#writing previous such posts have sure developed my Insights & Theories by the time i was actually posting them

[unproduciblesmackdown]

tonight's highlighted element of mitzi and mordecai's murder mystery is "fr why does mordecai Not just hate mitzi full throttle no caveats" like, seems like the reason he doesn't is: something we don't know at all surrounding something else we don't know at all, which is:: what specific reason atlas was killed when he specifically was (vs. like, more generally/thematically, like how it's introduced as "that's the business & an unsurprising inevitable fate for some in it")

mitzi mentions the "reassurance that it's still my fault" which leaves room to interpret it only as [she's framing this from mordecai's presumed perspective but doesn't herself think it was her fault] but i think it's more likely she agrees with that herself. wherein it's like....so why doesn't mordecai too begrudged about this to even speak to her, or later on not defend her at all (to someone who may die in 5 sec anyways but hey (gracie))

which, speaking of, i Know we did not see dramatic flashbacks ft. identical revolvers for mordecai to Not have been the one to shoot atlas....i Know mordecai was not: Not guaranteed to have quit lackadaisy afterwards, the only Employee we see at atlas's funeral (or identifiable character besides mitzi (widow) and asa (friend)), and currently going around never not describing his approach to his current "uniquely terrible" job as being one driven by Work Ethic and Professionalism to Not have shot atlas because atlas was in on that happening and requested/ordered it to happen such that mordecai can think of it as him having done it For His Boss, For His Job. i also know that regardless of dealing with it through a lens of professionalism(tm) and mere work ethic and etc there's no way a prominent character doesn't get to be in on all these emotional hangups and i doubt he got much of any [father figure] out of atlas for having a gun thrown at his head and then his self shoved into the line of fire Professionally(tm) but there's more room for him to simply be standing around like atlas's ferocious little gay ass shadow like oh so he's Competitive with atla's wife huh. well that is interesting. wherein like i'm not even sure that mordecai is helpfully expositing rn because he's (with very little interest) defending mitzi so much as he's like, actually protective of his own role in the murder mystery (and not just protective like, No One Can Know. i mean mordecai has how many murders that nobody's supposed to know about? that's not special) like excuse me the fact that SHE didn't shoot him and EYE did is actually important to me. whilest it's also like hang on, why was she not even living with him at the time (i extremely doubt that mordecai was instead, but. well, maybe not extremely. let's say Quite doubt. verily) why had things visibly deteriorated? mitzi seems to be entirely affectionate towards atlas's memory, and i don't think mordecai's lying about mitzi not shooting atlas or even being there (why would he be, anyways)

so it's like, what happened to deteriorate anything? it could've been for mitzi's safety or something, if what was deteriorating was atlas's handle on Not being murdered by nonrequest....which is leading back to that question of "what was her fault" which is alone a real [???] and then even more mysterious when it's like....the fact that mordecai's main deal is being aggrieved about atlas's death (and clearly more generally caught up in it such that For Some Reason he (but not really mitzi???) feels there's room for Important Things He Thought He Knew But Might Not and is now motivated to be riskily detectiving about it) and has whatever further emotional particulars surrounding that sure would Seem to point to like, yeah he Would just supercharged entirely hate mitzi now, right. and yet that doesn't seem to be the case, or else he has like, incredible restraint lol like Yes i feel that way No it actually doesn't affect what i do any more than this. but i Do extremely doubt that's the case, he's Not actually here to destroy what she has left or even bother backbiting in a situation wherein he has no reason Not to if he feels like it even a bit. it's also like, how could mitzi have such a role in things as to Be at fault for something that even indirectly got atlas killed? Maybe she was helping run things before he died, but that's pretty much the only idea i have since otherwise all we know is [she was his wife], which is unhelpfully vague, but [she was his wife who helped run his business] is Also unhelpfully vague.

mitzi's also this fairly isolated figure, despite us knowing how she connects to pretty much everyone currently. like, she showed up with a band (who's still around / we know what they're up to (probably Not: having played a role in atlas's death)) then she marries atlas, now she runs his speakeasy operation....but there are no figures involved here who atlas also wouldn't have been involved with. and, in fact, now mordecai is all riled about the possible unknown role that asa had in things (by potentially having something to warn atlas about by way of the mysterious thorn in marigold's side), with asa seemingly being someone more directly connected to atlas, while being a guy who mitzi and mordecai were previously just kind of Around Sometimes through their being wherever With atlas. it's like, okay, can't imagine mitzi up to something that involves herself and only herself that would make it her fault atlas died; But Whom Else could she have been involved in anything with whom atlas would not have been as, or more, directly involved with too....mordecai's a candidate there, of course, but if they were in cahoots about anything you might think they'd have Stayed in it (more than they have, i.e. by their sharing some secrets between themselves out here) rather than mordecai violencing out (this is a play on "peacing out," wherein you also shot at least one person)

(half-joking tangent about "maybe wick" wherein i'm mostly unserious like "lol maybe he's the mystery highest up at marigold" but i'm also forever like "well...yeah maybe" lol like maybe mining operations are his front and that's why he's also so busy with that. you'd think for all her involvement that lacy would have to know about something like that, but hey, maybe she does. maybe the only thing at risk re: wick being too nice to go seeking reprisals is, you know, ways of operating that mitzi didn't want to turn to, the potential loss or cooling of an alliance here....or maybe other people seek reprisals for him, what with that being the job of all the hired guns. i'm also just not so sure that lackadaisy really has any such Twists set up at all, even if there's things completely secret to us; but i'm also not sure what wick's role in things could be otherwise, if/when it comes to him taking any particularly active role at all. versus just being some kind upstanding (but not prohibitively. lol) citizen hanging out out here. being quietly robbed here and there)

finally for now, also a note wondering if simply The Feds alone are that thorn in marigold's side / what asa had to warn atlas about....i have to suppose that mordecai saying "i think i met your lawyer" to gracie is also the "c. trumble / no show" in drago's calendar book, is also the "local attorney and assistant missing" page beneath that book, is also that guy way back when (so like a day and a half or two back in the comic's timeline lol. eventful week out here) who got hatcheted up, truly f but hey man the savoys are calling mordecai their petit hache about it, so a small price to pay for the mostly postmortem mess....but fr like, is marigold running up against the problem of like, some more ambitious investigations, versus marigold having more room to focus on That rather than paltry competition, but wherein now the issue is just how far up the ladder of [informants] they can go? mordecai being tasked to take out gracie And his lawyer of yore seems to be a zany mission of killing these informants who drago's trying to meet with before he can do so....but it's also like, what's Necessarily new? gracie's Been meeting with this guy, they could maybe pay people off instead, and mordecai's saying an Ambitious agent (apparently like drago) could maybe shut a venue down for all of ten minutes. maybe drago specifically has some Particular information that makes it worth the risk and expense of Elevating Activity....marigold still seems concerned as well with potential competition, though maybe the Monitoring is all about seeing whether anyone else is reporting on operations. it's also sure possible that the total unknown of whoever runs marigold, for whomst asa can be no more than a messenger about these mysteries missions (like, if the marigold dream team triumvirate was trying to make sure people weren't being informants, couldn't they just be told as much?), has some kind of key context in their Motivation that isn't just peak straightforward cut & dry Business Matters. maybe they're like "wuhoh re: atlas dying. Could be me; what if i'm next." and is just making that everyone's problem by ramping up efforts to stamp out competition and informants, all while withholding info from everyone to be "safe"

not like Any Of [the mystery of what marigold's up to] theories necessarily illuminate "how does mordecai think there's some important things he could be wrong about? what would it be? why's mitzi seemingly know everything he knows, but is unfazed?" nor "how could mitzi be at fault for atlas's death, with atlas Probably being in on it, and mordecai definitely being in on it and mad at her but he Hasn't dedicated his life to destroying everything she has, as a hater, even though he could?" like hmm questions of the day. maybe atlas was being protective (of whom? in what situation would he think he could only protect them by himself dying? like, if he was warned by asa about the thorn in marigold's side being federal investigations....what else is new, and why would he die about that) maybe atlas thought his being killed was so unavoidable he was like well at least mordecai would certainly take me out as effectively as possible and where i can arrange my affairs and then not live my imminently numbered days in suspense (and why would it be so certain? did the head of marigold actually get like paranoid about shit Before atlas died such that asa could be like "they think you're too much of a liability and instead of initiating a war w/lackadaisy, marigold's ally atm, they're just gonna take you out to cut to the chase") in which case it's like, again, how would it be mitzi's fault. how would mordecai feel he has Enough information to have not previously suspected marigold (although he does specifically say there was no Overt reason to suspect, not that there was No reason to suspect at all) and feel that mitzi's culpability is Established and have shot atlas but not felt there was enough of a mystery there to investigate anything further if like, such a key piece of info was presumably unbeknownst to him before this brunch of disappointment just earlier.

(also, maybe mitzi and mordecai just have enough of a truce not based only on like, how they, in theoretical isolation, feel about each other, nor on sharing secrets about a murder mystery, but probably mostly based on this Understanding about their being the ones out here who had personal emotional ties to atlas (even if those were like, more unilateral in the cases of people in competition with atlas's wife. f) like, if mordecai's at the funeral then mitzi would know about that, not like viktor or any other loyal employees or affiliates were there, asa is also there presumably as that friend....atlas could also be like okay you have to shoot me but do Not kill my soon to be surviving wife, alright? thanks lol)

(wait also technically ivy's dad is kind of a mystery factor. but it seems most likely that he's just another lackadaisy affiliate who drew back when atlas died....hilarious if it's like "well my daughter who sees all of these goings on as Like A Movie is gonna keep hanging around this speakeasy, so i'll look out for her by taking atlas out so operations are greatly diminished and it's just Kinda dangerous" lol. the perfect plan. but he also does seem to have been involved in no tiny part in any of lackadaisy's more dangerous operations, see: that train depot funeral parlor smuggling gig, which had the proper slaughter at the lodge, the organ player shot, mordecai shot but he's fine thanks....risky business)

anyways i guess the theme is mostly like "what could be the basis of mitzi's culpability" and "mordecai gay. happy pride (and for the asexuality already as well)"

[alianoralacanta]

WMSC Analysis (28-07-2007)

Context: This is my first incomplete post that I plan to put in this La Canta Magnifico Blog archive. I am not sure why I only have the incomplete version, but hopefully this gives a little insight into the creation process. This post was for a critical point in the 2007 F1 season, namely the "Spygate" second ruling concerning McLaren's knowledge or lack of same of 780 pages of Ferrari information that somehow ended up at McLaren. This was the occasion for the $100 million fine McLaren received for the information spreading more than it initially knew, as well as being ejected from the 2007 Constructor's Championship. I don't have any blog posts in the saved archive covering the other events in the Spygate sequence directly, but if you don't know what this is talking about, I'm happy to fill you in. I generally write my blog entries in one piece. I start with an idea and a mental sketch of what I need to do to turn it into a post. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are checked as I go - my standard typing speed incorporates all this because I have a lot of practise at typing, thinking and checking simultaneously. As I finish each paragraph, I check it with the previous paragraphs, because I have a bad habit of introducing ideas in an awkward sequence otherwise. I then look back again at the end of each section, to ensure the plan itself still works. For more complex post plans, I commonly find myself adding new sections at this point. At the end, I do one more structure check, followed by a final proofreading pass. This incomplete blog suffers quite a bit from spelling issues in particular; I have made no effort to correct these, except for occasions where the meaning of the sentence changed. I almost never wait after finishing a post to post it; the La Canta Magnifico Blog archive series is the only exception… apart from this post's original appearance. I'd been checking for the transcripts during the development of the post, since these had been promised. I was about to post when the transcripts showed up, so I felt it best to add comments about those in the same post. It is unclear that some of the legal points mentioned here would hold in any judiciary function, be that a court, the FIA or anywhere else. Finally, WMSC means World Motor Sports Council. It was at the time the highest committee in the FIA for judicial matters that had never previously been judged. Stewards were not involved as the issue did not point to any specific race. Warning! Very long post alert!

Firstly, a legal disclaimer. I was intruiged, and not a little worried, when I heard that the FIA intended to publish its battery of evidence for its decision. In my previous post on McLaren/Ferrari, I pointed out that this was surely part of playing the case in public. This is in fact illegal, since there are other legal proceedings involving this case running at the moment. Any publication by the FIA could be considered prejudicial to those cases. Ironically, the FIA has noticed these cases (in point 1.8 of the full text), yet it has not absorbed the legal consequences.

The internal investigations to which the WMSC refers include McLaren's investigation into Mike Coughlan (currently suspended) and Ferrari's into Nigel Stepney (currently sacked). In theory, the case should remain open without any party needing to appeal. The judgement and the publication of the proceedings from which these quotes are derived amounts to a public trial of McLaren. This is against the law in most civilised countries. In fact, the law is such that the WMSC should not have judged McLaren at this point. McLaren could send the FIA through the civil courts for that alone, if it felt so inclined. The fact that the prejudgement is having serious negative consequences for McLaren, the FIA and Formula 1 obliges me and many other commentators to speak out. In my case, I am only quoting those parts necessary to make this post make sense.

Normally, there would be no problem with publication of evidence supporting a decision, and would in fact benefit those of us who wish to understand the sport better. Normally, the FIA does not provide that evidence. Wierd…

Unless otherwise stated, all quotes come from "WMSC Decision In Full", published by the FIA.

1.5 In response to the charge, McLaren made extensive written submissions in advance of the 26 July WMSC meeting and made detailed oral argument at the meeting itself. McLaren did not dispute that Coughlan had come into possession of Ferrari confidential information but argued, inter alia:

(i) that the Ferrari confidential information in question had not been circulated within McLaren;

(ii) that McLaren had neither used nor benefited from the receipt by Coughlan of the Ferrari confidential information; and

(iii) that the actions of Coughlan in receiving and dealing with the Ferrari confidential information were those of a "rogue employee" for which McLaren should not be held responsible.

These three points will need to be referred to extensively in the following argument. Normally, a court considering this sort of case would ask the company to pay the punishment and then the company relays the punishment (or an appropriate proportion thereof) to the perpetrator(s) among the staff, if sufficiently severe. The immensity of the punishment prevents this from occuring (can you seriously imagine Mike Coughlan paying a $100m fine?). Nonetheless, these three points are the reason the WMSC had to meet a second time.

2.3 All relevant parties (including McLaren and Ferrari) were informed of the new meeting and were given copies of the new evidence put before the WMSC (in some limited cases, after redaction of confidential information).

In other words, most of the information was publicly availabe. Strangely enough, the only "information" publically available were the widespread cases of mud-slinging which put me off writing about this case earlier in the summer. It was disgusting then, and now it just stinks. Using that as evidence would surely be irrational. Therefore, more of the case is based on confidential information than the FIA cares to admit.

2.5… In light of the strong imperative in the interests of the sport to issue a swift ruling, the following does not constitute an exhaustive list of the elements considered nor does it purport to be a summary of all of the evidence put before the WMSC.

This is a very important point. It means that the WMSC has, by necessity, interpreted its evidence in order to render swift justice. As pointed out in my disclaimer, this is quite a problem. In any case, interpretation is prone to biases at the best of times. When it's done quickly, errors creep in. That said, it is only possible to provide a definitive verdict on whether an interpretation is accurate if all the available evidence is presented. Therefore it would be unwise to assume that the WMSC is incorrect - but it would be equally unwise to treat the WMSC evidence base as if all the evidence leans one way. This is particularly the case since the swiftness of the case obliges weighting towards providing evidence in support of the ruling. Contra-indications would be expected to be short on the ground.

3.1 In the period after the 26 July Decision, the FIA was made aware of a specific allegation that e-mails relevant to the FIA's investigation had been exchanged between certain McLaren drivers.

I have noticed some people on the internet cast doubt over whether e-mails would be acceptable in a conventional court of law. They would be. In fact, e-mail evidence is key to a lot of cases nowadays, along with other new-fangled technologies such as text messages (which are important later on in this case, too). The key reason is that these can be written down and permanently recorded on paper. E-mails quite often are in business contexts, and with appropriate technology, so can texts. E-mails are particularly acceptable in law courts because they are easily printed in a way that retains all original formatting and records the day and time sent. They can be queried, even in printed form (since they are digital, there is always the possibility that an e-mail has been edited or even faked - though there are ways of testing for whether either has occurred). The other thing is that it is not normally possible to use e-mails as proof of certain forms of contract (such as employment contracts - these still have to be presented to the worker as a paper document and signed), but that won't trouble us here.

Suffice to say that in the absence of a reason to doubt the e-mails, they are valid evidence in civil and FIA courts alike.

3.3… Given the importance of establishing the facts and that the information might not come out any other way, the FIA offered the assurance that any information made available in response to the letter [to the three drivers] would not result in any proceedings against the drivers personally under the International Sporting Code or the Formula One Regulations.

This is why the drivers did not get punished. There are other types of cases where this sort of amnesty is offered, the best example being EU cartel law. The EU has a sliding scale of punishment discounts given to offenders according to the extent and timeliness of their assistance. In fact, the whistleblower is exempted completely from any punishment, while other members of the cartel may get up to 50% of the punishment removed if they assist fully and early enough. Naturally, those who stay silent and are convicted get the full punishment. It is used specifically to collect evidence that might otherwise be very difficult to obtain, and to set up a "race to confess". A brilliant example of how effective this can be was the Virgin Atlantic/British Airways cartel, which was broken by the former. The latter avoided some punishment because it assisted with the enquiries as soon as it knew the cartel had been exposed.

It may seem a deviation to mention this, but the FIA is apparently trying to do the same with the letters as the EU does with cartels. The difference is that instead of getting a "race to confess", its all-or-nothing policy gives those who do not confess early no incentive to confess at all. That said, the fact that this was only ever offered to the three drivers and to whoever originally brought this case to light. I add the last bit because the FIA has had a policy since 2003 that any individual bringing word of an occurence of cheating to the FIA would be entitled to anonymity, amnesty and a $1m bounty. I wonder who received the bounty, but by definition we are unlikely ever to find out.

There is also the point that other members of McLaren were not given this opportunity to confess and gain amnesty. This defeats the point of the amnesty rule, because it presumes that the other members of McLaren have nothing to offer that is worth amnesty. Equally strange is that McLaren's second tester, Gary Paffet, neither received a letter nor was asked to provide any other form of testimony. Unequal treatment of suspects is not acceptable behaviour. Add to this the word that Ron Dennis provided the evidence that triggered the second sitting of the WMSC and matters look even bleaker. If Ron confessed first and got the full heft of punishment, and the drivers who hung back got away without being punished, how is this justice? It's the reverse of the cartel law system, and would provide an incentive in future for everyone to clam up until the FIA is forced to pull out the big guns.

3.4…..Subsequently (at McLaren's request) both Mr. Alonso and Mr. de la Rosa made written statements to the WMSC verifying that these e-mails were sent and received and offering context and explanations regarding the e-mails.

This was the statement type I expected to see the moment I saw that the WMSC had used e-mail evidence. An e-mail that is not seen is very difficult to use as evidence in court. There is (anti-terror) law in the UK that obliges companies to keep business e-mails for at least two years. Since McLaren is in the UK, I would expect the staff of McLaren to produce e-mails on demand. Even if the McLaren drivers were legally only sub-contractors of McLaren, they would technically be self-employed and therefore bound by the same legislation.

I say "statement type" because it does not say that the e-mails themselves ever made it to the courtroom. They may have done and the WMSC may simply have decided to leave that evidence on the cutting-room floor, but there is a considerable legal difference between the court seeing the e-mails and only hearing about the e-mails. It is why phone conversations are not generally accepted in court on their own (as Eddie Jordan found out to his cost in 2003).

I have delayed this blog post because while I was analysing the original verdict, the transcripts turned up. I hope to do a reasonably sober analysis about what the transcripts tell us. I will discuss the parts I think are interesting in the order they appear in the document.

Please note that I am not really using the document to establish whether McLaren are innocent or guilty of the charges as presented; frankly I have my doubts as to whether even the WMSC were entitled to judge at this stage. And if they're not entitled, I'm certainly not! Instead, I'm curious about such things as how the WMSC meetings were conducted and the ethical and procedural implications of what happened in court.

July meeting: Preliminaries

First of all, I want to talk about what the WMSC transcripts reveal about how WMSC cases are conducted. It would appear that proxy voting is fairly common, since a quarter of those who could vote in July had sent proxy people. This makes sense because the WMSC members tend to have several other roles in motorsport.

I also like the fact that the WMSC has integrated multimedia links well into its meetings. Having been at meetings where the IT staff have been unable to connect even one person to a meeting, the ability of the WMSC to smoothly link up two people in different locations to the July meeting is very impressive.

McLaren seem to have been very concerned about confidentiality, to the point where they objected to the other teams being present for certain parts of the July meeting. Thankfully, the compromise which Ian Mill (McLaren's primary lawyer) offers to the court is sufficient to satisfy the WMSC. This is as well, since the whole matter of information confidentiality is at the centre of the incident to be discussed.

The second query is that the WMSC may not have had juristiction to charge McLaren. Usually, stewards or ASNs (the national organisers of motor racing) are the ones with the power to charge. Wierdly enough, the part that Max Mosely says the WMSC relies upon to charge McLaren is Article 27 of its own Statutes. This says that the WMSC may impose the sanctions provided for it in the International Sporting Code. I say wierd because this only justifies the September meeting, not the July one. It would have been better off using Ian Mill's suggestion that Article 16 (which states that the WMSC is charged with enforcing the International Sporting Code) is why the July meeting can be called. While the exchange proved the WMSC's legitimacy, it did not prove that they were particularly good at dealing with surprise queries.

Finally, the enumeration of evidence. The interesting point is not so much that McLaren sent their evidence out in pieces, but that Max immediately told Ian Mill that the final piece of evidence would not be permitted in court. Without knowing what was in the Ferrari Memorandum or the response, it is impossible to know whether a conventional court would have accepted this evidence. For that matter, if the evidence was in as irritable a tone as Max Mosely suggested, the documents would probably have been regarded in a fairly dim light even if they had been of a type that a conventional court would accept (courts generally prefer calm, collected reports and accounts).

In addition, Ron Dennis pointed out that some of the evidence never arrived at McLaren. That Mosely would say the documents had in a place providing evidence tends to suggest the documents were sent. Post office blunder or administration issue? We'll never know.

The "This is not a Court of Law" Statement

We now know that it was in response to the non-arrival of evidence at McLaren that Max made his statement about reopening proceedings if new evidence came to light.

I find the "This is not a Court of Law" sentence very interesting. It indicates that it does not supersede courts of law, and yet the pursuit of the case despite two courts of law looking at the same case seems… …contradictory.

There is also a very prophetic sentence, "it is much worse if such matters are unturned later, during the course of the proceedings or later". More evidence that the WMSC do not like surprises. Even though they must have known at that point that more evidence in one direction would turn up (there was and still is a pair of court cases pending, plus internal disciplinary procedures), they still felt it necessary to do the case now and punish the inevitable. This seems quite unfair to me - it would have been better to simply hold open the possibility of prosecution until such time as the extent of the problem was known.

McLaren's viewpoint

Traditionally, in courts of law, the prosecution goes first and the defense second. In that way, all the things the prosecution wants to include in their case can be defended against if appropriate. It is unusual that the defence is made to go first. Yet this is what happens.

The "whistle-blowing is endorsed in England" point is an important one, particularly for those not familiar with the English laws in that area. A "whistle-blower" cannot be discriminated against by their employer for bringing breaches of the law to the attention of the appropriate authority. In addition, certain protections apply during the court case to ensure that smear campaigns, for instance, are compensated for by the company upon a guilty verdict.

However, it must be noted that the authority has to be the appropriate one. Nigel Stepney could only have been protected by these rules if he'd reported it to the FIA directly. In fact, the FIA has a system for protecting "whistle-blowers". They're currently doing an ad hoc one with Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa, but more generally, a member of a team can confidentially tell the FIA about a rule breach by their own team and receive $1m upon a guilty verdict being reached. It is difficult to see why Nigel didn't take this option.

McLaren were technically correct not to reveal Nigel Stepney as the whistleblower, and Ian Mills' assertion on that score is correct. For all the tact involved in McLaren's chosen response (gently suggesting they were going to try components they did not intend to try), the problem is that they did not state their accusation clearly enough. An open accusation of cheating would have been clearer and more effective, and in all probability the FIA would never have suspected anything was amiss with the "whistle-blowing"… …they would have assumed that some clever paddock gossip had reached McLaren's ears or something. Since acquiring secrets is only illegal if the information was known to be another organisation's secret, the FIA would not have brought the events of Australia 2007 into the proceedings.

The first two actions taken as a result of the Australian GP are fine, but the firewall thing is strange. Surely everyone at a big company like McLaren already has a firewall? Surely it would have been simpler just to reconfigure the firewall. Or maybe McLaren's information security really was that lousy…

Ian Mills also brings Spyker into the discussion. It seems a bit strange, for Spyker (unlike McLaren) used its information in a straightforward challenge. As a result, it could hardly be charged with using the information to benefit itself in a performance sense. The charge of industrial espionage would still be theoretically possible, but depending on the exact path between the production of the diagram and that diagram's arrival at the FIA, it may well be that even that can be ducked under the "whistle-blower" rule. For instance, if someone from RBR came into Spyker's employ with the diagrams and then revealed them to Spyker, then technically it is the same as if the ex-RBR employee had simply sent them to the FIA, since the FIA classifies people according to their competitior (i.e team) rather than their individual status. However, it is unlikely that the Spyker-Red Bull-Super Aguri affair will ever be fully revealed.

Mosely's response to McLaren's viewpoint

It is clear that Mosely took a fairly dim view of Stepney's actions. Also that he misunderstood Ian Mills' explanation. How else could he have not heard at least some of the steps Ian Mills took to ensure that no repeat of the incident had occurred. (p8, July)

[phantomtutor]

Paper # 2 (30 points) -Motivation (800-1000 words) (Read Harvard article; How do you motivate employees (Herzberg) Some examples of theories: Maslow, BF Skinner (Reinforcement theory), Hertzberg (Two factor theory), Expectancy theory, Behaviorism, Attribution theory, Existentialism and the Hawthorne effect. You may discuss other theories from your research. Discuss three different motivational theories and compare and contrast them. What are the benefits and drawbacks to each one? Which motivational theory do you think is the best for enabling internal motivation and why? Reflect on your experience. Avoid using quotes from the articles Writing style and format requirements: Writing should be proofread and free of spelling or mechanical errors. Explain the concepts in your own words and use proper citations and references. Use personal voice e.g. I agree, I feel, I believe, etc. and real-life examples from your experience. Suggested format requirements: 800-1000 words /-10%. Times New Roman, 12 font size, double space. Use references and in-text citations in APA format. This paper should have a minimum of 3 references, which includes the assigned case study and two other outside sources which further inform your understanding of motivation. Make sure not to plagiarize. Plagiarism will result in a grade 0. Critical analysis: Students should show their ability to compare and contrast at least three theories and show how to apply them with real-life examples. Clear persuasive development of argument should show logical connection between the thoughts and examples. The sources that you researched should discuss motivational theories.  In depth analysis of the sources should show your ability to compare and contrast the theories, analyze implications of using different leadership approaches and apply the concepts on motivation to the real-life examples Paper grading Rubric A A student displayed a high level of critical self-reflection and analysis, provided thorough explanations and examples of positive insights from their learning. The student displayed an ability to discuss substantial range of key ideas from the discussed sources and demonstrated his or her in-depth understanding of how this new learning can be applied to real life examples. Arguments are formed in a persuasive manner and show some original and creative ideas related to the assignment question. Writing is free of errors and follows APA style consistently. Source: http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/motivation.htm https://gizmodo.com/why-b-f-skinner-may-have-been-the-most-dangerous-psych-1548690441 https://scienceforwork.com/blog/incentives-motivation-performance ORDER THIS PAPER NOW. 100% CUSTOM PAPER CategoriesManagement homework help Leave a Reply Cancel replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Email * Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Post navigation Previous PostPrevious As you’ve seen from the course material this week and last week, developers haveNext PostNext Discussion Focus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnt4CSZVJy8 Watch the video, a

[songtoyou]

Mr. Evans and the Congresswoman - Part 2

Paring: Chris Evans x Politician Reader

Rating: PG

Word Count: 1,858

Warnings: Political topics such as Biden, Harris, our current White House occupant and the current administration. 

Description:  It is the week of the DNC and Chris is once again interviewing you for A Starting Point. 

A/N: The DNC inspired me to write a second part for this story.  This is pure fiction as I do not know what Chris believes when it comes to politics and policy issues. This is a complete work of fiction.

I do not permit my work to be to be posted on any other site without my permission.

Note: Updated for grammar and punctuation edits.

"Hi, Congresswoman Y/L/N?" Chris Evans asked with a smile.

He was once again interviewing you for ASP. This time it was during the week of the Democratic National Convention. Chris and Mark had already talked to other politicians such as Senator Cory Booker and Representatives Ro Khanna and Alma Adams. You were the last elected official he was slated to interview to wrap up the DNC week.

Truthfully, Chris was happy to get the chance to talk with you again. Your previous interview for ASP was such a hit that it garnered a lot of attention from fans and the media. However, it was not because you helped bring more legitimacy and attention for ASP, but instead, Chris found himself genuinely admiring you.

"Hi," you said to Chris, giving a small wave through the Zoom screen. "I told you to call me by my first name."

"I know, but I still want to show respect," Chris responded with a teasing smile. Was he mildly flirting with the congresswoman? Yes, but he had no shame in doing so. "How are you? You are looking well."

"I am doing well. Thank you. How about you?"

"Same. Just trying to stay sane through everything. I'm actually currently in London. Working on a project." Chris admitted.

"Uh oh. You better be staying safe and following the right procedures and protocols," you lightly reprimanded him.

"My fans ratted me out. They found where I was just by the hotel door. Can you believe that? That is some FBI-level investigating, right there. I'd be impressed if I weren't also terrified of the lengths some of these fans will go to scout my location," Chris ranted. He did not understand why he was sharing this with you, but a part of him felt comfortable doing so.

"That…is quite impressive, I must say. Creepy. Scary. But impressive. You need to learn how to put in a Zoom background. It would solve all of your problems," you suggested to him.

"I would, but I'm technology deficient. Maybe I should look up some Zoom tutorials on how to do it. Give it a try."

"There is no try…only do," you advised cheekily.

"Now you're quoting Yoda. A woman after my own heart," Chris replied. He knew he needed to refocus. "So, as you can tell, Mark won't be joining us for this interview. I'm going to hit record if that is okay?"

"Okay. I'm ready when you are," you said.

When the record notification appeared on screen, Chris introduced you and immediately went into the first question.

"How do you think the DNC is going so far, particularly how this year is more of a virtual setting rather than in-person due to COVID-19?"

"Despite not having the big in-person celebration/gathering, I think the virtual setting is working very well. Better than I expected, actually. It gives off a more inclusive and intimate vibe to the DNC that we haven't felt before. I like the whole documentary approach and feel to it," you replied honestly.

"Were you excited that Joe Biden chose Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate?" asked Chris.

"Oh my God! I was so happy that Vice President Biden chose Senator Harris as his running mate. Like, my staff and I were beyond ecstatic. There is no one better to be Biden's running mate than Harris. She is amazing. Such an inspiration. I'm not going to lie, but I'm really excited for the debate between her and Pence."

That made Chris laugh. "Yeah, me too. Senator Harris really knows how to pull all the punches. Her nomination as VP has been met with overall positive response. The Trump Administration and Republican pundits appear to have a hard time painting a negative image of Harris. Why do you think Trump and Fox News are struggling to provide a negative image for her?"

"That is an excellent question. The public's overwhelming response to Harris' nomination is because 1.) she is the first black and south Asian woman to be on a major presidential ticket, and 2.) she is likable and charming. She has this exuberant energy that attracts people to her. You know, black and brown women and girls finally have someone that looks like them running for the second-highest office in the land. That is huge!

"I also have to wonder if people have smartened up in the last four years and won't tolerate the…hypocrisy, sexism, and misogyny…in this case misogynoir that is thrown towards Senator Harris from the media, political pundits, social media bots, etc. So, what we are seeing with Trump and Fox News struggling to attack her is because…well…they just aren't smart. All we have seen from Trump in his attacks against her is that she was mean to Kavanaugh when questioning him during his nomination process. But none of what Trump says holds up because we all know that smart, confident women intimidate him," you finished off your point.

"There is also the left…or more of the progressive left who are unhappy with Biden choosing Harris," Chris spoke up and continued, "They say she is a cop and put people away for weed. That she took kids away from parents when the kid didn't show up for school. That Harris is too conservative. What do you say to that?"

"All of that is…you know…. Senator Harris one of the most policy progressive senators we have. Her voting record is more progressive than Bernie Sanders. All people have to do is research her time as a district attorney and Attorney General for California to find out what she actually did concerning policy. But as we both know, people nowadays don't know how to critically think, which scares me. Progressives need to look at the overall big picture. This election in November is crucial. We are in the fight for our democracy, for our country, and for our lives…literally."

"I talk with my brother, Scott, all the time about certain political issues," mentioned Chris. "He is a tad more progressive than I am. I can admit that I tend to be more centrist. The district you represent is a mix of blue and red areas; how do you balance opposing views from your constituents?" 

You took in a deep breath before you answered. That was a loaded question. Representing a district that was not solely red, or blue could be difficult from time to time. You wanted to be respectful of the different viewpoints from constituents, but maintaining a neutral balance was hard and frustrating at times. 

"The majority of Americans are centrist/moderates. You need a balance of both liberal and conservative policies. Bipartisanship is crucially important when developing and passing laws. We are currently seeing an overt of one-sidedness while sabotaging the other side, which is detrimental to our country's growth. It is important to reach across the aisle to talk with those who may have opposing views than you. At the end of the day, people just want to feel that their concerns are heard and valued. We all want to feel that way. So, as an elected official, I make sure to take the time to talk with those in rural areas, along with urban areas, about their issues and concerns," you shared.

"Do you ever get any pushback from Trump supporters in the red areas?" Chris inquired.

"Well, it is important to note that not all residents in rural areas are Trump supporters. They just tend to keep that to themselves. I have actually talked to Trump supporters in blue areas. We can never and should never assume that one area has this type of person and vice versa. I learned that the hard way when I was campaigning for city council early in my career," you revealed to Chris with a small chuckle. "But overall, my constituents will talk with me and have been respectful. Some of the concerns that have been shared with me do fall under the QAnon conspiracy theories, which do disturb me, I'll be honest. Um…when being confronted with someone who has that extreme of ideals, it is important to remain calm and not to come off combative. Meaning that I have to remind myself that I am not quite dealing with a rational person. The only thing that I can do is calmly talk to the person and respond back with facts. Either they listen or brush me off and call me a radical lefty."

"The majority of people are good, like you said," Chris reminded you.

"That's right. It's a good mantra to live by. I think the American people are tired and have been tired for the past four years with this Administration. We need a sense of normalcy and decency. Compassion and empathy, which were two of the big themes during the DNC. This week was a nice reminder that we, as a country, can have that again."

"I agree. Very well said. You always end on a positive. I appreciate that. Thank you, Congresswoman Y/L/N, for taking the time to talk with me. You always provide great insight into the world of politics and your experience as an elected official," said Chris and ended the recording. "That was really great, Y/N. I know Mark, and I really appreciate you taken the time to do these interviews for ASP," Chris added.

"Oh, it is no problem. Like I said before, I like what you both are doing with the site. Are you happy with how everything turned out?" you asked him.

"Yeah… it's…it took a while to just get the website up and running. I know there is still work that needs to be done. Some areas need to be fixed, but with a project like this, we can adjust. There is more room for improvement and growth," Chris communicated to you.

You nodded in agreement. "Politics is a whole different ballgame. Not many people are willing to venture into the field. It can cause a lot of annoyances and headaches. So, hats off to you, my friend," you said, giving Chris a salute.

"Thank you. Well, I better let you go. I know you must have a million things on your plate."

"Ah yes, I have to go and save the United States Postal Service from corruption. Talk to you later, Chris. Take care," you waved goodbye and signed off.

Chris had to admit, he was in awe of you. There was something about you that fascinated him. None of the elected officials he and Mark talked to for ASP had the liveliness you had. You were not jaded or defeated by the system, at least not yet, since you were still considered a junior member of congress. Chris hoped that the energy and enthusiasm you had for politics and helping people would not diminish. When his Uncle Mike was still a congressman, he shared with Chris that D.C. can cause a lot of strain on a person's values and beliefs. "I have seen too many of my colleagues succumb to the pressures of dirty politics," Uncle Mike once said.

Chris just hoped that you would not succumb to those pressures.

[ziotsu]

time to write out literally all my thoughts as someone who can’t read Japanese!

I actually saw the first few pages when people were posting them because apparently the first half of the chapter comes out the second week? I didn’t post my thoughts cause I wanted to do them all at the same time

Page 1! Well this is fun, I absolutely love the expressions in this manga (I feel like me going on about the art in this manga is going to be a theme lol). But the subtle differences between how Ashiya looks and how he looks when Sakae is controlling him are amazing. And it isn’t just the eye color, but just everything with how Sakae acts and carries himself (face included) really is awesome. And it doesn’t feel like just slapping a new face on Ashiya’s body, I genuinely can see Ashiya making this expression when Sakae isn’t possessing him (if he wasn’t such a cinnamon roll). Also the shock on Abeno’s face is not something we see too often. He has his normal shocked face but this feels more raw than in the past? Like his eyes seem wider and the way his hair is makes it seem like he basically just did a double take. MMMMMMMMMM this is good shit. But story wise, I assume this page is just restating the fact that you really don’t wanna use influence on a parasitic shrub possessed demon.

Page 2 and 3! Abeno know’s what’s up, or at least it seems so. It would be more surprising if he didn’t tbh. Also I wonder if Sakae kind of knew this was going to happen? Considering he was trying to keep them away, I assume he did. At the very least he does not seem shocked at all to see Aoi like that at all. Speaking of Aoi, they are def trapped where they are at. That whole is well large enough for them to get through and attack them again, but they are still on the ground it seems. I am guessing it has to do with the tree we saw coming from their tail last chapter. They are still 110% mad though.

3-4! It looks like it isn’t just the trees that are keeping Aoi down, I thought the roots attaching the main body to the ground had been ripped up but it looks like there are some remaining. Sakae is as gentle as ever, yes just toss away his injured arm, great idea. Now Abeno is in even more pain. The wound though is really deep, looks like two large gashes, which Sakae actually starts to dress (rest in peace, kimono sleeve) (also while abeno is trying to get his arm out of the inner kimono (idk what is is called), we can see the medicine Abeno always carries around! I love the attention to detail in this manga)

5-6! Yup, page 5 doesn't do it justice, but page six really shows the extent of the damage one of the gashes did. Super nasty scar going to go there. We see some more of Aoi though, and do they chirp? Like what cats do? Cause murder cat looks super cute on page 5 and I don’t know how to feel about this.

They look like baby here and I want to protect them. Abeno seems to be bringing up the medicine, though I really don’t know what this would do to Aoi other than basically kill them. Which honestly, may be for the best? I know it’s a bit messed up, but it has been stated before that they are obviously past the point of getting them help, and leaving them there would be super dangerous.

7-8! I am making another assumption that Sakae doesn’t know what the medicine does. Which I have a current theory that the medicine is a new development for the underworld. (if such a medicine existed before Aoi left, why wouldn’t they use it on them?) Which would also mean that Sakae wouldn’t know about it either. My guess from the last pages seem to be correct as there is a panel showing Aoi burning, which seems pretty deathy to me. I honestly don’t know what they are going to do, though I think for now, they should be getting back, reporting the situation and getting help for themselves. Aoi seems really stuck here so I don’t think they are a direct threat to the underworld immediately. (Unless Aoi manages to escape the island and oh boy that would not be good) Abeno seems pretty determined, though, so regardless Aoi is most likely going to meet their actual end.

9-10! Aoi is starting to go to sleep here, Sakae seems really good at first aid (wonder where/why he learned that ;) Maybe a certain lady who often gets sick?) Not a whole lot happens, I think these are mostly showing the passage of time, and it seems Abeno is putting away the medicine for now. Which good move, my boy. Come back to take care of murder cat later. Also I wonder if all those trees are from Aoi’s parasitic shrub. That would be terrifying if that is the case. It could really show how long they have been there, trapped and going mad because of the shrub.

11-12! Good lord all of them are looking super cute this chapter. Sakae you can’t do this to me, just all your movements and facial expressions are justlasdkhjg;lakshjdg. Ashiya is cute in his own right, but this is a different type of cute. Why are all these characters like this and please don’t stop making all these characters like this. We get a good look at Aoi’s spine and it makes me sad (though also could give more insight to how the shrub basically takes over? Using the spinal cord to get to the brain seems like a good path to take if the shrub’s goal is to spread like any other parasite (which also makes sense with the going mad thing, kind of like rabies almost) I am glad Abeno’s arm is being supported and held still with what they had on hand. Still looks super painful though.

13-14! And they are out! At least out of the pit where they can really easily run if they need to. Sakae is starting to get tired, so I wonder how much longer he can go on? I hope he can stay awake long enough to get back to the mononokean because I highly doubt Abeno can carry an unconscious Ashiya back. He would most likely have to wait for Ashiya to wake back up before moving on and who knows how long that will take. Part of page 13 made me go back to see the last few pages, but it looks like Aoi’s front right paw is stuck in the ground :( good cause they are most likely really stuck there and probably wont be able to escape easy but it makes me sad to see the previous master of the mononokean in such a state.

15-16! Oof the tiredness is really showing in the first panel. Get out of there quick so you both can rest! I am guessing Abeno is asking about why Sakae said those things in the flower field.Like how Aoi is dead and such, and honestly did Sakae lie? Aoi, as they were in the past, is dead. They are completely over taken and do not recognize even the child they basically raised.

17-18! Oh boy Sakae is getting more and more tired, Abeno is asking about the golden butterfly and can you two just get going? Ya’ll have limited time here!!!!! Though I wonder if Sakae used his influence on one of the butterflies to communicate to Ashiya? it seems very similar? Or a butterfly made from pure influence? Which would explain how it disappeared when Ashiya grabbed it?

I am going to stop the page format because uh.... WHAT. First off Abeno was def asking about the influence/parasitic shrub thing that Sakae brought up. And WE ACTUALLY LEARN ABOUT IT NEXT CHAPTER. This is huge cause oml this feels like a rare moment. Normally mysteries like this linger for a few chapters, simmer and make us suffer. BUT WE GOT A NEW BRAND OF SUFFERING TODAY FOLKS! Like I theorized it a bit on why I didn’t think Aoi was the one Sakae used his influence on, due to thinking that Aoi being infected years before picking up Abeno seemed super dangerous and didn’t feel like something they would do. I DIDN’T KNOW YOU CAN USE INFLUENCE TO CURE THE PARASITIC SHRUB THOUGH! PAGE 22 IS SUFFERING! PAGE 22 HAS ALL THE ANSWERS! Like we now know what happened, or at least have enough facts to be able to piece it together! Aoi and Sakae went out for a job, either they find out that the demon is infected or know and are going to try to help them out. Aoi somehow gets infected by this demon and Sakae uses his influence to get rid of the growing infection only to die himself as the parasitic shrub is not meant to live in the human body. This explains why Aoi was so beat up over his death, because IT WAS THEIR FAULT. It explains why Sakae would use his influence on a demon that is infected, because it is Aoi, their employer and friend. He probably wasn’t meaning to die at all, just thinking that ‘hey let’s just get rid of this shrub from Aoi so they don’t die because they are an important part of the Underworld (though AU where Sakae can’t do this and has to become the next master of the mononokean ;) )

We also see the aftermath, it is almost like he becomes some form of demon himself, and actually looks infected with the shrub. I doubt it is the same sort of situation because he doesn’t become a tree? I am honestly unsure on how this affected him. He does go and meet his son a few months later, (wait or was that Aoi because between the two pages we see a sort of continuation with the hand on the left (aoi’s hand) but we also see the ‘veins’ of the shrub which hints towards Sakae? I like to think that Sakae visited baby Ashiya, so I am going to go with the assumption it is Sakae visiting till I am proven otherwise) and smol Ashiya is always cute. Ashiya does seem to ‘notice’ something? or he is just a baby and babies cry A LOT. We see Sakae ‘infect’ the butterfly he uses to communicate with Ashiya in the flower field. Wonder if he tried doing the same in the past with Abeno, only Abeno cannot hear his words.

ALSO GUYS I TOLD YOU TO GET OUT OF THERE NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? Ashiya is now completely passed out, Abeno cannot carry him back and now they gotta just chill there till Ashiya wakes back up. I know it is awesome to have questions answered, but please. 

Though I guess somehow they managed cause Ashiya wakes up in what I can only assume is the Legeslator’s place? It is def not the mononokean (too large and im sure we would be hearing a bell the moment Ashiya woke up) but it could be Korou’s place. Not sure how Abeno managed, but he probably found a way to get them out of there. Rip golden eyes, though :( Guess they were just either the side effect to using that much influence or a hint that Sakae was just kind of hanging around in case shit hits the fan. 

There is incense burning, making a guess this is either a preventative measure against the shrub or something to help wake Ashiya up faster. Ashiya is alone and it seems he is shaken because of what Sakae explained (I am guessing it was similar to his dreams when he subconsciously used his influence and he was dreaming about Sakae’s past)

This chapter was amazing, answered so many things and saw enough cute to really counter balance the ‘what the actual fuck’ this chapter brought along with it.

[audiohut]

Are you persistent in your craft? Here are some things that might inspire some ideas in your next session.

I’m going to continue to post these every other day as i have found myself with outside obligations relative to this. It gives me time to put my learning to work and come back with some hands on experience for you.

What do you find yourself writing when it comes to creating good lyrical themes? As i talked about before, there are a wide spread of topics you can chronologically lay out that appeal to many people and again, i want to talk about lyric production and song structure to help bring power to your song and meet your existing warm audience as well as cold audiences.

One thing i read about earlier this morning was creating timeless lyrics. Lyrics that are still captivating and interesting even over a long period of time. That time frame can be within the amount of time it takes to listen to your song, or lyrics that are simply unforgettable. One way you can help get these lyrics stuck in your head is by applying a catchy melody or series of harmonies within your song. Obviously this is the goal, but if you are approaching a hook/chorus you will want this to be the part that brings the listener in even more so and if done right, can be unforgettable or timeless in a sense.

For examples of timeless lyrics and incredible song writing, check out “Paint it Black” by The Rolling Stones, “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. These bands wrote handfuls of timeless songs and had lyrics that are emotionally captivating and interesting even decades later.

When you are drafting your lyrics whether it be digitally composing or the classic pen to paper, lay your lyrics out on a staff if possible and ensure that each syllable is tied to a note. This is where you will be able to play with your melodies, skips and steps as we talked about a bit in the last posting. Even if you plan on assigning the same tones over eighth notes, sixteenth notes or single syllables it helps to make sure every one of your syllable is rhythmically and melodically established to your song. Otherwise the effect may sounds out of key or off tempo discerning the listening and could create a lack of interest. Although many applications of flats and sharps come into play, it helps to know a bit of theory to work around what might add a little extra color to your song.

One thing we have not talked about yet is bass lines. In artists like Tame Impala, Oliver Tree and say Yellow Days you will notice their bass lines are a huge player in the flow of the song as it drives the low end of the song providing more feeling and creates something more immersive than if you were to have the tones from only your kick/808’s delivering your low end tone. The bass line does not need to be anything technical, but should be found as the root or fundamental notes of the chords and keys your strings or synth instruments are being played in sort of grounding and gluing your song together. When your bass line as well as synth instruments or strings are all together it could bring more opportunities to your table melodically hen it comes to the production of your lyrics and where they fit in tone and melody.

One way to add texture to your melody in your song is add rise and fall in your tonal and note movement. This can again, be done with any instrument you choose to have laying over your bass line but in all dynamic changes in volume and velocity will add more character to your production. This is heavily noted in many Saxophone players who use velocity in hard how the notes are being played to contour the emotion and make it hit more effectively to the listener.

Another thing to note when writing is to use engaging major chords as these are more compelling and have been noted in top hits more than minor chords. Like i have said before, produce your progressions and harmonies with whatever taste is needed in your song. For example you have Tadow by Masego and FKJ. This song features a wide variety of Minors and Majors creating a very harmonious and archetype sound production. Good Major chords that are used very often are as follows: C – G – Am – F ; D – A – Bm – G ; A – E – F#m – D ; G – D – Em – C ; and E – B – C#m – A.

When it comes time to captivate, bring in new instruments or change the dynamics of already existing instruments in your production. Most songs derive from no more than seven instruments including vocals as it can become quickly muddied up and create incoherence when listening to it. Seven may seem like a small number but remember that each instrument can be used in different manners to bring in what could feel like a new environment with each section of your song i.e: Verse, Chorus, Pre Chorus etc.

Because music can be fickle especially when writing you may want to record your practice sessions or keep a note book handy when ideas pop up. You never know when a new idea will pop and you will never know how quickly you can lose until its gone. Be creative and experiment with new sounds. From personal experience i have ran into accidental melodies, harmonies and riffs that blow my own mind.

And finally, when you are creating you need to be persistent. Many song writers have an enormous pack of songs before they finally hit the billboard. You need to practice your writing skills to 1. Develop and ear for what it is you know you are good with and 2. Get the bad songs out the way. Not every single thing you write and produce is going to be good. It will take plenty of trial and error before you discover a sound that suits your skills set and is enjoyable by others. Again, most artists write for upwards to a decade before they create something that is incredible and even then, they write songs they would not put out into the world. patience and persistence will always be the bread winner.

I hope this thought was insightful and brings to light some new methods or ideas for you and your creative process. If you are in need of some more thoughts and tips, follow my space and look back on previous postings! Thanks for the read.

-Andrew Giordanengo

-Audiohut

[marcilled]

The Xylo ARG: a summary

Have you or someone you follow been getting cryptic asks like the one above? They always just say one of the two following things:

a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078 OR a303d61a-371-4b71-b45-9a9e65921078

Well, good work, you’ve managed to stumble into a new tumblr ARG which I’ve taken to calling the “Xylo ARG” or “Shiloh ARG”. I’ve already talked about this on my blog already, but I thought it might be a good idea to have a post summarizing what the hell is up with these asks and what the deal with this ARG is.

The main blog and focus of this ARG is here: @xylophonetic

If you haven’t already read my previous post about this, you should check that out. It includes some speculation and theories that I didn’t include in this post, most notably my theories about this string of characters being a UUID, as well as some observations that this hex number actually corresponds to 5 unique colors encoded in hexadecimal.

Since my previous post, there’s been some developments, but sadly I and the others I’ve been discussing this with over discord haven’t come up with any major leads, or if we have, they haven’t led anywhere yet.

That being said, I thought it might be useful to make a post summarizing some of what we already know about this. I’ve never done an ARG and don’t even really know much about them, but I was one of the people sent one of these asks so in a way I’m a small part of it now. I figured I’d make this post since I think I was the first person to really analyze what was going on here and notice that there’s an actual blog associated with these asks people have been getting. Obvs a lot of these discoveries weren’t made by me tho, I’ve not devoted much time to discovering things, there’s a few others involved in trying to figure this out too. (y’all, feel free to hop in the replies/reblogs if you want people to know you’re helping with this).

Anyways, let’s get onto the actual post. This might get lengthy, so it’ll be below the cut. Heads up- this post contains creepy imagery, depictions which might be described as “body horror”, as well as mentions of parental abuse. All posts referenced should have a link provided unless they were deleted before the creation of this post. Got it? Let’s dive in.

First off, let’s recap on how this all started, and how me and a few others came to realize that this was, indeed, an ARG we’re looking at. (Presumably, anyways- all of the happenings are too strange to just be the work of some crafty aesthetic blogger… probably.)

It all started with a couple of popular tumblr users getting asks like the one linked at the top of the post here. Just this cryptic hexadecimal string, sometimes with hyphens, sometimes without. It’s unclear how many people these anonymous asks were sent to, but if you look up the text you’ll find a couple other popular tumblr users that were sent the ask. It’s always anonymous, and I don’t know of anyone who’s received direct messages from the blog owner(s).

After pondering it a bit, I decided to look up the ask I got on tumblr, and noticed a blog which had this string of characters as its url. And that’s where things started getting interesting.

The blogs

The main blog relating to this ARG appears to be https://xylophonetic.tumblr.com/. Her URL has changed a couple times since we first discovered it, the url was originally a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078. From now on I’ll be referring to this blog/blog owner as “Shiloh”, as that is and has been the name stated on the blog. (Also- her pronouns are she/hers as mentioned here.)

There is also another blog relating to this story, which I hadn’t mentioned in the previous post (because at the time we did not know about it / it had not been created yet). This blog originally had the url a303d61a, but has since taken the previous URL that shiloh used: https://a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078.tumblr.com/

This new blog was originally titled “Safe?”, and doesn’t appear to have any name associated as far as anyone can tell, so from here on I’ll be referring to them as “safe”. It’s unclear if “safe” is a character that has been mentioned by Shiloh before, but it’s certain that they are associated with the ARG because they swapped urls with shiloh. At time of writing, the “Safe?” blog has had its title changed twice, first to a series of three emojis, then to an eye emoji. We will continue to call them “Safe” until there is a more appropriate name discovered/decided on.

There is also, technically, a third blog- this blog uses the URL previously used by Safe, and it appears that this blog may just be for keeping the url hoarded. However, there’s still some interesting things on this blog, and even some possible hints. The blog is https://a303d61a.tumblr.com/ and will go unnamed unless things begin to appear on that blog as well.

Okay, now that we know a bit about how this started, and what blogs to be on the lookout for, what is there to know? Well, if you take a look at Shiloh’s blog, you might not even realize what you’re looking at is a part of an ARG at first. From first glance, it honestly just looks like an average aesthetic blog. She reblogs lots of aesthetic type posts from various bloggers, a lot of which may not mean much in the long run, but some of the posts she reblogs do give a bit of insight on some of the different “characters” in this emerging story. However, she also sometimes posts very cryptic things- many original posts contain very strange and cryptic photos or text that’s been purposefully obfuscated or otherwise altered. The same string of text “a303d61a…” is present throughout the blog’s history. There’s also other posts from Shiloh that imply that she is (or, was) in danger, or that she was sick, that she’s afraid of certain other characters, etc.

So, these “characters”… who are they? There are quite a few distinct “characters” involved in this, some seemingly more relevant than others. I’ll give a brief overview of what we know about all of them, but first, I should say what is known about the central character here: Shiloh.

Shiloh

While we don’t know a lot about Shiloh herself, there are a few things we can say for sure. Shiloh likes to reblog things she likes or thinks are interesting, much like your run of the mill aesthetic blogger. However, she also posts her own strange, cryptic photos sometimes- often times with many filters and photo manipulation used to make them look strange or hard to decipher.

Shiloh seems prone to deleting posts often, for one reason or another- or posting things then rapidly deleting them. This has been noted to happen even late into the night without much rhyme or reason. The “Safe?” blog is sometimes used to archive some of these deleted posts, although not all of the important/noteworthy posts are actually saved in this way. Shiloh has even been shown to go back and frequently edit old posts, sometimes multiple times. Her (and the other blogs’) urls, titles, icons, blog colors and headers have been known to change at random.

She also seems to not have total control over her blog/account- she’s posted before about her url or icon changing out of her control, and seeming confused or upset by it. See here. She’s also posted before about how she’s “regaining control” and such.

As well, it seems that for a time, Shiloh fell ill with some unknown ailment. Or rather, unknown to her- “they won’t tell me”. It’s unknown who “they” is in this context, but Shiloh seemed sad that she could not see Nat any longer- and also that her mother was preventing her from going out due to this illness. Notably, after posting this, she posted “im not a monster im not”. Perhaps people, possibly her mother, were telling her her illness made her monstrous??

Yesterday evening (may 16), she posted that her fever is gone and she is doing better now. Perhaps she has recovered from her illness– although she still seems confused about what is happening.

Aside from those things, she has also posted a photo here, tagged as “#me”:

(original post)

There’s a lot of uncanny images like this on her blog, and I can’t include every one of them- but this is, supposedly, Shiloh. There’s also another post in her “#me” tag, but it is simply a reblog of some art. Not sure if it is important.

Safe?

I’ve covered most of what we currently know about Shiloh herself, but there are many other “characters” at play in this story. Most of these characters we only know about based upon things Shiloh has said about them, or posts she has tagged them in. “Safe?”, on the other hand, we only know about from their blog, and how they interact with Shiloh.

Safe is a bit of a mystery right now. It’s unclear if they(?) are even one of the characters mentioned by Shiloh or not, or if they are an outsider completely. Regardless of who they are, they seem hostile towards Shiloh.

Safe’s blog was not known until two days ago (may 15th) around ~4pm. When we discovered it, our initial thought was that the blog could be unrelated to the ARG itself, and it could potentially just be somebody who was following along and taking time out to archive the posts. Shiloh is known to delete posts sometimes after all, including ones that seem pretty important.

As time would tell though, it became clear that Safe is another actor in this story, although they seem to be even more mysterious than Shiloh.

Safe seems to reblog many of Shiloh’s original posts, sometimes adding tags or even editing the post in certain ways. We have reason to suspect that Safe is a malevolent force, as they have reblogged the photo of Shiloh and tagged the picture “#it”, in spite of her specifically requesting not to be called it. They’ve also reblogged posts from her that say “cold” and tagged it “freeze”, and a post saying “warm” with the tag “burn”, as if wishing harm on Shiloh.

Nonetheless, some of the most compelling clues we’ve gotten yet have come from the Safe blog. Particularly, it was the Safe blog which posted the following:

Sadly, the post was later deleted from both blogs, and there is no web archive of it, or fullsize versions of the right and left pictures. Here’s the fullsize of the center picture, though:

This post originally came from Shiloh’s blog, although I believe the images were not in the original post– Safe seems to have a habit of editing Shiloh’s posts and adding new things.

These pictures are tantalizing because of the caption: “room 371″. If you’ll notice, 371 is a subset of the string of text tying all of this together…

a303d61a-371-4b71-b45-9a9e65921078

The significance of this is currently unknown. However, there was some speculation that Shiloh may have been hospitalized due to her illness- these images do look somewhat like a hospital. However, this conflicts with what Shiloh herself has said- she is at home. So, what is room 371? We just don’t know, at the moment.

Another series of posts from Safe that just happened today only further the mysteries surrounding them. Today, they reblogged the post in which Shiloh said her fever was gone and edited the text to make it say “SHE MADE ME SICK”. It’s unclear who “she” is, in this context- but this seems important.

Also today, safe changed their blog title from “Safe?” to a series of three emojis- a safety pin, an old key, and a dagger. This is significant because of another thing I’ll bring up later. At time of posting, they’ve changed their blog title yet again to be just an eye emoji.

Beyond the posts about room 371, and other mysterious edits and reblogs of Shiloh’s content, not much is known for sure about Safe. There are some theories that Safe is actually Shiloh’s mother, or that they are a reflection of Shiloh’s inner thoughts and feelings about herself, but for the time being these are simply theories with not enough proof to back them up yet.

Other Characters (Nat, Melody, Zach, Brian)

Now, it is time to get into the other named characters in all of this. These other characters we only know about from things that Shiloh has said, or posts that she has reblogged and tagged in their name. For some characters, we only know of them at all due to her tags.

First, let’s start with “Nat”. Nat is one of Shiloh’s best friends, and clearly someone she cares about a lot. Shiloh was very sad when she could no longer see her after falling ill. A scroll through Shiloh’s Nat tag will show a variety of posts, although there seem to be some strong connections to love, tarot, and cats. Also, sometimes, space.

Something interesting to note is that in the tags of this post, Shiloh seemed to imply that Nat also has a blog, but “she changed urls”, and Shiloh doesn’t seem to know what her url is anymore, simply saying “weird”. While this is purely speculation, it’s possible that Nat’s blog could have been tampered with, in the same way that Shiloh’s was previously (possibly by the person who runs the Safe blog?)

After Nat, we have a minor character: Melody. It’s possible they could be more important, but right now, I can’t find any posts where Shiloh directly mentions melody- we only know of melody from various posts tagged with that name. Interestingly, one of the earliest posts on the blog (and an original post, too) depicts a pair of boots and is tagged as “#melody”. There’s a slight pattern of celestial bodies and plants, but nothing too significant to comment on here.

After Melody is another minor character: Zach. Here’s Shiloh’s #zach tag. A common theme here seems to be certain mammals (an opossum and a squirrel) and two pictures of pocket knives. Recently, Shiloh has posted that zach is a friend of hers. Other than that, not much is known of Zach.

That brings us to Brian- another interesting character. Here’s Shiloh’s #brian tag. There’s a few original posts here, with some cartoon characters dancing and hugging. There’s also the same pocket knives that zach was tagged in.

On the surface there might not seem to be a lot here about Brian, but in actuality I have reason to suspect that Brian may be Shiloh’s brother. I believe our first hint at this was this post:

It would make sense that her brother would be there at her home, albeit unexpectedly. Another post that re-affirms this hunch is this now deleted post:

the tag #brother was put alongside #brian here. Also, there is this post which also mentions there being a brother:

There may be other characters, as there are a lot of tags in use on the blog. However, these 4 are the most obvious ones, having names that are… just ordinary people names.

Mother and Father

Beyond the already named characters, there’s two more distinct characters mentioned on Shiloh’s blog- “Mother” as well as “Father”. There are very few posts about Father, but a great deal about Mother. I’ll just preface this right now by saying that Shiloh’s mother seems abusive and openly hostile/aggressive towards Shiloh. As for her father, not much is known of him, but he seems to be absent from Shiloh’s life, likely due to having divorced her mother at some point in the past.

If you take a quick scroll through her #mother tag, you can see that there is a strong association with birds. This seems like a very consistent thing- perhaps Shiloh’s mother is a bird. Or maybe she just connects her with birds for some reason. Either way, if there’s bird imagery, there’s a good chance that it relates to Shiloh’s mother (although there was one bird image tagged as #brian, too).

Some of the earliest posts on the blog make references to mother in this way, too:

Another motif in the photos tagged as #mother are glowing eyes:

As discussed before, Shiloh’s mother seems abusive. Here’s some posts showing Shiloh expressing fear of her mother:

As well as some recent posts from earlier today (may 17) which tell a lot about how Shiloh feels about her mother:

(source for the last one)

It has been stated that Mother doesn’t like any of Shiloh’s friends:

It’s also been shown that Shiloh’s mother tells her she can’t go out and can’t see nat anymore due to her illness. I also speculated earlier that her mother may have been the one to call her a “monster”.

Additionally, this cryptic original post is in the #mother tag:

full tags are #fear, #heart, #love, #mother, #love love.

There’s a lot of hidden text in this image, including the mysterious hex string, as well as phrases and words such as “fear of the heart of love”, “like anything”, etc. It is a bit hard to make out, and difficult to reverse all the filters done to make the text illegible to begin with.

Adding to the series of mysteries surrounding Mother, earlier today Shiloh posted a series of pictures that appear to depict a path to a river. When asked about them, Shiloh stated that “mom doesnt like the river”, and that “she thinks its dirty or something”. Curiously, she says that her mom is scared of fish.

There have also been some theories that Mother is the one running Safe’s blog, antagonizing Shiloh when she gets the chance. There’s credence given to this theory by taking into account this post, where Shiloh talks about having her blog changed without her control over it. In the post, you can see that her icon was changed to this image:

An edited version of the full photo remains on Safe’s blog. This is a photo that was created by a neural network (source), and contains many bird-like features, so we’ve taken to calling this picture “mother bird”. The fact that Shiloh’s icon was changed to this while the blog was not under her control seems to imply that her mother was the one messing with her blog. Considering how much urls swapped between Safe and Shiloh, it seems as though there’s a link between Mother and Safe, although, again, this is speculation.

There is also this post on Safe’s blog, which depicts feathers / knives side by side, along with a caption from Shiloh saying “she’s coming”:

The post is now deleted from Shiloh’s blog. Given the feathers/bird motif here, and referring to a hostile entity as “she”, it’s probably safe to assume that Shiloh was referring to Mother.

At the very least, we can say that both Mother and Safe are openly hostile/antagonistic towards Shiloh, if not the same person.

As for “father”, there’s only a few posts referring to a father, and only recently have there been any original posts. Shiloh seems to associate him with suited businessmen, and there are many posts implying that her parents had a very testy relationship. It seems as though they divorced, and now Shiloh’s father is no longer in her life. Aside from some possible resentment possibly stemming from him not being there any longer, it’s hard to say much about Father, other than that he’s not around any longer.

Other tags

There are many tags in use on Shiloh’s blog, many of them seemingly mundane, something you’d expect from any run of the mill aesthetic blog. Still, there are a few tags which incite some intrigue, or are worth speculating about.

One such tag is #home. Shiloh makes many references to “home”- never “my house” or “where i live” or any other word- only ever referring to it as simply “home”. The images in the tag are often very lush and green depictions of nature- they could just be pictures of landscapes, or sometimes they are pictures of humble cottages in the wilderness. Sometimes they can depict houses that are rotting and decaying. All these pictures seem to signify what “home” is to Shiloh, and I think that “home” is a specific location.

To back up this theory, there’s also the tag #camp. There’s not a lot in this tag, but it seems to evoke this feeling of some summer camp or something that Shiloh went to once perhaps. Maybe “camp” could come up again in later posts? I guess we’ll see.

There’s also the tag #you, which would seem to be the opposite of the #me tag. However, there’s just some songs and other various reblogs in this tag.

Misc. observations / speculation

The new(?) blog at the url https://a303d61a.tumblr.com/ may be otherwise empty, but the blog’s title and description are somewhat curious. As of time of writing, this is the entire contents of their blog:

My device doesn’t have a new enough version of unicode to support displaying some of these emojis, but the emojis in the title are:

safety pin 🧷 old key 🗝 dagger 🗡

The emojis included in the blog’s description are:

rainbow 🌈 tooth 🦷 scissors ✂️ wilted flower 🥀

Also worth noting, is that these three emojis were briefly displayed as the title of Safe’s blog earlier today.

I get the feeling that these emojis may be a pretty significant hint. Something that reinforces this suspicion in me is the fact that Safe made a post tagging Shiloh’s blog, similar to how this new blog made a post tagging Safe. However, the post Safe made includes a safety pin emoji, which is one of the three emojis included in this blog’s title.

This is purely speculation, so feel free not to believe me, or reinterpret it how you wish of course, but: Perhaps Shiloh’s blog is like a safety pin, holding the story as we know it together. But, what we really need to find is the key. The key will lead us further, until we find the dagger.

I also find the emojis used in the description curious, because Shiloh has posted pictures of scissors (actually, lawn clippers?) before. Additionally, Safe has made a post about teeth and eyes hurting before. Interestingly, this post was edited from the original– Shiloh’s post was about her mother seeming angry, but Safe changed it to say “teeth hurt eyes hurt”.

Another potential lead that @ skippsblipps discovered, was a pattern in this old post from Shiloh.

Aside from the obvious secret message mixed in amongst the text, there seems to be a pattern of when the “a303d…” string of text repeats, and when there is something other than the original “a303d…” string. In their words:

“if we count only where the code was exactly the original code, its 6 , 1 , 2 , 1 , 4 , 2 if we count where the code deviates, its 1 , 3 , 3 , 3 , 1″

There’s a chance that this post could be absolutely random nonsense, or that we were only meant to look for the words within the text, but perhaps there’s something more here.

Closing thoughts

I said it at the start, and I’ll say it again: I don’t know a damn thing about ARGs. And, hell, after spending hours compiling stuff for this post, I’m still pretty clueless about where this one might lead. My main hope with this post was to inform anyone who’s curious about this ARG about what we’ve discovered so far, as well as to fill people in who may have missed stuff.

Also, I’d like to apologize if this post jumps topics around a lot, or if it can be a bit hard to follow. Honestly I think that’s just a result of all of the different loose ends in this ARG being hard to follow themselves, although I tried my best. I had to keep updating this post as I typed it, because new posts kept coming in and new discoveries/speculation kept happening. So, sorry for any confusion.

Sadly, many posts on both blogs end up getting deleted, and never archived. That’s why I’ve taken the liberty to archive each and every single post and tag I linked to in this breakdown on the internet archive, which is also why this took hours to make this post because I had to ctrl+c and ctrl+v like a million times. If you notice any of the links I put in this post are broken, just paste the url into the wayback machine and you should at least pull up the archive that I took at the time of typing this post. I couldn’t archive every single thing on all these blogs, just the stuff that I thought was relevant.

If anyone else is inspired to hop in on this ARG because of this post, please feel free to add your thoughts/speculation in the replies, reblogs, whatever. Also please don’t expect me to answer all your asks & speculation, I did this post because it seems like nobody else is paying attention to this and I thought it was cool and deserved some time and attention. I fully expect people smarter than me to outpace me and discover all the secrets and that’s cool with me, I’m just along for the ride. I hope my post helped. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: I’ve made an update to this post here, go read it!

[orionsangel86]

14x02 - Episode Review - Without the Bells and Whistles

Bucklemming colour me impressed. This episode was a rich character driven story that left me full and satisfied and that is something I NEVER say about Bucklemming. I am amazed at how character focused these first two episodes are and truly hope that Dabb keeps up the momentum among writers. It is a change of pace with the show, and a change of focus, but it is WORKING so far.

As always with BL episodes there were some pacing issues and clunky dialogue in parts, but damn Dick Speight Jr is doing a fabulous job making the show look beautiful. As with 14x01 there is a lot to discuss, though I will try to be brief as I have a desperate need to write a separate post about Cas because my angel had me in tears in this episode and he needs an essay written about him in it.

Without further adieu, a long review is under the cut.

Michael and the Bait

Firstly Jensen did spectacularly in this episode. Such a drastic difference from 14x01 and I’m not sure if that’s because of Dick being a more hands on director or Jensen finally making a choice but he has settled into the role and plays Michael as a sinister psychopath on a mission. Michael has far more personality in this episode. He is more interesting to watch and managed to hold my attention unlike in 14x01. This makes me happy.

So what’s the deal guys? Michael spends this episode focusing on his monster experiments, brags about owning Dean, and then just leaves? Obviously that’s not what happened. The clue is in the key moments:

“Why be the hunted, when you can be the Hunter?”

“Rule no.1 you can’t have a trap without bait. Rule no.2 Once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.”

Michael’s plan has been set in motion. The scene with the vamp girl being foreshadowing for the bigger picture, the bigger goal. Is Michael going after the hunters? If his plan is to make a world where Monsters are in charge, then the hunters need to be eradicated. It makes sense. It also therefore makes sense that you would set your sights on hunter central – the bunker. So Dean was let free so Michael could keep a watch on the bunker and it’s residents through him. As far as the rules go, if Dean is the bait, then releasing Dean is Michael not needing him anymore directly. The trap itself is the mystery, but I suspect we will find out more about exactly what Michael has done in 14x03, and it will most likely all have to do with this mysterious scar. I don’t think Michael is hiding “in” Dean so much as has an “open connection” to him where he could jump back in at any time without Dean’s consent. But we shall find out soon enough I’m sure.

Mary x Bobby

Obviously I support this ship, but I support it even more seeing as they have now paralleled Mobby to Destiel in two episodes in a row.

“My FBI is a little rusty”

This week, Bobby is our Cas mirror and Mary is our Dean. The fond pat on the back was the only hint we got that this was romantic, but like with 14x01, I ask you to try to find a single viewer who doesn’t see “something there” between this generic heterosexual couple? They are continuing to show their relationship through nothing BUT destiel parallels and it continues to delight me that this is now the shows go-to way to portray romance.

On a slight side note, Bobby being from an apocalypse AU world, he is the classic hunter right now who only sees in black and white, and the way he went for the vamp girl even after she tried to explain how she had never harmed a human. Bobby’s take on things this season will be an interesting one as it’s a continuous theme in this show to explore what makes a monster, something that dates back to John Winchester days (the ultimate black and white hunter). Also his understandable suspicions about angels making the dynamic with Cas a potentially interesting one. I wonder if this Bobby will ever utter the phrase “family don’t end with blood”?

Nick – It’s a chicken and egg situation

*sigh* I’m still not won over, and I probably won’t be. I expected this episode to be Nick heavy, and the flashbacks irked me because I simply don’t care. But I get that they would be necessary for a general audience. My lack of care is my own issue. It doesn’t matter how much Mark P acted his arse off trying to give us a decent performance (his first in years), I’m still not gonna be a fan. I’m still gonna skip those scenes in subsequent re-watches but that’s just me. I just don’t find it interesting even if he is being embedded into the story in a way that is paramount to the plot and the characters own struggles and development. I will acknowledge that importance and move on. I suppose the take away from Nick’s role in this episode when not specifically tied to Castiel (which I will yell about later) is whether or not he murdered his wife and child before he was possessed by Lucifer. The set up in the episode, the scripting and the direction implies that yes, he did. Though that could be a misdirection.

At the beginning of the episode, when he was asking Castiel what would possibly make him say yes to Lucifer to begin with, he had seemingly forgotten all about the brutal murder of his family, until Cas reminded him. Perhaps he had just repressed the trauma to the point that he had removed it from his mind to save himself further torment – but then murderers do that as much as grieving widows. Interestingly of all the things we learn about the murder case, we never actually learn Nick’s whereabouts, only from Castiel saying “you weren’t there” which is entirely unreliable because how would he have known other than from reading about the case himself? We know Nick’s neighbour is jumpy around him, so what did the neighbour actually see? We know his wife and child were killed with a hammer – an extremely intimate murder weapon and one that has been meta’d before in relation to Demon!Dean. Strangers don’t murder people with a hammer. It’s the weapon of crimes of passion, of extreme emotional connection to the victims. There is nothing cold and detached about a hammer. People who pick hammer’s to kill seek out the mess and extreme violence that they cause. It’s horrific and so much more gruesome than a knife or a gun. To kill an infant with a hammer? Even worse. To then see Nick murder the neighbour in the same violent attack, it is very easy to assume that he was the original killer as well.

If we assume Nick was the killer what does this mean for the canon of the show? Is this how Lucifer picks his vessels? What does this say about Sam? Who had to consume gallons of demon blood before he could contain Lucifer, Sam who had to be “corrupted” from a young age to prepare him? Was Nick already corrupted enough thanks to his apparent violent streak?

OR was this new kill with the hammer a result of what Cas called Lucifer’s “influence”, the “damage on his psyche”? Did Lucifer create the monster? Or was the monster already a part of Nick? If the season is going to continue the themes of previous seasons in exploring the shades of grey between men and monsters, then Nick is a key component. Is he the innocent victim of the devil? Or is he a tormented killer, who just so happened to get what he deserved? How would this affect the boys? If they are already struggling to find compassion towards a man wearing the face of their abuser, how does this potential new bit of information fit into that story? Perhaps, if Nick really is the killer, once this is found out it gives the writers an easy way to ultimately have him killed off without any guilt of tormenting and villainising an innocent. My money is actually on this theory. Plus it gives me a reason to continue hating him for the hell of it. But hey, that’s just me.

Castiel – The Angel with Too Much Heart

Oh Cas. What DON’T I have to say about you in this episode? I was amazed by Bucklemming’s dedication to Cas as a character and devotion to getting him right for once… I feel like I have slipped into an alternate universe because of this.

In 14x01 Cas was physically beaten, and in 14x02 he is emotionally beaten. I can’t help but wonder if this spells gloomy foreshadowing for Cas in the coming episodes. I want to write about this in depth as this episode is a fascinating insight into Cas’s psyche and his character arc going forward BUT I am leaving that for a separate post so in this review I will just sum it up:

Consider what happens to Cas in several points:

He overhears Bobby saying “angels ain’t known for their veracity” about Jo – that he doubts she was telling the truth. Cas shrugs it off and “tends to agree with him” but the awkwardness is obvious. This isn’t the Bobby who saw Cas as a son after all.

He is told he cannot go along on the mission to save Dean because his “angelic presence would be sensed by Michael” therefore his grace has rendered him useless.

He is made to relive his own possession by Lucifer “you were in a lot of pain, and Lucifer saw a vulnerability and he exploited it” though not talking about himself, the implication is obvious to anyone with a good memory of previous seasons.

He is made to relive another dark chapter of his history when his grace was stolen and he was human. Cas gives Jack a heartfelt positive speech that does show he is in a better place now “I had Sam and Dean, but I had something else that was extremely helpful. I had myself. Just the basic me, as Dean would say without all the bells and whistles” (which btw is so so good for human!cas meta) but the truth is actually far more depressing than Cas lets on, and the pain of what happened at that time, how Dean kicking him out of the bunker only encouraged the view that without his grace he was useless and unwanted by Dean – hence jilted lover.

He is surprised by Nick trying to “snap” him to oblivion which could easily be a trigger for Cas bearing in mind Lucifer has blown him up before via that very gesture.

He had to relive his “greatest regret” and what he did to Jimmy and his family. “You’re just a stone cold body snatcher, you’re no different from Lucifer” and you can SEE how much that pained him. How much Nick twisted the knife at those words.

He was told by Jack that he wanted to meet “The only real family that I have left” which is a slap in the face to poor Cas who sees Jack as part of his own family (and his reaction to that line is heart breaking).

Then the worst thing, he is made to face the possible conclusion that Dean may have to die to save the world. “Dean doesn’t matter” oh boy. No hate to Jack who doesn’t really have any real reason to put Dean ahead of the world, but to Cas, who is in love with him? Yeah that’s the killing blow right there.

Right at the end Jack says “Do you think he’d want it any other way?” and Cas KNOWS Dean wouldn’t, because they have been in that situation before as well, and when that happened Dean asked Cas to take him out. So he had to relive that painful moment as well. One that he refused, and because he refused to fight Dean, got beaten to a pulp after proclaiming that he would “be the one to watch you murder the world”. I have no doubt that Cas would still take that view over the alternative.

So Cas was emotionally beaten all episode. Forced to live through his worst moments and biggest regrets, and then have to face the fact that putting Dean above saving the world just isn’t right and he needs to prepare himself for that eventuality. If this episode and the last have told us anything, it’s that Cas is once again in a pretty low place. That much beating, both physical and emotional, are going to have an impact, and I am now really concerned about where Cas disappears to in episodes 4 to 6.

There is so much more to discuss, specifically in relation to what his view of his grace as “bells and whistles” could mean for human!Cas meta writers, not to mention the basic fact that any argument now about Cas hating being human just isn’t true. He still had himself, and he still believed in himself even when human, and even if he didn’t back then, he does now. He doesn’t see that period of his life as a total negative. That is HUGE.

Summary

A+ episode for Cas development. Amazing as that is being a bucklemming. It has also left us with lots to speculate and theorise which is always a great thing - keeping people tuning in. The Michael!Dean mystery as well as the Nick mystery probably won’t get revealed any time soon, but are enough to have people talking about them for a while. 

Sam was still very much in Leader mode, though didn’t really get to do much this episode, but the way I see it, 14x01 was for Sam, 14x02 was for Cas, and I fully expect 14x03 to be a Dean heavy episode (which is fair since I am sure we are all missing him by now). Jack is also one to watch. His inner turmoil is textually acknowledged several times over and seeing as he is basically a mini Cas, the possibility that Jack could decide to do something drastic is probably very likely. I wonder if we will see Kelly’s parents again any time soon - I kinda hope not as I reckon that would spell certain doom for them. 

It was a strong episode, and I enjoyed watching it (other than the Nick stuff). Probably my second favourite Bucklemming episode if I was to rank them all now which is very impressive (11x18 will always be top imo).

That’s all for now, as I am in the mood to write some Cas stuff. As always if you read this far kudos and please reblog and comment and send me asks as I love all that stuff. :D

[meggannn]

(based on your previous ask) do you mind if I ask how you feel about lok? is there a general consensus if it's good or bad? youre really insightful and just wanted to know if there were any major issues you had with it

yeah sure, i’ll do my best. if you want a quick answer to your question, here is a link to some of my other korra posts where i say pretty much the same thing as i do here, just in fewer words. cause this post will be mostly an unhappy summary of my experience watching the show. this post will contain spoilers, and disclaimer, i am a really biased, disappointed asshole, so i’ll just admit that now. 

short answer: i liked the concept of lok more than the product we got. a lot of that is because you had a physically buff brown wlw protagonist written mostly by cishet white men and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t handled great. when i think of lok now i tend to fluctuate between bittersweet nostalgia and quiet, simmering rage.

if you don’t care about the show summary, skip at the middle paragraph break down to my tldr.

so for those who don’t know, LOK was really my first “big” fandom on tumblr. when it was announced, a bunch of ATLA purists were already hating on it because 1) brown woman, 2) it was unrealistic to go from ATLA’s technology to streampunk in 70 years, and 3) it wasn’t ATLA, basically. it was my first big interest that i got to participate in as it was airing, and i was really excited about it. i defended it, i wrote meta, i liveblogged, i wrote tons of fic and spammed theories/wants before the damn show even had a release date. all that is to say, i was Invested, and i believed in it before i even saw it. people called me a bnf, i’m not sure if that’s true, but i did gain a lot my followers in my first few years on tumblr by posting korra stuff. a lot of them – hello – i think are still around today (i’m not certain how all the video games hasn’t scared them off yet)

i should say at this point that my opinion of LOK the show has been really wrapped up in the ugly stain left by the fanbase. korra the character has been the subject of tons of racist, misogynistic criticism since the moment we saw her back; when she showed up on screen as a proud young woman who fought with authority and stood up for herself, that was the nail in the coffin for her reputation. i agreed that she had a bit of growing up to do, because ATLA/LOK have always been stories about coming of age and maturing, but i disagreed strongly with this notion that she deserved to be “humbled,” which is what a lot of fans were looking for.

the overall consensus on if it’s “good” depends on who you ask. most people agree that ATLA is better overall: it was better plotted because it benefited from more writers in the room and more episodes to flesh out the world. opinions on LOK specifically range based a lot on their opinions of the K/orra/sami pairing, if they were involved in or what side they were on in any of the fandom wank, and also just complete random chance.

i’ll go more in depth into my ‘history’ with the show below, but i just wanted to mention that all the while the show was airing, korra was being hit with waves of criticism by so-called fans for basically being a confident brown woman who were calling for her to learn her place, respect her elders, etc. another common theme was fandom’s brilliant fucking idea that asami, a light-skinned feminine non-bending woman who was more polite and reserved than korra, would’ve made a better avatar. because you know why. (korra was often described as brutal, rough, unsophisticated, next to pretty, perfect asami. and asami is a fine character, to be clear, but that’s what she was – fine. nothing really stands out about her, which is a fault of the writing, because she had a lot of potential too.) so anyway all of this did sour my mood toward engaging with other fans outside my friend circle.

–

it was around maybe the middle of book 1 that i realized the writing for the show was simpler than what i was expecting – not that it was childish, which it was (because it was written for children, i understood that), but i felt like the plot meandered and the twists came out of nowhere. it felt like they were making it up as they were going, and it opened threads it didn’t answer. one of the biggest threads was the equalist revolution, which was a very sensitive topic that got jettisoned when the leader was revealed to be a fraud, and that devalued the entire movement in an instant. really disappointing, because i was looking forward to seeing that addressed. for a lot of people, this was a dealbreaker, and they started walking. i stuck with it, but loosely.

book 2 aired, focusing on the spiritual world and some really cool history. it still suffered a lot from awkward b-plots and loose threads it didn’t know how to tackle. korra lost her memory and then regained it 2 episodes later with no consequences, mako flip-flopped between korra and asami because bryke don’t know how to write teenage romances without making it a love triangle, and at some point bolin kissed a girl against her will and they didnt acknowledge that at all? i honestly don’t remember. anyway at the end of book 2, even though korra saves the day and prevents the world from descending into darkness for ten thousand years, due to events beyond her control, korra loses the spiritual connection that ties her to all of the previous avatars – aang, roku, kyoshi, wan, everyone. and people hit the fucking ceiling. “korra’s not a real avatar if she lost her connection to the old ones! that’s the entire point of the cycle! this show is bullshit, it’s not canon anymore!” (the entire point that finale demonstrated that korra’s power alone was enough to save the world and she didn’t need anyone else. but people found that ~unrealistic~ i guess). as you can imagine, being a fan of LOK is starting to get a little tiring by now.

books 3-4 is where the korra haters got to love the show again, because they were both straight-up torture porn. after everything she did saving the world, this is the arc where korra got beat down, tortured, dragged into the dirt, swallowed and spat back out. book 3 is a lot of people’s favorites because it was the first book that felt fully plotted out before it was put on air, which is why i enjoyed it too. but for me it was difficult to see a girl, whose identity revolved around being the avatar after being raised and sheltered to think it was all she was good for, effectively abandon her life and even her name by the beginning of book 4 because the events of book 3 were that traumatizing for her. somehow this was character development. we were encouraged to stick with it because we hoped korra would find herself again. and she did, sorta.

but it makes me furious that people who had quit in books 1-2 came back during 3 because they heard these books were better – aka book 3, the book that featured korra the least, and books 3-4 in which korra got her ass handed to her in some of the hardest fights vs some of the cruelest villains of the series. (nevermind that the book 3 villains suffer from the anime villain curse: they quickly went from “cool character design” to “wait, how does this rando group of villains show up with powers literally no one in the universe has ever heard before?” – questions no one ever answers)

anyway book 4 is a mish-mash of… i’m not sure. i’ve rewatched all the books but i don’t know if i’ll ever touch this one again. the culturally appropriating airbender wannabe, zaheer (a complete rando who somehow masters airbending enough to fly, which was a huge middle finger to airbending masters aang and tenzin for no reason) a guy who literally tortured korra one season before and put her in a wheelchair, is the one who the writers send korra to for her spiritual awakening that lets her save the day. not tenzin or jinora, her spiritual teachers with whom she has positive, healthy relationships – they send her back to her abuser who terrifies and degrades her a bit more before deciding to help. this was a pattern: the writers made both korra and asami face their abusers (in asami’s case, her father) for catharsis instead of gaining peace over their trauma another, healthier way because…. i’m not sure why. there is no reason why. and then there’s the guilt tripping nonsense of asami feeling as if she had to forgive her father, who tried to kill her, because he said he was sorry and sacrificed himself for her in the finale. it’s angst galore, if you like that kind of thing, which i normally do, except this is less angst and more just the writers trying to hammer in torture porn, grimdark, and poor attempts at morally gray nonsense into their finale season.

anyway at the end of her journey, korra, our buff brown woc, learns that she had to suffer to learn how to be compassionate and relate to her enemy. i’m not exaggerating, she literally says that. which is lovely.

–

tldr: i wasted a lot of emotional time and energy into this show and was extremely disappointed when some of the ending’s notes were “you had to suffer to become a better person” and “forgive your abusers/villains because aren’t we all the same in the end?”

but also on a strictly narrative level, LOK also bit off way more than it could chew both emotionally and thematically. it had an amazing premise, but it was not committed to

utilizing the steampunk genre to its best potential in the bending world (after the creativity in the rest of the worldbuilding, the LOK series finale was literally fighting a giant robot – seriously?)

giving its hero the respect and character arc she deserved. and i don’t say that because i think korra had no growing up to do in b1, she did, but she didn’t deserve for it to happen like that.

so basically i realized that a lot of the writers that made ATLA great weren’t brought back for LOK, and it showed. i realized that the LOK writers, when they listened to fans, were listening to the fans that whined the loudest, or (more likely, since they plan seasons years before we see them) they thought from the beginning that it was a good idea for korra to go through years’ worth of pain just to be spat out a humbler, “better” person

the reason i told you all that about me defending LOK in the beginning is because i need you to understand that i believed in LOK longer than i probably should’ve. i wanted it to be everything i was expecting in a diverse children’s show with an unorthodox female protaganist. but just because they had a brown wlw heroine doesn’t mean that they deserved to be praised for it when they treated her like garbage.

and korra and asami walk into a beam of light together in the last second of the show and i’m supposed to applaud the writers for their bravery or something

[daresplaining]

Personally speaking, S1 of Iron Fist didn't live up to my expectations but I am still invested in these characters and their stories and find myself optimistic for next season. With the little bits of casting news coming out + the fact they begin filming this week, what are your hopes and dreams for Iron Fist S2?

    Oh man, where to begin? We adored the first season, and it hit many of our personal requirements, but yes, there’s certainly room for improvement, and we’re excited to see how the new showrunner builds on the foundation laid down by Scott Buck and his team. Here are a few of our hopes and dreams for Season 2:

    Reflecting back, Season 1 was unusually… corporate for an Iron Fist story. And that’s fine– Danny’s time at Rand Enterprises further emphasized the culture shock and fish-out-of-water-ness so vital to his narrative upon returning from K’un-Lun. It also allowed the Meachums to get significant screentime– something they’ve always lacked in the comics. And of course, Danny’s introductory arc had to take place in New York. But having now played around in that world for a while, we’re hoping Season 2 shifts its focus to K’un-Lun. It’s a complex setting that we love in the comics and which requires further, in-depth exploration in the show. Plus, it would make perfect sense plot-wise, as Danny needs to return to figure out what happened to K’un-Lun and how to fix it, and also to continue his training if possible. The Defenders teased the mystery of whether or not it was actually destroyed: It seemed to be when Danny and Colleen returned at the end of IF Season 1, and in The Defenders the Hand continually claimed this was the case in order to rattle Danny… but the five fingers also talked obsessively about returning “home”, implying that there is something there to return to. Danny needs to go back himself to uncover the real story.

    Along these same lines– Danny needs to win something! He has achieved minor victories– most notably, taking Harold down without actually killing him himself– but he has not yet been allowed a major triumph. He managed to reassert his identity as Danny Rand in New York, but that’s not ultimately the side of his identity that needed affirmation, it was a reactionary struggle, was solved more by Joy than by Danny, and it didn’t really help him in the long run. The revelations of his parents’ murders and his motives for leaving K’un-Lun were thrust upon him by Gao– and the further trauma and pain this triggered is not what we’d call success. And we griped in this post about how he wasn’t even allowed the victory of taking down the Hand in The Defenders– a victory that by rights belonged to him and Colleen far more than to Jessica, Luke, or even Matt. He needs something big in Season 2. After all this fighting and all of these losses, his character arc demands it. Preferably, this win will be tied into the conclusion of his identity quest– in which he finally proves himself and comes into his own as the Iron Fist.

    This next wish ties into our desire for K’un-Lun development: we want further clarification of the role, status, and history of the Iron Fist in this universe. This would be majorly helpful for viewers who haven’t read the comics (we loved all the sidelong references to the mythos in Season 1, but we could imagine new fans being confused), but also for us. For example: we loved the contrast between Danny’s description of becoming the Iron Fist (he earned it through hard work and dedication), and Davos’s view of the situation (Danny was randomly chosen), because it perfectly summarizes the roots of their discord. But who is actually being honest? What is the process in this universe? (I mean… we’re assuming Danny is being honest. But we still want clarification.) Also, the worldbuilding surrounding the Iron Fist/Immortal Weapons in the comics is so cool that we’d kill to see it translated into the show. Danny says in IF episode 2 that he is the latest in a long line of Iron Fists. Bakuto has video footage of Orson Randall. And the sealed door protecting the dragon bones under Manhattan was set up by freakin’ Wu Ao-Shi. We need to hear more about previous Iron Fists, not only because they’re awesome, but also to provide some context for Danny as Iron Fist. He can’t exist in a vacuum– it would be helpful, both for his own character/identity development, and also for viewers (particularly those newer to the mythos) for him to learn more about his predecessors and how they handled the job.  

    And on that subject… we would murder a dude to get Orson in Season 2. They de-aged him a bit by setting his tenure as Iron Fist during the 1940s instead of World War I, and it would be entirely believable for him to still be hanging around via events similar to those in the comics (though probably minus Wendell, sadly). We want Orson because he’s a fantastic character, and also because Danny needs someone like him right now. He needs a mentor– and we’re not sure he’s going to have access to Lei Kung. At the very least, the gateway to K’un-Lun (or what’s left of it?) has presumably closed by this point, so he’ll need to find some other way back. Introducing Orson toward the beginning of the season would give Danny someone who could provide him training and guidance while on Earth, and would also set up the possibility of the Randall Gate existing in this universe– thus giving him a way into K’un-Lun. Also, Danny and Orson’s dynamic is priceless. Win/win/win. We’re clinging to the possibility that this mysterious person imprisoned in the Hand compound:

    …could be Orson.

    That said, we also want Lei Kung. We’re both massive Lei Kung fans, and were disappointed by how he was portrayed in Season 1. He was one-note and out-of-character, and we long to see this rectified by giving him a significant presence in Season 2 and digging deeper into his complicated relationships with Danny and Davos. 

    We’re also really excited to possibly see Danny expand his abilities and power up– either via acquiring the Book of the Iron Fist or just through more training. He’s a weak Weapon at the moment, just as he was in the comics pre-Immortal Iron Fist, and seeing his powers grow and develop would be awesome. Also, the various assorted powers granted by the chi of Shou-Lao are a lot of fun and would enhance the show’s already-cool fight scenes. He needs to use his healing some more, for one (we were really frustrated he didn’t use it in Defenders!), and we’re rooting for some “Lightning from God” goodness:

Thunderbolts (2006) #137 by Andy Diggle, Pop Mahn, Carlos Rodriguez, et al.

…or possibly this thing:

Immortal Iron Fist #17 by Duane Swierczynski, Travel Foreman, and Matt Milla

   We also want to learn more about this version of Colleen. Her backstory received less development than anyone else’s in Season 1, and so we’d like to see it explored further. Her childhood, her training in Japan, her time with the Hand, and her relationship with her father all remain vague and mysterious, and we’re not sure if this was a deliberate decision to allow for surprises later, or just lazy writing. Either way, we want to learn more about the details of Colleen’s past and get deeper into her head. It’s possible that this character exploration will be facilitated via her developing friendship with Misty– about which we are damn pumped.

   We also can’t wait for Misty and Danny to actually maybe… have a conversation? Anything? We’re so eager for them to interact that we made a post celebrating their half-second’s-worth of eye contact in The Defenders. We’re still a little disappointed that Danny and Colleen’s wonderful friendship in the comics was turned into the obligatory male lead/female lead romance, but it’s a nice, well-constructed romance all things considered, and we’re not demanding that they break up solely to allow Misty and Danny to date. Really, any meaningful interactions between Misty and Danny would be amazing, and we’re hoping for them to finally, finally get some bonding time in Iron Fist Season 2 (if not in Luke Cage Season 2– which is also a possibility!)

    And of course, we require at least one solid appearance by Luke. At least. But you already knew that.

   We also want Madame Gao back! We had all kinds of theories about who she might actually be, but even if– as The Defenders suggested– she’s just a Hand person with no exciting secret identity, she’s still a delightful character who was a great addition to Season 1. We’re expecting the Hand to be back in some capacity, if only because Danny never got to defeat them and so still has unfinished business/revenge to settle with them (dammit, Defenders…), but we’d be very happy to have Gao stick around afterward as a long-term solo antagonist. Her irreverent personality and dynamic with Danny is endlessly fun, and we’d love to learn more about her past. And hey, if Matt and Elektra survived the Midland Circle collapse, so could she, dammit.     

   This is less of a hope and more of a certainty, but we’re massively excited to see further exploration of the evolving Danny/Davos/Joy dynamic. We were hugely impressed by the way Danny and Davos’s relationship was crafted in Season 1, and thought the personal element the show added to their discord, which has always been missing in the comics thanks to the generation gap, made their falling-out extremely compelling. We’re eager to see how Davos’s revenge quest is handled, and to see their relationship continue to evolve. We are also still freaking out about the fact that they’re doing the wild Davos/Joy team-up from the comics, and can’t wait to see how that plays out. We love 616 Joy’s revenge quest, and so we’re hoping to get further insight into MCU Joy’s shifting opinion of Danny– the suddenness of which was a weak point in her narrative arc in Season 1. The clash of these three characters is going to be an emotional sucker punch, and we want it right now.

   And lastly: they need to give Danny his costume! Any costume! Let him have a costume! Come on! Our prediction (and hope) is that this will tie into returning to K’un-Lun. It’s a uniform, after all, and maybe once he completes his identity quest and symbolically proves himself, he will acquire the Iron Fist outfit. As far as which costume they might use– we’re not picky. We shamelessly adore his original giant collar and v-neck look, but we doubt they’ll go for that. (At the very least, we appreciate the little nods made to it– particularly in The Defenders, where most of his outfits have collars and shirts are unzipped way down.) If it indeed turns out to be an official uniform, we could see them adapting his Immortal Iron Fist costume, which is simple yet striking and would look good in live action:  

    If it ends up being something he puts together himself (not our preference, but a possibility) we could see them taking inspiration from his current costume, which was already referenced by his tracksuit at the end of The Defenders:

    Or possibly even integrating his Ultimates-verse look:

    Either way, we’re not too picky at this point. As long as it has the right general look and is aesthetically pleasing we’ll be happy. We do require the mask, the symbol (if his chest is covered), the dangly bits, and the slippers, of course, but the rest is negotiable. Also, as we recently mentioned regarding the Netflix DD costume, we hope they’re not afraid to use bright colors.   

    So, to summarize: we are super excited for Season 2, and all the potential it holds. It can’t come fast enough for us.

[cassyblue]

A very long post on my onions about JJBA

I am completely caught up with the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure manga. Took me two weeks to do it. But my brain hasn’t been up to reading novels/novellas since concentration whomst? Once the semester starts, I tend to read more comics than novels just because of time constraints. I am still on Part 3 of the JJBA anime. It’s an anime that I just can’t binge because it is a lot. I really like JJBA because it takes the shonen fighting manga and just turns it into a fever dream. So below is my thoughts on Parts 1-8, includes many a spoiler. Also as it goes on I get more sweary sorry. 

Part 1: Phantom Blood

Not my favorite arc, but it is the first part so I feel it doesn’t have the same level of writing/art as the next parts because Araki is starting out. It’s pretty tightly written and straight forward. Jonanthan is my least favorite Jojo. I think my main problem with this part is the assertion that Dio is evil due to the abusive environment he grew up in. That’s pretty much what I can say about Part 1. 

Part 2: Battle Tendency 

Part 2 is more complex and the characters have more growth than those in Part 1. I enjoy Joseph as a protagonist since he is a good combo of little shit and dumb teenager. The enemies to friends arc with Caesar is great. Throw two dramatic bitches together and the chaos that ensues is fun. I really liked that the best user of haman is a woman because the previous part was pretty dude heavy. Liz Lisa is on the fine line between fan service and sexy. But the fanservice doesn’t happen during fighting so I can forgive Araki on certain parts. The thing about Part 2 that really stands out to me is the expansion of the worldbuilding. It doesn’t feel overwhelming and fits neatly into the narrative. My other thought is that Araki just likes drawing asses. 

Part 3: Stardust Crusaders

Oh boy, so this is where I start to have a lot more onions. Everything I knew about JJBA before watching/reading was that there was this thing called a stand and everyone was gangsters. So when I started JJBA I was like tumblr lied to me what the hell is going on. Unlike Joseph in Part 2, Jotaro is just an asshole, a well meaning asshole, but still an asshole. Through this entire arc, Jotaro literally does not grow as a character unlike Part 2 with Joseph which is super frustrating. In Part 2, Joseph goes from cocky punk kid to more responsible and level headed kid with self discipline. Jotaro’s fighting ability literally gets no training whatsoever compared to Joseph. In the 45 days that the plot takes place, I would have thought that Avdol would have at least did some sort of training since he is the most experienced stand user. But nope that sure didn’t happen. The bickering between Joseph and Jotaro is enjoyable and the side characters are good humor relief. I think that’s where my frustration is -- Kakyoin and Polnareff have more character development than Jotaro does. Polnareff is in many ways a foil for Jotaro in that he ACTUALLY learns to accept help and so on. 

Things I did like was the introduction of stands. Thought there could have been better explanation but it’s JJBA so you know it’s going to not be there or it will be there eventually. I think this arc has ok writing but Part 2 was more solid. 

Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable

I really liked this part. It was more of a slice of life comic with mayhem. I felt that compared to Part 3, Part 4 does a better job with depicting teenagers. Josuke and his friends are literally dumbasses 80% of the time and Koichi has their one brain cell most of the time. Part 4 also dives much deeper into the origins of stands as well. 

What I liked was how the mystery parts of the comic were interspersed with the comedy parts. The previous arc was pretty straight forward without much diversion to have more insight into the characters. Part 4 is much more focused on relationships and has a psychological bent to the story. Unlike until the end of Part 3, Josuke and friends work as a team very quickly. The other part that I liked was the incredibly awkward Joestar family reunion.  Part 4 just has the most depth for me out of all the parts so far. 

The other part that I liked was the evolution of stands -- that some stands can grow and others have remote abilities and so forth. 

My biggest beef with this part is Araki totally doesn’t understand how graduate school works. Like ok first off, why the hell did Jotaro choose to do marine biology?? Want some background on that which we never get. When Jotaro is introduced, his specialty is whales and sharks (which i am sure he punched a shark at some point) but then at the end Araki decides that Jotaro’s doctoral work is on starfish? Um like ok what the fuck here. That’s a HUGE jump to do in academia in terms of changing your study organism. Like for me jumping from lepidoptera to hymenoptera was incredibly painful and that’s just WITHIN one ORDER (insects). Here Jotaro is jumping PHYLUMS. The other thing is that it takes uuuuh 6 years max to do your doctorate. So idk how Jotaro is able to do his entire dissertation in 3 months. It’s taken me two and a half years just to get my experiments done for my master’s degree. My advisor has given me two months to write my thesis, BUT I ALREADY HAVE MY DATA???? Jotaro would have had to collect all the data and speed write and I have no fucking clue how the hell he would even pass the defense even if he wasn’t also investigating a serial killer. Pretty sure the whole marine biology thing is just a cover so he has jstor access for everything related to stands. 

Part 5: Golden Wind

I didn’t expect to like this arc. But I did. It’s the arc that tumblr spoke of. First off, it has the perfect balance of dumbass to incomprehensible. Part of why I like JJBA is that you can see Araki’s art evolution and this is the first arc where he has completely gone from ripped as fuck dudes to twinks. That being said this is the arc that has the first plot hole and I only have a few theories as to why. It starts with Jotaro sending Koichi to Italy to investigate Giorno who is Dio’s biological son from his return in Part 3. This entire arc when I was live texting it to my best friend probably receives the most what the fucks in her replies. TD;LR: Giorno technically Joestar because Dio stole the body of Jonathan Joestar to make his comeback because you would think Araki for once has some somewhat reasonable biology here. Surprise fucker, Giorno’s hair turns blond once his stand ability awakens because he’s Dio’s son. So the whole Jotaro investigating Giorno thing is COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. My only explanation is Koichi is like yeah he’s an idiot kid and I don’t think he’s going to be a problem or Polnareff calls up Jotaro and is like yeah I’m keeping an eye on this kid while haunting a magic turtle. 

Which brings me to the most insane part of the whole arc, the GODDAMN TURTLE. As we learned in Part 3 with Iggy, animals can be stand users and there is this turtle that is a stand user. And basically Giorno and gang use this turtle to escort the boss’ daughter while plotting to take down the boss. There are so many fights over this goddamn turtle. Turtle does what turtle wants on top of it because it’s a fucking turtle. I just. The turtle. Then fucking polnareff dies and somehow manages to possess the goddamn turtle for almost a third of the arc???? And decides to keep hanging out in the turtle after everything is said and done as a fucking ghost. Like ok, I shouldn’t be like this is the most whack shit that’s happened in JJBA because there was an honest to god alien in Part 4. 

Honestly this arc also had some great character arcs. I think that somehow each character manages to grow and confront their issues. Considering that Giorno is the son of Dio, he actually is a pretty good kid. Like I was going in expecting Dio Jr. Which thank god that was not the case because I would have been like Really? REALLY WE ARE DOING THIS AGAIN? I think my main complaint was Trish was pretty sexualized. She’s fucking 15, Araki, please let her have some more clothes. 

I am kinda bummed that there is no crossover between Josuke, Jolyne, and Giorno because I think it would be pretty funny. 

Part 6: Stone Ocean

I don’t know where the fuck to start with this one. First off, I am from Florida. I lived in Florida for 20 some years of my life. I grew up in Florida. The first fucking thing that this manga does is say that it’s set in/near PORT ST. LUCIE (PSL). I grew up in PSL. For the longest time, PSL was pretty much known for being a growhouse central because it’s a suburbia of maze like developments. Like I am pretty sure that Araki just took a dart and threw it at a map of Florida. BUT that being said, there are several marine biology/oceanography research institutions very close to PSL so I guess I could see it considering Jotaro is supposedly a professor of marine biology now (honestly I think he just fucks around with stand research instead).  Stone Ocean feels more like it’s set in Miami. It has that vibe. I have been to Miami one too many times and have nearly died in Miami (more than once). Stone Ocean is a literal fever dream for me. However, I enjoyed the hell out of it. It ranks up there with the one Sailor Moon arc where Luna has the crush on the astronaut’s boyfriend and there’s space shuttle shenanigans. 

Oh and did I mention that Stone Ocean is set in 2011. This is kinda an important point since let me put some context to why half of this is me screaming. The space shuttle program ended in 2011. I saw the last shuttle return (I wasn’t able to see the launch because it was fucking crazy to even get a seat at the place I’d go watch it in PSL). ANYWAYS, let’s get on to this beautiful disaster trainwreck of an arc. 

So first off, Jolyne is my favorite jojo. She’s a punk ass kid with a lot of issues. I was worried it would be endless fanservice, but actually stone ocean wasn’t too bad in that regard. Also part of Jolyne’s design features butterflies heavily so I’m like yeah this is my favorite (did I mention that I study butterflies, that I have lived, breathed, and eaten butterflies since I was 12? Ok i did eat a moth once but that’s another story). Also I thought Jolyne’s stand was really cleverly done (besides that I screamed that it had sunglasses). Jolyne gets framed for her shitty ex hitting a pedestrian which turns out to even be a whole set up. Fun fact, Jolyne’s shitty ex is from Palm Beach. The only thing you need to know about Palm Beach is that it houses Mar-A-Lago, yep that Mar-A-Lago. It’s full of rich white people. Which makes the whole boyfriend shit even funnier for me. Like I can already see how the fuck Jolyne and Romeo meet etc etc etc. Let’s just say the one high school the county over is notorious for the rich kids being absolute wankers (duis, drugs, the whole shebang) and I can fill in the blanks just from being from the area. 

So it’s time to put Jotaro on blast again because he is such a fucking dick. He literally abandons Jolyne for 14 years. Jolyne is convinced that he doesn’t want her and hates her. She has every right to be angry with Jotaro. This goes back to Part 3 when I said that Jotaro literally has no character development, Jotaro still hasn’t learned a single fucking thing. He still thinks he has to do everything himself so that the people he cares about won’t get hurt. Which is partly a result of Part 3, but also he had the chance to overcome that misconception in Part 4? But he doesn’t? He like asks Josuke for help once and basically takes on the bulk of the investigation himself so Josuke and pals don’t get hurt/further involved. Jolyne eventually realizes that the reason Jotaro abandoned her is that she and her mom won’t get caught up in the stand bullshit etc and forgives him. Which like I can understand why she does that. But it’s an incredibly shitty excuse to sever all ties with your kid and divorce your wife just because you’re trying to protect your family. Like ok, I have a rough relationship with my family and it can be really, really hard not to forgive them if they suddenly start being good to you despite the fact they have hurt you so deeply and you just know it’s a bad idea to get back close to them because it’s only going to end badly. Anyways, Jotaro is a fucking dickweed. 

The one thing that I really liked is how Jolyne’s determination brings other people closer to her. She’s a literal brick wall and just bulldozes through obstacles regardless of if it’s a good idea. She also will not abandon her friends. So Jolyne best jojo, fight me. 

I can not believe that all of Dio’s kids except Giorno are Florida Men. I was like Araki it does not take 10 hours to get from PSL to Cape Canaveral and then I was like wait Jolyne has to fight a Florida Man like every 10 minutes so it does kinda make sense. The whole part in Orlando was like a fever dream. I lived in Orlando. When the mickey mouse shit started, I was like ofc there’s going to be a fight with The Mouse. You cannot enter Orlando without making a sacrifice to The Mouse. 

I completely knew that the arc would climax at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) just because it was set in 2011. I was fucking screaming the whole way through the final fight at the KSC because I have been there like idk 5 times or so. Can you believe that you used to not have to go through a gate to get in to tickets? That was before 9/11. Now it’s not like that. Anyways it was pretty great. 

I thought the ending was actually pretty satisfying considering the whole universe reset? 

Anyways Araki delivered the fucking florida man experience so completely that I was happy. He literally managed to write the arc like a Carl Hiaasen or Tom Dorsey novel on crack (those two are the best known Florida novelists who write mystery/crime novels about Florida). When the Part 6 anime comes out I am going to be so ready. 

Part 7: Steel Ball Run

Soooo this first arc of universe reset where everything is like do the Cupid Shuffle like 500 times while high as fuck. I think Part 7’s is weak compared to Part 4,5 and 6 in terms of writing BUT I was impressed by the originality of retelling of Part 1. I really liked the western bent to it. Also, I didn’t think that Araki could do completely new world building with stand origins without it being boring af. But he managed to make it really interesting and fucked up. I will put in a warning here: This arc isn’t great about race (not surprised at all), there is the magic cure for a disability trope (not a fan), and also sexual assault of a minor (really fucked up). 

Instead of the haman or however the fuck it’s spelled, Zeppeli uses a power called the spin which is his family’s secret ability. Zeppeli enters the Steel Ball Run which is a transcontinental horse race with a reward of half a million bucks. Johnny Joestar, a disgraced jockey sees Zeppeli use the spin and enters the race despite being paralyzed waist down just to figure out how the fuck Zeppeli uses it. For the most part, the depiction of disability is pretty good until you know the magic cure trope (offensive to disabled people, I can go more into depth with this in a different post). Zeppeli and Johnny start out as rivals but then become good friends and the writing is so good. However, every fucking cover drawing of the two together by Araki is very homoerotic. I don’t know if Araki actually knows how gay his drawings are? Like from Part 1 onwards, they are like...gay. Dio is there and I was like ok he gonna be vampire again but nope DIO FUCKING GETS DINOSAUR POWERS???? LIKE HE CAN TURN INTO A GODDAMN UTAHRAPTOR?????????????????????????????????????

Steel Ball Run has several layers of plot which are masterfully tied together :  the actual race, Zeppeli’s past, Johnny growing as a character, and the holy corpse. The holy corpse shit was right up my alley as being someone who loves crack christianity stuff. Like ok, at first I was like yeah it’s a saint and then I was like oh it’s the virgin mary and then Araki fucking hinted throughout the second half of the plot it’s JESUS???? Anyways that was some wack shit. President Valentine was a really good villain by the way -- completely captures Murica fuckery.  

I liked the addition of the fibonacci stuff/golden ratio in terms of maxing out stands/spin. 

My main issue with this arc besides race and disability fails is the handling of Lucy. She’s 14 and Araki oversexualized her. Like goddamn it she’s a FUCKING CHILD. This arc is probably the worst in terms of its treatment of women. I was really pissed at the fact that Araki had Lucy graphically assaulted and raped. So beware of that. That is part of the reason as much as I liked the originality of Part 7, I can’t really rank it high on the quality of JJBA parts. 

ANYWAYS ONTO PART 8

Part 8: JoJoLion

I am up to date as of August/September 2019 issue of the magazine JJBA is serialized in (I really want to say it’s Jump, but I’m probably wrong). This arc is really fascinating because it completely skips from the 1890s to the present day . There is the ties to Part 7 as that Johnny marries a Japanese woman whose family is a big part of this arc. It is set in Morioh like Part 4, but a Morioh completely shifted 180. It combines the story of a family curse, a man searching for his identity, and a conspiracy about these magical fucking fruit?

A college kid, Yasuho, pulls this dude out of the dirt at these weird formations in Morioh. The dude has no idea who he is and Yashuo names him Josuke. Note, the kanji for this Josuke are different than those for Josuke of Part 4. The Higashitika family that Yasuho is friends with takes Josuke in because he’s a stand user and he gets drawn into their shit while he tries to figure out who he is. 

The twist with Josuke’s identity and past was like fucking mind blowning. Like did not see that one coming that he’s the fusion of Yoshikage Kira (who in part 4 was the villian but in this one is the Joestar son of Holly? Not a murderer?) and Josefumi Kujo (character design resembles Part 4 Josuke). The thing with this arc is that it’s this weird combo of part 3 and part 4 with new content and characterizations. So it’s on one hand familiar and on the other hand completely unfamiliar. It continues with the corpse stuff, but I’m not completely sure how the corpse ties into the plot with the fruit and the new villains-- The rock people. It has to do with the equivalent exchange concept which is threaded throughout this whole arc. But like how exactly besides how Johnny died in Japan? Is the corpse still there in Japan? Araki TELL ME. 

Bonus: Little Jolyne Goes To Morioh Doujinshi. 

I found this Doujinshi on Batato and there wasn’t an author or artist attached but holy shit it is the CUTEST thing. It’s basically about Jolyne meeting Josuke because Jotaro needs a babysitter. It’s a very short one Doujinshi and the last part is hilarious. Anyways highly recommend reading this one because it’s really cute.

[rosanna523blog-blog]

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[breastforce]

Marco is a Trans Girl - The Megapost 2.0

So you’ve likely seen my big post on the theory that Marco Diaz from Star vs The Forces of Evil is a Trans Girl. It was made back in July of 2016 when Season 2 was just starting, and since then a lot of things have changed and we now know a lot more about what’s going on behind the scenes.

This post is meant to be an updated explanation of Trans Girl Marco theory, but now more in line with how things are actually happening. The gist of it being that Marco Diaz is coded as a closeted transgender girl.  Expect less theorizing and more meta talk. I’ll be going over all the clues that indicate Marco is trans, as well as how the starcrew came to the desicion as Marco developed as a character.

I can’t give enough thanks to the members of the crew such as @arythusa and @hug-bees​, whom have both done as much as they possibly can to communicate with the show’s growing LGBT fanbase, and given us so much insight into what’s going on

Full post below the cut.

Part 1: How it Happened.

“In my experience, almost no character goes into episode 1 totally finished. With such a long writing process, people end up changing and "discovering" more about the characters as they go on.” -Sabrina Cotungo [x]

A lot of aspects in Star Vs developed and matured along Seasons 1 and 2. Alfonso and Ferguson were written out and Janna joined the main cast, Ponyhead, Tom, and Glossaryk were given bigger roles, etc. So it’s pretty clear that Marco wasn’t originally penned as a Trans Girl. For the greater half of Season 1, they were simply a boy that ocassional feminine tendancies, with very few episodes indicating that there was anything else going on.

So what happened?

Well, individual writers and storyboarders have a bit of creative freedom when it comes to cartoon episodes. While they don’t have the ability to set much in stone, they can weave their own interpritations of characters into the outline that they’re given, inserting in small details that can enrich a character.

So while Marco was ‘officially’ a feminine boy, some writers interprited their feminity and general insecurities as indicative of something deeper.

One such example is in Mewberty:

While Star’s under an affliction that causes her to break out in hearts around boys, the writers have Marco not realize that they’re also a ‘boy’ for the first quarter of the episode, and when Marco’s hit over the head with something that would seem to be fairly evident for them, there’s a very noticable pause indicating that it’s something they are (or have just become) self-concious about.

And just to hammer the point home, there’s even a part in the episode where Marco’s outright mistaken to be a girl:

And Marco could have just been left at that.

The episode where I believe things changed though, is St. Olga’s School For Wayward Princesses

Marco disguises themself as a Princess to break help Star break into a boarding school, and the whole thing is completely natural. Marco doesn’t really try at all to be something they’re not - they’re just Marco.

Most media would have somebody suspect that there was something ‘off’ about Marco or constantly bring up how they’re the “odd one out” amongst all the other girls. Instead, Marco’s allowed to simply just be a girl for an episode without any objections from the narrative. Their gender is never made fun of, questioned, second-guessed, or even really brought up at all, even by the villain.

Not to mention the message of the episode - It’s Not Criminal To Be An Individual

It’s all about how there’s no wrong way to be a princess, but since royalty is a very narrow market in the United States, let’s just assume that the actual message is about how there’s no wrong way to be a girl.

And it’s likely no coincidence that Marco’s not only viewed as being no different from any of the other princess but also the keystone of the entire movement.

There’s no wrong way to be a girl, and Marco’s included in that. 

I don’t know for sure whether the writer behind this episode, Piero Piluso, conciously wrote Marco with them being transgender in mind, but they wrote Princess Marco as a girl through and through.

And that’s likely when the lightbulbs started going off in the crew.

Season 2 brought in a slew of new writers and cast members, including people who’ve had previous expierience writing LGBT characters such as Giancarlo Volpe, Evon Freeman, Le Tang, Amelia Lorenz, Zach Marcus, Brett Varon, Gina Gress, and the aforementioned Sabrina Cotungo (whom had even tried to get a transgender character into Gravity Falls)

The new batch of writers now all had the existence of Princess Marco influencing their interpritations of Marco, which made it a lot easier for many of them to come to the conclusion that there was something deeper going on, and that this kid was trans.

Thus resulting in a MASSIVE explosion of hints occuring throughout Season 2.

Part 2: Scattered Evidence 

“So if and/or when you detect LGBT-friendly themes on this show, it’s most likely there because the creators fought hard to put it there. They did the best they could to get any form of representation over, under or around those censors. They put it there to make a positive change in media.” -Amelia Lorenz [x]

Seaon 2 was where things really staarted to pck up.

Marco’s very first appearance is this:

Alright, they could be a feminine guy, Doesn’t exactly prove anything

They then spend the rest of the episode trapped in a closet that they want to get out of.

Which just so happens to be a Closet of Secrets.

Star even proposes at one point that it might be easier for Marco to just spend the rest of their life in the closet.

And, to top it all off, the writers specifically have Marco spend their entire time in said closet wearing a goddamn skirt.

In Mr. Candle Cares we get Marco outright saying they’d ‘Love to be Queen’. 

Red Belt opens up with a dream sequence where Marco’s more shocked to find themselves buried in a suit than dead:

And upon seeing themselves in a suit (which they don’t want!), they’re reminded that they’re unsure of themselves and their future.

And how, to Marco, there’s something holding them down. Something that they’re missing. Something that sets them apart from the rest of the cast (!!!!!!!!).

And this dyphoria Marco’s expieriencing was set off by a suit covered in mewberty hearts.

Calling back to the ‘Boy Hands’ moment above:

Marco fears that they’ll spend their life closeted, that they won’t be able to progress in life because they spent it hiding away, unable to escape being a ‘boy’ just like what happened in Mewberty.

And the dream wasn’t just a one-off thing for Marco:

It’s a regular, recurring nightmare they’ve had to the point where they told Star about it. They’ve been unsettled over the long term, but the show hasn’t shown it, they just let us know in this moment. 

Then we get Fetch, where in the last few minutes the writers do an animal-based dysphoria metaphor that puts Cartoon Network to shame.

It is pretty clear that the writers know what they’re doing because that’s legitimately one of the better explanations of what having dysphoria is like that I’ve seen on television: Rather than the dog talking about how they were “born in the wrong body”, they want to be a dog that is just like any other in order to calm their troubled emotions.

The book Star and Marco’s Guide to Mastering Every Dimension hammers down on the trans metaphor even further:

Willoughby is a dog. But in her dimension, dogs aren’t like dogs on Earth. They have very complicated feelings. So she stole my wand to make herself not have those complicated feelings anymore.

This passage can easily be translated to: “Some [women] aren’t like [other women]. They have very complicated feelings. So they [transition] to make themselves not have those complicated feelings anymore.” which is such a simple way of explaining what being trans is like to kids that it wouldn’t feel out of place on Sesame Street.

Not even a minute after the first exchange, we get this:

Which not only hammers in the idea that this is all about gender ever further, since they include a gender reveal that has no other real impact on the story, but if the dog’s in any way symbolic of Marco, then the scene pretty much speaks for itself.

And then in Gift of the Card, Heinous makes her return and the name “Princess Marco” is actually used in the show itself.

And after a season with a bunch of bits and pieces of foreshadowing scattered throughout:

It’s revealed in Nayasya that Marco does in fact have dysphoria, they’re so ashamed of their body that they can’t even look themselves in the mirror:

Marco Diaz covers the mirror when he shows because Marco is ashamed of his own body!

In addition, mirrors and showers are such common motifs in trans narratives that Sense8 had their trans character describe her dysphoria in nearly the same exact way. 

“At that age I was really uncomfortable with my body and didn’t like to be naked, especially in front of other boys. But you had to take a shower before you went in the pool, so I would do it but I kept my swimsuit on.”

And the only point where Marco can apparently somewhat stand to look themselves in the mirror?

When they’re dressed like that. Indicating that this isn’t just some Teenaged Body Insecurity but rather dysphoria.

Star and Marco's Guide to Mastering Every Dimension, a canonical side book that fleshes out the lore of the show, also manages to expand on Marco’s thoughts on their stay at St. Olga’s:

I almost died at St. O’s. Twice. The first time was at the hands of some robot guards, and the second time I almost died emotionally in the Solitary Conform-ment Chamber. I did learn that I’d make a great princess. I really wouldn’t say that pink is my color... but I wouldn’t mind wearing a poofy dress every now and then. It’s kinda liberating.

Notice their word choice. Not only do they outright say “I learned I’d make a great princess”, not only indicating that they did infact themselves as a girl in St. Olga’s to a degree rather than simply seeing the whole thing as ‘just a disguise’, but they also call wearing a ‘poofy dress’ to be liberating. 

There is a HUGE difference between “a guy enjoys wearing dresses and would like to wear them more often’ and ‘somebody who’s fantasized about being a girl finds a dress they didn’t even chose to wear to be personally liberating’. It’s not simply a matter of Marco wearing a dress, but rather that their attitudes towards it (and everything else) are something that a lot of Trans Women have found relatable.

Part 3: ‘Heinous’

“I can tell you that Daron is open to the idea of LGBT characters but beyond that the situation gets complicated. Also, as a board artist, I don’t have a lot of say in terms of larger story or character arcs, so I’m afraid I can’t comment on future plans.” - Sabrina Cotugno [x]

At this point there’s a number of members in the crew that all view Marco as a trans girl, and are writing her that way, but nobody has the power to make it explicit.

Then comes ‘Heinous’.

This episode pushed this concept to its absolute limit, where the writers for the episode did literally everything they could to get across the message that Marco’s trans and brought the theory to being as canon as they can possibly get at the time. (To the point where people on Reddit who either didn’t follow or dismissed the theory were struggling to figure out what the point of the episode was)

The basics:

Marco is consistently gendered with ‘she’ pronouns throughout the episode and the writers don’t have anybody ever question it

When in her Princess getup, Marco explictly refers to herself as a girl and seems to have a blast despite being blackmailed, to the point where they voluntairly keep on the dress for family game night.

The dialogue from Marco’s parents have loads of double meanings, where they’re talking about finding out about Marco’s interdimensional activities, but deliberately involk the image of somebody who just got outed as being gay or transgender to their parents.

And, most of all, Princess Marco wasn’t just a distant memory that didn’t matter. The episode revealed that Marco secretly kept up the ‘Princess Marco’ persona this whole time, getting royalty checks from merchandise inspired by her.

And to make things even more meta, Marco has apparently ‘influencing the next generation of princesses’ to be true to themselves.

The whole theme of the episode is Marco getting across a hidden message meant to inspire people despite being restricted in what they can say. So Marco says what they’re obliged to say, but phrases it in a way that makes the true message clear to the intended audience. This is essentially how the crew has been handling the theory in of itself.

Part 4 (for now): Conclusions

I’ll continue to update the post with relevant information as we move onto Season 3, so this part of the post will most likely change

The image that is being drawn is that the crew really really really wants to include trans representation within their work, and not only views but are actively writing a character as being transgender, but they can not come out and just say it due to legal reasons.

The crew’s response to the idea of Marco being transgender, as well as the prospects of LGBT representation within the show itself, has been nothing but positive. They’ve been consistently defending it to the point where one of the directors for Season 4 put out an argument as for why Marco being transgender girl is more important than them being a boy.

It’s not certain whether or not Marco will be able to come out and transition to being a girl during the series. The crew has many times expressed frustration about how much of a fight they have to put up to even get hints at LGBT representation past the censors. In the meantime, or in case they ultimately don’t succeed, the staff are deliberately giving trans people something to relate to in Princess Marco, and are doing everything they can to make sure we at least have that.

“I wish I could give a more reassuring or more substantial answer, but little by little people in the industry are trying to change things. The victories seem a bit small for now, but please know that you’re not forgotten.”  -Ariel V.H. [x] 

[theintp-journal-blog]

The Algorithm of My Anxiety Part II

On the previous post, I have already explained on “Why I should look for a job?”. And now, here, on this post, I would like to emphasize on “What job that best fit me?” So, here is the further explanation: 

What job that best fit me?

Before I answer my own question, I would like to define the word “me”. It is the last six words from that question sentence.

Hence, I want to describe myself first, in order to create a linear meaning and understanding (for my own self, of course!) on what kind of job that best suits me.

I am a Bachelor of International Relations, Universitas Padjadjaran. Some might have already know what kind of major it is. And maybe others don’t really know what we are studying.

For those who are wondering about “What did you study on International Major?”, I would like to give you a (not so comprehensive but I promise it describes most of the time for what we are studying about) (based on my own perception) elucidation:

- In the first semester, I have been given a course entitled “Introduction To Politics”, this course gives some explanations about what is politics, how we can use it, what is the importance of it, etc, etc. Next, there is a course called “Introduction to Social Science”, again it is a simple explanation what is social science, how we can use it, what is the importance of it, etc, etc. Also, We learned (not too much, and not too little too) about “Law”, an introduction one of course. And there is so many “introductory” course that I have forgotten back then since the first semester is in the year of 2012.

So, basically, in the first semester, we are thought to have a basic knowledge of political and social science. Since International Relations at my university is a part of the Faculty of Political and Social Science.

- In the second semester, we are about to be given a course of something like “Introduction to International Relations”, and any derivation of it. It is about what is International Relations, etc, etc. Alongside with the optional course that you can voluntarily take or not, it is also included the derivation of “International Relations” itself, IMHO.

- In the third semester, we have a course entitled “Philosophy of Science”, which is a base, a ground, a pillar, a basic knowledge, a pearl of first wisdom, a source of insight. There we, or I, at least, learned that when we think, we assume, we perceive after we take in a piece of outer information, we need to understand it as wholeness, we need to understand it by many perspectives or at least by finding the answer from The Holy Trinity of Divine Question:

a). What is?

b). How can?

c). What for?

And again, the other courses are the derivation of “International Relations” such as “The International Relations of Europe Region”. “The International Relations of Middle-Eastern Region”, “The International Relations of Asia-Pacific Region”, “The Humanitarian Law”, etc, etc.

What makes me so confused and can’t stop asking to myself is: I think the course of “Philosophy of Science” is a basic course to understand something, to understand any knowledge, and wisdom. Whether it be Political Science or Pure Science. IMHO, Philosophy of Science is a science to understand science <= Correct me if I am wrong about this LMFAO. But, yeah, I think that it is.

Hence, that course need to develop in the first semester, not in the third semester!!! But thank God, starting in the year 2015, the “Philosophy of Science” course has been started within the first semester. So, yeah

- From the fourth semester to sixth and seventh semester, it is all about THEORY, I repeat. T H E O R Y. Theory of what? The Theory of International Relations of course! like:

- Realism

- Idealism

- Liberalism

- Constructivism

- Post-Modernism

Really, I forget already the all of the International Relations Theory, I assume myself as an idiotic, dumb, college student back then, who ignores something complex. But I am pretty sure there is a lot of more than 5 Theory that I have mentioned above.

So in Conclusion:

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FOR THE PAST 5 YEARS OF STUDYING THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS MAJOR IS:

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS MAJOR IN UNIVERSITAS PADJADJARAN IS A MAJOR THAT STUDY ABOUT WHAT IS POLITICS AND HOW DOES IT IMPACT TO THE INTERNATIONAL WORLD, BE IT TO CREATE A PEACE OR TO CONSTRUCT A CONFLICT, AND IT IS ALL ANALIZED BY FAR-REACHING THEORY TO MAKE US, THE COLLEGE STUDENTS, TO SEE IT BY ANY MEANS OF NECESSARY PERSPECTIVE.

Post Script:

I don’t have even any single intention to make my own alma mater looks bad. Regardless there is true or not that there is some point of this post really have something to make my own alma mater looks bad or I point out something, negative prejudice towards it. This does not have any correlation of why I haven’t had a single job for now, in fact, I have some friends, in International Relations major of Universitas Padjadjaran, who have a great job, someone who has in Kemlu, in other Governmental Institution and I am very proud of them! This is just me, by all the fault, in the first place, the very reason why I have not got a job. But as far as I am writing about this post, I merely exposed the facts, the truth, of what I have experienced. I REPEAT: I don’t have any single intention to make my own alma mater looks bad or someone or something to get a negative image. Regarding the fact that I write clearly about my own College Institution, it is merely to point out a fact, a clear fact that I have experienced, for further experience, no other meanings, that is just it, it is just like, I feel like is it good to write as clearly as possible.

To Be Continued in Part III...

[wessonba]

I didn’t write a reflection after season’s 4 finale.  It is true that I was sick and really couldn’t think clearly enough to write, but if I’m truthful with myself…a part of me really didn’t want to.  Then because so much time had gone by and so many had written exhaustively about this season, I really thought I would just pass. But, in the last few days, I’ve had readers asking me where my review is and I guess I owe them at least an explanation. I love this show and it hurts me to have to say negative things. I really am rooting for them.  I was holding out hope that my patience this season would be rewarded. It wasn’t.  My overall initial feeling after watching the Outlander season 4 finale was one of dissatisfaction. I wasn’t angry just sad. My thoughts wandered to previous finales and I particularly remembered how I felt after season 1. As I watched Jamie and Claire sail away on that ship to France I was tearfully smiling. I can remember thinking that I would miss this couple and overall pleased with the adaptation. I was proud to be a fan.  I’m still proud to be a fan, but with a few exceptions, I struggled to write about this season. I would find myself sitting with my thoughts for far too long.  I wasn’t inspired.  And, I think my writing this season reflects that.

It is telling that my most popular blog posts this season have been when I felt the need to negatively critique an episode. I hate that.  I’ve had some time to think and to read other fan’s reactions and I find myself agreeing with bloggers and fans that I usually don’t.  I hate that. But, I can’t write this blog if I’m not genuine.  My readers trust me to be honest and my conscience would bother me if I was wasn’t.  I really love this show and want it to succeed.  Let’s be clear, there is still a lot to love about this show.  It is beautiful and transportive and I have always believed it was made with obvious love for the story they were telling.  It is a remarkable tv experience. What it isn’t …is …the same show.

I’m still not buying into some fans’ intricate conspiracy theories and need to denigrate cast and crew for not giving “fans” what they want.  But, something HAS  changed.  None of us on the outside really know, but there are a lot of theories out there and at least a few make some sense.  There were a lot of changes to the TPTB and I have no idea if that resulted in different work relationships and expectations and maybe changes to budgets as well.  There were new writers, bad weather, and some really concerning comments from the cast about their characters and the amount of input they would like to have in the writers’ room. I THINK that might be a good idea, but what if their ideas about their characters aren’t what we think they think, lol. I still haven’t forgiven Sam for not letting Jamie “quietly fall to pieces”. Then this week some fans were sent questionnaires.  I guess that would indicate that they are trying to listen, but why not just say we hear you?  Why send surveys to select fans? What was the criteria? I’ve always felt that the majority of fans are happy with the show, but not as vocal as those who seem to be invested in finding fault.  Was this questionnaire sent to a true representative sample of fans?

I’ve been here since the beginning and I don’t think PR has EVER really known who their audience is for this show or how to market it.  Can anyone say “the kilt drops”?  Are these surveys going to insure that PR and the TPTB will get an accurate picture of what fans want?  I think they might offer some insight, but shouldn’t be taken as gospel or as a definitive barometer of fan opinion. Quite frankly, if some fans actually get what they think they want they still wouldn’t be satisfied. I’m afraid it is the nature of the beast that is fandom. As much as fans like to think they know how to adapt Diana Gabaldon’s bible sized tomes, they don’t.  Nevertheless, there are some consistent and legitimate concerns played on many of the broken records. Sorting those out from the irritating scratches would not be an envivable job. This questionnaire thing feels like a mistake, one that is undermining the creators.  If I was them I’d be looking for another job. And, some folks NEED to stay.

I believe something happened this season that impacted what we saw on our screens. The show has taken a turn and is on a path that is far from the show I love to love.  It is a feeling, a change in attitude, and focus.  In my humble opinion, Outlander shines when it focuses on relationships.  And, that held true for this season as well.  Blood of my Blood and The Birds and the Bees were two of this season’s most well received episodes for that very reason.  I agree with fans who say that to in order to care about what happens to the characters we have to care about the characters.  As wonderful as the Cherokee village and Roger’s rescue were it was far less important than bridging differences and mending relationships in this story.  For example, just because you can write an episode of someone trekking wordlessly through a jungle doesn’t mean you should.

Character development just wasn’t up to par this season.  The Claire of the Ridge has always been my favorite Claire and after watching this season, I’ll have to reread Drums to remember why.  She seemed a faded version of the woman who finally becomes who she was meant to be.  She wasn’t the only character that was less than they should have been. Watching Fergus and Marsali I wondered why in the few minutes they were on screen their relationship was so much more dynamic and their persona so much clearer than Bree and Roger.  These two are so important to the rest of the story and they just don’t seem to be as clearly developed and/or portrayed in a way to make us care about them as major players.  I’ve written before about some choices that  I felt were a few “fatal” mistakes that have reverberated throughout the seasons: Loghaire at the witch trial and not allowing Claire to fight Jamie’s demons.  I read the explanations, but in truth Roger isn’t the beloved character he should be.  I’m hoping Roger’s leaving Bree and not choosing to come directly to River Run will not be one of those fatal mistakes that reverberate throughout the rest of the seasons. I think they dealt with those two previous mistakes as best they could and I’m hopeful that Roger and his relationship with Bree will be righted too.

I’m completely aware that I am just one more fan voice and one more opinion in the ocean that has been written about this season.  It feels ironic to find myself saying, I’m criticizing, but I truly just want the show to be better, having criticized that type of critique previously, but I truly just want the show to do better. It isn’t too late to fix what was wrong this season.  I just want to write about a show that inspires me, I want the Outlander  I wrote this about:

CHARACTER COUNTS … A REFLECTION ON

OUTLANDER EPISODE 1. 11

I was perusing Twitter on Saturday before watching Outlander episode 11 the Devil’s Mark when I came across a tweet from someone who had already watched the episode. Aside from being a little pissed that I hadn’t gotten to watch yet, I found the statement intriguing. The author said,

Because the tweet intrigued me, I re-tweeted it.  I felt my excitement to watch the episode heighten.  Had they really done it? Had they really shown Claire in all her wonderful nerve-wracken-ly principled glory?  I sure hoped so.

The episode was exciting and full of all kinds of wonderful, but per usual there was a theme that stood out for me. Character. In a real-world and TV world full of characters with ambiguous moral character, Outlander has the potential to be something different. Saturday night, I saw some of that potential realized. Our main characters had moral and ethical dilemmas that they solved in ways that have sadly become a-typical. They made selfless decisions. They did the right thing despite knowing the price they would pay would be dear.

I enjoy watching Game of Thrones, a show Outlander has been compared to. In my opinion, this comparison by journalists is weak at best and most often used by writers too lazy to look any deeper.  There seems to be a tendency among these types to latch on to what is the most “pop culture” popular thing to repeat. I have nothing against R.R. Martin or the show based on his works.  They are what they are, but what they are is a far cry from what Outlander is or tries to be.

Last years’ GOT season was full of characters acting out of warped emotions, values and needs. I don’t expect anything different this year. Lots of titillating stuff to discuss around the water cooler, but I must admit the most shocking thing about this show is how hard it is to find a redeeming character. I wish I could say this trend toward pushing the moral and ethical envelope was the exception rather than the rule on TV, but I can’t.  It is all too common.

My reaction to the GOT characters and their actions is very different from what I feel when I watch Outlander.  Folks on social media said they used a box of tissues watching this episode. This is very understandable, there is some tear-jerking stuff!  I cried some tears myself, but I came to examine my feelings a bit closer and realized there was something deeper going on here. When I watched Claire and Jamie and Ned and even Gellis make their choices, I felt a real connection. My eyes filled with tears for the human compassion I was witnessing. Our characters made unselfish choices. They made me feel proud to be human.

My Twitter author Lady Jane commented that Claire was principled to a fault. I think I understand what she means, if she meant that Claire puts herself in danger by stubbornly remaining a person who cares about others ..then yes…I agree, she does. It’s the “to a fault” part that I find myself still thinking about today. The kind of choices Claire has to make come with risk to herself and others, to say the least.  But…I resist the idea that her ethical and moral center is somehow flawed because she chose to be unselfish. I’m pretty sure Lady Jane agrees with me because she loves Claire for it. These are the character traits of the everyday hero who saves a child from drowning, pulls people from a burning car or donates an organ to a stranger.  These are the kind of people we should be admiring and celebrating.

Claire would not give false witness, even against a woman who admitted to killing her husband and even if it would save her own life. I cried bittersweet tears for Claire. Under extreme distress and pressure, betrayed by those who should have represented innocence and mercy (Leery and Father Bain) , surrounded by a sea of faces that desired to see her burn, she stayed true to herself.

Sad, but wonderful too.

She is saved at the last-minute by the zealot murderess Gellis who sets aside her own desires to help another. I cried for Gellis’ courage, for her self-sacrifice and for her wasted life.  She will not be the last person to give over her thinking and decision-making to a cause nor the last to step over a moral and ethical line for that cause.  Once again, it’s all too common.

The evening’s monumental plot twists weren’t over and neither was Claire’s decision-making.  In fact, a much harder decision awaits her upon her escape from Cranes Muir in the arms of her 18th century husband Jamie.  I’m thankful that the decisions were made back to back.  It helped the viewer understand who Claire is and that is a person who will do the right thing despite the pressure to do otherwise.  It makes her decision at the stones that much more poignant and meaningful.  She did not take the decision to leave or stay lightly. In fact, given her moral center the agonizing choice would have left her shattered. She is married to Frank and finally has an opportunity to return to him and yet,….Jamie.

The other person in this triangle  made a few difficult choices of his own. First, he decides to suspend his disbelief for her sake. If I had any disappointment in this episode it was the fact that they chose to let the audience believe that Jamie never doubted her story.  He was human, of course he did and maybe part of the reason he took her to the stones was to shatter Claire’s delusions.  In the book, when  he grabs her back from the rock it’s because she starts to go right before his eyes.  I wish they would have kept that part.  Despite his extraordinary emotional intelligence this would have seemed the more reasonable reaction to me.

And… then, the audience learns that Jamie has chosen to let Claire go. What this choice reveals about him is nothing short of staggering. This is a man of integrity. Everything he feels tells him to beg her to stay, but he chooses to let her go…why?

He now knows the truth and it cannot be ignored. There is a man…a husband … with a prior claim. Claire is the wife of another man and as a man who honors the vows spoken between two people, he must acknowledge Frank’s claim on Claire. She isn’t his wife because she is still wed to another. He must acknowledge that Claire doesn’t belong here. Her being here and with him is an unfortunate accident. She had no choice. She did what she needed to do to survive. And, after the witch trial, he knows she is a women out of her time and it will place her in danger again. She will be safer if she goes. He knows she has tried to get back to her husband and life over and over again. He will not add himself and his need of her to the equation. He loves her, so he will let her go.

I know I cried at every agonizing staggering step he took down that hill; my heart was breaking with his.

It’s a wonderful story full of redeeming characters who don’t always have to be right or have their own way.  My husband is a big fan of old TV Westerns and I think I know why. Even though I complain about their predictability the plots usually center around someone making a moral choice and often those character’s choose the self-sacrificing or ethical/moral high road. The characters learn lessons about doing the right thing for your fellow-man and having honor …like the characters in Outlander.

Somewhere, in TV and maybe our real-life culture, the idea of self-sacrifice as being a noble action has fallen away to the need for self-fulfillment at any cost.  Maybe it is because people don’t believe there is anything more to life. If that is so then I guess fulfilling your own desires at whatever the cost to others would make sense. But,  “I have to inform you, I am no of that opinion myself”.  I’m happy there is a production on TV that isn’t afraid to tell a story of people who wrestle with choices and choose kindness, honor, truth and self-sacrifice.

Looking for the show I loved…a reflection on Outlander season 4 I didn't write a reflection after season's 4 finale.  It is true that I was sick and really couldn't think clearly enough to write, but if I'm truthful with myself...a part of me really didn't want to.  

[yukithesnowman314]

Disclaimer: Possible spelling and grammar error below I’m just knocking this out of my way so I can work on this Hi-Score Girl review.

Round 1: https://yukithesnowman.com/2018/05/15/yukis-path-to-doki-doki-literature-clubs-good-ending-round-1-sayori/

Continuing from where I left off, I was able to obtain the CGs for Sayori’s route in order to unlock the true ending.  Re-playing her route gave me a new insight into her accurate portrayal of people suffering from depression (such as feeling numb, hopelessness, lack of desire, etc.) made me appreciate her character. I want to see more educated takes of characters struggling with mental health in fiction –because done right, it can hit hard.

Since I’ve “completed ” Sayori’s route, I’m going after Natsuki’s next.  I haven’t done her route since my first run through, which is perfect given I need to go through her route before replaying Yuri’s.  Going through Yuri’s route in Act 1 requires me to witness Sayori’s death scene; therefore ruining my plans to get the game’s true ending.

For cut down on time, any previous read dialogues are being skipped unless I find something interesting and worthy of being talked about.

I like Natsuki. She’s slowly becoming a favorite character of mines. I’ve said this many times, but I hate the tsundere trope in anime – unless a writer puts realism to the trope (as we see with Natsuki).  She’s a “tsundere” but her aggressive, angry nature is a resulted of her being physically and emotionally abused by her father. It’s common for victims of child abuse to struggle with anger issues and develop an inferiority complex. Obviously, Natsuki hides her insecure nature (from the abuse) by acting tough and hard-hearted (but of course, she secretly cares about other people and don’t wanna see them down or hurt).

Playing Act 1 again, I couldn’t help but laugh at MC’s awareness of overused anime archetypes as Natsuki did her little “tsundere” bullshit such as “It’s isn’t like I did this for you” and hiding her love for cute things through acting hard and tough.  It almost made me forget that DDLC was a psychological horror VN.  Almost.  With that said, I can’t help but find some parts of my personality in her (as weird as it might sound).  There are some things I do enjoy that I’m kinda shy to admit (some moe’ blob anime like Lucky Star, classical music, reading about heart-warming stories , and shedding a tear or two at emotional scenes in anime to name a few).

…that’s as far as my softer side y’all gonna get from me.

Tsunsuki

The first night of the poem homework for Natsuki went smoothly.  And by smoothly, I cheated and save scummed because I accidentally got a few reactons from Yuri and Sayori that completely override my goal to have MC romance Natsuki.  Eh. I dunno what cute shit fictional girls like. Or real ones at that.  I suck at the romance thing.

After starting over I got MC to interact with Natsuki,.  There’s a hint for shadowing/mockery here as Natsuki talks about her favorite manga,“Parfait Girl” MC makes fun of the cover, which offends Natsuki telling him the old adage of never judging a book by its cover and how things may have more layers than it appears. A subtle jab at the true nature of the game.

I can’t help to think how Natsuki’s character mirrors that of the otaku. Otakus are quick to defend their passions – may they be anime, manga, gaming, etc.. Sometimes, they find inspiration in them (such as with Natsuki becoming a baker and a cook from reading her manga) and opening up to those who also share their passion. Natsuki struggles to share her love of manga with her friends. Every attempt has been met with ridicule by them (since they believe she’s still childish for not growing out of her manga phase).

I’m sure you guys had to deal with this in the past (maybe even today as adults for the older people reading this).  With nerd culture growing ever popular by the day the stereotype of nerds and anime fans being childish and immature is dying. The stigma is still there, but it wasn’t as bad as it was decades ago.

I was able to have MC make Natsuki fluttered with the poem with him writing something that matches her style.  Guess she’s not used to people appreciating and sharing her passion.  I know that feeling.  Doesn’t excuse her from acting goofy about it but I get it.  As Natsuki share her poem with Monika Monika tells MC how Natsuki’s writing style is similar to late author Shel Silverstein: “childish”, but with adult themes and straight to the point by using fewer words than necessary.  I like that lowkey.  I believe that you can say more by saying less and the more you talk and ramble, the less interesting you are to people.

Make people think about what you say and keep them in wonder by saying less.

Everything goes per normal so let’s skip ahead to Natsuki and Yuri’s fight.  Stated in an earlier post (I think, it’s been a while and I don’t feel like searching for it), I went to Yuri because she’s my favorite character and I like her character archetype, but for this one, I went for Natsuki.   She gets happy, proud that somebody like her childish, but blunt writing style.  Real shit,  I get her.  It gets annoying when people talk down about your style (without any advice to improve it, mind you).  When somebody sees the beauty of your style, it reminds you that it is not bad.

You do get a little egotistical, however.

Following the second poem writing,  there’s a funny scene where Natsuki  is struggling to get her manga collection from the top shelf of the clubroom’s closet.   Natsuki, dealing with her short complex, tries to reach for them but fails.  MC tries to help out, but couldn’t, as he was put in an awkward situation – either hold the step ladder  that Natsuki had (while innocently looking up her skirt), or let her fall in which she hits head hard against something, crack it open, bleed out and die; thus ending her route and the game .  The two fall down and shit scatters, with one of her manga being damaged.

(…okay so she didn’t fall to her death.)

Natsuki gets upset, snaps off on MC, but then starts to  cry, saying things like “I’m just having bad day” and “every day, it just gets harder”.  Subtle hints to Natsuki’s homelife and being abused by her dad.  Of course, you won’t catch it on your first run (unless you read the spoilers).  You assume that Natsuki acting childish or overreacting, not knowing that her acting out is a result of her stressful home life.  Over time, it’s going to take a toll on any child dealing with abuse.

There was an interesting theory I came across on a DDLC Facebook group months back that not only Natsuki’s dad belittles her for reading manga, it’s possible that he may have destroyed a few from her collections.   It’s not uncommon for abusive parents to destroy their children’s personal items. I have friends who during childhood, their parents would break their things as a form of “punishment”.

Natsuki could be hiding her manga at the clubroom to avoid any further damage from her dad.  Monika fucking with her collection adding to how horrible her home life is only fueled by Natsuki’s paranoia that she may lose her manga – her way out of reality for a little bit. Really wish Dan did more with Natsuki character.  There are layers about her that need to be explored.

Continued in  Round 2 Part 2.

(before I go I gotta say some of you Natsuki fans need Jesus)

Original Fangsta Natsuki Disclaimer: Possible spelling and grammar error below I’m just knocking this out of my way so I can work on this Hi-Score Girl review.