it makes mention of specifically his wide smile, his dos dagger and his beautiful shirt. A kuchisake onna is a yokai that wanders in the street covering her face with a mask (skull mask for ichi) and a sharp object (his dos dagger). TW GORE DESCRIPTION: She asks you if you think she’s attractive and depending on your answer she muders you with her scissors, plunging it into you OR she takes off her mask showing her wide smile, her mouth slit at the corners to her ears and asks “how about now?” and depending on your reaction she cuts you in half with her sharp object OR she slits the corners of your mouth to look like hers. END DESCRIPTION. Ichi has the mask, sharp object, wide smile and “attractiveness”. Obviously it would be inappropriate to portray ichi in the same fashion as the kuchisake onna so he was probably given the internal organ tattoos to represent the gory yokai. (internal organs usually = gore in japan). This is speculah and he might be another youkai but this is all i can think of rn.

Jyushimatsu - sailor themed Jiangshi. Jiangshi are basically Zombies originally from Chinese culture. They hop around, and crave for life force. this little jyushimatsu has taken to tomato juice instead. (Bonus: the zombie that osomatsu is in the zombie set in hesokuri wars is also a Jiangshi)

Todomatsu - Kitsune (sly fox)

“The Night Path” Youkai from Osomatsu-san Season 3 Episode 6 (November 2020)

The latest and what sparked me to make this post tbh. This set reuses the Rokurobi design from the very first Youkaimatsu iteration! Full circle yo! I like to think of this set as an addition to the original youkaimatsu, since they’re both from the primary sources.

Jyushimatsu - Rokurobi (Again)

Totoko - Amabie (mermaid with three legs? prophesized about either good harvest or an epidemic, trivia: “Amabie” trended when Covid 19 hit the world)

Hatabou - Azukiarai (a youkai that originated from the sound of something like beans being washed near a river, anyone who comes near will fall into the river)

Dayon - Nopperabou (Faceless spirits that take the form of humans. They are harmless usually, they just scare humans)

Dekapan - Kappa (Mischievous River spirits)

That should be all of them! 

Recap: 

Osomatsu has been a Kitsune, Shuten-Douji (twice), Karasu-Tengu, Enma-san and an Oni

Karamatsu has been a Karasu-Tengu (twice), Aoandon, Kitsune, Yamato no Orochi and a Mizuchi (?)

Choromatsu has been a Dodomeki, Daitengu, Shuten-Douji, Kamaitachi, Mizuki and a Kappa (No repeats!)

Ichimatsu has been a Nekomata, Kitsune (twice), Mizuchi, Bakaneko and a Karasu-Tengu

Jyushimatsu has been a Rokurobi (twice-ish), Inugami, Kamaitachi, Yobuko, a Frog from Jiraiya and a Jorogumo (?)

Todomatsu has been a Yuki Onna (twice), Bake-danuki, Ungaikyou, Kamaitachi and a Bakaneko

You can definitely see a trend (lmao), I’m looking forward to more Youkaimatsus from Osomatsu-san!

bonus:

Osomatsu-san cameo from Yokai Watch!!!

[pepaldi]

Johnson’s backing for the Cambo oilfield is unscientific and potentially disastrous.

Peter Capaldi

The government should be supporting green jobs for fossil fuel workers, not deepening our dependency on oil and gas.

In three weeks’ time world leaders will gather in my hometown of Glasgow to talk about the biggest threat to our future: the climate crisis. We’ve seen an unrecognisable summer of flooding and extreme heat, and as a result people have lost their lives in Europe and around the world. The crisis is very much upon us.

And yet, incredibly, our prime minister, Boris Johnson, is preparing to sign off on a new drilling permit at Cambo oilfield, west of Shetland. If approved, Cambo would produce 170m barrels of oil and would deepen the climate crisis for decades to come. It would be a staggeringly backward move, going against the science and denying us all the green recovery we’ve been promised.

Let’s bear in mind that in the run-up to these talks kicking off, we have had some stark warnings about the sort of action that’s needed. Experts at the International Energy Agency have said there can be no new fossil fuel projects beyond those already under way this year, and the head of the UN has said its latest climate report must sound a “death knell for fossil fuels”.

Nearly 150 miles up the road from Glasgow is Aberdeen, a city where one in 10 jobs is dependent on oil and gas. This is a community that has felt every boom and bust of the oil industry, and where the big crash in 2016 led to many turning to food banks. During the pandemic 35,000 industry workers lost their jobs.

And across the UK, our reliance on oil and gas isn’t doing us any favours. Gas prices are soaring, energy companies are going bust, and many are facing a winter of fuel poverty. In recent weeks, we’ve seen long queues at the petrol pumps as the government grapples with the fuel distribution chaos. The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has admitted that our dependence on volatile global gas prices has left us exposed.

It’s clear that we need to urgently transition away from oil and gas towards using cleaner energy, such as wind power. But in making this shift, we can’t be leaving fossil fuel workers behind.

North Sea communities are resilient. They’ve seen shipbuilding come and go, and are now facing down the next big shift in industry. Four in five offshore workers have said they’re willing to move jobs to work in other industries. But those who want to work in renewables face sky-high training costs, and routinely get asked to repeat qualifications they have already done. Too often the government awards industry contracts overseas, meaning that new jobs go elsewhere. We’ve all heard politicians using slogans such as “build back better” and “green recovery”. But so far the government has failed to deliver.

To create green jobs, you’d think the government would be throwing all its efforts into creating a thriving renewable energy sector, and upgrading our homes and transport so we can wean ourselves off our oil addiction. But astonishingly, it is backing this new Cambo oilfield. And ministers seem to be the only ones who think this is a good idea – all the other major political parties think we should either reconsider the project or just scrap it entirely.

Now, I’m no expert in creating green jobs, but I’d guess that clinging on to doomed fossil fuels, which need to be phased out, isn’t the way to do it. Meanwhile, the UK is selling and installing fewer heat pumps than almost any other country in Europe.

If Johnson truly wants to be a climate leader and to boost the UK economy, he needs to be blocking climate-disaster projects such as Cambo, and making sure oil and gas workers are able to retrain to work in things such as offshore wind, decommissioning, or retrofitting our homes and buildings to make them warmer. This could be a chance to see the UK prosper and be a world-leading example in energy transition.

We know the climate crisis is happening, and we know our reliance on volatile fossil fuels is causing chaos. But we also know how to tackle it. If only Johnson would move forwards instead of backwards.

Peter Capaldi is an actor and campaigner

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

Camilla Tominey Telegraph, "She wanted drama"

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'She wanted drama': The inside story of the rift between Harry and Meghan and The Firm

As the Sussexes give their tell-all Oprah Winfrey interview, royal insiders reveal the 'other side of the story'

By Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor 5 March 2021 • 9:00pm

There was something distinctly familiar about the Oprah Winfrey teaser in which Prince Harry declared: "My biggest concern was history repeating itself."

The words, due to be aired during the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes' tell-all interview on Sunday night, bore an uncanny resemblance to the statement released by Harry's communications secretary, Jason Knauf, in November 2016 after the Sunday Express had revealed that the Prince was dating the American actress.

Confirming that "his girlfriend Meghan Markle" had been "subject to a wave of abuse and harassment", the statement criticised the "racial undertones" of newspaper coverage, adding: "Prince Harry is worried about Ms Markle's safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her. This is not a game – it is her life and his."

The unprecedented salvo created two important narratives around the former Suits star – it formally confirmed her status as the woman in Harry's life but also positioned her, in the eyes of the palace and the public, as the victim at the heart of a media "storm". As the statement suggested, a line had been "crossed".

But the tirade "by the Communications Secretary to Prince Harry" also put Mr Knauf in a compromising position. How was the former director of corporate affairs for the Royal Bank of Scotland going to be able to handle media relations for a couple when the Prince had so publicly made plain their deep hostility towards the press?

Almost exactly two years later, the 39-year-old spin doctor would submit a a bullying claim accusing Meghan of driving two personal assistants out of the household and undermining the confidence of a third staff member.

The Sussexes have denied that Harry pleaded with Mr Knauf not to pursue it, claiming the couple are the victims of a calculated smear campaign based on harmful misinformation. They said the Duchess was "saddened by this latest attack on her character, particularly as someone who has been the target of bullying herself and is deeply committed to supporting those who have experienced pain and trauma".

Those highlighting the "outrageous bullying" say they want to "tell the other side of the story" to the picture expected to be painted by the Duchess  on the Oprah special of her "almost unsurvivable" time in the Royal family. "Anyone who is a victim can't bear to watch it," said one.

The couple's lawyers insist Buckingham Palace is manipulating the press to peddle a "wholly false narrative" –notwithstanding the fact that the complainants no longer work in the royal household and the lack of palace action has now prompted an internal inquiry.

The Telegraph has spoken to a number of well-placed insiders who witnessed first-hand the turmoil within the royal household from Meghan's arrival as Prince Harry's girlfriend to the couple's decision to stand down as working royals last year.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity amid claims they had been operating in a "climate of fear", where employees were routinely "humiliated" in front of their peers and repeatedly subjected to "unreasonable demands" by both Meghan and Harry.

Unwilling to play a supporting role

It was not until October 2017, a year after Mr Knauf's unprecedented statement that Meghan gave an interview to Vanity Fair in which she declared of her relationship with Harry: "We're in love. I'm sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but what I hope people will understand is that this is our time."

The public did not have to wait long. Just a month later, the couple announced their engagement with a photocall in the sunken garden at Kensington Palace and an interview with the BBC's Mishal Husain in which Harry described his fiancee as "another team player as part of the bigger team".

Yet behind palace gates, it was quickly becoming apparent that Meghan had no intention of she and Harry being seen as the "supporting act" to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, despite their seniority in the royal pecking order.

That Christmas, determined to walk side by side with William and Kate to Sandringham's St Mary Magdalene Church, rather than several steps behind, they were pictured together as the so-called "Fab Four".

United front: The 'fab four' attend the Christmas Day service at the at Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham estate Credit: Getty Images Europe

The Cambridges invited the Sussexes to spend the festive period at their nearby bolthole, Anmer Hall, an experience Meghan spoke of fondly afterwards. "Meghan was very positive about it," said a former aide.

Two months later, the quartet appeared at their first official event together at the inaugural forum of their Royal Foundation – a highly choreographed event described by one royal insider as "designed to send a message that they would be working as a team. It was all very carefully rehearsed beforehand".

Disagreements with the Cambridges

After Meghan showcased her years of previous work with "larger NGOs and smaller grassroots organisations", both William and Harry acknowledged that working so closely with loved ones had led to "healthy disagreements" over how to best guide the foundation's work.

"Working as a family does have its challenges, of course it does," Harry said. "But we're stuck together for the rest of our lives."

By now, Kensington Palace staff had already become familiar with a mantra that would come to characterise the run-up to the Sussexes' wedding in May 2018.

"Want Meghan wants, Meghan gets" may have been shouted by Prince Harry to Angela Kelly, the Queen's personal assistant, following a row over a tiara – but royal aides were already well acquainted with the importance of meeting the Duchess's exacting standards.

"Everyone wanted her to be happy because they knew that would make him happy," said one. "Do whatever it takes to make it work for Meghan was the mantra. We all cared deeply about Harry. Contrary to this idea that they weren't supported, we were going to great lengths to accommodate their needs."

'We all cared deeply about Harry,' said one royal aide Credit: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP

So much so that there was an extraordinary incident during the couple's first tour of Scotland when members of the palace PR team "body blocked" Meghan's former adviser Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne during a visit to an Edinburgh cafe in what one former aide described as "the most embarrassing moment of my professional career".

The Duchess had apparently expressed "a reluctance to make eye contact" with Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne, who was reduced to having to post an Instagram shot of her former close friend and client visiting the Social Bites cafe from a considerable distance. "Anyone from the past was a problem," observed the former aide.

Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne's name would later reappear in court documents accusing Meghan's close friend and stylist Jessica Mulroney of "putting pressure on her [Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne] to withdraw or change statements" she had made in an April 2018 interview with the Mail on Sunday.

The defence documents claimed the Sunday newspaper's features editor complained about the intervention to Mr Knauf, who allegedly responded by saying he would ensure "this does not happen again". In the piece, Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne described Meghan as: "Picky, not only when it comes to her clothes but also her colleagues, instantly dismissing those who didn’t share her 'vision'."

Describing how the Duchess had "given me a bit of a difficult time" after meeting Harry, she added: "Meghan likes to move on".

When contacted by The Telegraph, Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne declined to comment on the incident.

'Email bombardments'

As the world was gearing up for what the LA Times had billed as "a royal wedding for the 21st century", behind palace gates the atmosphere was becoming fraught.

Staff had grown used to "email bombardments" by Meghan and Harry, with one describing how "the last thing we'd do before going to sleep is reply to their messages and the first thing we'd do in the morning is reply to their messages. Weekends, holidays – there were no boundaries. They live on their phones all the time".

Despite publicly claiming they largely ignored the press coverage, in reality the couple were often consumed by it. "They're both very thin-skinned," said one former employee.

Meghan's supporters say staff members "who preferred a more genteel pace" could not keep up with the Duchess's "American work ethic" – with one close friend now suggesting the criticism was racially motivated. "Find me a woman of colour in a senior position who has not been accused of being too angry, too scary, too whatever in the workplace," the friend said.

Yet it was not just palace employees who found themselves on the receiving end of "inescapable screaming and shouting".

Much has been written about the bridesmaids' dress fitting, first revealed in The Telegraph in November 2018, that left the Duchess of Cambridge in tears.

Contrary to subsequent reports that the row concerned Princess Charlotte's tights, what actually happened was that the dress itself did not fit Kate's then nearly three-year-old daughter. According to a well-placed source, "demands were made about when subsequent fittings would be, and Kate left sobbing".

While Meghan's allies suggest that Kate did not make enough of an effort to welcome her future sister-in-law into the royal fold, allies of the Cambridges suggest she "tried to arrange social things" and invited her to watch tennis together but "there was a sense that Meghan never really wanted to be friends".

The Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex at Wimbledon in 2019. Meghan appeared not to be interested in being the friend of her sister-in-law, insiders say

Those inside the palace concede, however, that the Cambridges can "appear standoffish" and are "often out of contact for extended periods".

Another former royal aide claimed the Duke, particularly, appreciated the "deflection" from his own occasionally demanding behaviour. "Bullying is endemic across all the households," the former aide added.

"The Meghan thing is a disgrace, but it's not in isolation. They cut you out, undermine you, talk down to you. One minute you're in – the next you're persona non grata. Some staff have special protection. I've never witnessed behaviour like it before. I wish I'd never seen behind the curtain."

A reprimand from the Queen

One member of staff afforded "special protection" is Angela Kelly, who has served as the Queen's closest aide since 2002. Rumours of Meghan being dubbed "Duchess Difficult" began to surface around the time it emerged that the Liverpudlian docker's daughter had been given a tongue-lashing by Harry.

Yet what was never accurately reported around the time of "Tiaragate" was that far from being denied the item from the Crown Jewels she wanted, Meghan was in fact given her first choice.

The argument erupted after the Duchess demanded that Queen Mary's Diamond Bandeau Tiara be produced for an unscheduled hairdressing appointment.

"Angela told Harry it was priceless and couldn't suddenly be handed over at short notice. He was furious and shouted: 'What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.' Suffice to say it didn't go down too well." So badly, in fact, that the no-nonsense 53-year-old, who has her own fearsome reputation among colleagues, reported the incident to the Queen, prompting a grandmotherly telling off for Harry.

Little did the Prince know at the time that staff had also given him a nickname: "The hostage".

According to one person with first-hand knowledge of the events: "They insisted that they had the same inflation-adjusted budget for the wedding as William and Kate – she got the choir she wanted, the dress, the carriage procession, the tiara – she got everything she wanted but it still wasn't enough.

"She was constantly looking for reasons to say she had been deprived. Also, she wanted drama from the very beginning."

According to one person with first-hand knowledge, the couple 'insisted that they had the same inflation-adjusted budget for the wedding as William and Kate' Credit: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

Although the couple wanted their spokespeople to deny it, a story about Meghan requesting air freshener to be sprayed around the "musty" St George's Chapel was true, according to multiple sources.

Even The Kingdom Choir did not get off lightly after the couple changed their song 12 times before they were happy with the arrangement of "Stand By Me". As choir member Karen Gibson revealed: "Gospel music is all about the cherries on top and it's not about stinting on anything. But we got word back that they wanted something a little less, so we did a second version which had an Etta James arrangement but again we had word back that it wasn't right." 

The group was then asked to meet Harry and Meghan face to face, before the couple finally settled on an arrangement after 11 previous attempts.

"The wedding was hugely stressful for everyone involved in it," said one former aide. "Staff were spending most of their time having smooth things over with suppliers."

Tears before the big day

The "Markle Debacle", when Meghan's father Thomas pulled out of the wedding at the last minute, only added to the tension as royal aides scrambled to "rescue" the narrative around the "big day" by having the Prince of Wales step in to walk Meghan down the aisle.

Despite Meghan later claiming to ITV's Tom Bradby that "not many people have asked if I'm ok", royal insiders insist they "rallied around" the couple – who were both in tears at times.

The Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who officiated the ceremony, is also understood to have given "psychological as well as spiritual" support. The principle leader of the Church of England caused hilarity among his staff by failing to recognise Ms Winfrey at the lunchtime reception at Windsor Castle, asking the US chat show host what she did for a living.

Oprah Winfrey arrives for the wedding ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan in 2018 Credit: Ian West/AFP

By the time the couple had returned from their honeymoon, relations between the Sussexes, the Cambridges and their staff became so bad that Harry and Meghan appeared reluctant to engage with anyone at the June 2018 leaving party for Miguel Head, William's former private secretary.

According to two separate sources, the couple "remained aloof" throughout the bash in the private garden at Kensington Palace. "It was a really convivial atmosphere with William giving a touching speech about Mig, but Harry and Meghan just remained on the outskirts and didn't mingle with anyone. They were the last to arrive and the first to leave."

Eyebrows were similarly raised when, having shared the news of her pregnancy at the Champagne reception following Princess Eugenie's wedding to Jack Brooksbank in October 2018, Meghan declined to attend the evening do. The bride was said to have been "upset" that Harry only "popped along for a drink without Meghan" – although they were due to fly to Australia for their first Commonwealth tour the day after.

During the 16-day tour, which also took in Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand, the couple appeared reluctant to engage with the press. Although Harry managed to be persuaded at one point to speak to reporters at the back of the plane, he told them: "Thanks for coming, even though you weren't invited."

Bullying claims emerge

On the same trip, it was claimed that Meghan had cut short a visit to a market in Fiji because she was concerned about the presence of a UN organisation promoting women, with which she had previously worked but now was no longer associated.

At the time, officials suggested that it was because it was humid and the crowd was oppressive in the market. After Meghan had been ushered away, a female member of her entourage was spotted sitting in an official car, looking extremely upset. Meghan's female personal protection officer left her post shortly afterwards.

Lawyers for the Duchess said she met other leaders from UN Women later on the tour and denied she left for the reason alleged.

Although Mr Knauf had not gone on the tour, he is thought to have been "deeply concerned" by reports of the couple's behaviour overseas.

"There was a sense that they were just refusing to take advice, and insisting on doing everything their way," said one royal source. "No one, from the most senior to the most junior employee, wasn't under constant attack," said another.

The Duchess of Sussex attends the unveiling of the Labalaba Statue in Nadi, Fiji, in October 2018 Credit: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Matters came to a head in October 2018 following the departure of a second member of the Duchess's private office.

Mr Knauf emailed Simon Case, then William's private secretary and now the Cabinet Secretary, after conversations with Samantha Carruthers, the head of HR. Mr Case then forwarded it to Ms Carruthers, who is based at Clarence House.

The email read: "I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of X* was totally unacceptable. The Duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying Y and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards Y."

The email, which also expressed concern about the stress being experienced by Samantha Cohen, the couple's private secretary, concluded: "I questioned if the household's policy on harassment and bullying applies to principals."

While Mr Case was "very personally supportive" of the individual members of staff, Mr Knauf expressed his concern in the email that "nothing will be done". The palace is now holding an investigation, having been criticised for failing to act sooner.

It was not until a month later that it was reported that Melissa Toubati, the Duchess's former PA, had "quit suddenly", just six months into the job. The following month, it was announced that Ms Cohen would not stay in post after the Sussexes' baby was born.

The couple were apparently "furious" about reports of their high staff turnover, piling more pressure on their PR team to "try to turn negative headlines into positive ones".

According to one former employee: "What people fail to understand is Harry's hatred of the media is probably one of the most important things in his life. It is defining for him. So the narrative is always – it’s the press's fault, never theirs."

That Christmas, the Sussexes were once again photographed alongside the Cambridges on Dec 25 but opted to stay with the Queen at the "main house" rather than Anmer Hall.

It came after an awkward staff Christmas party in which "all mention of Melissa's name was banned", according to one royal insider. "It was as if she never existed." Some employees found it hard to reconcile the couple's erratic conduct with moments of genuine kindness, such as when Meghan would buy female staff members flowers or even jewellery.

Relations break down

By the New Year, relations within Kensington Palace had "irretrievably broken down," with Prince Harry no longer on speaking terms with Mr Knauf after he had failed to persuade him to drop the complaint against his wife. The Sussexes' lawyers deny any such conversation took place.

Sources close to the couple say Ms Toubati, who was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, was sacked for misconduct, pointing out neither staff member made complaints of their own to HR. Ms Toubati's friends deny she was sacked for misconduct.

With Harry and Meghan already operating in a silo – and increasingly consulting the Duchess's US team of advisers rather than palace officials – a split of the two households at Kensington Palace appeared an inevitability.

It was around the time that the couple moved to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor in March 2019 that Amy Pickerill became the third of the Duchess's staff to leave her role, having served as her assistant private secretary since November 2017.

Mr Knauf also stepped down to work as senior adviser to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. He is now chief executive of the Cambridges' Royal Foundation. Friends say he "bitterly regrets" not warning Sara Latham, who was appointed as the Sussexes' director of communications in April 2019, how difficult working for the couple could be.

Jonathan Knauf stepped down to work as senior adviser to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Credit: Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive

The American PR supremo, who used to advise the Clintons, quickly worked this out for herself when the couple insisted on secrecy around son Archie's birth on May 6, while trying to maximise global coverage.

Around the same time it was falsely claimed that the Duchess had been prevented from doing an interview with CBS anchor Gayle King, Ms Winfrey's close friend. In fact, insiders say "the Duchess was calling shots throughout."

It came after Meghan had attended a high-profile baby shower in New York with Serena Williams and Amal Clooney, without being accompanied by any palace press officers. Concerns were raised behind palace gates when freebies started arriving at New York's Mark Hotel, causing consternation for staff back in the UK having to wrestle with the Royal family's strict rules on gifting.

Having courted controversy throughout the summer of 2019 for snubbing the Queen's invitation to Balmoral and taking four private jets in 11 days instead, relations with the media were at rock bottom at the start of the Sussexes' September tour to Africa.

Royal aides were then left dumbfounded when what had been a surprisingly successful 10-day trip with Archie was overshadowed by Meghan's interview with Mr Bradby, in which she revealed the "struggles" she had faced adapting to life in the Royal family.

The Duchess alarmed palace insiders by telling Tom Bradby of her 'struggles' as part of the Royal family

Duke's fears for wife

It came as Harry released an attack on the tabloid press as the couple announced they would be suing the Mail on Sunday over the publication of a letter Meghan had written to her father.

In a highly personal and scathing statement, Harry said some newspapers had "vilified her almost daily for the past nine months" and claimed they had published "lie after lie" at Meghan's expense simply because she was out of public view on maternity leave.

Referencing his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in Paris while being pursued by the paparazzi, the Duke said: "Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces."

The interview set the tone for their January 2020 announcement that they would be "stepping back as senior royals" to become "financially independent".

As the world gathers to watch the most highly anticipated royal television event since Diana's Panorama interview in 1995, it will be left to the viewers to decide which version of history represents the truth.

------------

Omg what do you make of this Plant... the tears were about the dress not fitting Charlotte and Harkles live their entire lives on the phones.

[whitehotharlots]

A movement that cannot be criticized cannot achieve positive goals

The hardest part of talking about malignant trends on the broad left is that, well, you’re not allowed to talk about them. It’s no exaggeration to say that criticism has become fully conflated with violence. If you attempt to engage critically with a left-liberal writer--regardless of how thorough and respectful you may be, and regardless of how powerful, public, or insulated the subject of the criticism--you will be accused of dismissing and erasing the writer, of inciting violence against the writer, and of committing some form of genocide against whichever identity groups the writer belongs to.

Conversely, if you don’t provide specifics, you’ll be accused of making stuff up. The same people who claim it’s an act of aggression to ask for proof when they make claims of victimization turn into immense pedants the moment they encounter a heterodox opinion. 

Unsurprisingly, a discourse milieu in which critical analysis is forbidden is a prime breeding ground for unsustainable (and even horrific) behavioral standards. Never mind improving the world that exists outside their sphere of influence... these people are perpetually on the brink of destroying their allies, their institutions, and themselves.

Today I dug into an especially profane case that highlights both of these points. It’s a matter of public record, so I hopefully won’t get accused of “doxing” anyone for discussing it. It’s also the sort of story where if someone cares about it, they’ll have an opinion of it within a second or two of reading a headline describing what happened. This means it’ll only be of interest to the sort of cranks who read this blog. My goal here isn’t to express outrage or advocate for one side or other--although it is outrageous, and you won’t have to try too hard to see which side I favor. Instead, I’m going to try to move beyond that, to use this instance as a broader cautionary tale in regards to the more horrific tendencies of the identitarian left, and to begin formulating some means of resistance. 

In other words, this might get boring. Even more so than usual. 

The story involves a court case, documented here, in which a young man named Kieran Bhattacharya is suing the University of Virginia Medical School. Mr. Bhattacharya (a white supremacist name if I’ve ever heard one) was subjected to formal censure, repeated psychological evaluations, suspension, and eventual expulsion. This all happened because he raised some concerns after a White Fragility-inspired panel on microaggressions.

This is one of those cases where both sides are going to assume there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface and, like I said, are going to be disinclined toward actually reading the available evidence. Thankfully, the court brief is fairly exhaustive and--importantly--the account provided in the brief has received the approval of both plaintiff and defendant. To stress, everyone involved in this case agrees, legally, that the account provided herein is an accurate picture of what happened. Additionally, we also have audio of the initial microaggression seminar (Mr. Bhattacharya’s comments start at around the 28:30 mark), as well as of the pursuant committee meeting that ended in his expulsion. 

Here is the initial exchange, as documented by the brief:

Bhattacharya: Hello. Thank you for your presentation. I had a few questions just to clarify your definition of microaggressions. Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group? 

Adams: Very good question. And no. And no— 

Bhattacharya: But in the definition, it just said you have to be a member of a marginalized group—in the definition you just provided in the last slide. So that’s contradictory. 

Adams: What I had there is kind of the generalized definition. In fact, I extend it beyond that. As you see, I extend it to any marginalized group, and sometimes it’s not a marginalized group. There are examples that you would think maybe not fit, such as body size, height, [or] weight. And if that is how you would like to see me expand it, yes, indeed, that’s how I do. 

Bhattacharya: Yeah, follow-up question. Exactly how do you define marginalized and who is a marginalized group? Where does that go? I mean, it seems extremely nonspecific.

 Adams: And—that’s intentional. That’s intentional to make it more nonspecific . . . . 

After the initial exchange, Bhattacharya challenged Adams’s definition of microaggression. He argued against the notion that “the person who is receiving the microaggressions somehow knows the intention of the person who made it,” and he expressed concern that “a microaggression is entirely dependent on how the person who’s receiving it is reacting.” Id. He continued his critique of Adams’s work, saying, “The evidence that you provided—and you said you’ve studied this for years—which is just one anecdotal case—I mean do you have, did you study anything else about microaggressions that you know in the last few years?” Id. After Adams responded to Bhattacharya’s third question, he asked an additional series of questions: “So, again, what is the basis for which you’re going to tell someone that they’ve committed a microaggression? . . . Where are you getting this basis from? How are you studying this, and collecting evidence on this, and making presentations on it?”

You can listen to the audio if you like. There’s nothing there, in my opinion, that is not captured accurately in the written description. Bhattacharya does not yell or raise his voice. He sounds skeptical, but in no way violent or threatening. Nor does Adams, the presenter, signal that she is experiencing anything that approaches fear or trauma. 

Immediately after the event, a professor who helped organize the discussion filed a “Professionalism Concern Card”--a cute academic euphemism for a disciplinary write up--against Bhattacharya, alleging he had displayed a troubling lack of respect for differences (the irony here probably does not need to be explicated).

Soon after that--literally still the same day of the panel--Bhattacharya received an email from faculty asking him to “share his thoughts” so as to help him “understand and be able to cope with unintended consequences of conversations.” The tone of the email is polite and professional, but the text hints toward an attempt at entrapment. You’ll see this a lot in woke spaces--invitations to come to an understanding with one another that are, in actuality, attempts to get a person to say something cancellable.

Bhattacharya took the bait, and, well… 

During Bhattacharya and Peterson’s one-hour meeting, Peterson “barely mentioned” Bhattacharya’s questions and comments at the panel discussion. Dkt. 33 ¶ 73. Instead, Peterson attempted to determine Bhattacharya’s “views on various social and political issues—including sexual assault, affirmative action, and the election of President Trump.” 

At this point, the kid was fucked. He soon after had an uneventful-seeming meeting with a dean. Two weeks after that, a separate panel found him guilty of “patterns of unprofessional behavior and egregious violations of professionalism” and strongly encouraged him to seek psychological counseling. 

Pre-Trump, Bhattacharya still probably would have been fine if he had just kept his head down, gone to a couple therapy sessions, and maybe issued an empty apology. Since 2016, however, the rules have changed. An accusation is now absolute proof of guilt and no amount of ablution can save someone in a vulnerable position. 

Eleven days after receiving the ostensible suggestion that he receive counseling, Bhattacharya was informed that he would not be permitted to return to classes until he had been evaluated. A day after that--before even having the opportunity to seek the mandated counseling--he was given a mere 3 hours notice before having to attend another disciplinary committee meeting. 

This meeting found that Bhattacharya’s continuing behaviors were proof that he posed an imminent danger to the campus community, although the committee did not bother to explain what those behaviors entailed. His behavior was simply noted as “unusual” and this was proof that “Any patient that walked into the room with [Bhattacharya] would be scared.” The following day, Bhattacharya was forcibly removed from campus and told he could not return until he had been screened. He was, subsequently, not allowed to receive sanctioned screening, because of his status of having been removed from campus after being deemed a security risk.

Again, none of what I have described is an exaggeration. None of these details are even being contested. 

Now for my own conjecture: the problem isn’t that anyone genuinely believes Bhattacharya poses a threat to anyone’s safety. The problem is that he attempted to question the ideological firmaments of contemporary anti-racist training. These firmaments are protected with aggressive viciousness precisely because they cannot withstand scrutiny. Had Bhattacharya merely scoffed at them, or even if he had been outright condescending and dismissive, he probably would not have received such a severe punishment. The problem was that he was right, and his accusers knew it.

Understanding speech in the manner prescribed by the peddlers of microaggression theory cannot possibly be codified in a way that won't result in arbitrary punishment. Bhattacharya’s experience demonstrates that with horrific irony. 

The assertion here is that the intention of a speech act should have no bearing on how we adjudicate the morality of that speech act--such a point was made repeatedly in the initial discussion, and stressed once again after Bhattacharya’s concerns have been raised. This standard contradicts how we've processed the morality of speech for centuries, but that's what people are very explicitly demanding.

How is this workable, when literally any statement could, conceivably, be considered offensive by at least one individual? This, I feel, was the point Bhattacharya reaching toward. If you were to say, I dunno, "I love trees" to a group of 1000 people, 999 of them could regard that statement as benign. But what if one person takes offense to it? What if they work in the lumber industry, or they were molested by guy in a Smokey the Bear costume? What if that person then files a report accusing the tree lover of offensive speech? Will the speaker be disciplined? Or will the powers that be take intention and effect into account?

Of course, we're not going to criminalize all speech in this way. Like all extreme and broad-reaching disciplinary standards, this one will only be selectively evoked in order to punish people with heterodox opinions and/or those whose presence threatens the status quo. Someone who says something much more incendiary, like "all men are rapists" or "white people shouldn't get social security" would not receive a reprimand regardless of how much offense their statements caused, because they're saying something that's acceptable in our current milieu. And right now, the least acceptable speech is that which shines a light on the manifest flaws and hypocrisies of corporate anti racism. 

Back to my hypothetical example, if the tree-loving speaker was on good terms with everyone, the complaint would most likely be ignored. But if he had said or done other things that for whatever reason displeased the people in charge, the specious accusation could still ruin him. What's worse, the person who filed the allegation of offense might not have even actually taken offense at the statement--they were just looking for a way to get rid of him.

Bhattacharya was attempting to voice legitimate criticisms about a political movement whose suggestions are functionally unworkable and that, even if it were implemented fully and uncritically, does not contain even a hypothetical explanation in regards to how its goals would result in improved racial equality/equity. Because of that, he was cynically labeled dangerous and expelled from a public university. 

You'd think a group that obsesses over power differentials and their own marginalization would have some grasp of this. Regardless of which side you fall into with this particular culture war, it should fucking terrify you that a movement that’s been tasked with addressing pressing social problems is designed in such a way that any substantial criticism is met with aggressive punishment. 

There’s no way you can win if this is you is how conduct yourself. This is why we’re losing. This is why even if you get all the censorship and deplatforming you can ever dream of, even if every major bank and multinational corporatation professes fealty to your movement, you will still lose. Because there’s no way you can win. 

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Croatia brings no men in a hamster wheel to Rotterdam 2021

Now could this be the teddy bear uprising invasion Muse has warned us about 12 years ago?

And LITERALLY, these review series make me feel like Croatia is openly taunting me - I watch the days go, I’m losing track of time, and when another day comes, I’m screaming “oh no I forgot to publish a review sooner than wanted!!”. Guess I’m for one glad there’s a time related song this year, hum?

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

Repping the Adriatic coast nation that got all the sea instead of Bosnia & Herzegovina is some 22 year old Albina Grčić, who first popped up on X Factor Adria back when that was a thing, and got lumped into a girlgroup in later stages, but to that she said “hvala ne” and moved on with her life, getting eliminated just like that. Queen <3 She did get her second chance to compete as a soloist and make a more prominent mark on her career when she ended up on The Voice in Croatia. She did well, placing third overall in the season, but somehow, during the duel stage, her coach initially favoured her fellow Dora 2021 contestant Filip Rudan:

Her Voice success landed her a record deal with the Croatian division of Universal Music, she released a debut single, sometime later ended up on Dora, and here she is now, on Eurovision.

“Tick-Tock” is the song, a standard upbeat pop song, and one of the ones that talks about a girl leaving a terrible relationship and being so well over it that she “found [her]self and [she’s] finally free”, and the “tick-tock” here is used to represent the time passing by, not the sound of her heart, unlike a fellow ESC entry of a similar title. The tune (or its lyrics only) is co-authored by some dude you might’ve heard of from France’s 2018 preselection Destination Eurovision, and that is Max Cinnamon - some half-English guy with a half English song about love (”Ailleurs”) that did moderately averagely in the final... I don’t even know if his influence shows, I just love how 2021 has sort of become revenge of the NF flops but they’re writing other entries instead (Suzi P, “Adrenalina”).

REVIEW

I often don’t really fully vibe with female bops in Eurovision as much as I want to, like, for the most part they’re overhyped, and I let the “yass queeeeen” audience gorge on the everything their favourite bops give them. But this year there are plenty of great ones to choose from, as I think that it’s safe to say that most, if not all, are tucked in somewhere inside my top 20, top 25 at the very minimum. Croatia managed to even do the impossible and land into my top 10.

Why?

Well, the answer is that the song is just so damn good.

I mean, what’s NOT to like about it? It’s a catchy and upbeat song that incorporates xylophones (or whatever is it that sounds like them), guitars and synths; has a good bassline in the chorus; and it’s just... a very good composition overall, like, all the instruments in it are just in their right place and uplift the song massively. I also like Albina’s performance on it, both live and studio, it clearly shows that she’s a very good singer (also shown on her cover of the scandalous Oscar award snubbery “Husavik”). Sounds like a song a common pop loving Eurofan could gear themselves towards. Besides, it also has possibly my favourite pre-chorus section of the 2021 year? Oh wait, there’s also Switzerland, scratch that. “Tick-Tock” has one of my favourite pre-chorus sections of 2021. It builds up so well instrumentally and the way Albina sings it is even better. I obviously like to believe Albina heard those voices from far away that helped her to escape, has found herself, and she’s finally free from her “partner’s” bad lovin’ and restraint. Yas queen go be free you didn’t deserve his tomfoolery anyway!  👏 (Also I admire a section that’s not quite the pre-chorus but is still before the 1st chorus, the one that goes “If you pull me down then I'll come around” - literally just a lot of the parts of the song are full of nice vocal performance and I don’t regret ranking this in my top 10 not a second.)

If it has any drawbacks, it’s just that it gets a tad too repetitive after the halfway mark... like, the pre-chorus before the second chorus is the one to be repeated once again, and no new verse, nothing - but it does launch itself into something extraordinary, and that is a chorus in Croatian, which I assume she would perform in Eurovision because there’s no Eurovision version on the song promo bundle, I suppose. Comparatively the Croatian chorus is not as complex in lyrics as the English language one, and flows slightly differently too. But the song still has a long chorus by the end, and song with too many choruses is never a good sign for those that look for a song that’s constructed well, but I guess it’s a good factor for those that value the song’s catchiness. I guess that’s what one of the two Eurovision 2005 hosts valued the most when writing the Ukrainian 2006 entry “Show Me Your Love”, which if you ask me, is straight up 75% chorus, lol.

So yeah my verdict is that almost everything about this song, I like. I’m just a little devastated that in a usually very easily gorged on category of female bops, this just tends to lag behind in love, like a fellow song I really like this year, Israel. Instead people tend to prioritize Cyprus (which I get because they’ve established themselves as a girlbanger nation since Fuego swept Eurovision) and... probably even Azerbaijan? (which I might also get because Eurovision rarely has this thing called an ethnobop anymore, and it has more ethno than “Cleopatra” did, but still unnecessarily underwhelming lol.) Well then, in a year of female bangers, I would just like Croatia to not be swept under the rug come semis I guess. Yeah “Tick-Tock” may not sound like it brings something totally never seen before in a Eurovision environment (foreign language lyrics, themes about a break up, hell even her dancers looked like they were wearing the same hats as Tamta’s dancers), but you got to have a lot in you to sell a worn out idea to the new heights, and Albina does exactly that in my eyes.

Approval factor: Yeah! There is a lot of it in here for me. Follow-up factor: A great follow-up, not so great in regards to panini but musically it’s just going up and up from what we had in the past few years. I’ve actually not minded “The Dream” for the most part but I knew it was a chanceless plodding ballad and Roko harboured heaps of wasted potential working with Jacques Houdek and having wings as part of his performance, uff. *_* And then there’s “Divlji vjetre” which I also like a lot - a much better male ballad winner choice! If the Dora re-up winners keep being decent imo just like this, I have a feeling I will follow it a lot more often than I did just this one time this year. I am just saying that panini-wise, it was a sucky move from HRT for not allowing their last year’s winner promote his new song with Tijana (from Serbia 2017) on the Dora night, so we sadly only heard a pre-recorded opening version of “Divlji vjetre” to start off with :( Otherwise I think it’s not Dora’s fault in itself that Damir himself chose not to even submit an entry this year because he hadn’t found a good one - much like with Diodato for Sanremo (he was NOT rejected, if you think he still was, shush). But aside that, musically, it just keeps going up for me. Well done Croatia, for you’ve used to be a Eurovision country I don’t necessarily care about, that you brought two pretty damn good entries in a row. Qualification factor: I can absolutely trust in Albina bringing in a little bit of her charisma and well-likedness, and on top of that, a great vocal performance, in Rotterdam. Don’t ask me why, I just do. She doesn’t really perform her song live on pre-parties as much as I’d like to hope she would, but you heard girlie on the national selection, she didn’t win for nothing. Yeah yeah there might as well be female uptempo songs hungrier for the last spot, but I’d like to think Albina is one of the ones ready to devour than to be devoured. Go girl! Take us all dancing!

NF CORNER

To be honest with you, “Tick-Tock” winning Dora caught me by surprise. Ever since its re-up, the last two editions were kind of won by male ballads, and maaaaybe the dancey females were doing moderately well enough for themselves, but not overall? But look, juries were very keen on Albina, probably because she can SANG and she creates one hell of a fancy presence on her performance. And somehow she ended up snatching a win out of the hands of 5G conspiracy theorist 2016 representative Nina Kraljić, who was at first too drunk to care, but too unexpectedly sober to yell all over the soc. media how she was robbed and how the contest was rigged against her with her being on first and all that. Which is a shame that she is one of THOSE people, because her NF entry “Rijeka” is kinda nice? We did have the Balkan-esque ballads coming from Croatia in recent memory, but we haven’t had a truly proudly folksy one at that from Croatia for a long while, if not ever. Nina could’ve very well brought that to Rotterdam (and another mismatched wardrobe choice oops). But instead she was the one screaming “oh no, oh no, oh no”.

Actually I regarded Nina as one of my faves pre-show, and Albina was on her way, though she didn’t really cement the personal fav status until after all performances, thus making Nina and Albina switch spots for me. But truly, the one song that was my top favourite, iiiiiiiiiiis

GIMME AN OCEAN! OF LOVE!

2021 made me realize that damn, maybe anything that’s funky is my favourite music genre afterall. Up until then I vibed with entries like “Tonight Again” and “What’s the Pressure?” that had this sort of energetic flair and very rhythmic kinda sound to it, but 2021 just simply cemented it to me that my music world has probably been about nice and smooth and funky all along. I owe so much gratitude to ToMa first and foremost along the lines of more to have come in this year’s lineups - I just can’t not want to dance to “Ocean of Love”, and ToMa is quite alright at selling it live as well. There are small gripes with some instrument usages but that doesn’t detract from the fact that I love love LOVE funky guitar tunes.

Aside from that, I can give shout outs to Beta Sudar, whose song not only was underrated, but also had an underrated meme format throughout its performance:

My other props go to Bernarda, who not only competed in a national selection singing a song about seeing “Colors” while blind (and ironically there was a song called “Blind” in that same NF sung by a well-seeing guy!!), but also for finally putting this every country’s reject to rest. Seriously. That particular song was passed on to everyone in need of a competitive Eurovision bop, from Poli Genova to Helena Paparizou as of recently. Oh well, at least the song died a honourable death - well performed slice of good typical Eurovision pop (maybe even overperformed a little towards the end), that got a good rank with the regional juries, but somewhat murdered in televote, fellow Boris Milanov composition “Chameleon” style.

This one Mia Negovetić chick was promising too! Her song was written by the Debs and you might be tired of them trying to continue infiltrating Eurovision at this point, but a lot of their Eurovision songs are usually something I enjoy, “She’s Like a Dream” is no exception. Nothing but 3 minutes of pastel-dressed Croatian Ariana Grande doing what she does best <3

Oh and also some dudes tried to play chess on stage too I guess. But their song is not worth looking into, because one of the acts on it is apparently also a conspiracist, and maybe because oft this their entry is aptly titled “Sing, for the freedom has arrived!” lol I wonder what exactly is the kind of freedom you’re thinking of my guy

Was this the “better mood game” Laura was warning everyone about? Beats me

NF CORNER (NON-COMPETITIVE)

• It’s still hilarious to me as to how one of the acts this year, Brigita Vuco, was planning to bring in backing dancers, only for them to show a fake COVID test or something and outright BARRED from coming with her on stage. <3 Whatever she intended to do with them dancers, I have absolutely no idea, but at least she committed to her song being about drunken nights visually by having all these blurry shots

• Nina Kraljić’s greenroom shenanigans, from the “1-2-3, 1-2-3, drink” to numb the sadness over some results (and the 8 she got from the region Rijeka for the song “Rijeka” lmao), to whatever she saw on the phone that made her smile or go neutral

• Greenroom reactions in general. I swear, this year had cameramen in every single corner everywhere just to make sure something covers up for a human audience instead of severals of Zoom screens permitted to act as an audience. Random people in greenrooms were doing some sort of emotions after random acts, and also randomly they ended up pointing a camera towards an act that lost, but the act didn’t treat losing as if it were such a big deal <3

• All the other memes the Croatian Twitter might’ve noticed me for:

seriously Bernarda was locked in a bluelight mathematical dice contraption. how fucking cool is that

ANY LAST WORDS?

I just fucking hope that Albina shatters any doubts that people have had about her song come rehearsals, and somehow Croatia AND Israel slip through, because never too many female bangers I appreciate in the final, if they all are the bangers I appreciate, lol.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

At the current moment, this article seems to have been taken down - it may be reinstated, or still available on archived versions of the site.

“Women in Dokowadai village, Maharashtra, reveal the scars of their hysterectomies 
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Revealed: India’s mass sterilisation drive

Thousands of women are sacrificing their reproductive systems in a bid to keep their jobs, bringing back memories of the country’s dark history of population control

Heavily sedated and lying on a dirty mattress inside a makeshift tarpaulin tent, Chanda Ravi, 32, gingerly opened her eyes.

The mother-of-three was one of 101 women to have undergone a rushed sterilisation procedure on August 27 at a camp in the central Indian state Chhattisgarh.

Ms Ravi recovered well, but the speed of the procedures – the 101 operations were done in just eight hours – have brought back memories of India's dark history of population control.

Sterilisations are legal in India, and four million were carried out between 2013 and 2014, the last year figures were available.

However, doctors are paid cash incentives to carry out the operations, and this causes some professionals to bypass safety regulations and rush surgeries to earn more money, risking women's health.

Saira Shekh, who had a hysterectomy at the age of 25, is one of many women underwent the procedure prematurely
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

A doctor is only mandated to safely carry out 35 daily sterilisations under Indian law. Dr Jibnus Ekta, the surgeon who carried out the 101 operations, is now under investigation for exceeding the allowed numbers.

When contacted by The Telegraph, the authorities in Chhattisgarh blamed a backlog of operations due to Covid-19 and said Dr Ekta was the only trained tubectomy surgeon – a procedure that blocks the fallopian tubes – in the Surguja district of Chhattisgarh, home to one million people.

“This doctor went out of the way to help these poor women and operated [on] them. Instead of being praised, he is now being hounded. Nevertheless, we have initiated the inquiry against him for conducting excess surgeries [than] approved for a day,” the state’s health secretary Alok Shukla told The Telegraph.

Assa Ugray, from Ghodka Rajuri village, Maharashtra, had a hysterectomy aged 29
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Nearly 30 sterilisation camps have been held in Surguja this year and 821 operations have been carried out.

In India, tubal litigation operations – known colloquially as tube tying – are done under general and local anesthesia, either via open or keyhole surgery.

In these sterilisation camps, the procedures are done under local anaesthetic, according to the Chief Medical Officer of Surguja district, Dr Poonam Singh Sisodia. They involve using a falope ring to block the fallopian tube, preventing eggs from reaching the uterus where they could be fertilised.

Leading Indian gynaecologist Dr Ifrah Aslam said it was possible to conduct a tubectomy within a little as five minutes, but the quicker the operation the greater the likelihood of complications.

“There are chances of internal bleeding and injury to other organs because safety measures get bypassed in these sterilisation camps,” Dr Aslam said.

In 2014, at least 13 women died after undergoing sterilisations at a health camp in Chhattisgarh. Tubectomy operations were carried out on 83 women in six hours.

There are other, darker still, sterilisation scandals in India's history.

Sugarcane cutters are encouraged to undergo hysterectomies so they will no longer menstruate, allowing them to work every day of the month during the harvest
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Back in the mid-1950s, it was the first country in the world to introduce a national family planning programme in an attempt to curb widespread poverty by limiting population growth – then, the average Indian woman had six children.

But, the policy quickly became one of the most hated in India’s history, as police cordoned off poor villages and dragged men to dingy operating tables where their genitals would be cut – whether or not they wanted the operation.

In 1976 alone, the Indian government sterilised 6.2 million men until the campaign was abandoned amidst massive public anger. Despite this legacy, permanent methods of birth control remain popular in India, particularly among poorer, remote communities that do not have regular access to condoms or birth control pills.

But, women now bear almost the entire sterilisation burden, constituting 93 percent of operations, according to 2018 government statistics.

“India is a patriarchal society and the sterilisation program is focused on women, reinforcing those same societal norms,” said Dr Sulakshana Nandi, national joint convener of the People's Health Movement.

“The government has to completely do away with the camp-based approach and ensure routine fixed day services for all those who choose to access contraceptive services.”

Population growth is less of a factor now; the overall fertility rate in India had already fallen to 2.2 children per woman by 2016 – narrowly above the replacement rate of 2.1, the number of births required to maintain a country’s population without migration.

However, women in India also face pressure to undergo equally dangerous hysterectomies – a more complex operation, where the womb is removed – to secure employment.

In the Beed region of the western state of Maharashtra, a staggering 36 per cent of women have undergone the surgery, according to a 2018 study by Maharashtra State Commission for Women.

There are few employment opportunities outside of sugarcane farming for poor women in the Beed. But it is backbreaking work. They are expected to gather 40kg bundles of cane and transport them to factories for processing, working 20-hour days in near 40°C heat, with no days off.

Many farm owners only hire female labourers who have undergone hysterectomies as some women request days off while they are menstruating due to the physical nature of the work, which has caused demand for the procedures, often unregulated, to surge.

While operations are carried out in a hospital rather than a makeshift camp, local activists say doctors again cut corners to maximise profits. The women are typically illiterate and don’t understand the risks involved.

“To save money they will use someone else’s syringe and put it in the next patient,” explained Manisha Tokle, the President of Jagar Pratishthan, an NGO in the Beed region working with sugarcane cutters.

“They will give them cheap painkillers and won’t give them pre and post-op care.”

When The Telegraph visited the house of Asha Ugray, 29, she was lying against the wall of her makeshift dwelling gasping for air. “I have a fever and I can’t move any part of my body because I don’t have the energy to,” heaved Ms Ugray.

“It feels like my whole body vibrates the whole time, I don’t have enough blood in my system and it is hard to breathe.”

Ms Ugray underwent a hysterectomy in the Beed after experiencing debilitating gynaecological pain and her employer wouldn’t grant her time off. Since the operation, she has suffered from internal bleeding, severe abdominal pain which makes it difficult for her to walk, and problems urinating.

In her village of Kasari 15 other women were also experiencing complications after undergoing surgery.

“To meet the demand for contraceptive services, the government must ensure adequate routine and quality services instead of resorting to mass sterilisation camps and unregulated operations,” said Dr Nandi.

“The dangers that mass sterilisations pose to women's lives and health are well known and repeating such violations is criminal.”

[thecreepiestcarrie]

#JusticeforJohnnyDepp: Johnny’s witness statements at a glance (Stephen Deuters, Malcolm Connolly & Trinity Esparza)

Things I Cover in this Post:

May 2014: incident on the plane

March 2015: the finger injury incident in Australia

May 2016: the phone throwing incident, leading to the application for the TRO

AH’s behaviour following her applying for the Temp Restraining Order against Johnny

Elon Musk’s involvement with AH

The witness statements I am featuring highlights from are from Stephen Deuters- personal assistant to Johnny from 2004-2017, working currently as the European president of Johnny’s production company (his texts were included in The Sun’s opening statement, there have been inconsistencies in his story but he claims the messages were altered), Malcolm Connolly-  security guard of Johnny since 2004 and Trinity Esparza-  owner of the Eastern, works as front desk supervisor since 2014.

I’m gonna go in chronological order of these events, which begins with Stephen Deuters statements.

The Sun have cast some doubt over how trustworthy Stephen’s accounts can be, citing text messages, which Stephen says were doctored.  Here we see that Stephen was using Scum’s language back to her to placate her because she was probably unresponsive and unwilling to converse with anyone until they presented themselves as at least a little on her side, I’m assuming. Was it manipulative of him to use the word ‘kick’ in order to gain a different reaction out of Scum? A bit, sure. But from the audio recordings we can see that she is insistent when she thinks she’s making a point, we can even hear how her use of language/the way she refers to certain incidents does not match up with the recollections of others present at the time. I think an important part of Stephen’s statement here is that the authenticity can be proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt. The chairs in the plane were fixed to the ground - facts are facts. What plane doesn’t have furniture fixed to the floor? What kind of crazy health and safety hazard is that?

This is something I wanted to expand upon. Victims of domestic violence can/will hide their injuries in order to protect their abuser and so, one could argue that Scum never disclosed any of her injuries to Stephen because she was either protecting Johnny or she was feeling the shame of being a victim of this violence. Nope. No sale, I’m not buying that. In the first screenshot, we see Stephen talking about how Scum insisted upon he and Jerry (the only two present aside from she and Johnny) that Johnny had kicked her. Continued to insist and, like I said before, she will repeat herself until she gets the response she wants (or gets distracted by something else). She was so quick to yell out to Stephen and Jerry to be her witnesses and Stephen even presented himself to agree with her. Even back in 2014, she was trying to plant the seeds of Johnny being an abuser and she was sharing this to members of his staff. Stephen was still Johnny’s assistant when the divorce/tro happened, so what happened between 2014 to 2016 to make her stop going to him with this false narrative? Was it that she thought this ‘kick’ (it was a tap on her butt from Johnny’s foot, my gf and I do shit like that to each other all the time, calm down Brenda) was strong enough evidence to convince them of her point of view, and everything else after that she didn’t have them bear witness to? (because none of it happened).

Okay now we’re going to move to March 2015 and Australia, namely the incident of Johnny’s finger getting sliced down to the bone, as recounted by Malcolm  Connolly

Malcolm had seen Scum throw objects before, interesting coz Scum (and her party) has accused Johnny of throwing things all about all of the time. She’s again projecting her own behaviour onto him because she’s the perfect abuser. Also, wow, how dare you hurt his perfect fucking face? And then tell him that you love him? She is disgusting.

They immediately came up with a way to cover for Scum because it would create extremely bad publicity for her. Or could it be that, as a man, Johnny was afraid to come forward as a victim of violence because no one would believe him because that’s exactly what’s happening right now. Fake feminists will spout shit like ‘men can’t be abused’ and will blindly believe Scum purely because she’s a woman. The idea of a man being abused is not a part of the accepted mainstream perspective and Johnny was undoubtedly shamed into silence, like so many other victims (regardless of gender) are. It’s an antiquated view that isn’t based in any facts and it’s keeping other male victims silent to protect this idea of men being always strong and to be anything else is pathetic.

Let’s jump ahead to when the shit really hit the fan - March 2016, this is when the allegations began to leak and Johnny was finally cutting himself free of Scum. The following are highlights from the statement of Trinity Esparza.

Hello to Miss Trinity who is an impartial witness, I think this is definitely worth taking note of. Especially when you compare it to who The Sun relied on for their witness statements- 8 people, including Scum herself, who all have a personal connection to her. People who are clearly her friends and have an emotional connection to this case. Trinity is the kind of witness we have been waiting for.

Okay, so the phone throwing incident, which led to the fantastical, moving bruise on Scum’s face, occurred on May 21st of 2016. We’ve all seen it by now because she walked around with it on display for sympathy/pity when she was going to court to apply for that temp restraining order (which was denied, never forget that fact). One would assume that it was visible to the press that day because there was no makeup was on her face. So how come the bruise wasn’t visible closeup four days after the injury supposedly occurred?

Here we have the magical, fantastical, moving bruise - welcome her to the stage, six days after the impact allegedly occurred. This is six days after Rocky took those closeup photos of the injury (the photos they took immediately after Johnny’s alleged ‘temper tantrum’ that left a path of destruction through the apartment... which four separate cops failed to find any trace of).

And here we have some more irrefutable evidence, video surveillance that is time/date stamped. I would like to note that Trinity points out Johnny left the night of the 21st and did not return, so Scum’s bruise only beginning to appear to Trinity on the 27th isn’t due to Johnny returning to abuse her some more. He was entirely gone.

Rocketman returns, clearly Scum was in some kind of relationship with him before Johnny left (emotional affairs are just as real/damaging as a sexual affair).

Wow. Read this paragraph and really think about what kind of twisted fuck Scum is. She has friends at People magazine, a direct line to the press so that she can control how the story comes out.

More of the Rocketman, just enjoying his time in the penthouse owned by Johnny, the penthouse he was forced to flee after continued abuse from his lying wife. It clearly was something she/they were trying to hide because he was only dropping by late at night when Johnny was away. Please note that Scum and Mollusc were publicly dating each other in 2016, online articles place their relationship as ‘beginning’ (I would say beginning to be public would be a more truthful way of putting it) in May of 2016. The exact same month when she began publicly accusing Johnny of abuse. So that’s a nice bit of overlapping there... and by nice, I mean gross and making no fucking sense.

I am really grateful for all of the reblogs and interaction, let’s keep fighting for the truth.

[causeiwanttoandican]

Holy crap!

The Telegraph- Camilla Tominey

'She wanted drama': The inside story of the rift between Harry and Meghan and The Firm

As the Sussexes give their tell-all Oprah Winfrey interview, royal insiders reveal the 'other side of the story'

By Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor5 March 2021 • 9:00pm

There was something distinctly familiar about the Oprah Winfrey teaser in which Prince Harry declared: "My biggest concern was history repeating itself."

The words, due to be aired during the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes' tell-all interview on Sunday night, bore an uncanny resemblance to the statement released by Harry's communications secretary, Jason Knauf, in November 2016 after the Sunday Express had revealed that the Prince was dating the American actress.

Confirming that "his girlfriend Meghan Markle" had been "subject to a wave of abuse and harassment", the statement criticised the "racial undertones" of newspaper coverage, adding: "Prince Harry is worried about Ms Markle's safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her. This is not a game – it is her life and his."

The unprecedented salvo created two important narratives around the former Suits star – it formally confirmed her status as the woman in Harry's life but also positioned her, in the eyes of the palace and the public, as the victim at the heart of a media "storm". As the statement suggested, a line had been "crossed".

But the tirade "by the Communications Secretary to Prince Harry" also put Mr Knauf in a compromising position. How was the former director of corporate affairs for the Royal Bank of Scotland going to be able to handle media relations for a couple when the Prince had so publicly made plain their deep hostility towards the press?

Almost exactly two years later, the 39-year-old spin doctor would submit a a bullying claim accusing Meghan of driving two personal assistants out of the household and undermining the confidence of a third staff member.

The Sussexes have denied that Harry pleaded with Mr Knauf not to pursue it, claiming the couple are the victims of a calculated smear campaign based on harmful misinformation. They said the Duchess was "saddened by this latest attack on her character, particularly as someone who has been the target of bullying herself and is deeply committed to supporting those who have experienced pain and trauma".

Those highlighting the "outrageous bullying" say they want to "tell the other side of the story" to the picture expected to be painted by the Duchess on the Oprah special of her "almost unsurvivable" time in the Royal family. "Anyone who is a victim can't bear to watch it," said one.

The couple's lawyers insist Buckingham Palace is manipulating the press to peddle a "wholly false narrative" –notwithstanding the fact that the complainants no longer work in the royal household and the lack of palace action has now prompted an internal inquiry.

The Telegraph has spoken to a number of well-placed insiders who witnessed first-hand the turmoil within the royal household from Meghan's arrival as Prince Harry's girlfriend to the couple's decision to stand down as working royals last year.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity amid claims they had been operating in a "climate of fear", where employees were routinely "humiliated" in front of their peers and repeatedly subjected to "unreasonable demands" by both Meghan and Harry.

Unwilling to play a supporting role

It was not until October 2017, a year after Mr Knauf's unprecedented statement that Meghan gave an interview to Vanity Fair in which she declared of her relationship with Harry: "We're in love. I'm sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but what I hope people will understand is that this is our time."

The public did not have to wait long. Just a month later, the couple announced their engagement with a photocall in the sunken garden at Kensington Palace and an interview with the BBC's Mishal Husain in which Harry described his fiancee as "another team player as part of the bigger team".

Yet behind palace gates, it was quickly becoming apparent that Meghan had no intention of she and Harry being seen as the "supporting act" to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, despite their seniority in the royal pecking order.

That Christmas, determined to walk side by side with William and Kate to Sandringham's St Mary Magdalene Church, rather than several steps behind, they were pictured together as the so-called "Fab Four".

The Cambridges invited the Sussexes to spend the festive period at their nearby bolthole, Anmer Hall, an experience Meghan spoke of fondly afterwards. "Meghan was very positive about it," said a former aide.

Two months later, the quartet appeared at their first official event together at the inaugural forum of their Royal Foundation – a highly choreographed event described by one royal insider as "designed to send a message that they would be working as a team. It was all very carefully rehearsed beforehand".

Disagreements with the Cambridges

After Meghan showcased her years of previous work with "larger NGOs and smaller grassroots organisations", both William and Harry acknowledged that working so closely with loved ones had led to "healthy disagreements" over how to best guide the foundation's work.

"Working as a family does have its challenges, of course it does," Harry said. "But we're stuck together for the rest of our lives."

By now, Kensington Palace staff had already become familiar with a mantra that would come to characterise the run-up to the Sussexes' wedding in May 2018.

"Want Meghan wants, Meghan gets" may have been shouted by Prince Harry to Angela Kelly, the Queen's personal assistant, following a row over a tiara – but royal aides were already well acquainted with the importance of meeting the Duchess's exacting standards.

"Everyone wanted her to be happy because they knew that would make him happy," said one. "Do whatever it takes to make it work for Meghan was the mantra. We all cared deeply about Harry. Contrary to this idea that they weren't supported, we were going to great lengths to accommodate their needs."

So much so that there was an extraordinary incident during the couple's first tour of Scotland when members of the palace PR team "body blocked" Meghan's former adviser Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne during a visit to an Edinburgh cafe in what one former aide described as "the most embarrassing moment of my professional career".

The Duchess had apparently expressed "a reluctance to make eye contact" with Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne, who was reduced to having to post an Instagram shot of her former close friend and client visiting the Social Bites cafe from a considerable distance. "Anyone from the past was a problem," observed the former aide.

Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne's name would later reappear in court documents accusing Meghan's close friend and stylist Jessica Mulroney of "putting pressure on her [Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne] to withdraw or change statements" she had made in an April 2018 interview with the Mail on Sunday.

The defence documents claimed the Sunday newspaper's features editor complained about the intervention to Mr Knauf, who allegedly responded by saying he would ensure "this does not happen again". In the piece, Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne described Meghan as: "Picky, not only when it comes to her clothes but also her colleagues, instantly dismissing those who didn’t share her 'vision'."

Describing how the Duchess had "given me a bit of a difficult time" after meeting Harry, she added: "Meghan likes to move on".

When contacted by The Telegraph, Ms Nelthorpe-Cowne declined to comment on the incident.

'Email bombardments'

As the world was gearing up for what the LA Times had billed as "a royal wedding for the 21st century", behind palace gates the atmosphere was becoming fraught.

Staff had grown used to "email bombardments" by Meghan and Harry, with one describing how "the last thing we'd do before going to sleep is reply to their messages and the first thing we'd do in the morning is reply to their messages. Weekends, holidays – there were no boundaries. They live on their phones all the time".

Despite publicly claiming they largely ignored the press coverage, in reality the couple were often consumed by it. "They're both very thin-skinned," said one former employee.

Meghan's supporters say staff members "who preferred a more genteel pace" could not keep up with the Duchess's "American work ethic" – with one close friend now suggesting the criticism was racially motivated. "Find me a woman of colour in a senior position who has not been accused of being too angry, too scary, too whatever in the workplace," the friend said.

Yet it was not just palace employees who found themselves on the receiving end of "inescapable screaming and shouting".

Much has been written about the bridesmaids' dress fitting, first revealed in The Telegraph in November 2018, that left the Duchess of Cambridge in tears.

Contrary to subsequent reports that the row concerned Princess Charlotte's tights, what actually happened was that the dress itself did not fit Kate's then nearly three-year-old daughter. According to a well-placed source, "demands were made about when subsequent fittings would be, and Kate left sobbing".

While Meghan's allies suggest that Kate did not make enough of an effort to welcome her future sister-in-law into the royal fold, allies of the Cambridges suggest she "tried to arrange social things" and invited her to watch tennis together but "there was a sense that Meghan never really wanted to be friends".

Those inside the palace concede, however, that the Cambridges can "appear standoffish" and are "often out of contact for extended periods".

Another former royal aide claimed the Duke, particularly, appreciated the "deflection" from his own occasionally demanding behaviour. "Bullying is endemic across all the households," the former aide added.

"The Meghan thing is a disgrace, but it's not in isolation. They cut you out, undermine you, talk down to you. One minute you're in – the next you're persona non grata. Some staff have special protection. I've never witnessed behaviour like it before. I wish I'd never seen behind the curtain."

A reprimand from the Queen

One member of staff afforded "special protection" is Angela Kelly, who has served as the Queen's closest aide since 2002. Rumours of Meghan being dubbed "Duchess Difficult" began to surface around the time it emerged that the Liverpudlian docker's daughter had been given a tongue-lashing by Harry.

Yet what was never accurately reported around the time of "Tiaragate" was that far from being denied the item from the Crown Jewels she wanted, Meghan was in fact given her first choice.

The argument erupted after the Duchess demanded that Queen Mary's Diamond Bandeau Tiara be produced for an unscheduled hairdressing appointment.

"Angela told Harry it was priceless and couldn't suddenly be handed over at short notice. He was furious and shouted: 'What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.' Suffice to say it didn't go down too well." So badly, in fact, that the no-nonsense 53-year-old, who has her own fearsome reputation among colleagues, reported the incident to the Queen, prompting a grandmotherly telling off for Harry.

Little did the Prince know at the time that staff had also given him a nickname: "The hostage".

According to one person with first-hand knowledge of the events: "They insisted that they had the same inflation-adjusted budget for the wedding as William and Kate – she got the choir she wanted, the dress, the carriage procession, the tiara – she got everything she wanted but it still wasn't enough.

"She was constantly looking for reasons to say she had been deprived. Also, she wanted drama from the very beginning."

Although the couple wanted their spokespeople to deny it, a story about Meghan requesting air freshener to be sprayed around the "musty" St George's Chapel was true, according to multiple sources.

Even The Kingdom Choir did not get off lightly after the couple changed their song 12 times before they were happy with the arrangement of "Stand By Me". As choir member Karen Gibson revealed: "Gospel music is all about the cherries on top and it's not about stinting on anything. But we got word back that they wanted something a little less, so we did a second version which had an Etta James arrangement but again we had word back that it wasn't right."

The group was then asked to meet Harry and Meghan face to face, before the couple finally settled on an arrangement after 11 previous attempts.

"The wedding was hugely stressful for everyone involved in it," said one former aide. "Staff were spending most of their time having smooth things over with suppliers."

Tears before the big day

The "Markle Debacle", when Meghan's father Thomas pulled out of the wedding at the last minute, only added to the tension as royal aides scrambled to "rescue" the narrative around the "big day" by having the Prince of Wales step in to walk Meghan down the aisle.

Despite Meghan later claiming to ITV's Tom Bradby that "not many people have asked if I'm ok", royal insiders insist they "rallied around" the couple – who were both in tears at times.

The Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who officiated the ceremony, is also understood to have given "psychological as well as spiritual" support. The principle leader of the Church of England caused hilarity among his staff by failing to recognise Ms Winfrey at the lunchtime reception at Windsor Castle, asking the US chat show host what she did for a living.

By the time the couple had returned from their honeymoon, relations between the Sussexes, the Cambridges and their staff became so bad that Harry and Meghan appeared reluctant to engage with anyone at the June 2018 leaving party for Miguel Head, William's former private secretary.

According to two separate sources, the couple "remained aloof" throughout the bash in the private garden at Kensington Palace. "It was a really convivial atmosphere with William giving a touching speech about Mig, but Harry and Meghan just remained on the outskirts and didn't mingle with anyone. They were the last to arrive and the first to leave."

Eyebrows were similarly raised when, having shared the news of her pregnancy at the Champagne reception following Princess Eugenie's wedding to Jack Brooksbank in October 2018, Meghan declined to attend the evening do. The bride was said to have been "upset" that Harry only "popped along for a drink without Meghan" – although they were due to fly to Australia for their first Commonwealth tour the day after.

During the 16-day tour, which also took in Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand, the couple appeared reluctant to engage with the press. Although Harry managed to be persuaded at one point to speak to reporters at the back of the plane, he told them: "Thanks for coming, even though you weren't invited."

Bullying claims emerge

On the same trip, it was claimed that Meghan had cut short a visit to a market in Fiji because she was concerned about the presence of a UN organisation promoting women, with which she had previously worked but now was no longer associated.

At the time, officials suggested that it was because it was humid and the crowd was oppressive in the market. After Meghan had been ushered away, a female member of her entourage was spotted sitting in an official car, looking extremely upset. Meghan's female personal protection officer left her post shortly afterwards.

Lawyers for the Duchess said she met other leaders from UN Women later on the tour and denied she left for the reason alleged.

Although Mr Knauf had not gone on the tour, he is thought to have been "deeply concerned" by reports of the couple's behaviour overseas.

"There was a sense that they were just refusing to take advice, and insisting on doing everything their way," said one royal source. "No one, from the most senior to the most junior employee, wasn't under constant attack," said another.

Matters came to a head in October 2018 following the departure of a second member of the Duchess's private office.

Mr Knauf emailed Simon Case, then William's private secretary and now the Cabinet Secretary, after conversations with Samantha Carruthers, the head of HR. Mr Case then forwarded it to Ms Carruthers, who is based at Clarence House.

The email read: "I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of X* was totally unacceptable. The Duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying Y and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards Y."

The email, which also expressed concern about the stress being experienced by Samantha Cohen, the couple's private secretary, concluded: "I questioned if the household's policy on harassment and bullying applies to principals."

While Mr Case was "very personally supportive" of the individual members of staff, Mr Knauf expressed his concern in the email that "nothing will be done". The palace is now holding an investigation, having been criticised for failing to act sooner.

It was not until a month later that it was reported that Melissa Toubati, the Duchess's former PA, had "quit suddenly", just six months into the job. The following month, it was announced that Ms Cohen would not stay in post after the Sussexes' baby was born.

The couple were apparently "furious" about reports of their high staff turnover, piling more pressure on their PR team to "try to turn negative headlines into positive ones".

According to one former employee: "What people fail to understand is Harry's hatred of the media is probably one of the most important things in his life. It is defining for him. So the narrative is always – it’s the press's fault, never theirs."

That Christmas, the Sussexes were once again photographed alongside the Cambridges on Dec 25 but opted to stay with the Queen at the "main house" rather than Anmer Hall.

It came after an awkward staff Christmas party in which "all mention of Melissa's name was banned", according to one royal insider. "It was as if she never existed." Some employees found it hard to reconcile the couple's erratic conduct with moments of genuine kindness, such as when Meghan would buy female staff members flowers or even jewellery.

Relations break down

By the New Year, relations within Kensington Palace had "irretrievably broken down," with Prince Harry no longer on speaking terms with Mr Knauf after he had failed to persuade him to drop the complaint against his wife. The Sussexes' lawyers deny any such conversation took place.

Sources close to the couple say Ms Toubati, who was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, was sacked for misconduct, pointing out neither staff member made complaints of their own to HR. Ms Toubati's friends deny she was sacked for misconduct.

With Harry and Meghan already operating in a silo – and increasingly consulting the Duchess's US team of advisers rather than palace officials – a split of the two households at Kensington Palace appeared an inevitability.

It was around the time that the couple moved to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor in March 2019 that Amy Pickerill became the third of the Duchess's staff to leave her role, having served as her assistant private secretary since November 2017.

Mr Knauf also stepped down to work as senior adviser to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. He is now chief executive of the Cambridges' Royal Foundation. Friends say he "bitterly regrets" not warning Sara Latham, who was appointed as the Sussexes' director of communications in April 2019, how difficult working for the couple could be.

The American PR supremo, who used to advise the Clintons, quickly worked this out for herself when the couple insisted on secrecy around son Archie's birth on May 6, while trying to maximise global coverage.

Around the same time it was falsely claimed that the Duchess had been prevented from doing an interview with CBS anchor Gayle King, Ms Winfrey's close friend. In fact, insiders say "the Duchess was calling shots throughout."

It came after Meghan had attended a high-profile baby shower in New York with Serena Williams and Amal Clooney, without being accompanied by any palace press officers. Concerns were raised behind palace gates when freebies started arriving at New York's Mark Hotel, causing consternation for staff back in the UK having to wrestle with the Royal family's strict rules on gifting.

Having courted controversy throughout the summer of 2019 for snubbing the Queen's invitation to Balmoral and taking four private jets in 11 days instead, relations with the media were at rock bottom at the start of the Sussexes' September tour to Africa.

Royal aides were then left dumbfounded when what had been a surprisingly successful 10-day trip with Archie was overshadowed by Meghan's interview with Mr Bradby, in which she revealed the "struggles" she had faced adapting to life in the Royal family.

Duke's fears for wife

It came as Harry released an attack on the tabloid press as the couple announced they would be suing the Mail on Sunday over the publication of a letter Meghan had written to her father.

In a highly personal and scathing statement, Harry said some newspapers had "vilified her almost daily for the past nine months" and claimed they had published "lie after lie" at Meghan's expense simply because she was out of public view on maternity leave.

Referencing his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in Paris while being pursued by the paparazzi, the Duke said: "Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces."

The interview set the tone for their January 2020 announcement that they would be "stepping back as senior royals" to become "financially independent".

As the world gathers to watch the most highly anticipated royal television event since Diana's Panorama interview in 1995, it will be left to the viewers to decide which version of history represents the truth.

[polkadotfairyposts]

Ok, so as an english person living in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 I now actually really *get* the need for independence.

Here's my brief, foggy and perhaps mildly innacurate because im a bit shit with dates and names but bear with me. I was also drunk when i wrote this but it still stands

So, Scotland is one of the oldest *established* countries in europe, in 843 or 834 it became a recognised country

England, being England, kept on invading and there was a lot of dispute about territory.

You know thoose historical figures you hear about a lot, William Wallace of Braveheart fame, Robert the Bruce of Outlaw King. These guys were about in the 1300s. Contantly battling with England over their sovreinty

In 1314, the Battle of Bannockburn happens, Robert the Bruce pretty much destroys the English army near Stirling

1320, the Declaration of Arbroath is signed, stating the people of Scotland, not a king or leader, but the people theselves are sovereign, in quite a dramatic comparison so England's monarchy and heirarchical system. Yes, the Scots had kings and nobility, but the people were the most important, kings were not chosen by God

It was written in Latin, but says the following:

As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself".

Boom, right?!

The union of the crown happened, im hhazy on it all, watch Mary Queen of Scots to get a fairly good idea. Its mostly to do with a lot of Protestant/Catholic issues, mostly fuelled by English politics, as far as i can see, but i. Could be v wrong. There was alot of hoo-ha regarding recognising Scotland's monarchy, especially involving the "Auld Alliance" with France, who England was continually picking fights with

1703: The Scottish Parliament passes the Act of Security, under which Scotland will not in future be bound to accept the same monarch as England unless Scotland is accorded completely free trade with England and the colonies.

So, the Treaty of the Union happened in 1707 (thats right, its only just over 300 years old) but lets just look at the curcumstance in which it was signed

In the years (maybe decades) leading up to this, England imposed some kind of tax or restrictions on scottish trading.

5 February 1705: The English Parliament pass the Alien Act, restricting scottish exports and trades. Big economic impact here. Many purses made a lot lighter.

So, the Scottish Parliament (made of nobles and officials, no vote for the people. Rumoura of bribery and threats abound) decide to enter into this Union. A draft is written, its voted in, the Scottish Parliament is dissolved. There was a LOT of anti-union feeling about this. Theres a rumour the Treaty was signed in an actual basement in edinburgh to avoid protests happening around the city. (I obvs dont know the truth in that)

Magically, when the scottish parliament was dissolved, restrictions were removed and scotland was able to trade freely as part of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain"

Now, theres a king, exiled, James, or "the Pretender", hanging in France, decides to rally troops from there and head back to try and sort a Jacobite uprising. This, in 1708, failed.

1715 sees another Jacobite uprising. Defeated

1720 Spain tries to. Help another Jacobite uprising. Defeated.

Honestly, just keep on going through rinse and repeat until the big one.

You all know Bonnie Prince Charlie and the 1745 Jacobite uprising and the absolute massacre of Culloden, especially if youve followed the Outlander series.

This was the last big rebellion. And I'll tell you for why.

Scottish culture was all but outlawed. Kilts, Tartan, Pipes, Gaelic, all punishable offenses. The Highland clearances happened (basically rich people owned the land, decided it was gonna make them more money to feed cattle than people and moved villages and townspeople to the most barren areas, on the brink of survival. A lot of folk were destitute, some left in ships bound for the US willingly , many were sent as punishment for even minor crimes)

Now, im not saying the Scots were angels and innocents subjected to English rule, a good few profited highly from Slave Trade and many oof Glasgow and Edinburgh's city statues are of questionable admirability.

But this Union of Equals is anything but.

In the 1990s, the Scots had to fight tooth and nail to get their own parliament back. This was under Labour and Donald Dewar became First Minister.

In 2014, there was an epic vote for Scots on whether to become and Independent country again. From polling at just 26%a year or so before, the Yes vote went up to 45%. Not enough to win the referendum, but a huge improvement. The Better Together campaign raised questions such as EU membership, pensions, currency, could Scotland afford it?

The DAY AFTER the No vote was announced, David Cameron announces EVEL (yeah, it looks like evil) English Votes for English Laws. Freezing Scottish MPs out of decision-making. So much for "Stay with us, Scotland. Lead us, dont leave us"

2016 the goddamned Brexit vote happens. It was 52/48 Now you know, if that had been the outcome for Yes, the uproar would have been "its too close to call" "thats not a big enough margin!" but because it was what an underlying majority of Tory backbenchers actually wanted, it was accepted. People who voted to stay in the EU were labelled Remoaners and the 16m+ who voted against it were ignored in favour of the 17m+ who voted for. Also worth noting, scotlannd voted 62% to stay in the EU. A much higher margin than to remain ppart of the UK. We were ignored. So much for Scotland staying in the UK to stay in the EU

Oh, and the last decade of Tory austrity has seen oension age increase and pension amount decrease. We've one of the worst ppensions in the developed world. There goes that argument

As a result of the Brexit vote, the sterling decreased in value. Fuck it, a number of Scots wouldnt even mind using the Euro if we were to rejoin them, but we'd be well within our rights to use our own Scots ££££

Also, the Macrone report shows pretty well that Scotland has a wealth of natural resources it would be able to use, we could definitely afford it.

Soooo, we comme to the "once in a generation" arguement. This was said a lot, by both sides. As a turn of phrase. Same as many things. Boris Johnson said he'd rather be dead in a ditch than take an extension for EU talks. He took that extension and thougb ive been thoroughly searching ditches up and down the UK, not spotted him yet.

Nowhere in the Edinburgh Agreement (the document agreement 2014 referendum) does it state "once in a generation". It *does* state that scotland can holld another referendum following "constitutional change". One word. Brexit. Thays one big motherfucking change.

If were talking about a generation, in human terms, thay could be 20/30/40/50 years or so. But if we're talking political generation, its worth noting in talks with Ireland, this was defined as seven years. Since the Edinburgh Agreement was signed in 2012,we're past that. And even if we go by 2014, thay makes 2021 the year we can do another.

12 consecutive polls have shown Yes well ahead for independence. Scotland also allows 16-18 year olds to vote. And EU citizens living in Scotland.

The point is, if Scotlannd wants it, Scotland shoukd be able to choose it.

[vettingsanders]

He Did Nothing For Years

The Bernie Sanders Story

I was going to title this post something that more adequately expresses my rage, like “Bernie Sanders is a Grifting Fuck and a Garbage Human,” but then I decided to be classy and paraphrase a quote from Evita instead.  But I’m also petty so consider the subtitle of this rant to be “A Grifting Fuck and a Garbage Human.”

I was going to wait to post this until the primaries are over because if by some unholy hell miracle Sanders wins the nomination, obviously we all have to unite behind even the shittiest, most doomed to fail candidate, but fuck it.  Vote blue no matter who, that goes without being said, but Sanders is the worst possible choice and was even when there were a dozen plus horses in this race, and now y’all are going to hear all the reasons why.

The Early Years: Sanders the Deadbeat

Sanders graduated from the university of Chicago in 1964 with a BA in Political Science and chose not to work until he was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981

I say “chose not to work” because he was fully capable but preferred being a bum.  He had no student debt, he had no health conditions that prevented him from working, and the 1960s were characterized by rapid growth of the workforce, with three out of four college graduates holding high level positions by 1970

Sanders occasionally did some freelance writing and carpentry during these years, according to his resume, probably so he could claim he was trying to work in order to collect unemployment.  Let’s take a look at some of his writings:

At age 28, he wrote an article for alternative newspaper The Vermont Freeman entitled “Cancer, Disease, and Society.”  In the article, he argues that sexual repression can cause cancer, and women who are virgins, have fewer orgasms than their peers, or simply don’t enjoy sex are more likely to develop cancer.  The article includes statements such as “the manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develop breast cancer, among other things” and “How much guilt, nervousness have you imbued in your daughter with regard to sex?  If she is 16, 3 years beyond puberty and the time which nature set forth for child-bearing, and spent a night out with her boyfriend, what is your reaction? Do you take her to a psychiatrist because she is “maladjusted” or a “prostitute,” or are you happy that she has found someone with whom she can share love?”  He also argues that the education system contributes to cancer, as does having “an old bitch of a teacher (and there are many of them).”  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2157403-sanders-cancer.html

In 1969, in another article for The Vermont Freeman, he wrote, “In Vermont, at a state beach, a mother is reprimanded by Authority for allowing her 6 month old daughter to go about without her diapers on. Now, if children go around naked, they are liable to see each others sexual organs, and maybe even touch them. Terrible thing! If we [raise] children up like this it will probably ruin the whole pornography business, not to mention the large segment of the general economy which makes its money by playing on peoples sexual frustrations.”  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-freeman-sexual-freedom-fluoride/

His resume, incidentally, also lists him as a freelance youth counselor during his period of unemployment, which is just great.  The man who thinks thirteen year olds should be getting pregnant and children should touch each other’s genitals, counseling your kids.  Fantastic.

In the 1970s, Sanders stole electricity from his neighbors rather than paying his own bill.  https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-119927

He stole food from the refrigerator of The Vermont Freeman’s publishers https://newrepublic.com/article/122005/he-was-presidential-candidate-bernie-sanders-was-radical

 He was asked to leave a hippie commune in 1971 due to sitting around engaging in “endless political discussion” rather than working.  Let me repeat, he was too lazy for a hippie commune. https://freebeacon.com/politics/bernie-sanders-asked-leave-hippie-commune/

Now, all of this apart from the theft is arguably okay.  It’s his own life, and if he wants to squander it publishing poorly written essays and doing jack shit, whatever.  Except it wasn’t just his life, because he had a son, Levi.  And he was a deadbeat, paying no child support and causing Levi’s mother, Susan Mott, to rely on welfare, which made her face discrimination when trying to find housing.  https://twitter.com/m_mendozaferrer/status/1093295853907922946

Bernie Sanders is a deadbeat dad.  No respect.

Failing Upwards: Sanders the Politician

In 1971, Sanders joined the Vermont Liberty Union Party, a socialist political group.  From 1971 to 1977, Sanders was the party chief and habitually ran for office, failing every time.  He left the group in 1977, stating that they did not do enough to fight banks and corporations during non-election years.  This is just one example of Sanders decrying everyone else as too impure for him.

In 2016, the Vermont Liberty Union Party voted to brand Sanders as a war criminal.  Their general secretary, Peter Diamondstone, said of Sanders, “ He never was a socialist!"  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bnjby3/the-vermont-political-party-bernie-sanders-founded-isnt-into-him-anymore  This is just one example in the long list of Sanders alienating his allies.

He finally won the mayoral election for Burlington in 1981, by only ten votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Burlington_mayoral_election

Sanders was only elected to the US House of Representatives in 1990 because he had the support of the National Rifle Association.  The incumbent Congressman, Republican Peter Smith, advocated for an assault weapons ban, so the NRA flooded Sanders with money.  https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/stickin-to-his-guns-the-nra-helped-elect-bernie-sanders-to-congress-now-hes-telling-a-different-story/Content?oid=27816693

In 2006, 2012, and 2018, when running for the Senate, Sanders ran as a Democrat in the state primaries, then declined the Democratic nomination, and ran as an independent in the general.  This made it basically impossible for any Democrat to run against him.  https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/21/bernie-sanders-democrat-independent-vermont-601844

After a landslide loss to Secretary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary, Sanders demanded changes to the DNC primary structure that would make the process easier for him to win with just a plurality of delegates instead of a majority.  These rule changes were the reason the 2020 Iowa caucus was such a clusterfuck. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bernie-sanders-iowa-caucus-winner-trump-democrats-a9317761.html

Despite all his talk of getting out the youth vote and inspiring disenfranchised voters, Sanders planned all along to squeak by with only thirty percent of the delegates in the 2020 primary by provoking infighting among other candidates to split the moderate vote.  The supposed movement he claimed to lead is a sham. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/bernie-sanders-thinking-he-will-win-it-all-2020/587326/

“I Never Saw Him”: Sanders and Civil Rights

Sanders touts his participation in the March on Washington in 1963 as proof of his devotion to civil rights activism.  He loves to remind people that he marched with MLK, as seen during the She the People 2019 forum where he repeated that old chestnut for the millionth time and was booed by the attendees. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-met-with-boos-after-name-dropping-martin-luther-king-at-she-the-people-summit

In actuality, Sanders was one of 250,000 people at the march, along with Mitch McConnell, who is clearly no champion for civil rights. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/7-things-know-about-sen-mitch-mcconnell-r-ky-part-flna6C10621413

Representative John Lewis, an actual civil rights hero who worked with Dr. King and whose skull was fractured by police on Bloody Sunday, said that he “never saw [Bernie Sanders].  I never met him,” during the movement. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/local/2016/02/11/john-lewis-never-saw-bernie-sanders-during-civil-rights-era/80263450/

Sanders was charged with resisting arrest during a segregation protest in Chicago in 1963, and was charged $25.  He later white flighted to Vermont, one of the whitest states in the country. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/bernie-sanders-core-university-chicago/

Sanders never bothered to vote during the Civil Rights movement, only putting forth the effort when he himself was running. https://imgur.com/gallery/mmS40Gq#460q6bS

During his speech in Jacksonville on the 50th anniversary of MLK’s death, Sanders rewrote history and tried to claim that King’s real focus was economic justice and not civil rights.  "All of us know where he was when he was assassinated 50 years ago today.  He was in Memphis to stand with low-income sanitation workers who were being exploited ruthlessly, whose wages were abysmally low, and who were trying to create a union. That’s where he was. Because as the mayor just indicated, what he believed — and where he was a real threat to the establishment — is that of course we need civil rights in this country, but we also need economic justice.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/bernie-sanders-revolution-needs-black-voters-to-win-but-can

In thirty years in Congress, Sanders has not sponsored any bills pertaining to civil rights: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?sponsor=400357#current_status[]=28&enacted_ex=on

Sanders voted for the 1994 crime bill https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bernie-sanders-has-dodged-criticism-crime-bill-vote-while-others-n1020726

In 1994, he praised the bill and stated that the US needed more jails.  https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1221468426855755776

He touted his vote for the crime bill on his website at least until 2006, as proof he was “tough on crime” and “strong on the cops” https://web.archive.org/web/20061018180921/http:/www.bernie.org/truth/crime.html

In 2015, during a meeting with police reform activist group Campaign Zero, Sanders responded to being asked why he thought a disproportionate amount of people of color were incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses with “Aren’t most of the people who sell the drugs African-American?”  Those present at the meeting stated, “Even confronted with figures and data to the contrary, Sanders appeared to have still struggled to grasp that he had made an error.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/bernie-sanders-revolution-needs-black-voters-to-win-but-can 

In 2018, fifteen racial and social justice leaders in Vermont, including multiple NAACP branch presidents, ACLU organizers, and BLM activists, sent an open letter to Sanders and the Sanders Institute to complain that they were “excluded” from the “national progressive movement that Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to foster.”  The letter asks “how could Senator Sanders host what is supposed to be an intersectional, progressive event without inviting the very people whom he serves?”  http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/vpr/files/201812/sanders-letter-2018.pdf

Curtiss Reed, Executive Director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, stated that the exclusion of Vermont POC from the Sanders Institute’s event was “a catastrophic failure of his sort of tone deafness to marginalized communities in the state of Vermont” and added “I’m tempted to say this is no longer a question of benign neglect on the part of the senator, but willful ignorance on his part not to include marginalized voices in this national conversation on the progressive movement.”   https://www.vpr.org/post/we-find-ourselves-excluded-racial-justice-leaders-ask-bernie-sanders-get-program#stream/0 

Vermont Black leaders stated they were “invisible” to Sanders, and that the senator “was just really dismissive of anything that had to do with race and racism, saying that they didn’t have anything to do with the issues of income inequality.  He just always kept coming back to income inequality as a response, as if talking about income inequality would somehow make issues of racism go away.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/vermonts-black-leaders-we-were-invisible-to-bernie-sanders

In his 1998 autobiography, Sanders repeatedly and needlessly used the n-word. He chose to keep the word in the text when republishing the book in 2015.  https://www.inquisitr.com/5620596/bernie-sanders-under-fire-for-use-of-n-word-in-2015-book-clip-from-audiobook-version-goes-viral-friday/ 

“I Will Not Make It a Major Priority”: Sanders the Ally

During an interview as mayor of Burlington, Sanders said LGBTQ rights were not a “major priority” for him and he would “probably not” support a bill to protect gays from job discrimination.  https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/10/bernie-sanders-on-marriage-equality-hes-no-longtime-champion.html

Also during his time as mayor, Sanders signed a resolution affirming that marriage is between “husband and wife.” https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/02/06/clinton-surrogates-pounce-on-sanders-over-82-marriage-resolution/

Sanders and his wife stated in 1996 that they opposed the Defense of Marriage Act simply because it would weaken states’ rights.  Only later did he claim his opposition was due to support for same-sex marriage. https://time.com/4089946/bernie-sanders-gay-marriage/

Sanders argued same-sex marriage was a states’ rights issue in 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=kej9QAsS3uI&feature=emb_logo

In that same year, after same-sex civil unions had been legal in Vermont since 2000, he responded to a reporter asking if same-sex marriage should be legalized in Vermont with “Not right now,” after the “very divisive debate” preceding the civil union legislation. https://web.archive.org/web/20160407064606/http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060607/NEWS/606070302/1003/NEWS02

In thirty years in Congress, Sanders has not sponsored any bills pertaining to LGBTQ rights: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?sponsor=400357#current_status[]=28&enacted_ex=on  

Sanders the Warmonger

Sanders loves to tout his opposition to the Iraq War as proof of his moral superiority.  But in 1998, he voted for the Iraq Liberation Act, which states that “it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”  He also supported Clinton’s airstrike on Iraq.  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/105-1998/h482

In 1999, Sanders had anti-war protesters at his office arrested. https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/27/bernie-sanders-savior-or-seducer-of-the-anti-war-left/

The Iraq War Bill that Sanders voted against required Bush to first try diplomatic efforts and abide by UN rules of military conduct.  It also required transparency and progress reports.  https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-joint-resolution/114/text

The Authorization for Use of Military Force Act (AUMF), which Sanders did vote for, required none of that and is the reason the Afghanistan War was so much of a clusterfuck.  Bush would have used the AUMF to invade Iraq even if Congress had voted down the Iraq Liberation Act.  The only person to vote against the AUMF was Representative Barbara Lee.  Sanders voted in favor of it.  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/107/sjres23/text

Sanders claims to oppose the defense industry.  But he brought Lockheed Martin and their 1.2 trillion dollar, over budget, outdated stealth fighters to Vermont. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-loves-this-dollar1-trillion-war-machine

During his tenure as mayor of Burlington, he fired the assistant city treasurer when she was jailed for an anti-war protest. https://academic.oup.com/publius/article-abstract/21/2/131/1917641?redirectedFrom=PDF 

Sanders the Healthcare Crusader

Sanders was chairman of the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee during a 2014 scandal when dozens of veterans died while waiting for medical care.  During his tenure, Sanders only held seven hearings on VA Oversight, as opposed to the House committee’s forty-two hearings.  Veterans argue that Sanders was too invested in the idea of the VA as a shining example of government healthcare to address its failings.  Despite the scandal and tragedy, Sanders as recently as 2017 bragged that  he was involved with “the most comprehensive VA health care bill in this country.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-veterans-scandal-on-bernie-sanderss-watch

He voted against the Clinton plan for universal healthcare in 1993.  https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/14/1501210/-Where-Was-Sanders-on-Health-Care-in-93-and-94-Against-the-Clintons

Sanders also voted against CHIP, the children’s health insurance program that AOC relied on to see a doctor in her youth: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/105-1997/h345

Despite campaigning on Medicare for All since 2015, Sanders was unable to explain how much the program would cost during a 2020 60 Minutes interview.  https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/24/politics/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-2020/index.html

When Senator Warren did the math for him and released her detailed M4A plan, Sanders attacked her, calling his plan “more progressive” and saying hers would “have a very negative impact on creating jobs.” https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/03/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-health-care-plan/index.html

Sanders claims that his healthcare plan is standard in other countries.  But his M4A plan would ban private insurance, which is not done in any country but Canada.  In the Scandinavian countries Sanders loves to hold up as an example of government healthcare, the market for private insurance is growing.  https://aapsonline.org/no-bernie-other-countries-do-not-ban-private-care/

“Too Brassy, Too Bitchy”: Sanders the Feminist

In his autobiography, Sanders quoted an article calling his 1996 primary opponent Susan Sweetser “too brassy, too bitchy.” https://books.google.com/books?id=_2YjBm2_JGUC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=sanders+too+brassy+too+bitchy&source=bl&ots=SWrIR5Xa8m&sig=ACfU3U2-Hj1-UXIOM0Zz274h6_Nu8juoBg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHhtObq6LmAhWvUt8KHc8mDVUQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=sanders%20too%20brassy%20too%20bitchy&f=false

 In his Vermont Freeman article “Cancer, Disease, and Society,” Sanders called teachers “old bitch[es]” and blamed them for men developing cancer.  He also said women developed cancer due to sexual repression.  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2157403-sanders-cancer.html

Referring to their 1986 governor race, his opponent Madeleine Kuhn stated, “When Sanders was my opponent he focused like a laser beam on “class analysis,” in which “women’s issues” were essentially a distraction from more important issues. He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a “sexist position,” he declared.”  https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html

Sanders called Planned Parenthood “a part of the establishment” because they endorsed Secretary Clinton for president.  https://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/planned-parenthood-bernie-sanders-218026

Sanders called Hillary Rodham Clinton, former law firm partner, former First Lady, former Senator, and former Secretary of State, unqualified to be president. https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/06/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-qualified/index.html

In January 2020, leaked phone banking scripts from the Sanders campaign called Warren a candidate of the affluent who wouldn’t bring any new voters to the Democratic base.  https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/11/bernie-quietly-goes-negative-on-warren-097594

In response, members of Warren’s campaign leaked information that, at a dinner in 2018, Sanders had told Warren he did not think a woman could win the presidency.  Sanders and his supporters decried this as a lie, even though reporters knew of the dinner and had been asking Warren if Sanders had discussed women’s electability there for over a year.  https://twitter.com/mlcalderone/status/1104477933886935040?s=19

Sanders supporters then flooded Elizabeth Warren and her supporters’ Twitter mentions with snake emojis.

Sanders said of Secretary Clinton, “It is not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!” https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/21/13699956/sanders-clinton-democratic-party

Bending the Knee: Sanders the Dictatorship Fanboy

During a 2020 60 Minutes interview, Sanders inexplicably decided it would be a good idea to start praising Fidel Castro’s genocidal regime, stating, “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but, you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. When Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program.  Is that a bad thing, even though Fidel Castro did it?” https://www.vox.com/2020/2/24/21147388/bernie-sanders-cuba-60-minutes-nicaragua

He doubled down on this praise at the next debate, whining, “Really?  Really?” when the crowd booed him.  https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article240627047.html

In 2014, Sanders visited Cuban prisoner Alan Gross, who lost over 100 pounds and five teeth during his captivity.  During the meeting, Gross recalls Sanders telling him, “I don't know what's so wrong with this country.”  https://www.npr.org/2020/03/04/811729200/former-prisoner-recalls-sanders-saying-i-don-t-know-what-s-so-wrong-with-cuba

In 1985, Sanders praised bread lines and food rationing.  “American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food.  That's a good thing. In other countries people don't line up for food. The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death." https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/21/1920767/-Time-to-switch-out-from-Bernie-he-praised-nations-with-bread-lines-that-s-a-good-thing-Danger

Sanders hung a USSR flag in his office as mayor of Burlington.  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/24/bernie-sanders-reveals-his-radical-inclinations-ov/

He honeymooned in the USSR, and praised the state of the Soviet Union. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-bernie-sanderss-1988-10-day-honeymoon-in-the-soviet-union/2019/05/02/db543e18-6a9c-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html

In the 1980s, Sanders attended a Sandinista rally in Nicaragua where the attendees chanted, “Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/bernie-sanders-pro-sandinista-past-problem.html

Sanders recently praised China, saying that it has made "more progress in addressing extreme poverty than any country in the history of civilization." https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/458976-sanders-china-had-done-more-to-address-extreme-poverty-than-any-country-in-the

“They Can’t Stop Us”: Sanders the Conspiracy Theorist

Despite conceding the 2016 primary and stating that “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and I congratulate her for that” (https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/index.html), he later made the Trump-esque statement “Some people say that if maybe that system was not rigged against me, I would have won the nomination and defeated Donald Trump.” https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-defeat-donald-trump-2016-rigged-primary-dnc-nbc-kasie-hunt-1446116

 On February 21, Sanders tweeted, “I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.” https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1231021453270769664

After Super Tuesday, Sanders stated that Buttigieg and Klobuchar were pressed to drop out as part of an establishment plot to defeat him. https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/486503-sanders-klobuchar-and-buttigieg-ended-campaigns-under-great-deal

Sanders has repeatedly attacked the press as “paid by the corporations and billionaires who own the media.”  He’s promoted the conspiracy theory that Jeff Bezos makes The Washington Post write negative articles about him. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/27/bernie-sanders-attacks-media-press-fair-or-trump-2020-democrats

During the Nicaraguan conflict, Sanders accused American reporters of ignoring the truth and told a CBS reporter, “you are worms.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/bernie-sanders-pro-sandinista-past-problem.html

Sanders accused The Washington Post of trying to harm him in the Nevada caucus by reporting on Russia’s attempts to boost his campaign. https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bernie-sanders-takes-a-shot-at-washington-post-good-friends-when-asked-about-timing-of-russia-report/

“We Support Them”: Sanders the Spoiler

Robert Mueller’s investigation found that Russian interference sought to boost both Sanders and Trump’s 2016 campaigns, stating “we support them.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/17/indictment-russians-also-tried-help-bernie-sanders-jill-stein-presidential-campaigns/348051002/

Sanders was well aware of the Russian efforts, stating “What we knew is–well, of course we knew that.  And of course we knew that they were trying to cause divisiveness within the Democratic party.  Uh, that’s no great secret.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDYbHult0Do

When The Washington Post reported on Russia’s efforts to boost Sanders in 2020, Sanders had already known for weeks and said nothing.  After the report came out, he attacked the Post and accused them of trying to tank his performance in the Nevada caucus, stating “I’ll let you guess, about one day before the Nevada caucus. Why do you think it came out?  It was The Washington Post?  Good friends.” https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bernie-sanders-takes-a-shot-at-washington-post-good-friends-when-asked-about-timing-of-russia-report/

The Fish Rots from the Head: The Sanders Campaign

The 2016 campaign breached the Clinton campaign’s voter data and harvested and stored voter information https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data/

The 2016 campaign received a 645 page letter from the FEC detailing the campaign’s finance violations (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-bernie-sanders-donors-who-are-giving-too-much/482418/) and had to pay a $14.5 K fine to the FEC after receiving donations from non-citizens. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/376373-sanders-campaign-pays-145k-fine-to-settle-fec-complaint

The 2016 Nevada campaign director sought to rig the state’s caucus by urging staffers to buy double-sided coins for tie-breaking coin tosses http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sanderss-nevada-director-floated-two-sided-coins-for-tiebreaks-report/ar-AAhHiAI?getstaticpage=true&automatedTracking=staticview

The 2016 campaign initially decried superdelegates as “undemocratic” (https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/opinions/superdelegates-democratic-party-kohn/) before attempting to persuade them to go against the primary’s outcome and back Sanders instead of Clinton https://www.npr.org/2016/05/19/478705022/sanders-campaign-now-says-superdelegates-are-key-to-winning-nomination

The 2016 campaign was accused by staffers of sexual harassment, demeaning treatment toward women, and pay disparity by gender https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-sexism.html

Weeks before the 2016 general election, Jane Sanders retweeted a video from an April town hall of her husband telling an attendee to “make these decisions yourself” regarding whether or not to vote third party if Secretary Clinton won the primary https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/26/retweet-bernie-sanders-wife-jane-raises-questions/91140254/

The 2020 Sanders campaign appointed Russian interference denier and Jill Stein 2016 voter Briahna Joy Gray as the campaign’s National Press Secretary https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/888555665865814017?lang=en

Following promises to run a civil campaign, Sanders hired David Sirota, a man who’d spent months attacking other primary contenders online, as a speech writer.  The campaign also confirmed that Sirota had already been serving in an advisory role prior to his official hiring https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/sanders-promised-civility-hired-twitter-attack-dog/585259/

Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray called for the doxing of a Sanders critic on Twitter. If there was any repercussion for this behavior, it has never been made public. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/14/1879124/-Bernie-Sanders-s-Campaign-Doxed-a-Critic-on-Twitter

The 2020 campaign hired and fired YouTuber Matt Orfalea within 24 hours after being alerted of his sexist, racist, homophobic, and ableist content, suggesting he was not vetted before his hiring https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/bernie-sanders-matt-orfalea-mlk-youtube-video/

Despite his firing and the campaign decrying his behavior in October 2019, in January 2020 Jane Sanders was still retweeting and praising Orfalea.  https://twitter.com/Rob_Flaherty/status/1236861997398048768

In March 2020, Orfalea posed as a Biden volunteer and made calls to voters claiming that Biden has dementia.  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgeanp/a-man-fired-from-sanders-campaign-is-calling-biden-voters-and-saying-he-has-dementia

They hired and fired Darius Khalil Gordon after two days after being alerted of his sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and ableist Tweets https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/12/bernie-sanders-new-head-organizer-called-people-fgs-bhes/

The campaign also hired former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour as a campaign surrogate.  The Women’s March cut ties with Sarsour following anti-Semitic statements. https://nypost.com/2018/11/20/womens-march-founder-calls-on-current-leadership-to-step-down/

Sarsour was also condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for the statement that “a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else.” https://forward.com/news/national/435964/bernie-sanders-linda-sarsour-jewish-voters/

Sanders National Campaign Co-Chair Nina Turner claimed that Biden’s strong support among Black voters is due to the voters’ “short memories” and “not a true understanding of the history” https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/473161-top-sanders-officials-hits-biden-over-riding-on-obamas-coattails

The 2020 campaign paid staffers working 60 hours a week an average of 13 dollars per hour despite Sanders campaigning on a 15 dollar per hour minimum wage https://www.vox.com/2019/7/20/20700841/bernie-sanders-minimum-wage-staff-pay

Bernie Bros attacked Biden’s Detroit rally on 3/9/20, striking senior aide Symone Sanders in the head with an iPad and knocking her down. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/joe-biden-detroit-protests-sanders-124874

“Nobody Likes Him”: Sanders Himself

In 1996, Congressman Barney Frank said of Sanders, “Bernie alienates his natural allies.  His holier-than-thou attitude—saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else—really undercuts his effectiveness.”  https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2016/04/11/history-barney-frank-bernie-sanders-criticize

In her recent Hulu documentary series, Hillary Rodham Clinton briefly spoke about Sanders, saying “He was in Congress for years.  He had one senator support him.  Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.” https://twitter.com/Burkmc/status/1235863901813661697?s=09

A former campaign staffer called Sanders “unbelievably abusive.”  Another campaign insider called him an asshole, and a former Senate staffer recounted, "He yelled in meetings all the time.”  https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/anger-management-sanders-fights-for-employees-except-his-own/Content?oid=2834657

One aide stated that Sanders “never makes you feel like you’re good enough to be in the room with him.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/us/politics/bernie-sanders-image.html

Sanders voted in favor of dumping nuclear waste on the poor and predominantly Latinx community of Sierra Blanca, Texas https://www.texastribune.org/2016/02/28/Sanders-Nuclear-Waste-Votes-Divide-Texas-Activists/

When asked if he would visit the site in Sierra Blanca, Sanders answered “Absolutely not.” https://archives.texasobserver.org/issue/1998/09/11#page=11

Sanders voted five times against the Brady Act which required universal background checks and a waiting period to buy firearms. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/13/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-voted-against-brady/o

He also voted against the AMBER Alert System. http://archive.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2006/09/21/sanders_vote_on_amber_alert_emerges_as_key_campaign_issue/

He wanted to primary Obama in the 2012 election cycle. https://www.thenation.com/article/yes-bernie-sanders-wanted-obama-primaried-in-2012-heres-why/

After saying millionaire senators are immoral (https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/politics/bernie-millionaire-senators-immoral/index.html) and railing against millionaires and billionaires in his 2016 campaign, Sanders responded to criticism of his millionaire senator status by saying “if you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”  His stump speech now only rants about billionaires. https://theweek.com/speedreads/834228/bernie-sanders-says-millionaire-like-write-bestselling-book 

Upheld a ban on rock concerts as mayor of Burlington like a Footloose villain https://i.redd.it/atpybo1rcwa31.jpg

Despite running on forgiving student loan debt since 2015, when pressed for specifics during an interview with Dana Bash, Sanders responded, “I don't have the plan in my pocket right now,” because, you know, why on Earth should he know the details of his key campaign promises? https://mobile.twitter.com/DanaBashCNN/status/1137779734467792897

Two days before the 2016 general election, Sanders tweeted “I do not believe that most of the people who are thinking about voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist.” https://twitter.com/berniesanders/status/794941635931099136?lang=en

 Sanders had a heart attack at age 78, making his continued life expectancy 3.1 years. https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/acute-coronary-syndrome/study-65-older-mi-patients-die-within-8-years

He could have dropped out of the race after his heart attack and endorsed Warren, and she could have spent the primary building coalitions with the demographics where she was the weakest, and could well have been the front runner by now.  Instead, he selfishly stayed in the race, screwing her over and knowing full well the odds are against him living through a single term.  He continued to do the only thing he’s good at: fucking everyone over.

Say whatever you want about Biden, it’s not like there aren’t things to say.  But I’ve seen so many posts about how “Sure, Biden’s the worst EVER, but he is EVER SO SLIGHTLY less worse than Trump,” and excuse me, fuck off.  Biden horribly lost his wife and daughter before his 1972 Senate term even started, and instead of dropping out, he continued to serve his constituents while commuting home two hours every night to raise his sons.  Meanwhile, in 1972, Sanders was a deadbeat bum stealing electricity.  There’s no comparison.

[anonymous-moderate]

In the 2016 election, I voted for Trump.

When it comes to political leanings, I’m moderate. I can lean a little left or a little right depending on the issue, but I’m moderate. I was only 21 when the last election rolled around. Now, normally, I avoid politics at all costs. I hate the drama and I hate the judgement and I hate that the difference in who I vote for can cause a person I thought I was friends with to insult me and attack me or pretend we never knew each other at all. I hate that someone’s political leanings have any sway in how they’re viewed. Whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican, the moment that label is made known, someone somewhere judges you for it and makes assumptions without even knowing what exactly you believe in and stand for, and why. They already think they know everything about you without you saying more than that single word.

So I hate politics.

But when it comes to making important voting decisions, I don’t just vote on a whim. When 2016 rolled around, it was the first presidential election I could vote in. I have friends in the LGBT and nerd communities, and most people there tend to be left-leaning. But my family is Christian and mostly conservative, though my immediate family and I tread more toward the middle than most. I’d say we were Libertarian if there weren’t a few other beliefs in that party that don’t align with ours. But as you can already see, going into the election I had voices from both sides whispering in my ears and trying to tell me who to vote for (without actually trying, because most people I know wouldn’t do that on purpose; hearing repeated opinions just gets into your brain). So I tried to do my research.

Now keep in mind, this is all coming from my memory from four years ago...and as this is a recounting of my experience and not a display of facts, I might be a little off. But bear with me.

From my point of view, there were reasons I didn’t like both candidates...and they both also had certain campaign platforms that I agreed with wholeheartedly. I won’t go into detail here because it doesn’t really matter...but there were reasons for me to love and hate both. From a personality perspective, Trump was an ass. He was a businessman, not a politician, so he didn’t sweeten his words. He just said what he was thinking without trying to smooth-talking his way into people’s hearts. He was upfront and blunt and honest. He didn’t hold back. He had rough patches in his history, and he never pretended it didn’t happen. He made promises that he probably couldn’t keep, but every candidate does that to paint themselves in a positive light. Hillary did the same thing. He was a celebrity before he was a candidate, and I knew that gave him an advantage.

But Hillary had the same advantage. She had been in politics for years. Her husband had been president before she ran. And she really was a politician. She had the capacity to talk her way into people’s hearts, with promises that were more emotional based...something which, for her, was an added strength. And she was a woman...which at the time was unprecedented. A lot of people were hoping for her to win because of that fact. But...she lied. A lot. She would say she believed in something that, months prior, she was against, and then say she never was against it in the first place. She was sly and she was clever. She could paint a pretty picture to cover up mistakes. She had secrets.

But that was the difference. I voted for Trump because at the very least I knew what I was getting. I knew what to expect. I didn’t vote for Hillary because she scared me. Because I didn’t know who she really was, because there were secrets and rumors and people who had disappeared mysteriously around her family...and sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if she had won. A lot of people openly hate Trump for one reason or another, and people are always pointing out what he did wrong. But we know what he did wrong. We KNOW. We’re well aware of what is going on in this country. What scared me about Hillary was that even if there was chaos and disaster happening in the background, things could have seemed perfectly fine, but it all would have been a pretty and elaborate lie to make everyone feel better. She could have hidden the bad things easily, because from everything I was seeing in her campaign, she was already lying and hiding. Between the lesser of two evils, that’s what made up my mind.

So in 2016, I voted for Trump.

Say what you will about his poor choices. Ignore the positives if you want (up until Covid, unemployment was at the lowest it has been in a decade at least; the United States is now the leading provider of fuel and energy in the world; money was put into certain suffering communities and the economy was improving, at least until shit hit the fan this year). Go ahead and focus on all the bad things that happened, I don’t blame you...the news only reports on that stuff anyway. Nobody wants to hear about the fluff pieces and the moments of positivity, so I won’t hold a grudge for people who will only point at the disasters.

But now, in 2020, I don’t know who to vote for because frankly I don’t like either option. There were more moderate-leaning choices that came up in the primaries that I loved...but with the way political parties work, they weren’t “Left Enough” for the Democratic Party to put up against Trump. There were candidates in the last election too that I liked better than Trump but weren’t “Right Enough” for the Republican Party. So I don’t know who to vote for and I wish we could have a legitimate third option that doesn’t make me uncertain.

Now I would say this on my normal account...but I can’t. Because if I spoke my mind and out my name to these words, I would lose so much just for having my own opinion. And it’s scary. And I know, that sounds so impossible, that it’s “scary” to have a unique opinion when I’m talking to a group that is comprised mostly of people who boast open-mindedness...but it scares me anyway. Because in this day and age, you never know how someone will react when you say “Hey I think differently than you”.

So hi. This is me. And even from behind another name, I’m saying:

“Hey, I think differently than you...and I hope that’s okay.”

[maaaaaatryoshka0325]

As Above, So Below - Kim Seungmin Paranormal Investigator AU Part 2

Warnings: Very detailed gore, mentions/depictions of murder, graphic scenes, a character basically has a seizure

(<- Previous Part) (Next Part ->)

“Are you guys sure?” You asked for the billionth time.

“Y/N, if you ask us that again I’m gonna whack you with this camera.” Hyunjin laughed. “Of course we’re sure.”

Seungmin, Felix, and Hyunjin were helping you pack some clothes for a trip up the mountains to a small cabin. The five of you were to investigate a site where people were committing suicide and murders. The place desperately needing a cleansing.

“Shouldn’t a priest go?” You asked.

“We investigate it first, then we take it to the church. With something like this, the permission will have to come straight from the Vatican.” Seungmin explained as he helped you pack your luggage into the back of the van. Hyunjin and Haru had another old fashioned Volkwagen parked outside of your apartment.

“It really has to go all the way to the Vatican?” You asked.

“Isn’t that what he just said?” Haru asked as you both stepped out, leaning on the other van.

“Instead of standing there with an attitude, why don’t you help?” Felix asked, carrying one of your bags.

“Why should I? There’s no reason to bring all this shit.” Haru snapped at Felix.

“Says the one that filled up our whole van with just her luggage.” Hyunjin said, walking up to you and gently taking your luggage. “I’ll pack these Y/N, get yourself ready.”

He gave you a kind smile and you bowed to him in thanks and walked inside of your apartment. Seungmin promised you could continue living there, and persuaded you to change your college courses to online courses in case you all needed to travel. You kept your part time job at a small family clinic, as you did desk work. They promised to allow you to come back whenever you weren’t out on investigations, as you were pretty close with the family, and they knew of your gift.

You took out the cookies and brownies you had baked for everyone in thanks for allowing you to join them. When you brought them out, the three men’s eyes lit up as you handed them the little baggies of goodies.

“Wow, are these for us?” Felix asked, his eyes bright.

“Yep! I made them earlier, so they’re fresh!” You said with a smile.

You slowly walked over to Haru and handed her a small bag of them, and her eyes narrowed as she took them from your hand.

“If you think you can win me over with sweets, you’re wrong.” She growled before opening the front door to the van she and Hyunjin were sharing and slammed it shut.

“I’m sorry you keep putting up with her attitude, just try to keep your interactions with her limited for now.” Seungmin sighed, gently placing his hand on the small of your back and leading you to the van you were going in with him and Felix.

The three of you got in the van and buckled up as Seungmin put his GPS on. The ride up the side of the mountain was going to be about 2 hours, and you were glad Haru was with Hyunjin and not in the same van as you. You weren’t sure you would be able to deal with her attitude for that long. You felt something warm being placed over your legs. You looked over and saw Seungmin placing a blanket over your lap, a soft smile on his face.

“Why don’t you take a little nap? You look really tired, and I know you got up pretty early to make those sweets.” He said softly, reaching behind him and pulling a fluffy pillow from the back seat and handing it to you.

You took the pillow from him, but anxiety started to eat at you. “I actually can’t sleep during car rides… I got into an accident when I was younger, and it messed me up pretty badly.”

His soft eyes flicked to you as he pulled onto the highway, his hand going to rub your arm.

“I promise I’ll be careful, trust me, you might want to try and not be exhausted when we get there.” He said softly.

You slowly nodded and shifted the pillow under your head, snuggling under the blanket. Soft music played through the radio, and the sound of Felix’s light snoring lulled you to sleep as Seungmin began to hum to the soft music.

“Y/N? Hey, we’re here.” A soft voice spoke in your ear.

You opened your eyes to make eye contact with Seungmin, who’s large eyes were looking down at you.

“We’re here.” He repeated softly.

You nodded and sat up, stretching and cracking your bones as you did so.

“How’d you sleep?” He asked.

“Fine, though my bones ache now.” You said with a small chuckle.

“Well, you were in the same position most of the time. I kept checking your pulse to make sure you were alive.” He said with a soft smile.

You were about to say something when Felix slowly sat up from the back, his hair sticking at weird angles as he turned his head to you both, his one eyes squinting and the other squeezed shut.

“That ride was too fast.” He said, his voice octaves deeper than usual.

“Yeah, it was for you. You sleep like a bear.” Seungmin mumbled, stepping out of the van.

You followed him right after, running your fingers through your hair to situate it. There was a pretty large log cabin sitting in the middle of the massive property, a beautiful lake right behind it. It wasn’t an old run down log cabin, much to your surprise. It looked really neat, the wood a fine shade of mahogany.

Two elderly people stepped out, and you were assuming it was the owners of the mountain resort. It was pretty much a nature get away, cabins lined the shore of the giant lake, all spread out onto large properties.

“Mr. and Mrs. Oh, I’m Seungmin. We talked on the phone a few times.” Seungmin said as he approached them, shaking Mr. Oh’s hand and bowing to Mrs. Oh.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Seungmin, and thank you so much for coming.” Mr. Oh said with a bright smile.

They led the five of you into the beautiful cabin, a large chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

“I know you told me a bit over the phone, but I think you should explain more on what’s going on with my crew with me.” Seungmin said as you all set your suitcases in the massive living room. A deer’s head was above a large fireplace, a black leather couch lining the whole room.

Mr. Oh lead you to the couch and you all sat down. You say beside Seungmin, excite filling you to learn about what’s been going on on the beautiful property.

“When we bought this place twenty years ago, it was run down and shabby. We’ve worked hard to make this place the way it is, we put thousands and thousands into it.” Mr. Oh began. “We finally were able to open the place up to the public 18 years ago. It took us two years to repair the whole side of the mountain, we worked day and night. And everything was fine for the first six months, and that’s when the first murder happened.”

Mr. Oh pulled out a folder stacked with papers and handed it to Seungmin. You peaked over Seungmin’s shoulder and saw the picture of a young man, not much older than you. His eyes were wide, his pupil’s taking over his whole eye, giving him a demonic like appearance. Seungmin flipped the page, a gasp almost leaving your lips. Pictures from the crime scene were attached to a small newspaper article:

April 6, 2002

Teen accused of brutally murdering and mutilating his friends on a get away. The murders happened around 2 A.M, a family who was vacationing in a nearby cabin heard the screams of the last victim, Song YongJi. The victim’s were brutally mutilated and hung, some having their body parts sprawled across the ground. Police have the suspect, Kwon TaeJoon, in custody, in custody, and have been endlessly questioning the suspect.

Your eyes scanned the murder scenes, blood was splattered all over the ground outside, one of the victims, a male, was hanging against a tree. Two spear-like objects had his arms pinned to the tree as if he’s been crucified, his lower half missing and his insides on the ground. You shivered as you looked at the next two victims, another male and a female. The male was sitting up, a massive hole in his stomach, his tongue ripped out and his eyes torn from his sockets. The female was laying in front of him on her back, her face towards the camera. Her eyes were gouged out, an upside down cross cut into her forehead. Behind them, on the wall of a cabin, was a pentagram drawn in blood.

And then the last victim, Song Yongji, the killer’s girlfriend, was laying on her side, a single stab wound to her stomach. The picture was so fresh, her eyes weren’t even dilated yet. Her pretty skin was covered in scratches and self defense wounds. Seungmin flipped the page, another article on another set of murders.

May 6, 2005,

Father accused of slaying his family in a vacationing spot in the rural mountains. The man in question was the father of four of the victim’s, and he was married to the fifth, the mother of the children. Their children’s ages ranged from sixteen to four months old. Police have the man in custody.

The spot was also the same area where another massacre had happened three years ago in 2002.

You stared at the picture of the father, the same look in his eye that the younger male had. Two more murders with gruesome scenes happened again on March 6 2010 and on August 6 2016, and you shuddered at all of the pictures of the crime scenes.

“Why are you coming to us now? The last murder was in 2016.” Seungmin pointed out.

“No…” Mrs. Oh said, her eyes sad. “The last murder was four days ago.”

You unpacked your bags as it had begun to get dark out, and a few things were still floating in your head. Why was all of this happening at such a beautiful place? What had driven all of these people to murder? You crawled into the comfortable bed, but an uneasy feeling had kept you awake as you laid there.

“6….”

Your body froze, the hairs on your neck standing up as you slowly looked around your room. You had heard it, you know you did. You slowly got out of bed and walked down the stairs, your eyes landing on Seungmin sitting on the couch. He turned his head and gave you a soft smile, and it disappeared when he saw the look on your face.

“What is it?” He asked, standing up and grabbing your hand to lead you to the couch.

“I heard something upstairs… A whisper.” You said lowly.

His eyes searched your face, his large iris’ the prettiest shade of amber you’ve ever seen.

“Let me make you some hot chocolate, and we’ll talk about it.” He said.

You nodded and followed him into the kitchen, and he gave you a confused look.

“I don’t want to be alone right now.” You sighed.

“I understand, I’m shocked with everything you’ve told me about that that had scared you like this.�� He said.

“I know.. But because of everything that happened here, I’m just nervous.” You whispered, playing with your fingers.

His hands gently grabbed yours, a soft, reassuring smile on his pretty face.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m right here.” He whispered.

You smiled at him and nodded as his gentle touch made all of the anxiety go away.

When the hot chocolate was done, Seungmin lead you into the living room, the fireplace gently crackling to keep the massive room warm. You sat down on the couch and he sat down beside you as you both sipped on your hot chocolates. You sat there for a moment, before you quickly grabbed the files that held all of the murders in them.

“What is it?” Seungmin asked.

April 6. May 6. March 6. August 6.

6.

“Look at the dates.” You said, pointing to them.

His eyes scanned over the dates as you pointed to the 6’s.

“When I was upstairs, I heard someone whispering six. There’s something to do with that number Seungmin!” You gasped.

Seungmin took the files from you, his eyes scanning the dates again.

“Y/N… You might’ve just found something!” He gasped.

You both smiled at each other as you both continued to look through the files, reading over the names carefully.

“I can’t find anything that leads to the number six…” Seungmin sighed.

You sighed in defeat as well and glanced at the clock. It was 3 AM, and you both had a long day ahead of you. Seungmin places the files down, his eyes wandering around the room.

“Is everything okay?” You asked.

“Yeah, don’t worry.” He chuckled, glancing at you. “Just trying to put things together.”

He picked up the files again, scanning through them as your eyes began to droop. Seungmin began to softly hum and you gave in and allowed yourself to be lulled to sleep by his soft voice, your cheek resting on something warm.

You woke up to something moving, your eyes opening as you slowly raised your head. Your nose brushed Seungmin’s, making you jump back with a squeak.

“S-Sorry! I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you!” You gasped, covering your red face with the blanket.

You heard Seungmin chuckle behind you.

“It’s okay, your head kind of plopped on me while I was reading and I couldn’t read with you laying on me, so you made me get some sleep. Thank you.” He said.

You looked at him and nodded, pulling the blanket off of you. He rubbed his shoulder, giving you a devious smile.

“Though your head was a little heavy, I think you messed up my shoulder.”

WHACK

You hit him with one of the couch pillows and he let out a loud laugh of amusement as he jumped off the couch and away from you.

“It’s not my fault your head is heavy!” He laughed as you chased him around the couch, beating him with the pillow.

“I don’t know how you two are so active right now.” Felix yawned as he walked down the stairs.

“You know I’m a morning person.” Seungmin pointed out. “We should probably get breakfast going.”

The five of you sat at the table in the dining room, a very beautifully crafted wooden table. Seungmin set down pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and waffles with juices and chocolate milk.

“To the first day of our investigation!” Hyunjin said, raising his glass of orange juice.

You all raised your glasses and clanked them together, then took your shares of food. As you ate, the others talked about what they planned on doing.

“Haru and I are gonna check out the surrounding area and see if there’s anyone that comes here annually and what they know. Felix, Hyunjin, check all empty cabins and see what you can find.” Seungmin said.

“What about me?” You asked.

“You had a late night last night, you should probably get some more sleep. Or see if you can crack anything out of those cases.” Seungmin said, not looking at you.

How boring.

Haru gave you a mocking look, knowing you were disappointed, but you ignored it. It sucked he was putting you at the back burner during your first true investigation.

After you all finished your breakfast, they all headed out and waved goodbye.

“Don’t worry Y/N,” Haru laughed. “Useless people get to relax while we do all the work. Think of this as a vacation.”

You rolled your eyes and fixed yourself up for the day, before sitting in the living room with the files. You bit your lip and grabbed the new article about the murder that happened now five days ago. You saw the pictures, and cringed when you saw the gore and carnage in them. Your eyes went to the murderer, a college student with high grades, an athlete, a good kid.

“This doesn’t make sense.” You sighed.

You quickly checked your phone for the date.

April 11th.

“6….”

All the hairs on your body stood up, your hands shaking as you slowly turned your head. Nothing was seen around the room, and you slowly turned back to the files and pulled your laptop out, searching the recent massacre.

“Kim Joonwoo.” You whispered the name of the kid, your eyes scanning the online article.

He’s being held up in a detention center not too far from the mountain.

“Time for me to get out and find some shit out.” You whispered, getting up and grabbing your hoodie.

The Oh’s had allowed you to borrow one of their cars to get to town, since they were good with driving on the mountain. You took the key and put the GPS on your phone as you began to head off into the small town. The small town was bustling with people, shops lining the streets, restaurants and bars on every corner. You pulled up to the detention center, which was surprisingly very small. You quickly parked and looked around as you headed up the stairs and into the building.

A woman sat behind a giant counter, another cop beside her.

“Can I help you?” She asked flatly.

“I’m here to see Kim Joonwoo.” You told her.

“Are you family?” She asked.

“Well no-“

“Girlfriend? A friend?” She asked.

“I’m not.”

“I can’t let you in then.” She said flatly.

You quickly grabbed your ID, your eyes going to hers.

“Listen, I’m a paranormal investigator hired to investigate the resort on the side of the mountain where all of the massacres happened. I just want to speak with him to find out what happened.” You explained.

She went to open her mouth when the officer beside her smiled at you.

“You’re here with Seungmin?” He asked.

You nodded and he gave the other woman a reassuring smile.

“This could really help with the case, I’ve seen his work, they’re really good.” He told her.

She hesitantly nodded and took your ID as the other cop lead you back.

“I really hope you guys can figure this out, my cousin went to that resort and said she felt like she was going crazy.” The cop said.

“Really? Did she say why?” You asked.

“She said she kept hearing things and seeing things… She left on the third day and hasn’t been back since.” He explained.

“I see, I’ll try my best to get what I can out of him.” You said reassuringly.

He smiled and nodded as he lead you to a glass where phones were placed on either side. He wandered off towards where the inmates were kept, and you glanced down at the picture and notes you brought. You jumped when you noticed someone staring at you, and realized it was Joonwoo. His eyes were dark with eye bags, his lips chapped and bloody looking, his nails bloody from biting them. You gave him a sweet smile and gently took the phone, and he shaking reaches for the one on his side.

“W-Who are you?” He asked shakily.

“My names Y/N, and I’m here to investigate the resort on the side of the mountain. I’m a paranormal investigator.” You said.

His eyes both darkened and lightened at the same time as he pressed his hand to the glass.

“So you’ll believe me, right?” He asked.

You pressed your hand to the glass where his sat on the opposite side, a reassuring smile on your face as your other hand pressed on a recorder to get what he would say.

“Just tell me what happened, can you do that?” You asked.

He slowly nodded and shifted in his seat.

“We all wanted to go to the resort and just let loose for a couple days. We were off of school for a small break, and we heard how beautiful it was.. And that it was haunted. We thought it’d be fun, ya know?” He asked.

“I understand.” You said with a nod.

“The first night was fine, nothing really happened besides some cold spots in the cabin. We got one of the little run down ones since it was cheaper. I remember on the second night, I kept hearing voice and thought it was my friends messing with me… But it was them.” He whispered, tears pouring out of his eyes. “They made me do it.”

“Them!” He yelled, making you jump. “They kept crawling in my skin and in my body! They kept taking over my body and making me watch them kill my friends! I couldn’t do anything! They wouldn’t leave me alone!”

The cop who had taken him out began to approach him as the boy began to freak out. When the cop put his hands on his shoulders, the boys head shot up to yours, his eyes dark, his pupils blown out.

“6.” He growled. “Beware of cabin 6.”

His eyes rolled back as he bashed his head against the glass twice, the officer bringing him on the ground as his body jerked, foam forming at the corner of his mouth.

“Call an ambulance!” The cop yelled to another cop.

You quickly pushed past the doors as the other cop ran out.

“Hey! You can’t be back there!”

You quickly dropped down to his level, pushing him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on his tongue or saliva.

“Call a priest!” You yelled. “He’s possessed still!”

When the ambulance arrived, you and one of the cops assigned to his case exchanged numbers, as you had promised to get Seungmin to call a priest. You had video surveillance from the detention center and voice footage, making it all the perfect evidence.

When you arrived back, you saw Seungmin looking around the area, relief in his eyes when he saw you.

“Where were you?” He asked.

“Conducting an investigation on my own.” You said.

“Great, now she thinks she can do whatever she wants.” Haru growled.

“I actually found something.” You said, looking at her.

“What is it?” Felix asked.

They followed you inside as you played the surveillance footage and voice recording.

“Cabin 6.” Seungmin gasped as he looked at you.

“6.” You both said.

“Okay, what are you two talking about?” Hyunjin asked.

“Last night Y/N heard something whisper 6 to her… And we realized the dates were all the 6st of each month.” Seungmin explained, opening the files and showing everyone.

“And everything went down at cabin 6?” Haru asked.

“I’m not sure, but all he said was beware of cabin 6, so I think that’s our next search.” You said.

Seungmin nodded and stood up, turning to you. “I’m gonna go tell the Oh’s we need to see cabin 6, and the area surrounding it.”

As Seungmin walked out, you caught up with him.

“Seungmin?” You asked.

He turned around and gave you a questioning look.

“Would you possibly be able to get a priest to help that boy? He was definitely still possessed... I saw it.” You said.

“We’ll check the property and have a priest go there first, then if we have enough evidence we’ll have the priest come here. There’s definitely something… Evil going on here.” He said with a reassuring smile.

You and the others headed over the cabin 6, and you realized the place wasn’t as nice as the others. The cabin was still cleaned up and fixed and all, but it was noticeably not as nice as the others.

“I wonder why this cabin isn’t as nice or as big as the others.” Hyunjin said, looking around.

You froze before you even walked into the place, the aura not right.

“You okay?” Felix asked, gently grabbing your shoulder.

“Look at the 6.” You whispered.

Felix’s eyes went to the 6 on the cabin, and he let out a shocked gasp. It looked like the 6 had been moved quite a few times, 2 sixes imprinted against the wood, the third boldly in the middle.

“666…. They did something with that.” Felix said.

Seungmin gave you both a confused look, and you quickly pointed it out. Seungmin’s eyes scanned it before he took out his camera and snapped a picture.

“We’ll need this.” He said.

Felix noticed your stressed aura and wrapped his hand around yours.

“Don’t worry, we’re all right here. We’ve got you.” He said reassuringly.

You smiled at him and nodded as the three of you walked into the cabin with Haru and Hyunjin, and they searched around the place.

“Nothing seems to be out of place here.” Haru said, looking around.

“It all looks normal.” Hyunjin agreed.

Haru stepped on the rug, and you noticed the way it creaked.

“Haru, step there again.” You said.

She glanced at you and stepped back on the wood, the creaking sound echoing in the room. You both quickly moved the rug covering the wood floor, and gasped when you looked down at it. The floor was wet, almost, and in the middle of the floor, was a blood red pentagram.

“I highly doubt the Oh’s know about this.” Hyunjin gasped.

He and Seungmin quickly took pictures, and you thought about it for a moment.

“What is it?” Felix asked.

“The way the bodies were hung and killed, the way they drew the symbols is almost like… They were sacrificing them.” You said. “Do they know anything about this property?”

“I’m not sure… Why?” Felix asked.

“Because on some mountain sides, witches were doing sacrifices. Usually with animals, but with people too.” Seungmin explained.

“You think this was a ritual ground?” Haru asked you.

“It could be, all the symbols… The way these people were murdered and their positions… This place could be cursed.” You said.

Everyone’s eyes widened in horror, and Seungmin quickly grabbed the files out of his bag and scattered them around.

“She’s right.” He gasped.

“What can we do?” Hyunjin asked.

“We have to find where all of the rituals happened and get to the main source of the curse.” Seungmin said.

“Haru, Y/N, take the small trail towards the next cabin, see if you can find anything.” He said.

You both nodded, and you were surprised Haru had nothing smart to say or tried to object. You both quickly made your way through the woods, when you noticed something.

“Isn’t that the shed where the last girl was hung too?” You asked.

“I think so- holy shit, there’s still blood on it.” Haru gasp as she stepped towards the shed.

The pentagram was a dark angry red, like no one even tried to scrub it off.

“This is weird, don’t they usually clean off all bodily fluids?” You asked.

Haru didn’t say anything, she just walked around the shed, her eyes taking in every detail. You took out your camera and shot a picture of the pentagram, needing it Incase it magically disappeared.

“We should get Seungmin.” Haru said.

You nodded as you began to follow her, when you noticed her stepping into the ground that looked caved in.

“Hey lookout!” You yelled, pushing her out of the way.

“What the f-!” Before she could finish, you shoved her away completely and fell through the earth.

A yelp left your lips as you plummeted, then everything to black as you hit the earth.

[fallershipping]

Looker x Anabel Retrospective

The absolute ultimate Retrospective post as to explain why I’ve been on this OTP since 2016. Especially made in mind with the idea that some new peeps on the boat may not realize the extent of the lore between these two characters. Feel free to read this or skip this if you want, because I did pour out my heart and soul and it can be kind of a lengthy read.

Enjoy~

So Looker and Anabel have been two existing characters in Pokemon for the longest time, with both being sort of beloved for different reasons but not too often thought about as compared to other NPCs. One’s a reoccurring comedy relief detective since Platinum and the other is probably the most memorable and strongest of the Hoenn Battle Frontier from Emerald.

But when SunMoon dropped, these two characters got a new lease on life that no one really saw coming. This special appearance made them go from NPCs I never really thought too much about to placing them as my top two favorite Pokemon characters of all time.

The UB Task Force mission, as much as a glorified fetch quest as it seems to be, continues some of the darker, more adult themes brought along with SunMoon. While the main story dealt with subjects of abuse and what it means to be a truly strong person in the case of hardships, the post game surprisingly delves into the corrupt side of a seemingly good organization and idea of sacrificing one life to save another. What appears to be another run of the mill Looker mission takes a dive into the tragic backstory shared between certain characters, and all of this lore was scrapped in the ‘definitive’ USUM games.

So while a lot of people might have played this portion of the game, many could have skipped it entirely or didn’t give the dialogue too much thought.

But you’re asking, why is it special? And why have I cared so much for a potential romantic relationship between Looker and Anabel enough to draw them as much as I have?

Haha. Buckle up buckaroo.

So right off the bat, Looker and Anabel’s banter sets up what kind of relationship they have with one another. They’re formal as coworkers can be, but the more they talk to one another, the friendliness that they share quickly becomes apparent. They also tend to speak highly of each other, no matter if the person is in the room or gone out.

And he’s not wrong! Looker is well aware of just how capable Anabel is for a guy that isn’t really known for Pokemon battles himself.

After the first UB on the list is securely captured, Looker insists on a feast for everyone to enjoy in one of Alola’s famous restaurants, in which Anabel points out asking how he had known of this already having just now arrived here. Looker, flustered, says that he’s read it in a magazine and dashes out to make reservations, cuing Anabel to react to his odd antics in a more...

Affectionate way.

Look at that lil smile.

He’s an odd fellow, for sure. A lot of characters in the past called him weird or were off put by his personality, but Anabel is very patient and sort of endeared by him. He constantly returns to the gang yelling “It’s a catastrophe!” in different languages-- And Anabel doesn’t snap at him angrily for it, but calmly asks him to repeat himself in english so that she can understand him.

During the course of the post game while Looker’s away, Anabel is always talking about him in a positive manner. Despite his quirks, she finds him a league of his own even amongst the elite of the International Police.

Despite this acknowledgment of Looker’s skill and ability, she seems to be awfully dead set on keeping Looker as backup in their base of operations.

Anabel knows how dangerous UBs are. They’re not human criminals that he can easily deal with with his own fists-- they are aggravated alien monsters. Her imagining Looker facing one of them alone without any Pokemon to defend himself with probably scares her deeply.

Scares her enough for her to constantly assign him to be backup for her and the Protag, despite his protests and his expertise in fieldwork.

And yet she never fails to remind him that he is important regardless of whether he’s on the field fighting alongside her or set to backup. Almost, in a way, finding a way to flatter him. (smiling at him as reassurance or perhaps even putting up a bit of charm) She is thankful for his help on getting intel and he’s a valuable asset to the mission, but she cannot bear the thought of her friend getting hurt when she can handle the UBs with her own fully trained Pokemon team.

However, despite her confidence, Anabel grows more and more fatigued with each UB encounter. Looker’s worry rises and he tries even harder to let himself take her place in the field.

As much as she also insists on not wanting to worry him, Looker’s usual goofy and eccentric demeanor begins to change. His speech patterns start to become more serious and his sentences trail off more often, which throughout all the games, is a rather rare sight to see. His care for Anabel brings out something vulnerable and emotional out of someone self proclaimed hard-boiled.

With all the respect he gives her and all the times he commemorates her aptitude, he still fears for her greatly.

And when a familiar character appears, we understand why.

Nanu comes in to talk about the truth behind Anabel’s reappearance in the series; much like the UBs, she came from another world through Ultra Space and ended up as what Interpol dubbed as a Faller. 

Fallers are bathed in the energy from ultra wormholes. Thus, UBs are attracted to these humans, mistaking them as a way back home and going on the attack. Back then, Interpol found a particular use for Fallers by using them to direct the attention of UBs away from public areas.

Which is what happened ten years prior to the events of SunMoon. Looker, Nanu, and a third member were sent to fight a Guzzlord. However, Looker hesitated in harming it further when it realized it was just scared monster sent here against it’s will. But his lapse in judgment cost the life of the third member, a Faller woman, to fall victim to Guzzlord’s attack.

Looker and Nanu took down the Guzzlord but learned the horrible truth about their companion, who was not trained in combat-- she was designated as bait, but the catastrophic results were a failure that shadows Interpol forever. Not long after, the two agents found a woman washed up Poni’s shore recollecting nothing about herself but her name; Anabel.

This is why Looker has been growing ever so worried for Anabel’s safety and why he even asked the champion in the first place to help. The protag is indeed a Faller as well. He thought he could be able to control the situation with having a fantastic trainer who befriended Solgaleo/Lunala to keep the UB outbreak in check-- To make sure Anabel was safe. After all, the protag is able to help the mission go along beautifully and safely capture each UB.

But not without a price. Anabel was still being hurt, and Nanu had to intervene to make Looker realize that he had made a big mistake.

After all, Anabel isn’t aware that she’s a Faller herself. Why doesn’t she know yet? Wouldn’t Looker tell her? Or Nanu?

It would appear as Interpol learned something after all these years, and isn’t really using her as Bait as they did before with the first Faller. Anabel is said to have autonomy over this and chose to save the UBs from a worse fate. Unlike the first Faller, she was properly trained for the UB Task Force missions and for many other Interpol related missions as her own strong, resourceful agent. However, Interpol is still quiet about her status as a Faller and anything relating to them from the past.

And Looker, years after the incident with Guzzlord, is now met with an Anabel with a newly built Interpol life determined to help people, Pokemon, and UBs in need no matter what. She absolutely believes in her successes and her cause. And she is adamant of going on these missions. Looker grows a bond with her and is faced with this troubling realization;

To tell her the truth would mean to collapse the whole world upon her.

After all... Having rebuilt her life, seeing her so confident, so passionate about what she’s doing... He sees her succeed in something he feels all too familiar with-- Starting from the bottom and creating an identity, somehow.

Having been found in the Battle Resort, washed ashore with no memory, not even a name to go by. Looker knows her pain more than anyone else. She needs to know about what she is going through-- But the uttermost pain she will feel and the lingering eyes of Interpol’s heads has been keeping him mortified and silent.

So he does anything and everything in his power to protect her in the meantime, before she can be told the truth. And with the way the Alola mission went, that time is coming up real soon.

However, with the protag and Nanu’s help the UB Task Force finally had every UB under control. And Anabel was kept safe and sound, much to Looker’s relief. They can finally enjoy some time off and no doubt will be in for quite a long, painful, but necessary conversation when the time comes.

Not of course before Looker going off into a slight panic over the idea of Anabel going on a date.

And that was the line that made me totally think “Oh yep, yep! Looker’s got a massive crush on her!”

SO! What’s the take away from all this madness??

The fact that Looker and Anabel care deeply for one another so much, as they go far too out of their way to protect each other from harm. Not just out of necessity, but their banter clearly shows that there’s a deeper connection between the two than just a professional coworker one.

You might argue that Looker is only worrying about her this deeply because of what he went through all those years ago and is trying to prevent the same thing from happening, and yet... He’s grown to appreciate and know Anabel for who she is. She is in fact her own agent that joined Interpol on her own volition and chose to do the UB missions due to her empathy to the lost beings so far from home.

He knows when she’s unwell, he knows why she hides it away. He understands her as a person and it’s wonderful how much they show that they grew to have a bond with one another. Enough for both of them to catch on to each other’s quirks and feel comfortable.

The small giggle that she gives him, the small yet playfully affectionate jab, the way it just says “Oh there he goes again thinking about the feast at this time... Just Looker being Looker~” Because she also knows him deeply as well! This man is not one of her best allies but one of her most trusted companions in this new life of hers and it shows!! 

They’re each other’s most trusted companions and their partnership is just wonderful to see.

Of course, romance can’t happen between them yet-- Not until Anabel knows the truth about Fallers and what Interpol did long ago. But let’s be honest, even the big angst/hurt/comfort fest that would come from that conversation would be a whirlwind of emotions that would just end up with them having an even stronger relationship than they’ve ever had before.

It’s not just that they look wonderful together, complement each other, and such-- It’s all those things plus the backstory and close bond and tragedy that comes from this mission. It makes me want to see them overcome every hurdle and be happy with one another and have all the joy and happiness they deserve after all they’ve been through.

I want to see them in more situations where they can be casual with one another, fight alongside one another, and so on so forth. They just have so much potential and I really think Game Freak sees it too.

And as for a lil bonus, Looker in USUM finding out the protag is the champion but is more impressed with Anabel’s knowledge than the actual champion. Also they’re always vacationing together mutually huh hmm wowie?

--

tl;dr go ship Looker/Anabel aka Fallershipping aka Lookabel best ship 10/10