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mediocre--writing · 3 years

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Favorite Crime

S- I was your willing accomplice, honey

Bad news. Bad news, bad news, bad news.

Nobody had a single good word to his name, besides a praise for his party facade or his skills in bed.

But there's always a deeper story behind a headline, or that's what Nancy had always told him. That this unflattering headline covered a hurt, poor person who was, more than likely, being villainized for a story. That's what happened with Jonathan, right?

Bad guy has a shitty family life and it turns out he's not the villain at all, just different in a way people don't yet understand.

But how can someone so cruel and crude have a deeper story than just being a jackass?

Turns out, it's always more complicated than calculus homework Steve still doesn't understand.

A short word from Max itched a scratch inside Steve's head that had been bothering him since the first day. The way he sauntered, never just walked, nor did he ever cower, the way he always looked so fine, so perfect, so okay.

Just like Steve does, he guesses. The focus on his hair and his clothing and how he's perceived, it doesn't matter to him how he looks, he just wants people off his back.

So, it's not surprising that it was an uphill journey, more like a completely vertical wall standing between them, but they somehow made it to the top, made it together.

Somehow, despite the fights and denials, despite the reluctance and the running, it was rough, and it seemed like gravity was strongest at the top, trying to pull them down the closer they got together. They're standing at the top, this once unattainable point that seemed like the top of the world where the sun shined brightest on them and only them. Nobody else.

Except there's always someone else, isn't there?

It's not always someone falling in love with someone else or falling out of love with the one they were destined to be with, sometimes there's pressures you can't fight on your own, sometimes they're even too strong to fight with someone else. Sometimes you can't defeat your enemy like the knight slays the dragon. Sometimes you don't live happily ever after with the princess and she just stays locked in her tower until someone can actually save her.

B- Doe-eyed as you buried me

The eyes, the lashes, the soft glances in the hallway and the sweet smiles shared during practice. They all pile up over time, creating this deep, strong warmth that keeps your body warm. The warmth that you don't notice until you're separated from it for a second too long.

The fire ignited in a once ice cold heart that gives meaning and light to a corrupted soul begging for help.

Those big, brown eyes that were once referred to as "ugly cow eyes," a statement that Billy couldn't disagree with more. Because even if they were cow eyes, they were sweet, beautiful, innocent eyes that were so willing to love.

Eyes that opened his own, opened his eyes to a bright, new future he didn't even know existed before.

It was smothering, the feeling, which he hadn't felt in almost ten years now, one he didn't realize he'd forgotten what that love felt like, what being cared for felt like.

He fell into love like a poor, unexpecting animal would fall into a hunter's trap.

It was like he knew it was happening, he noticed he was falling and tried to grab onto the sides of the trap, try to claw his way out, but he inevitably fell to the bottom, laying on his back, but he noticed that this trap wasn't so bad. He could still feel the sunlight on his cheeks and there was someone there, laying next to him who offered great comfort as they waited for the predator to kill them both.

But it felt safer when there was dirt being put on top of him to keep the burning heart warm, it was like the predator wouldn't be able to spot them if they hid for long enough under this false hope, because they were still stuck in the bottom of the trap and they were only digging themselves deeper.

S- And now, every time a siren sounds, I wonder if you're around

Steve's favorite color was always purple. He liked the harshness of red and the calm of blue and purple always seemed to fit the blend. It was a strong color, something he'd associated with his best days and reminded him of this innocence he loved.

He doesn't love purple so much anymore.

The neon signs above shops and restaurants, composed of this beautiful red and dashing blue turned the dark mall into a bright purple.

The fireworks bouncing off the walls and their faces glowed in bright yellows and greens and blues and reds and purples.

And that purple hue covered everything that night. Not a single light was burning brighter than that purple color.

The red blood gushing down his chest wasn't beautiful and the sight of his dashing blue eyes closing was more horrifying than any sight he'd ever been forced to watch.

He hated purple. He hated the mix of blue and red and he hated the beautiful purple color that highlighted his face while he struggled to breathe, while he searched for Steve’s eyes and reached out for his hand before he just--stopped.

And the sirens, God, the sirens.

They were loud and blaring and the god damn red flashing lights were mixing with the blue lights from cop cars and Steve was so fucking sick of seeing those colors everywhere. So fucking sick of that loud blaring noise, but that also could have been a result of the concussion and blood loss he’d experienced within the past 48-ish hours.

And, he gets it, that sometimes people just don’t get lucky enough to make it.

But it’s been close to three months and every time a cop car or ambulance passes him, he just wants to sprint after it, like he wanted to that night, just to see him one more time before the inevitable ends it for good.

The inevitable, isn’t it always funny that you can stop it? Or--could have stopped it. There’s always a solution that could have prevented this “unpreventable” event, yet people pretend it isn’t so. That people die because it’s “meant to be” and not a tragic fate that no good person deserves.

The inevitable, isn’t so inevitable, turns out, on a day in November when Max admits a hidden truth.

And they meet again, but it feels the same. They missed each other unlike any person they hadn’t seen. They just sit for hours, barely talking but just holding hands, squished on this tiny hospital bed where a, supposedly dead, teenager and his boyfriend sit and silently cry.

And as they hear an ambulance pull up outside of the hospital, Steve doesn’t tense like he has been for the past months, he just squeezes Billy’s hand tighter and feels his breathing from where they’re touching.

B- But I say that I hate you with a smile on my face

The camaro, the doctors warned him that he may not like driving it, some form of PTSD from the night and the accidents that had occured, but Billy felt more released from his problems as he drove the car than when he had to sit in a hospital room or talk with his step sister and the nerd herd about...well, anything.

And the sunrise, how beautiful sunrises were above treelines as you release your problems with a loud rev of an engine.

He’d done his morning like he always would, made coffee when he woke up, got dressed, poured an extra cup for Steve, kissed him on the forehead when he left it on the nightstand, then lounged around the living room for a while.

Except today was different.

Billy wasn’t getting up at 6am, he was getting up at 5.

And he didn’t get dressed and lounge around, he got dressed and loaded his favorite things into his car.

But he was making the cup of coffee for Steve to wake up to when he got up at 7, it just probably wouldn’t be as hot as it usually was.

There’s a new step, but just for this day. He rips off a piece of paper from the notepad that they left by the phone.

He rips off the corner, enough to fold in half so it sits upright on the nightstand.

He draws a sloppy heart, one Steve always said just looked like a fat ‘X’, and signs a little ‘B’ in his “fancy prince handwriting” as Steve always called it.

He set the paper next to the cup of coffee, pulled up the sheets on his side of the bed, pushed Steve’s messy bed head back and left a soft peck on his forehead, then one on the tip of his nose. Steve’s pink, chapped lips moved into a soft, dopey smile as Billy pulled the blankets over his chest more, it was starting to get cold with October approaching.

The camaro roared under him as he started it up and pulled out of the driveway, working his way West, all the way to California: somewhere where his abusive dad wasn’t around and neither was the pressure to hide himself.

He hid everything, his sexualities, a majority of his home problems, his mental issues, how he’d see things, things that weren’t there and never had been. He’d continue wearing himself thin trying to keep up this facade, it was like he’d pushed himself down so far he forgot what he was supposed to like, what he used to hate.

For the best. This was better because he didn’t feel like Billy, he felt like different versions of some other person who was acting the role of Billy. Felt like his personalities didn’t match from person to person, lost the cathartic feeling of exposing all his thoughts to Steve, it made him feel guilty.

And Steve didn’t deserve that. Never did.

Billy was never good for him. He split everything up. Split up his own parents' marriage, he was the cause of most of their fights, and he ruined any and every relationship he’d ever been in, even the ones with Max or other people his age that he could have been a real friend to.

He still thinks about Steve, often. Thinks about him with a fond smile but hates how he was around him. Hated that feeling of hiding who he really was any time he was with this person who was supposed to be the best thing for him.

Hated the way Steve made him feel the need to pull at the reins to stop but made him want to go faster, faster, faster.

Hated Steve. Hated the way he loved him, but he just couldn’t force himself to be that happy.

Well, I hope I was your favorite crime...'Cause baby, you were mine.

#lots of symbolism and stuff and lots of confusing spelling mistakes but im kinda proud of it #also it switches perspectives between the lyrics #stranger things #harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #mediocre—writing #mw harringrove #billy x steve

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arr-jim-lad · 4 years

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Can you go into how you think Dios insane and how his mind works. I have trouble putting my thoughts into words but reading other people's opinions helps and not a lot of people talk about dios insanity even tho i find it very interesting

Sure thing!!! You know I love to talk about DIO lmao(NOTE: This will include spoilers for Stone Ocean later on)

In part 1, human Dio’s goal appears to be proving a point to his dead father as well as himself. He always wants more, to achieve more, to prove he’s capable of more. He does that by pursuing superiority in many fields; he proves academic excellence by finishing law school at the top of his class, he proves he’s a talented sportsman by being one of his school’s star rugby players, and he actively, since the moment he joined the Joestar family, wants to prove that he’s superior to Jonathan and therefore a better heir and a better son.

It’s also important to mention the flaws he sees in himself here; his anger. I went into this before here but to summarize it; Dio has an anger problem and he not only knows it - it’s his most despised thing about himself.

That’s all simple stuff at the start, as it’s just trying to prove he’s better than others, and that’s easy to understand.

Then he becomes a vampire and a power trip REALLY hits him. Now he doesn’t have to pretend that he’s a gentleman anymore because literally no one can do shit to him. That law he studied? Fuck that, he can break it now all he wants, because it doesn’t apply to him anymore. The law is written for mere humans, and he’s not one of them anymore. He can do whatever he wants and he will do that - as flamboyantly and dramatically as possible. The Joestar fortune he was after in his earlier days? Fuck that too, he’s an immortal vampire with superpowers now, he can just take whatever money he wants.

Now Dio is free to be himself in every sense, and he stops pursuing power in a sneaky, deceitful way, but just. Straight up terrorizing anyone who steps in his path. Now EVERYONE gets to know about his wish for power, not just Jonathan.

And what’s even better - NO ONE is a problem anymore. NO ONE can hurt him. You know what this means for Dio? That he doesn’t have to get angry and frustrated anymore, because no one is able to push him that far.

….Except for Jonathan Joestar, who just won’t leave him alone

Jonathan keeps coming back and it low key pisses Dio off, but on the other hand, he also has major respect for him because of that. In his life of power and bliss, Jonathan manages to be the ONLY thing to disturb him

So Phantom Blood ending happens, Dio is bodyless, and in a mixture of necessity and respect, he takes Jonathan’s body. I notice people often seem to think that he took his body because he wanted it from the get go or something, but that’s not accurate. Initially it was for revenge, because Jonathan was the one who caused him to have to behead himself, and in SDC DIO even clearly says he NEEDED to take that body in order to survive - it was originally revenge and survivalism, but seeing Jonathan’s final actions also added immense respect to that. That body means a lot of different things to DIO.

Anyway now we get to the good part.So Dio is underwater all alone with a corpse for about 100 years. I went into more into this once before but to TL;DR that post; that kind of situation Does Bad Shit To You.

By the time DIO arose from that coffin, the insanity REALLY took hold of him. Because, in that coffin, he got to THINK. He got to do a LOT of thinking. All alone. He got to think about what matters to him.

And once he did all that thinking, he found his goal.It was not riches or power, but lack of anger: Inner peace.

Throughout SDC and Stone Ocean, that’s his ultimate goal.Now, how he goes about to obtain that is… hm.

In Stone Ocean, we are introduced to DIO’s diary, in which he essentially wrote down a highly complex, highly convoluted ritual of obtaining peace of mind, or as he likes to call it like the dramatic bitch that he is: Heaven.

I’ve seen people say that he apparently doesn’t show any philosophical interest in that kinda thing in SDC to which I say, do you even pay attention?

Think about DIO throughout SDC - what do we actually see him do before the final battle? He’s reading, he’s studying, he’s relaxing, he DOESN’T WANT TO BE BOTHERED.

He isn’t even the one sending out his assassins at first - the Tarot enemies are all Enya’s employees, she dragged those homicidal maniacs together. It’s only after all of them are defeated that DIO sends out HIS followers, the Glory Gods.

DIO wants his minions to take care of this because it’s low key stressing him out and he Doesn’t Need This Shit Right Now. He’s SO CLOSE to doing his ritual, Pucci is waiting for himin America, they have PLANS, and now these Joestar bastards are in Egypt?? What the fuck??? Can they like, not??? Is there any respect left for the ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs you hang on the door handles??

Basically, SDC catches DIO at a really bad time because he’s just in the middle of something big and it all just comes in to crash his plans, but there’s a lot about him that can be discerned from the final battle, and that is one of my favourite aspects of him, which is also very closely tied to his idea of Heaven; KNOWLEDGE.

DIO was really REALLY confident at the start of the battle, because he was convinced he had more knowledge about the Joestar group than they did about him, and knowledge was supposed to be his greatest weapon.

You can tell how paranoid and stressed out he becomes once Jotaro breaks that idea of him Knowing More and starts moving in stopped time. One of my favourite scenes in the final battle has got to be the ‘Is Jotaro Really Dead?’ scene, in which DIO acts like a paranoid wild animal, he acts like a cat who has his sights on something, but is not 100% sure if it’s safe to come close.

This paranoia is a HUGE factor of why he wants Heaven, aka Peace of Mind, and he is fully aware that he has this issue.

Another one of my favourite moments happens to revolve around his paranoia, that being the moment in Stone Ocean which shows us that it’s preventing him from fully trusting even those who are the most devoted to him, such as Pucci;

What we’re looking at here is DIO speaking to someone who is essentially the closest thing he EVER had to a friend, someone he admits he feels truly relaxed with, and yet even with this man he’s unable to shake off the paranoia he feels.

DIO really doesn’t know true inner peace, even in a situation that he himself described as being one that’s making him feel at ease.

Now we finally get into some bigger Stone Ocean spoilers regarding the stand of the main enemy of that part, Pucci - the same stand that DIO tried to obtain.

Here’s basically what the ritual-obtained stand, Made in Heaven, does;

It speeds up the time of entire universe to bring it back to a point where it started the spin, with everyone still alive just as they were (except the people who the stand user kills), but this time everyone has a vague idea/knowledge of what will happen next, because everyone essentially witnessed the future.

Now, assuming that DIO’s Made in Heaven would do the same thing as Pucci’s did, here’s what this tells us about DIO:

He is SO PARANOID that the thing that gives him the most anxiety and unrest, the thing he wants to get rid of, is the same that all of us take for granted:Not knowing what will happen next.

DIO wants to obtain peace of mind by getting rid of that ‘problem’ of an unknown future and making EVERYONE know what’s inevitably coming next, but he’d be the only one who would be able to change it. That’s his ideal world.

DIO’s insanity was born from his wish to achieve peace of mind.He wants to get rid of his anger and paranoia, but his idea of the solution to those feelings is absolutely demented and unfathomably convoluted.

Basically… it’s something that only be thought up by a megalomaniac vampire who was left deep underwater for 100 years in a claustrophobic coffin with only the corpse of the only man he ever respected to keep him company.

#jjba meta #dio brando #jojo meta #jojo's bizarre adventure #stardust crusaders #stone ocean #jjba #jojo #Anonymous

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okaybutlikeimagine · 4 years

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Hello. Thoughts on Dads!Harringrove??? the boys like in their mid 40s with 3 kids. what type of parents do you think they’ll be??? will their grandpa jim spoil them??? i love harringrove parents w all my heart. they both deserve a big happy family of their own 🥰

Hello, my thoughts are it’s the cutest damn thing ever and i could cry just thinking about it aUGH HARRINGROVE DADS.

Okay, so i’ve read quite a few things talking about the Harringrove Dads and adopting little babies, adopting sweet little girls, etc. and i absolutely live and die for that shit. Like i’m so serious, i think it’s so sweet, it warms my heart, i eat it up, i LOVE it

But also (and i’m sure i’m not the first to say it) I feel like they’re NOT the type to go adopting babies. They’re not getting a surrogate to raise a kid from infancy. They may want to, they may have that inkling, they may see Jonathan and Nancy having a baby and get that infamous Baby Fever, but I just… I really can’t bring myself to write that.

Bc (in my canon) Billy was adopted as a 17 year old delinquent. El was adopted as a 12 year old lab rat. Steve was basically abandoned at home when he got too old to be the “cute little boy” their parents could tote around to promote their Nuclear Family image. They’re two boys who were made very keenly aware that there are shitty people out there who believe kids get less desirable the older they get. Shitty people who think babies are worth more than older kids who probably just come with “problems”.

(i’ve also been rewatching Boy Meets World and GUYS. i see a lot of Billy in Shawn Hunter. Boy who’s taken in bc he’s been neglected and he’s a sensitive kid underneath but he’s got this hard, bad boy shell bc it’s easier than crying every day)(AUGH and just like Will in Fresh Prince goddamnit i fucking LIVE for those kids who think and act all tough and use their pretty looks like a weapon but all they really need is a caring and stern hand who’s gonna keep them on the straight and narrow and help them out along the way i am SOFT.)

So if these boys have 3 kids, it’s 3 kids who were seen as the “worst” of the bunch. 3 kids they fought to connect with bc these kids didn’t see anything in themselves anymore but goddamnit, Steve and Billy saw 3 kids beat and broken by the system that told them the older they got, the smaller their chances were of ever getting out of this place. They came with problems and fears and shells harder than Billy’s steel toed boots but like hell were Billy and Steve going to let these kids go the rest of their lives thinking they were damaged goods.

(god now i wanna write OCs of their children. look what you did to me!)

Okay so their parenting style changes as they grow and adopt more kids, as what happens with most parents. They learn what’s good and what’s not so good and they get better at fixing problems (but of course it’s never quite that easy bc they’re adopting kids of different ages).

And of course i’m saying they adopt the kids everyone has turned away, but for their first kid they adopt a little boy, about 5 years old, bc they gotta start small. He’s very cute and has a bit of a lisp and he mixes up some of his letters and he’s… energetic. He runs and he screams and he tires himself out real quick to the point where he just flops down and takes naps where he is, meaning there has been more than one occasion where Billy or Steve has found the child sleeping face first in the middle of a room (the entry room seems to be his favorite. Billy doesn’t blame him, the carpet is softer there than anywhere else.) One time he even flopped down on the middle of the sidewalk and again in the middle of a department store. Both times Billy scooped him up like a rag doll and carried him around the rest of their trip out.

And i know it’s not the BEST movie but i can’t help but think their parenting at the beginning would be a bit like the movie Big Daddy. Like, a lot of well-intentioned but misguided advice, a lot of “real world” lessons (like how to piss on the side of the road), a lot of hurried and frazzled solutions to things because “kids are messy why are kids so fucking messy why can’t he ever stay clean?”

“He’s just a kid, Steve, c’mon-”

“He’s always sticky! How! How is he always sticky? What’s making him so sticky!”

And I just!! Augh!! Imagine Steve at work all day and Billy has off/maybe he’s inbetween jobs right now so he can be home with the kid/whatever and so he has errands to run and takes their little kid with him and the kid’s like:

“What’s your real name?”

“You know that. It’s Billy.”

“…. why?”

And Billy shrugs with an “I dunno, cuz I couldn’t talk and my parents could and they had to call me somethin.”

“You could’n talk?”

“Hey, you couldn’t either.”

The boy thinks for a second before: “Could too.”

“Could not. Not when you were a baby.” He pokes the boy in the shoulder, still very tentative with how much the little tike can take. “Don’t start attacking me! You didn’t name yourself.”

They walk for a second but Billy chimes in before the kid can.

“Hey, that’s not fair though, is it?”

The boy looks up and shakes his head, but he can see the confusion in his eyes.

“You should be able to name yourself, right? What do you want your name to be? Anything in the world, what do you want me to call you?”

Which is how Steve comes home to their child and Billy eating some baby carrots smothered in BBQ sauce and his husband telling him: “By the way, the kid’s new name is Hot Dog.”

“…. what?”

“He picked it out himself.”

And just imagine Billy and the kid are going grocery shopping and Billy catches the boy reaching for a can of spaghetti-o’s.

Billy reaches for the can and takes it off the shelf. “You like these?”

The kid nods.

“Alright then. Watch out-” he hold the kid back gently before chucking the can at the ground. He turns to his boy. “Dented cans are half off. Y’know, Microsoft dropped 3 points.”

His kid nods in awe.

“Wanna pick that up for me?” Billy asks and the kid follows, before rearing the can back to throw it on the ground.

“Woah woah woah! Watch it there!” Billy grabs the boy’s arm, before aiming it a different way. “Aim away from your feet… there ya go. I know they’re kinda tiny targets but still, don’t wanna give yourself a flat tire there.”

The kid chucks it and Billy laughs. “Nice job, little dude.”

And i just have so many THOUGHTS about this!!! Their second kid being a little 9 year old girl who’s real fucking good at boxing and fighting and also a little too good at sneaking out the window. They’ve caught her a few times in the backyard or the front yard, just sitting around shivering. It always gives Billy and Steve a heart attack.

“What are you doing out here?” Steve asks, kneeling down to look at the girl, Billy taking note of her hands balled up into little fists.

“I heard a… noise. A loud noise.”

“Oh, yeah, your brother just dropped a glass.”

“Oh. Did you… did you… hurt him?” Her fists clench tighter, her shoulders get tighter, closer to her ears. Billy sees himself in it. He wants to ease her shoulders down out of her ears.

“No! No of course we didn’t.” Steve soothes, rubbing the girls arms soothingly. She looks skeptical.

But it becomes a pattern, and they realize it’s whenever she thinks something is going on or someone is in danger. To the point where if any loud noise happens, one of them rushes outside to look for Jordan climbing out a window.

Steve’s out there this time, grabbing hold of her middle and helping her out of the window because they’ve let their plants grow a little wiley and she was having a hard time getting past them. He sets her down gently.

“It’s fine, hun. You’re fine. Your dad just dropped a pan.”

“Oh…”

“Y’know, you can’t keep doing this.”

“What?”

“Ditching out the window like this.” He kneels down to look at her. “It’s not safe. And one of these days it’s gonna be snowing and you’re gonna jump out in your PJs and be all cold.”

“I’ve done it before.”

And if that doesn’t break Steve’s heart. He thinks about Billy when he was a kid. About the stories Billy has told him when he’s tired and a little drunk and feeling a little emotional. Steve loses himself in the sadness of the thought for a second.

He brushes a little bit of dirt off her shoulder.

“Yeah… well you don’t have to ever again, alright? I mean it. Nothing is happening to you here. We’re not gonna hurt you… Now give me a hug.”

She accepts it, which is big for her, and Steve squeezes her as tight as he squeezed Billy that one night he found him with a cut on his cheek and bruises all up and down his arms.

And then they adopt another boy. A 17 year old boy. A boy who’s been in and out of so many homes he doesn’t have a number for it. A boy who’s angry and jaded and… loves poetry and is so gentle with children and animals.

And him and Billy butt heads… a lot. They’re so similar… at least he’s similar to what Billy used to be. And it pisses them both off bc suddenly Billy knows what Hop felt- frustration. Utter frustration at this boy not understanding his fucking potential.

And i’ve written a whole dialogue for this but it’s long and very dramatic and I might just end up writing a fic about all of these little sweethearts (bc i have so many ideas!!!) but basically the boy telling Billy and Steve that he’s fucked up. He’s fucked up and no one will ever be able to change that and Billy is adamant that he’s not until he admits-

“No. You’re right, you are fucked up.”

Steve is shocked. “Billy!”

“No, shut up Steve.” Billy points at the kid. “You are fucked up. You’re a fucked up kid, and you know what? I’m fucked up too. And so is Steve. And so is your aunt El, and your Aunt Max, and your Uncle Will and Uncle Jonathan. And y’know what else? Your grandpa Jim is fucked up too. Hell, even your Grandma Joyce is fucked up. Wish I could tell you she’s not but ding ding ding! She is!”

And they get in a fight. There’s no fists, no touching, but it’s a major fight of Billy telling this boy what Hop told him once: You’re our kid now and we love you. And you can leave and never think about us again but we’re never gonna forget you.

And: “Don’t you dare fucking compare us to those assholes because I’m not giving up on you. We’re not giving up on you. You’re family now and no matter what you do, I’m gonna be there to worry about you and be happy for you because you deserve it!”

And Billy gets frustrated with all of his yelling so he grabs his stress ball and walks away, breathing heavy, and Steve is there to look the boy in the eye and tell him Billy’s right. And that he understands that the boy has a past before they ever met him “but Billy had a life before he met me… and same with me and him, and we can still love each other. So maybe we’re just on an even playing field. We get to learn about you while you learn about us and… and even so, we can still love each other, right?”

AUGH I’M SOFT. ANYWAY.

Hop and Joyce spoil them fucking rotten. It’s really hard to spoil a 17 year old boy as stubborn as an ox (“You were bad enough, now you bring me another one?” “You saying you didn’t like taking care of me, Pops?” “I’m saying I have enough gray hair as it is.” “Oh shush, Hop!” Joyce hits him) but they do their best. They give him love and support. Joyce bakes a shitton of cookies and cakes and Hop buys the kids toys (and the older boy CDs and records and band tees)(“I’m trying! The older I get, the less I know what kids what.”)

And they love all their aunts and uncles too! The little girl has a hard time reading and she reads way below her level, so Aunt El helps her out!

“I understand. I learned to read really late.”

“Really?” The girl’s heart lifts a bit. “How late?”

“I was twelve.”

“Really??”

El nods and gives a kind smile. “Yeah, but I learned, didn’t I? I had a lot of help, and I can help you, too! Just like your dad helped me.”

The girl smiles brightly.

Will’s favorite is the youngest boy (but he would never tell the other two that. Of course not.) because he’s silly and he took to Will almost instantly and he likes to roll around in the grass and catch bugs and those were never really things Will liked as a kid and he… he likes that. He didn’t think he’d ever like that but there’s something about this kid that brings out adventure in him. He reminds Will of Mike when they first met. A bundle of energy and excitement that always dragged Will around on adventures.

The older one hangs out a lot with Max and Jonathan. Jonathan likes hanging out with the kid cuz he reminds him of Billy when Billy was young. (“I don’t remember you being this… exhausting though.” Jonathan tells Billy.) (“You’re just getting old, bud.” Billy says with a laugh and a clap on the back) They smoke weed whenever they can and Jonathan gives the boy some good old 70’s and 80’s music to listen to and tells the boy “Meatloaf is not the best of our decade, don’t listen to your father. Either of them, honestly. Their music taste is shit.”

Max hangs out with the older one too. She gives him advice about girls and how to talk to them and she picks up a skateboard for the first time in years because of him. They go to the skate park sometimes and everyone there is amazed that a twenty something year old girl is here to skate with them until she skates circles around them. (She becomes the hit of the skate park)

She also wrestles around with the little 8 year old girl sometimes! She has a lot of heart to hearts with the kid, giving her advice as well and telling her silly stories of both Billy and Steve so that the girl learns to trust them more.

And overall they’re a big, loving family!! And they’re slightly dysfunctional too and i just! Can’t see it happening any other way!! Bc they’re a little dysfunctional but they’re dysfunctional with LOVE and isn’t that what matters???? It’s a lot of work and a lot of sweat and a lot of tears but it’s their family and in the end their kids love them to death bc they realize their fathers love them to death and!!! Everyone’s heart is full and happy and i’m crying!

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comicbookuniversity · 3 years

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My Problems With X of Swords So Far....

SPOILERS!!!!!

As of this post, we are 16 of 22 chapters into this crossover event, the first of the Krakoa Era. I want to start off by saying that I have largely been enjoying this era of X-Men overall; I came for Jonathan Hickman taking over the franchise, but spent some of my quaruntine time catching up on the other titles and mostly enjoyed them. I am by no means an X-Men expert or superfan, but I know my lore pretty well and am a fan. That being said, let’s dive into this mess.

I want to give credit where credit is due, the first half of this event has been well crafted. The writers, as apparently led by Hickman and Tini Howard, have worked to create a consistent tone across all of the books and it shows. This is clearly an event crafted with care and skill. And aside from the error on Bogdanovic’s part, the art teams have been on point delivering great looking books. Considering this, the pedigree of the teams, and again, Jonathan Hickam, the guy who Marvel trusted to end Stan and Jack’s creation in Secret Wars, leading this event- this is should by all measures be much better than it is. Even if it didn’t live up to the aforementioned event, it should still be better than what we’ve got because of the ideas we’ve got on the page. I think these are all interrelated problems with the event, but I’m going to list them individually as I see them.

The Problems

1. Pacing- This largely effects the first half of the event, considering how the backhalf has changed, but we spent nearly 10 issues of the X-Men simply gathering their prophosized swords as ruled by the host of the tournament between the two sides, Saturynye. During this time, we did not get a lot of ideas of strategy or spycraft to learn more about a largely unknown enemy. We got a lot of decompressed character introspection, and even a set up to Al Ewing’s upcoming SWORD book (looking majorly forward to that book). This meant that we didn’t learn a lot about these characters that we did not already know to try to drive up the emotional tension that I don’t believe worked as the internal stakes did not match the scale of the external threats- the end of a utopia. This might have worked more if there were less of it and thus getting right to the heart of the matter. But the event spent so much space on spinning it’s wheels for.....what reason? Why was it necessary to give so much time this aspect compared to other possibilities? This brings me to my next problem.

2. The Promise of the New- One of the great things about this event is how it rewrites what we know about Apocalypse to make him more interesting while giving us a huge new set of characters and lore to get to know and love with the revelation of a whole secret history of mutants on Earth and then the history of the exiled mutants to what basically amounts to a Hell after fending it off from taking over Earth. It’s genuinely a great addition to Apocalypse and the franchise as a whole. I am supremely excited about the future of the Arrako people, but we spent 10 issues of the X-Men gathering swords while learning very little about this new land and new people. We learned about Solem a little bit and how he relates to the rest of Arrako, but that’s basically it. We are 16 issues in and we don’t know a whole lot about this lands or even more specifically the histories of Swordbreakers of Arrako. We know a little, but in all that time where the characters of X-Men and Arrako could have been interacting and building relationships to actually have drama beyond one side is coming to dominate the Earth for ancient reasons, we got next to nothing. And even as the tournament has started, the information and drama between the new side is minimal; enough to make the move the narrative forward but that’s it. I’m not saying I need a whole history course, but I definitely feel like we should know more than we do know about Arrako. I think we’ve in fact learned more about Otherworld than Arrako, which brings me to my next problem.

3. Otherworld....Why?- Seriously, why? It’s pretty clear both before and after Secret Wars that it isn’t necessary to travel through Otherworld to travel the multiverse. So...why? Because they want to build up Otherworld as a new playground for future stories and to connect othe ongoing drama of what had been happening in Excalibur, which...ok. Look I get that it helps to develop long unused properties to breath new life into them, but what does Otherworld have to do with Arrako other than apparently you have to travel through it to get to it? That seems forced to me and it does nothing to heighten the drama of the battle between Krakoa and Arrako. It forces a war to become a tournament, but other than that....again, it really doesn’t add anything. Otherworld’s role in this story is completely unnecessary. It’s easy to imagine this story without Otherworld. If Otherworld played a less forced role and a role that made more sense to the conflict, I wouldn’t have a problem with it’s inclusion or learning as much as we have about it. But, we’ve been given more information about various parts of Otherworld that have not been important and we could have spent that time learning more about or developing the relationships of Arrako/Krakoa.

4. A Tournament of the Absurd- I know I complained about it taking ten issues just to get our two sides into the same room for conflict, but then it took another three before we got to our first conflict. We were over half way through the crossover and no one had drawn their sword against their would-be enemy in favor of an overly theatrical and long dinner where we finally got some relationship building but were still not at the main draw of this attraction- the duels or whatever type of conflict it would really turn out to be. Literrally anything that involved the swords being used for combat got pushed back until like 60% through this story, which is squandering the promise of the premise. But finally, this week get got the to the action, and it was nothing like anticipated. Our first match lasts less 3 pages, which could be exciting if we understood what was going on with how the nature of the loss, but then it ‘s undercut by a plot point that makes very little sense and does not give the characters involved any real agency. An unexpected romance or marriage is always a nice surprise in a story like this, but this crossover doesn’t earn it. The characters are literally whisked away against their wills and told to marry each other without knowing a thing about each other, nor can they communicate with each other. If the marriage was a solution because of the two sides coming to an arrangement by the two sides talking it over or if it had been the two newlyweds plan based on their own insights and choices, then this idea would have been wonderful. But again, literally taken against their wills without warning and forced to marriage for the sake of two societies without it even being clear that this really advanced the cause of or guarnteed the safety of either side. Then we move forward to a fight that has promise only to be immediately stopped from fighting to participate in a childish contest between two obviously mismatched opponents that makes the contest one sided. Like, What The Actual Fuck? Why avoid the fight in favor of that contest? One clearly has more entertainment value than the other. Fuck it, fine, let’s see if Wolverine is given a fun fight. His first match (yeah, we’re getting too much Logan here) has potential, but the creative team decides to make the fight more psychedlic to the detriment of clarity of choreography and thus removes tension. It’s a style choice that pulls away from the fight and then the victory is undermined by a bullshit twist of the rules that compounds the lack of clarity into greater frustration. Then Wolverine is transported to a drinking contest against a teammate? Like, why? What does this do for the story? There’s a brief line used to justify it and the next thing it sets up, but it’s weak. It’s fucking frustrating, because developing the relationship of these two characters could have easily been handled differently rather than wasting one of the spots in the tournament for a point that is given instead of earned. I will give the third match a pass as that was actually what the story promised; intrigue and violence between the players.

At this point, unless something major changes, I’m calling it here: X of Swords is bad. It wastes is promised premise, it wastes it’s time, and it wastes it’s potential. The problem is that this is clearly crafted by people who generally know what the hell they’re doing, but for some ungodly reason their talents are not being put to their fullest. We’ve seen all of them write better stories; heck, the ongoing stories before the crossover started were better. Even if something major happens to really hook me back into this story that will only change my opinion from bad to mediocre because we’re already 75-ish% done with story, and that means all these problems will always be true. I really hope the characters of Arrako stick around after this story, because I think they have immense potential, but this is just a bad start. I know there are people out there that are happy with this story, and I’m happy for them. But, I hope I am not alone in seeing these problems. Let me know if I am not alone.

#x-men #marvel comics #x of swords #spoilers #wolverine #storm #apocalypse

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gxdsetmxnsters · 4 years

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You’re the One Thing I Can’t Let Go

Originally posted on both Wattpad and Ao3 ; Vent fic ; Scriddler ; mentions of domestic violence : unhealthy relationships : alcohol : sex : unhealthy coping mechanisms

"I dunno what happened," Edward blubbered before angrily wiping his runny nose.

He was slumped against the chair he was sitting at with Selina sitting across from him with a concerned look on her face. It wasn't every day that Edward Nygma, aka the Riddler, dropped in for a visit, and it was much less common for him to come to her apartment in the beginning stages of a breakdown. Scratch that, it was something that'd never happened before, and she considered Edward a close enough friend to be concerned for his general wellbeing and current state.

"Try to explain," Selina said soothingly, unsure if reaching across the small kitchen table and putting a reassuring hand on Edward would help calm him down or cause more problems than it was worth.

"Dunno, dunno," Edward whined softly. He drew up his knees and balanced on the chair, hugging them to his chest. Selina almost asked if he wanted to move to the living room as the couch was more comfortable than a chair, but refrained. If Edward wanted to move he'd either do so himself or ask if he could.

"Was it Jon?" Selina asked carefully, knowing she had guessed correctly with the way Edward stiffened and sniffled loudly.

"Iddint always," Edward said, his current state making his words sound nasally and pinched. "It's always that prick."

"What happened?" Selina pressed, leaning forward and eyeing Edward, concern growing for the man in front of her.

She was well aware of the relationship between Edward and Jonathan, as was the majority of the other rogues, but only she, as far as she knew, was fully aware of how dysfunctional the relationship truly was. Sure the relationship itself was dysfunctional at best but it went deeper than just the simple assumption that it was dysfunctional.

The fact of the matter was the relationship bordered on being nearly as bad as Joker and Harley's relationship, but granted for different reasons. Selina had learned of this when Edward had shown up on her doorstep nearly a year ago with a busted lip and the clear signs that he'd been gassed with Jonathan's Fear Toxin.

Having managed to pry information out of Edward then, Selina had been mildly horrified by the behaviors and actions Edward and Jonathan took out on each other. She'd learned that such fights happened at least two to three times a week from arguments that often started out being petty.

Edward had confessed that he was at much of fault as Jonathan was for their "domestics", having given the other man more than one concussion by hitting him with his cane, and even the one time occurrence of breaking the man's arm, of which Jonathan had returned in kind.

"Jon didn't gas you again, did he?" Selina inspected the still crying Edward in front of her, relieved to see that there were, at least, no outwardly signs of Edward being, or having been, affected by the Toxin.

"Nuh uh," Edward shook his head and sneezed, easing his legs down so he was sitting normally.

Selina sighed before getting up and grabbing Edward the box of tissues that was sitting on the kitchen counter.

"I'm glad to hear that at least." Selina skid the box of tissues over to Edward who grabbed a few and wiped his nose. "I still don't understand why you're with him though."

"Not... Not all his fault." Edward hiccuped and looked at Selina with his red watery eyes. "I'm just as... just as at fault..."

He blew his nose again and Selina waited patiently for him to continue, sensing that he wished to.

"Sometimes... sometimes I wonder why I'm with him myself," Edward confessed. "I... I know it's not the best but I... can't stay away. I know it's probably bad, but I care about the bastard. Probably too much..."

His eyes lost focus as he zoned out, an odd detached look on his face a stark contrast to the emotional one he'd had moments before.

"Edward," Selina reached over and gently placed a hand on his to bring him back into the moment.

Edward jumped and yanked his hand away from Selina's, yes wide and wild looking before he calmed himself down. "Sorry 'lina."

Selina smiled slightly and waved a hand, "It's ok Ed, your reaction was to be expected."

Edward nodded before looking down at his hands which were now resting in his lap.

"Edward?" Selina prompted. "What happened tonight if Jon didn't gas you?"

"I..." Edward glanced up briefly before looking back down at his hands. "I don't know... I think it was another fight but... I don't know. All I remember is... All I remember is that Jon somehow managed to... confirm and deny something in the same breath and I..." Edward hiccuped again as fresh tears slid down his face.

"You're doing great Ed," Selina soothed again, "tell me what he confirmed and denied at the same time."

"I..." Edward sniffed and Selina fought the urge to make a face at how disgusting it sounded.

"Y-You know that for the past... two years Jon and I have... b-been a thing b-but it was never... anything official..."

Selina nodded slowly, "I'm aware of the fact, yes."

Truthfully she understood that part. Labeling someone as your partner, of the same sex or not, had its own set of problems in their line of 'work' so it was often not something that actively happened, or was made known, the majority of the time.

"W-Well," Edward's voice wavered as he started to subconsciously tear the tissue in his hands to shreds. "Somehow Jon and I... we got into a fight again and I thought... I thought it was gonna get bad 'lina, like real bad."

His forlorn eyes met hers again and Selina felt a tug on her heart strings. She hated seeing Edward like this. Whatever had happened to the normally upbeat and arrogant rogue must've been extremely bad if he was reduced to this, but Selina also knew the skills and talent Jonathan had at picking someone apart psychologically. It was one of the things that made him one of the more dangerous of Gotham's criminals.

"But... I don't know what happened," Edward continued quietly, shoulders hunched forward. "I don't know if Jon picked up on... what I was think of asking him or if it was something else but... he effectively acknowledged that I was his boyfriend before he..." Edward's voice cracked as a new wave of sobs wracked his body. "Before he broke up with me. Who does that? Who acknowledges after two years of being together that they're actually a couple before breaking up with them?"

His tone was laced with anger now, and Selina knit her eyebrows together, trying to formulate a response.

"I don't know," she confessed, deciding to be honest with him.

"Jon does, that's who." Edward bit out his words before he stood up and started pacing. He wiped at his eyes and took a deep breath to steady his nerves. "Fuck I need a drink. Do you have anything?"

"No," Selina said, "and I don't think you should be drinking either. It won't help anything."

"Fuck if I care!" Edward turned on his heel and glared at Selina. "I don't care if it'll help anything in the distant future, what I do care about is getting rid of this damn pain I'm feeling because I was emotionally hurt!"

"I know you were," Selina said, backing up slightly as Edward advanced on her. She slowly reached for the knife that was sitting on the cutting board. She'd been in the middle of fixing dinner for herself when Edward had interrupted her.

"Don't you dare," Edward growled, noticing the movement.

Selina sighed and raised her hands up in surrender. "Ok Edward, but you have to listen to me. Drinking away your problems will only make things worse. I know things hurt right now but you're stronger than this. You're better than this."

"Am I?" Edward's voice softened but it held a touch of bitterness. "Am I better than this? Stronger than this?"

"You are," Selina said, "don't end up like your father."

Wrong thing to say, and Selina realized her mistake too late.

"DON'T YOU EVER SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT AGAIN," Edward yelled. "I AM NOTHING LIKE THAT SON OF A BITCH."

"I'm sorry," Selina said, wincing at the raised volume in her small kitchen.

"I'm fucking leaving," Edward bit out, stalking towards the door that led to the hallway. "And I'm going to drink."

"Oswald won't take kindly to you getting drunk at his bar," Selina warned.

"Does it look like I'm going to go to that place?" Edward snapped. "I don't need the whole fucking city to know about what happened. No, I know of somewhere else that I can get drinks."

Edward let out a huff of annoyance as he left Selina's apartment, slamming the door behind him. He could careless if she was going to be mad at him for that later or not. The only thing that was on his mind right in that very moment was the idea of getting very, very drunk. A small part of him knew that Selina was right, getting drunk wasn't a solution to his problems but it would sure as hell numb the feelings he was going through and that was enough to convince Edward to do it.

Stumbling through the back alleys of Gotham, he found his way to the seedy bar he'd discovered years ago when he'd just been starting out on the criminal scene. The place was horrendously dirty but had good cheap liquor for those looking to get drunk quickly, as well as... other things. Yes, Edward mused to himself, perhaps tonight he would drown himself in liquor and sex, there was no other options that sounded appealing to him in that moment.

Edward failed to notice that Selina had followed him and that she was frowning deeply at his chosen place to self destruct. She may not have been able to stop him from going, not at least without getting hurt in the process, but that didn't mean she still wasn't going to stop looking out for him. She opted to leave him for the time being, expecting to find a very angry Scarecrow at her door demanding answers. Perhaps she'd give him one, after she finished carving up his face with her claws.

Feeling considerably more cheerful at the idea, Selina made quick work of heading back to her apartment and not a moment too soon. Not even five minutes after getting back there was a pounding on her door and Selina rolled her eyes in annoyance.

"For fucks sake Jon, I'll be there in a minute!" She hollered, taking her sweet time getting up from where she'd settled herself on the couch and walking over to her front door.

Jonathan paused mid knock as Selina yanked open the door and scowled at him.

"Where's Edward?" Jon had the gall to have a guilty look on his face, which only made Selina madder than she already was.

An indignant hiss came from her before she reached up and slapped him across the face.

"How dare you!" She raged as Jonathan took a step back, eyes wide with shock as he raised a hand to his stinging cheek.

"How dare you come here asking for someone that clearly wants nothing to do with you right now, and how dare you have the nerve to ask me where he is as if you didn't hurt his feelings!"

"So I did hurt him," Jon said in a low voice, a flash of guilt crossed his face.

"Of course you did!" Selina snarled. "And you're lucky that I have enough restraint in me to not claw your eyes out."

"I'd like to see you try, child." Jonathan's face darkened as a hand slipped into his pocket.

"Don't you go all Scarecrow on me," Selina narrowed her eyes. "Ed's not here. He was, but then he left."

"You didn't try and stop him?" Jon mimicked her by also narrowing his eyes.

"No." Selina huffed, "I tried but I didn't want to fight him. That would've been like kicking a man already down and while I normally love doing something like that, I don't do it to people I care about."

She put emphasis on the last few words and smirked inwardly as a look of guilt crossed Jonathan's features again. So the good doctor could actually feel emotions.

"Where is he if not here?" Jon glanced around distractedly. "I need to apologize. It hasn't occurred to me that something mattered that much to him."

"I don't know," Selina crossed her arms.

"You're lying." Jonathan's eye's snapped to hers. "Where. Is. He."

"Like hell I'm telling you if you're going to barge in on him with threats," Selina growled. "Especially since I know how you treat him."

"I-" Jonathan open and shit his mouth. "You know about that?"

"Yes I know about That," Selina retorted. "I know quite a lot more than you think I do, so don't go around acting like I don't."

"I see..." Jonathan thought for a moment. "You're still lying about knowing where he is. You do. Tell me. I promise I won't say or do anything to harm him when I do find him. I just want to make sure he's safe."

"Should've thought about that before you went and fucked shit up," Selina said darkly.

"Selina, I will only ask nicely one more time," Jonathan said. "Where. Is. Edward."

Selina eyed the man in front of her and quickly assessed whether or not if she should tell him where Edward was. There was genuine concern in Jon's eyes as well as worry. She also knew that Jon would not leave until he'd gotten an answer and while normally Selina could wait such behavior out, her greater concern was for Edward. If she was engaged in a stupid dominance battle with Jon, Edward had no one to make sure he was ok after he was done with whatever self destructive binge he was currently on.

"Fine." Selina relented. "But I'm only telling you because I'm worried about Edward, I don't care about anything else, much less how you feel."

"Fine by me," Jonathan said with a shrug. "So?"

Selina told him the address and Jonathan gave a quick nod and a short word of thanks before leaving. Selina shut the door and leaned against it, giving a short prayer that things would go smoothly.

Jonathan eyed the building he was approaching with disgust. It was shabby and barely looked like it was holding up. How on earth had Edward discovered a place like this? He stalked up to the door steeling himself to enter before the door fling itself open and Edward came stumbling out.

Jonathan was quick to grab him before he face planted and he screwed his nose up at the stench of alcohol and sex that clung to the man in his arms.

Edward made a sound of protest and wiggled out of Jonathan's grip, a slurred apology falling from his mouth as he realized who he'd ran into.

"Jonathan!" Edward glared at the other man and took a drunken swing of which Jonathan was able to easily side step.

"Edward darling," Jonathan tried to soothe as he continued to side step Edward's attempted swings.

"Don't 'darling' me," Edward scowled as he took a step forward but misjudged his foot placement and ended up tripping.

Acting on reflex, Jonathan caught Edward and wrapped his arms around the genius that was now struggling to break out of his grip.

"Edward, listen to me," Jonathan said quietly. "I wanted to apologize for what I had said. I was not aware that such things held actual meaning to you as we've been moderately happy with how things had been for the past two years. It was my mistake."

Edward paused in his struggles and peered up at Jonathan's face. Even in his drunken state, he was aware enough to where he knew Jonathan was being sincere.

"Reeaaalllllyyyy?" Edward slurred, still not completely convinced.

"Yes, really," Jonathan said. "Now then, why don't we make it back to our apartment so that I can put you to bed and make you something that'll help with the unavoidable hangover you'll have tomorrow?"

"Can't walk..." Edward muttered, all too happy to be slumped against Jonathan's body. Perhaps he was too quick to accept Jonathan's apology, but he was drunk after all, and apologies were few and far between where Jonathan was involved so even hearing one was enough for even Edward's currently inhibited mind to realize Jonathan was genuinely sorry for his actions.

"Don't worry my dear," Jonathan smirked as he picked Edward up bridal style. Edward yelped and wrapped his arms around Jonathan's neck, causing the taller man to chuckle softly.

"Don't worry, I won't drop you," Jonathan said. "In fact, I don't think I'll be letting go of you for a long while..."

He started to make his way to their shared apartment which he realized wasn't too far away from where they currently where. Interesting, he'd have to make note of it if Edward ever ended up running off to sulk again. Speaking of which... perhaps once he settled Edward into bed he'd pay a visit to whom ever had slept with his partner and touched what was his.

He busied himself with the thoughts of what he'd do to them as Edward let out a snore, completely passed out.

"As expected," Jonathan sighed quietly.

He passed under a half open window, the music drifting down to the street below.

I'm wondering why do all the monsters come out at night? Why do we sleep where we want to hide? Why do I run back to you, like I don't mind if you fuck up my life?

#enigmatic fear oc #enigmatic fear writing #scriddler #scarecrow #riddler #jonathan crane #edward nigma #edward nygma #scarecrow x riddler #cranigma #riddlecrow #vent fic #wattpad #archive of our own #monsters #monsters all time low

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tvdas · 3 years

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Political Scientist Claes Ryn in The American Conservative

The Declaration of Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia on the possibility and the certainty of fraud. Caught with Their Hands in the Cookie Jar, by Jeremy Carl The New York Times on Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election https://www.regent.edu/misc/analyzing-american-election-integrity/ https://letsfixstuff.org/2021/10/how-the-2020-election-was-stolen/ Other sources are mentioned in this article:

Election Fraud — Reform This Thing by Tal Bachman

The time has come to completely renovate America's presidential election voting process.

No, I'm not talking about the electoral college. That can stay. Nor does this have anything to do with Biden versus Trump per se (although the ongoing dispute and understandable doubt about who actually won helps support my contention).

All it has to do with is maintaining America's status as an actual representative democracy—a republic—whose citizens determine electoral outcomes by majority votes. Per Lincoln, that was the whole point, after all: government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

For that sort of government to exist in reality, and not just in rhetoric, you need elections whose results citizens can genuinely trust. They need to be legitimate, but also, need to be seen to be legitimate.

What that means is elections characterized by simplicity, intelligibility, uniformity, and voter anonymity, as well as overall transparency, formal and multi-layered scrutability, physical security at voting stations, and real-time and post hoc verifiability of vote counting.

Put all those things together into a system, and you have election integrity. Omit one or more of those things, and you have a system which begins sliding toward unacceptable levels of error and election-changing fraud. At the point where error or fraud produces false outcomes, or can no longer produce the requisite level of confidence in reported outcomes, the system becomes incompatible with representative democracy—meaning that any representative democracy which continues to use it, is ipso facto either degenerating into a non-democratic form of government, or has already completed that transition. That would be true regardless of surface appearances, or what citizens believed.

To put it more plainly, representative democracy requires legitimate elections. As Ol' Blue Eyes once claimed about love and marriage, you can't have one without the other.

You can guess where I'm going. America has done all sorts of things right, but—as Mark Steyn has pointed out many times over the years, most recently on Tucker Carlson Tonight shortly after the election—its presidential election process ain't one of them. It violates nearly all the requirements for electoral integrity and for inspiring confidence in itself. It's no wonder that, as you read this, the president of the United States, his entire legal team, and tens of millions of citizens, believe outcome-changing fraud occurred the night of November 3rd, 2020.

What I mean to say is that even if there wasn't any fraud at all, we'd all still have lots of reasons to suspect there was. That alone is completely unacceptable.

One reason for suspicion is at least one presidential election has been rigged before—election fraud in America is nothing new.

Other reasons include the hundreds upon hundreds of people convicted of voter fraud over the past two decades (virtually all of them Democrats), large-scale electoral dysfunction in other recent races, and even a recent detailed confession from a professional East Coast election-rigger.

But more relevant are the reports of misbehavior on election night: poll watchers barred, ballots re-dated, tens of thousands of votes of mysterious provenance suddenly appearing, improbable-to-the-point-of-impossible statistical anomalies and other oddities, etc., as well as questionable recount behavior.

But the most compelling reason of all is the amply documented vulnerability to manipulation of the computerized voting machines now used so commonly. To what extent these machines were in fact manipulated, in this recent election, I can't say; but again, even if they weren't manipulated at all, their mere existence necessarily casts doubt on the integrity of any reported electoral outcome. For that reason alone, they should be discarded.

Let me just list a few indications of how lousy these machines are.

The day before the election, USA Today investigative reporter Pat Beall published a zinger of a piece detailing a number of disturbing voting machine vulnerabilities. Entitled "Will Your Ballots Be Safe? Computer Experts Sound Warnings on America's Voting Machines", Beall's piece chronicles things like spontaneous vote-switching, the instant disappearance of tens of thousands of votes, and erratic vote registering. That was days before anyone heard Sidney Powell alleging the same things.

Beall's piece is not the only credible account of vulnerabilities in voting machines. The House Administration Committee issued a report in 2018 noting some of the same problems (and, interestingly, pointed to Georgia as one state most vulnerable to computer vote-rigging). A number of other such reports have emerged in recent years, including a 2018 New York Times piece reporting the discovery of voting machines manufactured by Election Systems and Software with remote-access software secretly pre-installed, and—as if that weren't alarming enough—that the machines had a history of reporting vote counts at odds with votes actually cast.

Not that this is new material. Evidence indicating the fraud-friendly nature of computerized voting machines has been out there a long time. As far back as 1974, the US General Accounting Office was warning of serious accuracy and security problems with America's new vote-counting computers. (As for possible vote-tampering culprits, the CIA at least had the decency to admit during the 1975 Church Committee hearings it regularly tampered with vote-counting machines in foreign elections). In 1985, New York Times reporter David Burnham, in an eyebrow-raising piece, reported that the National Security Agency had begun investigating reports of vote-manipulation in voting machines used by a full third of the American electorate.

By the late 1980s, the potential for manipulating computerized voting machines had become even more undeniable—and unnerving. In a magisterial 1988 New Yorker piece on the topic, journalist Ronnie Duggar wrote:

"Some officials concerned with elections think about the unthinkable in their field; namely, the stealing of a Presidential election by computer fraud in the vote-counting in metropolitan areas of key states. Steve White, the chief assistant attorney general of California, said to me last spring in Sacramento, 'It could be done relatively easily by somebody who didn't necessarily have to be all that sophisticated. Given the importance of the national election, sooner or later it will be attempted.'"

Journalist Jonathan Vankin was another early chronicler of electoral computer fraud (taking time to revisit the topic in a 2000 piece, in which he pointed out compelling evidence of serious computer-rigging in Miami-Dade, Dallas, Orange County, and several other locations). A book-length exposé even arrived in 1992 courtesy of James and Kenneth Collier.

And yet here we are, nearly a half century after that first US General Accounting Office warning, still using the same easily manipulable computer systems, which bad actors have almost certainly manipulated before to fix election outcomes; and partly as a result, we're all still wondering if Joe Biden really got 15 million more legitimate votes than Barack Obama did—a gap which must strain the credulity of even the most partisan Democrat (not that they'd mind illicit victory). (We're also now wondering how many of the presidents over the past thirty years won their elections fair and square).

So as I say, it's no wonder that now, half the country suspects fraud; it's because fraud on a huge scale, thanks to the voting machines, remains eminently possible.

As for how to reduce the possibility of voter fraud, the steps are simple. And it's not like they're secret. Nations around the world use them. A functional, trustworthy, election system of integrity would look something like this.

First, it's run by a single-purpose, rigorously impartial, devoutly transparent federal entity overseeing federal elections (about which more below).

Yes, I know we're all sick of the federal Leviathan. I know it already has far too much power. It's just that in this case, we don't have much choice, do we? We're going on well over a century of chronic Democrat Party presidential vote-rigging; and it appears they just ran one of their classic tricks again just a few weeks ago. At some point, pro-America voters have to stop making excuses for why they shouldn't try solutions to these nation-destroying problems, and just try them.

Yes, I know this would require a constitutional amendment. But let's assume for now we could get one of those passed.

Second: The new federal entity—let's call it Elections USA—would then divide the nation into voting districts of equal size for purposes of federal election (that could occur within pre-existing congressional districts). Elections USA would then further subdivide the voting districts into smaller units. Working with the postal service, Elections USA would then draw up a list of voters in each unit and designate a voting station for residents of that particular unit.

Third: In preparation for election day, Elections USA would send out flyers informing households of where to vote. The information would also be made available on the Elections USA website.

Fourth: On election day, voters travel to their designated voting stations: an elementary or high school, a union hall, a community center, whatever.

Each voting station is watched over by police or other security guards.

As voters approach, they join a quick-moving line. At the front, they present two pieces of government issued ID, at least one with a photo. A volunteer finds the voter on her list of voters for that unit. (If they've come to the wrong polling station, they are redirected to the right polling station).

The voter then approaches the voting station in a large, open room, where another volunteer hands him a paper ballot. Picking up the provided pencil, he marks the ballot behind a screen, folds the ballot, and drops into the voting box in full view of the poll clerk and attendant witnesses sitting a few feet away—typically, a few volunteers from political parties who act as "scrutineers", or official observers and verifiers. The voter then leaves. The entire process never takes more than fifteen minutes.

Once polls close, no one is allowed to enter or leave the premises until the vote count is completed.

The poll clerk—still in full view of the scrutineers—dumps the ballots on to a table and sorts them into piles according to the candidate/party voted for. She then counts the votes for each, showing them to the scrutineers as she goes. Once the votes are counted, a supervisor is called over to the table. After verifying that the scrutineers are satisfied with the counting, and resolving any lingering concerns, the supervisor signs off on the count, and the ballots are immediately placed in a special, sealed envelope. The sealed envelope is then stamped, and cannot be opened without subsequent detection.

The ballot count numbers are then phoned into Elections USA, right then and there, again in view of the scrutineers, who verify that the numbers called in match the numbers they witnessed during the count.

Once all the numbers are called in to Elections USA—a process which never takes more than two hours—the supervisor then physically transports the sealed envelopes (each marked with information like Voting Desk #4 at Poll Station #15) to the Elections USA depot, where she hands them over.

The sealed envelopes are then transported to Elections USA employees, who will then verify, and eventually formally certify, that all the numbers called in from each desk of each polling station of each voting district in the country matches the number of actual ballots. In the unlikely event any question arises about accuracy, the ballots can be accessed and counted again.

In a simple process like this, the media will have accurate election results within two hours of the polls closing, and there is virtually no opportunity for fraud. I can attest to that, because I myself have witnessed this exact process in real life quite a few times, and am friendly with several people who volunteer as election workers on election days. What I described is how elections are conducted in Canada, but not only in Canada: an identical or similar process is used in most other English-speaking countries. A few simple security protocols—not least of which is, no computerized voting machines—and your election is as fraud-proof as this mortal realm would ever allow.

When you compare this typical voting procedure to the morass of conflicting voting regulations representing fifty states, many of which—incredibly—do not even require that the voter present identification before voting, and which are being manipulated by the very state party hacks tasked with preventing fraud, you begin to see just how desperately America needs electoral reform. Credible stories of poll watchers being denied access, for example, in any normal country, would be regarded as completely unacceptable, to the point where the votes in that area would be likely thrown out as a matter of course. And yet, that type of chicanery is now so common in the United States, most people take for granted it goes on. That's how far the window of acceptable behavior has moved.

Lastly, I point out the outrageous absurdity of Democrats screaming for four years that Russia hacked the nation's vote-counting machines in 2016, only to suddenly demand—once their salaried goons in mainstream media prematurely declared Biden the victor—that we all instantly fully accept that no hacking or vote manipulation could ever have occurred in the 2020 election...when almost all the machines remained the same.

Trump's currently demanding recounts, and that's great. But America needs more than recounts. It needs something like a constitutional amendment federalizing the federal elections and banning voting machines. It also needs an exhaustive investigation—although by whom, I don't know anymore—to identify just which bad actors have been manipulating those easily manipulable voting machines for the last forty odd years. Given the frame-up jobs we've seen the last four years, I have a few hunches about the culprits—and I don't think they were Russians.

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ebaeschnbliah · 4 years

Text

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

________________________________________________________________

A metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three (and beyond)

The beginning of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three, really leaves no doubt what the theme of its story is about. When the eye of the camera zooms slowly in on Speedy’s and the famous black door with the number 221 in Baker Street, it seems to take it’s path right through a literal wood of pointy, black spears. Fences built of iron spears that guard the place..

It starts with a row of spears in the forground. When those get blurry, even more spears from midfield move into focus. Finally the camera reveals spears also in the background. That makes three levels of spears, one might say.

Three levels of spears stand like guardians in front of 221b Baker Street. Could those three levels symbolize the three stabbing victims of The Sign of Three? After all, each one of the three characters is depicted as guard, as protector ... and each one of them gets stabbed.

TBC below the cut ...

Stephen Bainbridge

He is a Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army. The current regiment is known as the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards … ’Every foot soldier bears the mark’ (Soo Lin, TBB). How surprising is it that the ‘East’ zooms in on Bainbridge before he gets stabbed by Jonathan Small?

Also … the gesture of the woman is interesting. Two Vs make a W (or a M … depends on the turning). It also lets me think of Culverton Smith’s W-gesture in TLD, in the short clip with the man disguised as cock (x).

Modern Grenadier Guardsmen wear a cap badge of a "grenade fired proper" with seventeen flames (x). Foot soldiers linked to exploding grenades … what a lovely coincidence, especially regarding the ‘passions’ grenade from TFP. :)

When the changing of the guards takes place, Bainbridge is already wounded and slowly dying. He got stabbed before the changing.

The name Stephen is of Greek origin and means ‘crown’ and ‘that which surrounds’. Saint Stephen was stoned to death and is regarded as the very first Christian martyr.

Another little detail caught my attention as well. Just a word used twice to describe a person.

SHERLOCK: “Elite Guard.” JOHN: Forty enlisted men and officers. SHERLOCK: Why this particular Grenadier? Curious.

And in TRF Sherlock sais:

SHERLOCK: This little boy; this particular little boy ... who reads all of those spy books. What would he do? JOHN: He’d leave a sign?

Max Bruhl left a sign. Stephen Bainbridge wrote a note. Not much of a difference, I think.

Guardsmen Max and Claudette

James Sholto

He is a retired Major of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and Captain John Watson’s old commanding officer. A decorated war hero but not to everyone. Something went wrong when he led a team of new recruits into battle. ‘They all died’ (just like AGRA). Major Sholto, badly wounded, was the only survivor. Press and families gave him hell. Deaththreats and hate almost turned him into a recluse, into a most unsociable man, who spends his retirement way out in the middle of nowhere.

I’m quite sure this has been mentioned before, the 5th Northumberland Regiment on Foot (’foot soldiers’ too) still uses their ancient badge … St George killing the dragon (x) Every quiver of his beating heart

‘He destroyed us all’ … somehow these words sound very similar to the one Sherlock uses in TFP, in a situation where he considers himself to be a soldier: ‘Five minutes. It took her just five minutes to do all of this to us. Well, not on my watch.’

As mentioned above, Mary’s dialogue in TST matches the description about the incident with Sholto’s recruits almost identically … ‘something went wrong’/’but it went wrong’ … ‘I was the only one who made it our’/’they all died; he was the only survivor’. And Mary considered AGRA to be her family ... ‘we were family’.

Major John Sholto is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His sons are called Thaddeus and Bartholomew. The renaming of the Major’s first name - from John to James - must have been a deliberate choice. A choice which is reflected in the skip code of TEH ‘John or James Watson … saint or sinner ... James or John’, as well as in John Watson’s middle name … Hamish (Scottish for James).

Major Sholto’s room number is ‘two oh seven’. This reminds me of the ‘double oh seven’ codeword for the ‘flight of the dead’ in ASIB. Two and double …. both means 2. Sure, the number on the door reads 207 but then, it happens several times in this story, that things told and things shown are sometimes not quite the same or vis versa.

When the wedding guests leave the church and the reception takes place, Sholto is already wounded and slowly dying. He has been stabbed before.

Sherlock investigates the cases of both guardians

Bainbridge’s note reaches him sometime during the wedding preparations. John and Sherlock arrive just in time to save Private Bainbridge’s life. The case though remains unsolved.

Without knowing it at the time, Sherlock investigates Sholto’s case during John’s stag night. They call the investigation of the ghost-man the ‘Mayfly Man’ case. It remains also unsolved.

Sherlock includes both unsolved cases into his best man speech at John’s wedding and here at last, all the puzzle pieces fall into place and Sherlock is able to solve both cases, which are closely related. As a consequence Major Sholto’s life can be saved as well.

The person responsible for the attempts to kill Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto is:

Jonathan Small

‘Brilliant, ruthless, almost certainly a monomaniac - though, in fairness, his photographs are actually quite good’ … that’s how Sherlock describes the killer. Small’s motive is revenge. He is convinced that Major Sholto is responsible for the death of Small’s brother Peter, who had been among the killed recruits. It seems that Private Bainbridge merely had the misfortune and got randomly chosen for the rehearsal of Sholto’s murder. But ... why this particular 'foot soldier’? (I’ll come back to that question later)

Jonathan Small grins like Jim Moriarty and wears a checkered shirt like John. He is a brilliant, ruthless monomaniac and obviously also a womaniizer who has no problems to woo half a dozen women, almost at the same time, into telling him well-kept secrets. Basically … a perfect blend of Jim Moriarty and traditional John ‘three continents’ Watson.

Like Major Sholto, Jonathan Small too is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His name has not been changed. Only together with his female and not-canon counterpart Janine, Mary’s bridesmaid, who seems to be a lovely blend of Irene and Jim, the name chosen for the antagonist of this episode, appears to gain a special significance.

Janine - deiminutive of Jeanne, female form of John … ‘little Johnny’

Jonathan - diminutives are Jon, Jonni ... though not related to ‘John’ regarding the meaning of the name, it can still be heard as … ‘little Jonny’ (’You can talk, Johnny-boy. Go ahead.‘ Jim, TGG)

None other than ‘little Jo(h)nny’ (the H makes the difference) is responsible for the almost murder of Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto, the first two stabbing victims of this episode.

‘Little Johnny’ also happens to be another word for penis … the ‘meat dagger’.

Who’s the third ‘victim’ then?

Mary Elizabeth Morstan

She is a character full of surprises who starts as a simple nurse who marries John Watson in TSOT. Among Sherlock’s deduction-word-cloud in TEH the term ‘guardian’ can be found and only one episode after the ‘wedding’, Sherlock outs her as facade … his very own facade, because the Empty Houses in Leinster Gardens, on whose front walls Mary’s face is projected, are Sherlock’s property.

Mary Elizabeth Morstan isn’t her real name either. It’s the name of a stillborn child from a gravestone in Chiswick Cementry. This connects her character to the other stillborn child of this story ... Rachel Wilson, the pink lady’s daughter from ASIP. The initials A.G.R.A. stand for Mary’s true name, she tells later … but soon this turns out to be incorrect as well. A.G.R.A. was a group of four undercover agents who worked for the British Government. Prior to her ‘retirement’ Mary had been a member of that group. Sherlock describes her as ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Based on the current status, her two first names are Rosamund Mary … the family name is still unknown (if there even is one).

Why should Mary be the third stabbing victim?

Readers of my theories will probably know that I’m playing for a long time now with a mind palace scenario which stretches from the beginning, most likely in PILOT (or even before) to the end of S4 (x). Back then I wondered ...

Is it really so farfetched to consider the possibility that Sherlock tries to deduce and solve the mysteries and problems of his own live - and his falling in love with John - at first in his mind? Before he comes out?

Over decades - since ACD - the story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson has been told by the famous 'unreliable narrator’. Could it be that this time - with Sherlock BBC - the world will get the true story? Finally told by Sherlock himself? By looking right into his heart and mind and soul? By showing how his brilliant mind works? How his heart and soul expand and grow?

Would TPTB do such a thing? Stay in Sherlock’s mind over the span of multiple episodes? Follow his train of thought … show his evolution … in such a way? I don’t know. But it sounds thrilling to me. (Nov 2016)

Based on those early ideas I gradually came to the conclusion that Sherlock BBC tells the story of how Sherlock Holmes deduced his own persona. He does this the same way he investigates his criminal cases … by setting up scenarios in his mind and repeating those until he has found the correct solution (The Stage is set). Investigating his own case - the pink one - in such a way, would mean that all the characters which appear on Sherlock’s ‘mind stage’ represent different aspects of himself. Some of them may be based on real life persons, most of them are probably entirely created by Sherlock’s imagination. I like to compaire this process to a ‘mind journey’ or to a long (dramatic) dialogue, Sherlock holds with himself. This propably doesn’t happen during a dream or in a state of coma, as I thought back in 2016. A lot of time and thinking has gone by since then. Nowadays I presume that a conscious thinking process would fit better with the literal character Sherlock Holmes, whose deductions are always built on facts, science, reason and logic. It would be rather OOC that a man like Holmes would base an important, life changing decision on anything else than his razor sharp mind. Anyway, it’s just one of many theories.

Mary now … ever since I noticed the lot of similarities this character shares with Sherlock (x) my view on her started to change considerably. To me she isn’t the woman anymore who comes between Sherlock and John but instead the facade Sherlock Holmes created and married to his traditional, eternal friendship with John Watson for the sole purpose, to hide his romantic feelings and his sexual desire for the friend behind this protective wall. Mary is Sherlock’s facade, his guardian, his firewall … because:

John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him and I would lose him forever – and I will never let that happen. Please … understand. There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening.

In my opinion, these are Sherlock’s own words and they express his fear of what might happen to the uinque friendship he shares with John, if the friend ever discovers the true nature of his feelings for him. Sherlock would do anything to stop that happening, even if this means that he has to incarcerate his emotions inside a high-security facility, behind elephant glass and chain his sexuality with iron bonds to a wall in a padded cell, like a hound from hell.

The ‘meat dagger’ incident

Sherlock tells the wedding guests - Major Sholto sits among them - about the unsolved Bainbridge case and asks if any of them has got a theory how that guard might have been stabbed. What kind of murderer can walk through walls, which weapon can vanish? Molly’s fiancé Tom (both characters are mirrors for John and Sherlock) assumes it could be a case of ‘attempted suicice by meat dagger’ ... something that would have been self administered.

A lot has been written since then about the ‘meat dagger’ as a metaphor for 'penis’ …. for ‘little Johnny’. :)

Sherlock sees only one feature of interest in the whole case … while he tried to solve the mystery, the eternal friend saved the life of the guard. And just the same happens a little while later with Major Sholto, the other guardian. It turns out that both men - both guardians - have been stabbed by the same killer … Jonathan Small … little Jonny, the meat dagger ....

There’s only one other character in this episode who has been stabbed unknowingly as well. That’s Mary. And in her case it’s indeed … ‘stabbed by meat dagger’ because Sherlock deduces her pregnancy by the end of the episode. Or expressed in computer language: the firewall has been penetrated by the virus.

The ‘father’ might be John or David, Mary’s ex. It doesn’t matter if one views the story metaphorically where all characters represent aspects of Sherlock himself. Going by his looks, David is clearly a mirror for John, while his history regarding the constant online observation of Mary, connects him to Mycroft, the brain. David seems to be a ‘blended’ mirror like Jonathan Small (John/Jim) or Janine (Irene/Jim). A mirror who represents the ongoing interest of the brain in the feelings hidden behind the facade.

When Sherlock marries John and Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend. He tries to ‘downgrade’ those feelings. And yet, Sherlock allows three ‘social ancounters a year’ but ‘always in John’s - the traditional friendship’s presence’. That sounds very much like the ‘calculated risk’ Mycroft takes with Eurus. Both ‘brothers’ seem to be ‘love-addicts’ in need of a fix, once in a while … when the burden of ‘holding oneself to a higher standard’, of ‘keeping oneself right’ gets too heavy … or too boring. In that case it could propably happen that one takes the frustration out on the wall … then the wall has it coming … :)

The moment of revelation

When Sherlock is blinded by the flashlight of ‘little Jo(h)nni’s’ camera, he suddenly realizes that the cases of Bainbridge and Sholto are connected. That the stabber has to be the same person. It’s the moment when the first domino piece falls and knocks over the next, and the next, and the next …. leading to a chain reaction of revelations at the end of which Sherlock knows without any doubt that his new facade had been penetrated again … this time though by a ‘kill shot’. He’d been hit by AMO (the perfect ammonition), fired by the crack shot that is his eternal friend. The seed of love has been laid without Sherlock noticing the ‘chink in his armour’ through which Cupid’s arrow hit home. Now love has taken root behind his facade and is growing.

The name chosen for that love is Rosamund - Rose of the world, as the dialogue in TST confirms. There’s a real rose of that name - Rosa Mundi - an old rose depicted in a work of Sandro Botticelli “Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child”. This rose is also known by the synonym ‘rosa versicolor’ - which means ‘rose of many or changing colours ... iridiscent’.

The word iridescence is derived in part from the Greek word ἶρις îris , meaning rainbow, It is the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to gradually change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. (X)

Sherlock - the ‘virgin’ he is called in ASIB by Jim and Irene - announces the pregnancy of Mary (I still wonder if this means that he is the 'Gabriel’ of A.G.R.A. - the angel who announces virgin Mary’s pregnancy). And during the stag night, John is labeled with ‘Madonna’. Another name for Virgin Mary. This turns the eternal friend also into the ‘virgin’, just like Sherlock and Mary. Another ‘sign of three’ one could say.

Three virgins - three novices - who will now start a new journey on a way they have never travelled before. Sherlock will finally encounter romantic love and accept it ‘it is what it is’, the facade will ‘get retired in a pretty permanent sort of way’ as the brain blatantly puts it in TST and the traditional ‘eternal’ friendship will have to change into a romantic-sexuell relationship. A morphing together of friendship and sex - John and James - would be a quite logical consequence, I guess.

In TST the little baby is christened with the name Rosamund, a name that can be traced back to ‘rainbow’ … Rosie for short. And rosy=pink!

‘Oh, what a night! ... I was never gonna be the same … I felt a rush like a rollin' ball of thunder spinnin' my head around n' takin' my body under’

No wonder this song has been chosen by the creators to accompany this scene. Overwhelmed by emotions - surprise, confusion, amazement, shock, joy, panic, uncertainty, concern, fear - Sherlock isn’t able anymore to carry on with this ‘wedding’ .... with this renewed ‘changing of the guard’. He walks away alone into the night. The case is solved. Sherlock is aware of what happened. Now he has to deal with the consequences. Should he really replace his guardian again or should he finally stop pretending, stop lying, drop the facade and confess his deepest secret?

Because if you tell them and they decide they’d rather not know, you can’t take it back. You can’t unsay it. Once you’ve opened your heart, you can’t close it again.

This confrontation, Sherlock fights with himself, becomes the centrepiece of the following episode (HLV) where Sherlock is completely torn into. One half of his being, still protected by the facade, is at war with the ... ‘other one’, the slowly increasing emotional side of him. But somewhere deep inside his mind he probably knows already that this is a war ‘he must lose’. And so Sherlock has to go deeper ...

TAB doesn’t only take Sherlock back to his literal roots. In this episode Sherlock investigates again two of the main threads of the story and ties them together through the ‘bride’ … FALL and HOUND. Mary, the facade, feels already ‘left behind’ and John, who represents Sherlock’s now fully acknowledged, tender feelings, directed at his friend ... ‘does grow up so fast’. The episode ends with Sherlock, who throws himself into a torrent of water=emotions and follows Jim Moriarty, Mr Sex, down the Reichenbach Fall … right into the emotional rollercoaster that is Series Four.

Like the investigation in TAB, this series runs backwards as well. TST repeats the events of S2 and S3 while TLD zooms in on S1. I persume this happens because Sherlock applies an ability he describes to Dr. Watson as ... ‘reasoning backwards’:

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically…Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically.” (ACD A Study in Scarlet, Conclusion)

There’s one important change though, which will alter everything. Sherlock now adds baby Rosie, the pink seed of love, the AMO-factor, to his equation. As a consequence his mask, his facade - that what ‘thatched’ and guarded him - crumbles and falls. And Sherlock accepts the change … It is what it is.

Then, in TFP, the third episode of S4, Sherlock puts the results of his deductions under the sharp lens of his emotional core, for the ultimate experiment … the final distillation … to produce at last a clear solution. Still missing is the chemical reaction that should follow the application of that solution, one might say. :)

Back to the three ‘guardians’

My husband is three people

During the wedding preparations, John tries to interst Sherlock for this curious case. John says the sentence ‘my husband is three people’ twice, interupted only by this short dialogue:

SHERLOCK: Major James Sholto. Who he? MARY: Oh, John’s old commanding officer.

Taking John’s words ‘my husband is three people’ literally, then he is talking about his own husband … which will soon be Mary. Husband, not wife, because Mary represents an aspect of Sherlock, his facade, his cover ... his ‘thatch’. As mentioned above, when Sherlock marries John to Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend … one could also say …. he places a commander at their/his side. And this is exactly what Mary does in later episodes. She decides who mowes the lawn, chooses the name of the baby and that it is her to take John home and not vis versa.

Husbands can be equated with facades, with commanders, with guards. All of them serve as protectors and defenders of Sherlock’s true feelings for the friend.

Who could have been the first ‘husband’ … the first facade, the first guardian?

Neither of us were the first

This is what Mary tells Sherlock, while John welcomes his ‘privious’ commander. Is she really talking about sexuell experiences of her brand-new husband with another man, just to taunt Sherlock? Viewing the Mary-character as an aspect of Sherlock himself and not as a real wife that comes between two men, I heavily doubt this. Applying a metaphorical reading to the story, wouldn’t it be much more likely that this conversation is about their - Mary’s and Sholto’s - assigned profession. Neither of us were the first … guardian.

Mary is the husband to be, the most recently chosen facade, John’s new commanding officer, an undercover agent of the government.

Major James Sholto is John’s old commanding officer, Sherlock’s previous facade, which turned out to be not strong enough.

The only other guard in this story is Stephen Bainbridge, Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The foot soldier named after Saint Stephen, the first martyrer.

And isn’t there somthing strikingly similar regarding those three guards as well as a noticeable increase in drama and strength, which so often happens when sequences are repeated on Sherlock’s mind stage?

Private Bainbridge guards the Queens Palace. The ‘East’ zoomes in on him, then he get’s stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - without noticing it. A changing of the guard takes place. Bainbridge almost dies beneath a shower of water.

Major Sholto guards the Queens country. He fights on a battlefield in the East beneath a burning hot sun. Something goes wrong and all the recruits under his command die. Badly wounded himself, Sholto has to leave the service and change into retirement. He gets stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - and almost dies.

Mary secretly works for Mycroft, the government, the ‘queen’ - as an undercover ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Her last operation took place in the East. Something went wrong and a lot of people died. It first looked as if Mary had been the only surviver (like Sholto). She marries ‘Johnny-boy’ Watson, gets stabbed by his meat dagger, becomes pregnant and …. dies not long after ‘PINK-RAINBOW-ROSIES’ birth.

The Sign of Three is about the ‘changing of the guard’. It takes place inside Sherlock’s head. But the marriage of John and Mary, that Sherlock arranges so heartbreakingly beautiful (and so strikingly yellow), turns out to be utterly pointless. Because the bride, the husband, the new commander, the facade is already pregnant ... had been stabbed before the wedding ... before the changing of the guard.

The Yellow Face connection

This isn’t new. It has been discussed before in this interesting meta About Yellow Face by @darlingtonsubstitution (sadly the part below the cut is gone) from 2017. As mentioned in the comments there, the creators of Sherlock BBC once refered to their favourite ACD stories. Yellow Face was among them but ... they wouldn’t be able to adapt it, because of the sensitive content, they said. This isn’t quite true though, it seems. On the contrary, the colour yellow features most prominently in Sherlock BBC … and not just the colour itself.

It starts with Sherlock’s and John’s first date at Angelo’s. The whole scene is drenched in yellow. PILOT even more than ASIP.

A secret code of ancient cyphers, sprayed in yellow paint, leads to the Yellow Dragon Circus.

Golden cats and big ‘yellow’ felines - lions - roam the story.

Yellow is the colour of the smiley face on the wall of the 221b living room.

There’s an assassin who carries a yellow ladder and a yellow tool case with a gun in it.

A bright yellow mask has been placed inside a box, alongside a train, a phone, nicotin patches and a note.

The main colour of the wedding ... bright yellow. It’s the wedding that leads Sherlock to the revelation ... to his love deduction.

A canary trainer, a trainer of yellow birds, turns out to be the killer.

Norbury, the case of the Yellow Face from canon, plays a vital role in TST

The finish of a race is marked with a bright yellow band that floats slowly to the ground while a ‘confessing’ serial killer, who is a mirror for John, passes as winner, signaling a W with his fingers, while the fingers from the ‘East’,, next to Private Bainbridge, signal a double V.

Yellow is the colour of the sun, of fire, flames and explosions.

Yellowbeard ….

But one of the most important links to Yellow Face is the following one:

JOHN: Mary, I may not be a very good man, but I think I’m a bit better than you give me credit for, most of the time. (Sherlock BBC, TST) 'I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.' (Grant Munro, The Adventure of the Yellow Face)

This piece of dialogue connects John to Grant Munro, the husband of Effie, the woman who hides her secret child from a previous marriage behind a yellow mask. She doesn’t do it out of some dark or sinister motive as Sherlock Holmes is convinced at first. Her former marriage had been legal and she'd loved her late husband dearly. Lucy, her little girl, can truly be called a child of love. But Effie fears to reveal Lucy, because the girl is ‘different' and the mother is anxious to lose the man she loves now, because of this. She is torn into between the love for her child and the love for her husband.

She (Effie) drew a large silver locket from her bosom. 'You have never seen this open.'

'I understood that it did not open.'

She touched a spring, and the front hinged back. There was a portrait within of a man, strikingly handsome and intelligent, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent. (ACD, The Yellow Face)

ACDs Yellow Face is a case without crime, without any devious betrayal. Instead, it’s about love and the fear to lose love, because at that time in ACDs story, it’s about a love not accepted by many.

'That is John Hebron, of Atlanta,' said the Lady (Effie), 'and a nobler man never walked the earth. I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him; but never once while he lived did I for one instant regret it. It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine. (ACD, The Yellow Face)

In ACDs Yellow Face, the ‘first husband’ is of ‘African descent’ … just like Private Bainbridge, who is the ‘first guardian’ - the first of the three ‘identical husbands’ - in Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three. He is the one who represents Sherlock’s earliest facade … the guardian of the Queen’s Palace.

Just like @darlingtonsubstitution presumed more than two years ago, I’m now more convinced than ever, that Moffat and Gatiss did adapt ACDs Yellow Face and they not only included it in Sherlock BBC, they made it into the main theme of their story (beside ‘hound’, ‘fall’ and ‘scarlet/pink’). In their version though, the focus shifts from ‘unacceptable’ skin-colour to ‘unacceptable’ sexuality.

Sherlock BBCs baby ... Rosie ... Sherlock’s baby ... represents love. And this love is pink and has been given a name that can be traced back to ‘Rainbow’. The Sign of Three tells the story of the ‘changing of the guards’ and how Sherlock finally discovers the AMO-factor that will alter his life completely.

When I discoverd Sherlock BBC for the first time (back in 2011) I was thrilled by that fascinating crime drama and its two charismatic leads. Now, after 13 episodes, it has grown into so much more than just an excellent crime drama among others. The way I read it, Sherlock BBC is a wonderful and stunning story about equality. Inside Sherlock’s mind, the great detective doesn’t only solve the greatest secret of his life. No, the actors Sherlock chooses to represent the different aspects of his persona, are as diverse as the colours of the rainbow. They are old and young, male and female, beautiful and ugly, strong and weak, rich and poor. Neither gender, sexuality nor the shade of skin colour or from which corner on this planet someone comes, is of any importance. Anyone can be a part of this Sherlock Holmes. That’s what makes this adaptation so absolutely unique to me. Sherlock himself becomes the rainbow of his own story.

Thanks for reading to anyone who is still there. :)))) I leave you to your own deductions. And thanks @callie-ariane for your invaluable scripts.

December, 2019

________________________________________________________________

Episode spanning metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC:

From PILOT to TGG …. About the meaning of S1

From ASIB to TEH …. The big question - what is the meaning of Reichenbach

#changing of the guard #sherlock bbc #metaphorical reading #the sign of three #guardians #commanders #husbands #edited pics

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schraubd · 5 years

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What's The Story on Trump's Antisemitic RJC Speech

Here are some highlights from the recent Republican Jewish Coalition conference, featuring a major speech by President Donald Trump.

He asked the attendees "How did you support President Obama, how did you support the Democrats?"

He also told them to explain his allegedly successful tariff policy "your people" who "don’t like tariffs."

An RJC twitter account spoke of one speaker's "Jew heritage" -- apparently favorably.

But the big eyebrow raiser was when he told attendees -- all American Jews -- that Netanyahu was "your Prime Minister". He then said that a Democratic victory in 2020 would leave Israel "all by yourselves."

This is not even the first time that Trump has told American Jews that Israel -- not America -- is "your" country. And given that we just spent however many weeks obsessing over "allegiance" and "Benjamins" -- indeed, given that groups like the RJC have insisted that we obsess over "allegiance" and "Benjamins" -- this seems like a big deal.

And to be fair, Jewish groups have not been silent. The AJC, ADL, and Israel Policy Forum all issued statements criticizing the President. The AJC was one of the first off the blocks, saying "the Prime Minister of Israel is the leader of his (or her) country, not ours. Statements to the contrary, from staunch friends or harsh critics, feed bigotry."). ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Trump for language "that leads people to believe Jews aren’t loyal Americans." The Orthodox group Torah Trumps Hate blasted "this antisemitic trope spewed by the president."

Individual Jewish figures also took note. Yair Rosenberg accused Trump of going "full dual loyalty". Batya Ungar-Sargon said the President's comments were "straight up anti-Semitic." Abe Foxman called out Trump's "dual loyalty tropes". Rep. Eliot Engel wryly observed that "I somehow doubt the president would say 'your Taoiseach' to a roomful of Irish-Americans."

But there still remains the question -- is this going to become a story?

What I said yesterday, I stand behind today: it is absolutely clear that Jews care about antisemitism of this sort when it comes from Trump or other elected Republicans. We don't give it a pass, we don't shrug it off. My tweet attacking Trump for saying Israel, not America, is my country is a 3,000 likes and counting (possibly my most-liked tweet ever).

Yesterday I said that the problem isn't that Jews don't care when Trump does antisemitic things. It's that nobody else does. We do express our concerns, but they're not amplified. The 1,000 microphones thrust in our face when Omar says "allegiance" disappear when Trump says "your Prime Minister".

Is that going to happen again? Some media sources have picked up on the antisemitism angle as something worth emphasizing. While JTA buried the lede (its current headline is "Trump gets hero’s welcome at Republican Jewish Coalition conference"; the "your country" bit is 9 paragraphs in and described as an "awkward moment"), others shone the spotlight where it belonged.

Haaretz ran the same body text as JTA but reheadlined the story "'Your Prime Minister Netanyahu': Watch Trump's Very Awkward Speech to American Jews" (subtitle: "At Republican Jewish conference, U.S. president mocked refugees, asked crowd to push for tariffs with 'your people' and seemed to suggest all Jews voted Obama"). Allison Kaplan Sommer filed her own piece "Calling Out Omar and Democrats' 'anti-Semitism,' Trump Pulls Jewish Dual Loyalty Trope."

The Times of Israel's story was "Trump tells US Jews that Netanyahu is 'your prime minister' (subtitle: "President also says Democrats would leave Israel 'out there by yourselves' in comments to Republican Jewish group; asks how they could back Obama, apparently referring to all Jews").

Outside the Jewish press, Business Insider wrote "Trump spoke to an audience of American Jews and referred to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu as 'your prime minister'", and Slate ran with the similar "In Speech to Republican Jews, Trump Refers to Netanyahu as 'Your Prime Minister'".

So that suggests these remarks are getting coverage, and are getting coverage as an antisemitism case. Which is good. Because it should.

But what we haven't seen yet is the sort of secondary reporting that truly defines something becoming a story. Nobody, for example, has pressed the RJC's Matt Brooks or other prominent GOP figures to comment on Trump's remarks, or ask them if they think that Bibi is "their" Prime Minister. There haven't been headlines or stories which take for granted that this is a controversy or a crisis for the GOP and RJC -- nothing has yet run of the form "Trump, RJC on defensive after comments suggesting Jewish 'dual loyalty' to Israel". Nobody is pressing groups like the ADL as to whether they're in contact with the RJC or Trump and if there has been satisfactory progress to walk back the antisemitic valences of what Trump said. Indeed, there isn't yet even the call for an apology, let alone the feverish meta-commentary about what it means that no apology is forthcoming.

That's the big difference between how left and right antisemitism is covered. It isn't that the latter is ignored. It's that Jewish criticisms of the latter aren't amplified; they don't yield the multi-day meta-coverage and the demands for apologies and the calls for comment that requires everyone to take a stand and get placed in awkward and uncomfortable positions.

Some of that is due to Trump's unique property -- he's got so many scandals swirling about him at any given time that no individual one ever seems to stick for more than a half-second.

But this is clearly more than just a Trump phenomenon. And I'm not sure how to fix it. The claim is often said that we, the Jewish people, can't "let" this sort of unequal coverage and treatment persist. And yes, it's probably true that the Jewish media could do more to keep these stories afloat -- to treat them as stories, not just one-off "awkward moments" that get a day's comment and are forgotten.

Yet the fact is that it strikes me as unlikely that such efforts, even if expended, would gain traction unless they were matched by interest from the non-Jewish press -- and that I very much doubt is forthcoming.

For my part, a huge swath of the non-Jewish interest I've seen in this story centers almost exclusively around the "hypocrisy" charge -- Omar got raked over the coals for "allegiance" while Trump was supposedly met with "crickets." The problem is that (a) hypocrisy is a two-way street -- how many people in the former case were insisting that dual loyalty insinuations weren't a big deal or were just a big ol' smear? -- , (b) depending on the critic, hypocrisy can be an unfair charge insofar as it implies that Jews haven't been trying to call out Trump over this (see above to falsify that), and (c) the time spent on the meta-point of hypocrisy is energy taken away from the primary point of "Trump said something antisemitic," so it ends up diluting the narrative and ironically further entrenches the sense that Trump is taking less fire for a similar sin.

In any event, I may not have a solution, but I know what I want to see. I want to see journalists calling up Brooks and GOP congressmen and White House spokespersons (and the ADL and AJC, and Democratic officials and other liberal anti-racism and anti-antisemitism groups) and getting comment and keeping the story alive. I want headlines that are about the scandal and its continued fallout. I want pained discussions of the difficult position this is placing conservative figures, how they're struggling to grapple with how to forcefully denounce antisemitism while not cutting ties with a President still popular in his party, and what this signals for 2020. I want pieces about the huge blow the RJC conference struck against ongoing GOP efforts to attract Jewish voters -- what should have been a coming-out-party for Trump-supporting Republicans turned into a fiasco.

In short, I want journalists to treat Trump's antisemitism like a story.

We'll see if they do.

via The Debate Link http://bit.ly/2U2lE6P

#anti-semitism #Bibi Netanyahu #Donald Trump #Media

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 4 years

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September 6, 2020

My weekly view of things I am up to and thinking about. Topics include the future of Earth, housing in California, the national debt, carbon pricing, and software complexity.

Earth’s Future

The funder is interested in developing a timeline of Earth’s past and future and placing human history in the geologic context. It’s a bit off the beaten path for us, but a fun project, and I spent some time this week on it. It got me thinking about Earth’s long term future.

We all know, in at least a vague sense, that Earth’s days are numbered. I think most of us know that we expect the Sun to go nova some billions of years from now (about 7.6 billion I think is the best estimate), and barring intervention from a future advanced civilization, no life will be able to survive that.

I found this paper by O’Malley-James et al. to be an interesting read. It discusses the future of life from an astrobiological perspective, asking what biosignatures a distant civilization might observe from Earth in the distant future. Plant life that depends on C3 photosynthesis, and by extension most animal life, has maybe 500-600 million years left, beyond which point carbon dioxide is too depleted. Plant life based on C4 photosynthesis might make it 900 million years. From then on it’s only microbes. Eukaryotic life might last 1.2 billion years before the oxygen is depleted. Prokaryotic life was here first, and it will probably be here last. The paper estimates 2.8 billion years as an upper bound for any microbes at all to survive in caves or underground. For the remainder of its existence, Earth is a sterile, lifeless world without oceans, an atmosphere, or geological activity.

Before all that, Earth’s biosphere may go into an irreversible decline after the formation of Pangaea Ultima, about 250 million years from now. At that time, the combination of merging of continents, cooling of the Earth’s core, and increasing of solar luminosity will result in a falling of carbon dioxide to the point where today’s biological productivity cannot be sustained. Earth is now 95% of the age it will be when this happens.

It is an unspoken and open question of how this general picture might be altered by a civilization that is capable of effecting meaningful change over geological timelines. Human civilization is not at this level presently, and it is unclear if we will attain it.

I wonder too how contemplation of the biosphere’s mortality influences how we think of environmentalism and sustainability. Perhaps 250+ million years is so vast a time that it cannot be distinguished from infinity in our minds. For my part, I can admit that the prospect genuinely bothers me.

Housing in California

California’s legislative session expired at the end of August, and with it, another opportunity for statewide zoning reform. Scott Wiener’s SB1120 would have allowed duplexes on single family lots. It is a modest but valuable proposal which had majority legislative support, but some last minute parliamentary shenanigans from the party leadership ran out the clock.

I continue to think that the housing issue in California is intractable, and that with its current strategy, the YIMBY movement will not be able to attain any but the most marginal victories. The Bay Area needs to increase its housing supply by at least 50%, maybe 100%, to really solve the problem. To achieve those kinds of numbers, allowing duplexes and ADUs is not going to cut it. The region needs to be open to horizontal as well as vertical expansion. Something must be done to break the dysfunction in the construction industries that prevents buildings and infrastructure from being delivered at a reasonable time and speed. The movement should also stop diddling around with measures that feel good but will backfire, like rent control and vacancy taxes.

Meanwhile, the tech industry is continuing to make tentative moves toward remote work. I continue to be hopeful but skeptical that widespread adoption of remote work can finally get housing costs under control.

My suspicion is that the YIMBY movement has succumbed to the Shirky Principle, which posits that “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” An ever-growing share of its energy is devoted to playing the Reds vs. Blues game, which is more than redundant in California. They have no vision of what an affordable California or Bay Area look like, no credible plan for getting there, and ideological blinkers that foreclose many important aspects of the solution.

As I’ve done several times before, I go back to Citizens Climate Lobby, which I see as the gold standard for political advocacy done right. They have a clear vision of passing a federal carbon fee and dividend plan. They don’t dilute their efforts on ancillary priorities or play partisan games. They have commissioned detailed economic modeling of the plan and have made every effort to insure it works from both a technical perspective and from a range of value systems. I don’t know if CCL will succeed, but at least they can succeed, unlike most activists, and CCL is one of the few major organizations I feel good supporting.

Red Ink

The Congressional Budget Office released an unsurprising but grim report on the national debt. The debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 98%, the highest ever except for a brief time at the end of World War II. It should cross the 100% mark next year and reach 109% by 2030.

Deficits are a classic gnarly problem. They are harmful but not catastrophic, and the harms are mostly at some indeterminate point in the future and are not clearly visible. This makes them easy to ignore, and ignoring the debt, or at best using it as a partisan talking point, is now an established bipartisan tradition.

Japan somehow continues to function with a debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding 230%. I don’t know how high the US can go on this metric and hope not to find out. We’ve seen debt crisis in Europe and Argentina recently. What I think is more likely is that debt service will be another ball and chain, along with population aging, stagnant productivity, and broken housing, health care, and education markets, on the American economy.

Carbon Pricing

Resources for the Future has a new carbon pricing calculator tool out, evaluating several proposals from the current Congress.

At the $52/ton level, four of the eight proposals stand out as having a positive benefit/cost analysis when economic costs are weighed against CO2 reduction alone. In all eight cases, “secondary” health benefits exceed the CO2 benefit as well as economic costs. As economic intuition would suggest, benefit/cost ratio goes down the higher the carbon price goes, since as the price goes up, we move down the ladder from most cost-effective emissions reductions to less cost-effective.

For my own part, I’ve generally been using a social cost of carbon of $50/ton. A few years ago, that seemed like a reasonable median estimate. At some point I want to review the literature again to see if I should be using a different figure.

The large health benefits are good for making the case for carbon pricing, but they raise some questions. The numbers strongly suggest that we should be thinking about air pollution reduction as the primary goal with CO2 reduction as a secondary goal. But if we do that, is carbon pricing really the most effective policy on air pollution?

Software and the Collapse of Civilization

I found this talk from last year by the game developer Jonathan Blow. He details ways in which the software industry is unable to deliver fast, reliable products and analogizes to historical failures of technological reproduction that are associated with past civilizational collapses. The talk is about an hour. I have to say it is a bit odd, but I found it worth watching.

Several time throughout my life, I have made attempts to get into the software industry, and at other times such as now I have programmed on a hobbyist basis. While I don’t see bad software as a major existential risk to civilization, there are clearly problems. Blow identifies what could also be called the bloatware problem: programmers tend to reach for libraries and abstractions in their code, needlessly inflating size, complexity, runtime, and bugs. He worries that abstraction has become so pervasive that the industry is not even capable of delivering reliable software at this point, and the knowledge of machine code programming has been largely lost.

Blow’s argument is reminiscent of the success problem, as described by Samo Burja, or the notion of social reproduction.

I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to develop the analogy between software bloatware and policy bloatware, a term to describe the phenomenon of public policy being designed in ever more complex manners. An overly complex policy environment increases the difficulty of coordinating the entities required for a solution, and it causes solutions to look more like patches and kludges over problems rather than actual solutions. An example is the attempt to address housing affordability problems by developing complex, multi-government affordable housing subsidies. Kludgeocracy is the best term I’ve seen for this phenomenon so far.

Casey Muratori identifies the same problem, which he called the 30 million line problem, so named because he estimates that to write the most basic “Hello World” web app requires, between the server and the client, at least 30 million lines of code and probably far more, with present technology. He proposes a solution based on a universal CPU instruction set and restoring root access to developers. Ironically, the talk (excluding Q&A) is over an hour when I think 10 minutes would have been sufficient to convey the key points without loss of essential detail.

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eddycurrents · 5 years

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When they said that the event calendar for the release dates of House of X and Powers of X would feature major events that recontextualize and change how you think about the entire event, they weren’t lying. If anything, based on House of X #2, it was an understatement. As much as the first issues of both series have already changed the landscape of Marvel’s merry mutants, changing the characters, and changing the rules, House of X #2 makes you wonder about everything that you’ve seen previously.

This issue also sets in stone that House of X and Powers of X are inseparable. You need to read both, not one or the other, in order to get the full story. They play off of one another more like one continuous narrative, with notes flitting back and forth between the two books, than two discrete stories. The differences are really just a matter of perspective and scope. One book looks at the story from one particular angle, and the other zooms out, looking at a different composite. The way the two play off one another, even this early into the event, is very impressive.

Jonathan Hickman and his collaborators already set a new standard with the first issues of HoX and PoX, House of X #2 takes it a step further and fundamentally changes the rules of the Marvel Universe even. It takes an already existing high water mark and raises it further.

Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia continue to be a shining light in this story, especially when it comes to permutations. And this issue may well have one of the most pored over and inspected infographics yet.

It is truly astonishing what Hickman, Larraz, Gracia, Cowles, and Muller are doing here.

There will be spoilers below this image. If you do not want to be spoiled on House of X #2, do not read further.

SPOILER WARNING: Below I’ll be discussing the events, themes, and possibility of what’s going on in House of X #2 and beyond. There are HEAVY SPOILERS beyond this point. If you haven’t read the issue yet and don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading now. You’ve been warned.

PREAMBLE | First Impressions

All I can really say is holy crap. I’ve been highly impressed so far with what House of X and Powers of X have been doing so far, but this one blows all expectations out of the water.

House of X #2 is a truly incredible story that completely reinvents the character of Moira MacTaggert, retcons decades of X-Men continuity in the process, but does so in a way that opens up endless possibilities, new stories, and more, rather than being any kind of forced insert. It’s brilliant. And it makes you wonder about all of the X-Men stories in the past, especially reading interactions with Destiny and Magneto in new contexts, and those that we’re currently reading.

Basically, Moira’s a mutant with the power of reincarnation. She keeps coming back and attempting new solutions and experiments to solve the human-mutant problem like a mutant take on Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon’s Daytripper.

It also makes a lot of the speculation that many of us, myself included, about what’s going on in the first couple issues possibly entirely wrong. Because it changes the rules. I love it. It’s amazing and ballsy for a series as potentially dissected and analysed as this to just outright break the standard framework entirely.

Also, in regards to Pepe Larraz’s art this issue, it shifts depending on the life that’s being discussed. While Moira and the people around her are mostly the same, the panels shift and take on different shapes and angles per period. It’s a very nice and easy way to show visually that we’re seeing a different life being lived with minimal confusion or reliance on the text.

Marte Gracia continues to deliver exquisite colour art. Like Larraz’s layouts, the colours shift and change, in some ways subtle, in other ways explosively, across the different lives. It’s also impressive whenever a colourist can make an apocalyptic landscape feel dark without it looking like mud.

And Clayton Cowles and Tom Muller remain the cherries on top with letters and design respectively.

ONE | Time After Time

Throwing that spanner in the works of every theory, assumption, and possibility of the first two issues is Moira’s reincarnation abilities. It is a huge retcon that makes you question everything.

It starts out unassumingly enough with an ordinary life, lived to an ordinary span. in an ordinary way. Life One is an interesting way to lead us into this radical change to Moira’s character because it’s ordinary. It’s brilliant to present such a huge shock to the system through such a simple, unexpected life story.

And it spirals out from there as we’re taken back to Moira’s discussion with Charles in Powers of X #1, given more details and explanations of here different lives. From simple destruction chance of Life Two being cut horrifically short to the far flung length of joining with Apocalypse in Life Nine. Some lives an elements are familiar, others radically different from what we know, each apparently giving Moira a different piece of the puzzle in order to figure out the solution to the extreme division between humans and mutants.

I find it somewhat funny, given the text piece in Powers of X that sending mutants into space isn’t one of the primary proposed ideas through any of these lives, but maybe that’s something we’ll see when and if she finally gets things right.

I also find it interesting that one of the lives that gets the most attention is when she picks man over mutant in Life Three. It’s one of the ones that goes horrifically wrong as she decides that mutants are a disease needed to be stamped out, coming up with a cure to eradicate them. It establishes Destiny as an arbiter of justice to temper if Moira decides a similarly destructive path.

The various differently lives briefly shown throughout the story are also fascinating. They beg to be expanded upon through a series of specials and mini-series mining the different possibilities of these alternate existences. They feel rich and well-realized with interesting events informing on Moira’s decisions through her lifespans.

Although they can be left as throwaway ideas within the larger framework of the House of X/Powers of X event, there’s fertile ground here to expand upon in time. Moira VII Assassin could be an interesting, dark, and cynical thriller, especially as compromises to morals and ethics become hollow as the machines manifest anyway. A new Age of Apocalypse in Life Nine practically screams to be explored. It’s fascinating how all of these lives combine, recombine, and mix different common elements and themes across X-Men history and spin out something new.

It also makes you wonder about those time periods in Powers of X #1. We think that X0 through X3 are the same timeline. This issue opens up the possibility that that may not be the case. The futures might be from one of Moira’s previous lives. We don’t know yet what exactly we’re seeing and that uncertainty adds a fair amount of excitement to see what’s coming next.

What we’re seeing in House of X and Powers of X could be Life Eleven, since there are already some radical departures in how Krakoa seems to work, and all of the people who are now alive that were dead. I’ve gone through thoughts as to how it could be messing with time, but Moira’s reincarnations seems to eliminate that theory entirely. It’s also easy in story terms since it would essentially give a blank slate to establish the rules of this new reality, but I think that’s too simple.

I think, however, that we’re currently witnessing Life Ten. For one, we’re referring to Moira often in these series as Moira X, which would seem to infer more that this is her tenth life, rather than necessarily X as in Xavier or X-Men or even as a placeholder X for her multiple possible surnames (Kinross, Cowan, MacTaggert, Xavier). It also potentially rewrites the meaning of the title Powers of X as being more personal, not just referring to the time periods, but these being the “Powers of [Moira] Ten”. It takes all of the huge, reality and time-spanning ideas and humanizes it, making it a personal tale of one woman’s struggles.

I think Life Eleven is triggered at the end of House of X/Powers of X and is the seed for the “Dawn of X” titles spinning out of this story.

TWO | Entanglements

The wider implications of Moira’s powers are felt in how long you’ve been reading X-Men comics and whether or not you want to do a deep dive into the past. It could be fun, it could be maddening, and ultimately the story in House of X and Powers of X doesn’t necessitate it. You can read this still without having ever read a single X-Men comic and enjoy it.

But over-complicating things is a pastime of longtime X-Men readers. These books were written for a long period of time by Chris Claremont, after all.

One of the major things that this shows in various permutations throughout the story is redefining Moira as one of the primary movers throughout history. She serves now as a catalyst for events and direct causes for divergence points creating alternate timelines. In some ways subtle, in others profound.

I’ve stated and speculated previously that Xavier seems different through the first issues of both series, in terms of the X1 Xavier potentially exhibiting telekinetic powers he never had and his kind of creepy character affectations (that could have been continuing on with X’s behaviour from Astonishing X-Men) and the seeming oddity of not knowing who Moira was in X0, which I thought could have been put down to time travel shenanigans, but that seems moot with House of X #2. It’s probably just a new reality that we’re dealing with.

It raises questions as to whether or not Xavier is really a puppet master as previously believed, or just another cog in the Moira Machine, figuring out that possibly the only way to answer the Man-Mutant conundrum is to get Xavier, Magneto, and Apocalypse (and possibly the machines) all working together.

And then there’s Moira’s run during the ‘80s. The Muir Island X-Men. Magneto’s rehabilitation. Working with the New Mutants. Aiding Xavier throughout. It takes on an entirely different element knowing that she was knowledgeable of various events beforehand. It takes working with Freedom Force in an entirely different light. There’s undoubtedly a lot you could dive deeper into in order to figure out how things stack up in this new light.

THREE | Number Six

Curiously missing from the infographic giving Moira’s timeline is Life Six. There’s a gap between Life Five and Life Seven that remains unaccounted for. Nor does it come up when she’s talking to Charles Xavier explaining to him who he is.

For a story that is built on detail and complexity, the omission has to have a reason. And because it’s missing, we can potentially get endless speculation as to why it’s missing.

Personally, I think it could be because it’s actually the baseline Marvel Universe that we knew. Life Ten would appear to be that, being consistent with what we know, but there’s doubt. We’ve been told through Moira’s conversation with Destiny that she has a limited amount of reincarnations, ten, with possibly an eleventh if she got things right.

Or I could be completely wrong and it’s something else entirely.

CONCLUSION | I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

It’s taken me a while to put fingers to keyboard on this one for a number of reasons, one of the primary ones being that this story just left me gobsmacked. It presents so many different possibilities and reinterpretations that you’ve practically got to tear up the script as to what you thought was going on. It makes you question whether or not anything at all that you’ve read before is in a particular frame or even relevant to a particular frame.

It’s incredible.

Hickman, Larraz, Gracia, Cowles, and Muller have managed to take an already impressive new approach to the X-Men and elevated it further beyond imagining. It’s very exciting. House of X #2 represents an even greater sea change than we were led to believe.

d. emerson eddy is fairly certain he doesn’t reincarnate into the same life if you kill him, so please don’t try.

#Examinations #X-Men #House of X #2 #Jonathan Hickman #Pepe Larraz

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artcenterstories · 4 years

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Climbing the Ladder: Meet Catalyst CCO Josh Wright

AC: What inspired you to co-found Catalyst? Josh Wright (BS Product Design '03) Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Catalyst: The seed was planted when I was at ArtCenter. The College trains you to think about design, not just from the aesthetic or mechanical point of view, but also from a business perspective.

At ArtCenter, I was encouraged to look for a business partner. When you have someone who focuses on the financials, you can focus on making design work for the business.

AC: You've had an interesting career trajectory. Can you speak about your journey? JW: Designing for an outdoor lifestyle has always been important to me. In the early years of my career, I started working in California, designing a lot of sports and lifestyle products, including footwear and backpacks for various surf, skate and snow companies.

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Then, I moved to Wichita, Kansas, to work for the iconic Coleman company. It was a cool experience because it was a very small design team, and I got to touch all of their products. After six months, I contributed $30 million to the company's bottom line.

That's something else ArtCenter taught me: Don't go to Porsche; don't go to Apple — they already have great design. Go to a brand that doesn't have great design, yet. Bringing good design and storytelling to their products transformed a 100-year-old brand into something fresh and fun. And they still sell some of my products today.

I later worked at Tumi in New York designing some of their carbon-fiber luggage and helping to expand some of the product categories into footwear, wristwatches and apparel. In 2006, I got this amazing opportunity in Hong Kong and I spent the next four years working at a world-class design consultancy firm. But I was always on the lookout for a business partner, based on what I had learned in school.

AC: How did you meet your Catalyst co-founder? JW: Rock climbing. It's one of the reasons I wanted to move here — the climbing community in Hong Kong brings together such a diverse group of people. My co-founder and I have such different backgrounds — she's from bio-tech and finance.

Through the years, we developed a friendship based on trust from countless days of climbing the jungles. We realized that we had complementary skills, with her business and my design background and our mutual desire to be outdoors. We wanted to create outdoor products that brought value to people's lives — that was the genesis of Catalyst.

AC: What was the first Catalyst product you designed? JW: At the time in 2010, the iPhone was becoming the device of choice, even for climbers, so our product was a fully waterproof protective iPhone 4 case. Soon after, we launched and had a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Today, Catalyst has reached a tipping point where it's becoming a global household brand name; our products are available in over 70 countries and major retailers, including Apple, BestBuy and Target, as well as eight Amazon marketplaces, four Shopify websites and WeChat in China.

AC: Catalyst 20L Waterproof backpack recently received the prestigious Red Dot Award. Can you speak about the design process? JW: Each of our products fills a need and solves a problem. The waterproof backpack offers travelers an ultra-compact, -lightweight pack that folds into a carry pouch that's a little smaller than a 12-ounce soda can.

Waterproof is a core component of Catalyst. I'm kind of a nerd for waterproof products.

I've used this bag as a flotation device while snorkeling in Thailand. I've carried it through heavy tropical rainstorms and through a canyoneering trip in northern Italy, where I was jumping off waterfalls. The backpack works incredibly well. When the bag is rolled up, anything you keep inside it will stay dry.

AC: What are you working on right now? JW: We're always working on something new — we launch eight to 12 products every year. We were the first company to make waterproof cases for Apple watch and AirPods.

The backpack line is something we're currently working on expanding, and soft goods in general. We're heavily focused on expanding our business solutions for industrial applications of our products, including for oil and gas, hospitals and schools.

AC: How do you define success? JW: Being able to create products I believe that bring value to the people who use them, and seeing a lantern I designed for the Coleman company being used on the show The Walking Dead.

AC: Do you have any superstitions? JW: My dad always told me that it is bad luck to be superstitious and I live by that.

AC: What’s the design cliché you’re most tempted to use? JW: I really subscribe to modernism. I believe that form should follow function with zero added details for ornamentation. Everything I build is intentionally designed, but not decorative. We are loosening up this "cliché" by adding some fashion and styling elements to some of our future collections, which I'm pretty excited about.

AC: What’s the one tool you can’t do without? JW: My iPhone.

AC: What’s the first site you look at when you open your computer in the morning? JW: Slack.

AC: What do you do to detox from media and screens? JW: It's not just screens, it's the city itself because Hong Kong is so crowded. My detox is my weekends out in nature: rock climbing, hiking, canyoneering or surfing. I think an amazing secret of Hong Kong is that two-thirds of the territory is subtropical jungle with unreal, pristine waterfalls and beaches.

AC: If you could trade jobs with anyone for a day who would it be? JW: As a designer, there's no other job I'd rather be doing. But as a kid, I always wanted to be a marine biologist like Jacques Cousteau.

AC: What book is on your bedside table? JW: I have three books; none of them are finished. One is a history book called Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, another is a business book The E Myth and the third is a just-for-fun, fiction book called This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It (John Dies at the End).

AC: Who are the most interesting designers working today? JW: Marc Newson. I also really like Michael Young — he's a British-born designer based in Hong Kong. Toy designer Michael Lau was at the forefront of the urban vinyl movement and I love his style. I'm also a huge fan of James Dyson, Jonathan Ive, and entertainment designer Stan Winston has always inspired me.

AC: Were you exposed to design growing up? JW: I come from quite an artistic and mechanically inclined family. My grandfather was a renaissance man: a photographer, inventor, mechanic, engineer, architect, designer... He had so many hobbies and passions, and he created so many things. He made all of my grandmother's jewelry.

He designed and physically built the house his family lived in, including the thermostat and heating system from spare parts. He built motorcycles for my mother and her siblings. When I was a kid, he built us a tree house with a zip line, which was super dangerous, and go-karts. I was always around people who were artistic and creating things.

AC: Describe a moment in your childhood when you first identified as a designer. JW: When I was in high school, I was lucky to have an art teacher who brought in different brochures from art and design schools around the world. For the first time, I was aware you could design cars, toys or products as a career. As a kid, I was always sketching, building models, taking things apart and putting them together. When I found out it was a career path, there was no other option for me.

AC: If you could have a superpower, what would it be? JW: Eternal life — I have too many hobbies and not enough time.

AC: What’s your most prized possession? JW: My grandfather passed away this year, and I have the camera he used when he was working as a photographer and a backpack he built for his Boy Scout group in the 1950s.

AC: Where is your happy place? JW: There are so many! Twenty meters deep, swimming with manta rays off the coast of Thailand, snowboarding in Japan. There's a canyon in Hong Kong that looks like Jurassic Park — it's just so raw with waterfalls everywhere. But to summarize, my happy place is being outside in a gorgeous location with people I care about.

AC: How would your closest friend describe you? JW: A relentless, laser-focused — I hate to say it — asshole, but with a heart of gold.

#catalyst #josh wright #product design #design #artcenter #artcenter college of design #catalystcase

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ralfstrashcan · 5 years

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3x19 Reaction / Commentary

I didn't even skip breakfast today, it's almost as if I'm a real functioning adult ahahaha.

SDFALFJSKLDFJASDF I'M ALREADY A MESS

Ngl those first few shots made me think I had fallen headfirst into a zombie apocalypse movie. Wind swooshing through the speakers, no living soul in sight, no cars driving, just Magnus walking along the street, on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams hahahahaha sorry I'll stop.

Wow what a jerk.

There's been so many hilarious jokes about the “What fool summoned you” line, and my favorite one will forever remain this.

So, points to Magnus for asking, minus points for buying this shit not-sound-at-all story. Even “fatherly love” can't just screw the laws of nature, okay, Magnus shouldn't just skim over this. Then again I can definitely cut him slack on this because he is a little preoccupied with other problems at the moment.

Listen, Magnus's body language throughout this whole scene (and also throughout the sneak peek we saw for 3x20) is so expressive. Imma skim over it because I plan to do a thorough Relationship / Scene Analysis for Magnus and Asmodeus, so let me just leave this picture here uncommented.

No wait, I have a question. Isn't Magnus's magic occupied with guarding Lilith's home? Did Asmodeus pick it up before summoning himself or did he call it just now? Also, does Asmodeus know that Lilith is on the loose? Then again, is she even? Because no Shadowhunter can be bothered to look for her and she did say that she wanted to go back to Edom... but that was probably a lie to get Cain to cooperate. And how could she even send herself back to Edom? So many questions. Anyway moving on because who cares about Lilith.

Magnus's face when he gets his magic back. ....................yes I have no witty words here, sorry.

Lol okay I have. I love this scene, I absolutely LOVE Magnus's face and how expressive it is, but I've also been dreaming of an epic eye-sparkling, energy-crackling mid-battle-scene where Magnus regains his magic for uhhhh almost a year now, and in terms of dramatic-ness this was pretty anti-climactic. And I think we can agree he won't lose his magic again and then get it back in a more dramatic fashion. Also where are his cat eyes I feel cheated.

I mean, come on, even he gets to show them!! Btw what a dick cunning move to use them to manipulate Magnus. Since they made a compelling argument the first time around.

Also LOL Asmodeus playing nice for one second and when Magnus denies him he immediately shows his hand with “I won't take no for an answer.” Man has no patience XD

Finally I wanna give a huge HUGE shout out to Magnus for resisting Asmodeus becuase can you even imagine how low he must be feeling and yet he has enough presence of mind left to realize that whatever comfort Asmodeus offers can't be true, there must be a hook and it's best to stay away. Dude what strength.

“I only lost sight of her for a minute.” “Enough time for the Evil Rune to have taken hold.”

Uuuhhhh since when?? Did they also go to the bathroom together before?? Did I miss that?? I mean, sure, Clary was drifting sometimes, but she spent a whole half episode in the same cell as Jonathan with Jace “away” behind the glass wall and out of her sight, so...... yeah. This is a little sudden.

She keeps saying that but we have yet to see her actually filter anything. #nofilter

“No one can hurt us if we get to Morning Star first. And once we have that sword the entire world will be terrified of us....”

So he wants that evil sword not to open a rift but to keep the NY Shadowhunters off his back so he can live his life in peace. I-n-t-e-r-e-s-t-i-n-g.

Yes, good. Finally learned your lesson.

.............Or not??? I mean it's not like Clary pretended to be on his side before, to lull him into a false security and gain the upper hand. Why would he fall for it now? Because he acts like Jace is the only risk factor here, and Clary is of course truly and wholly on his side. I mean, true, the circumstances are different since she freed him and all, but like. Guy must have trust issues by now. Where are they.

Also

he should start a self help group with Alec hahahahahaha *weeping*

Me, waiting for the next episode of Shadowhunters. (Also I just noticed Simon says “me neither” not “mine neither” so it sounds as if he's not Izzy's thing, either and LOL I couldn't agree more ahahaha.)

Uh-huh, I agree. Perfect timing. I mean, it's not like there was a glaring 98% there earlier, and as if he didn't have plenty of time before to bring this unfortunate line of conversation up. This is on you, Simon. Don't blame the filtering.

HAHAHA ASK ALEC, HE'S GOING TO THROW IT AT HIM HAHAHAHAHAHA

Seriously though. Just, uh, crush it into powder, add some saline solution, done. And I'm not even a scientist. This is intuitive. The heck.

I'm 1000000% on board with all of this, okay. Over excited Alec is the best Alec. Handholding is the best. Magnus's weariness of surprises is headcanon confirmed. Yes to all of it.

So there were a few lines that were widely interpreted as allusions to their kinky sex life and tbh I never bought any of it because I thought it was seeing too much where there was nothing, but this is so very obviously meant in a kinky way that I'll accept it. Another headcanon confirmed ahahaha this episode is so generous to me.

Ugh I'm so gonna have to write something about that. And knowing myself, it'll be sad closeted Alec daydreaming of all the things he can never have.

Question time, what are those weird rivets thingies? Do they hold any meaning? Is their placement of importance? Because they look very deliberate and very there. I'm confused.

Also, this scene was designed to drive me crazy. There's 7 different shots where we see the lock's placement and there are no less than 3 (!!!!!) different placements. Placement #1, #3 and #5 are consistent (though really, #1 and #5 shouldn't even count because they are clearly the same shot, just with Magnus's hand reaching for the lock) on the left side of the yellow lock, to the bottom left of the Dips lock.

Then we see Alec placing it in an empty compartment at the very edge of the construction (placement #2), only for it to be on the compartment below that in the next shot (placement #4), sharing space with a little gray-blueish lock. This is the same place from where Magnus removes it then (placement #6).

I hate inconsistencies, okay, and I really did notice all this the first time watching. I can't not-see stuff like this. The only fun that comes out this detail obsessiveness is the lock that clearly ships Captain America and Captain Marvel (left) and the lock that was placed from two years in the future (right) because ahahahaha did the show forget it takes place in 2016?? It would seem so.

And yes, I chose to focus on this instead of the fact that Magnus incinerates their lock because that hurts my heart too much to think about, okay. That scene was perfect, the music swelling in all the right places and just. So heart-wrenching. I might've teared up a little. You can't prove anything.

Why she not removing those paper thingies? Seems impractical.

Paint on face trope? Check.

Yeah Raphael, lemme pay you some respect for facing your mistakes like that. I like it a lot.

Istg if they don't give him GPS this time and just rely on the tracking rune again, which Jonathan and Clary will insist he blocks, then imma flip my shit.

.......................so many fanfics want to be written here, okay. So many.

Also is no one gonna talk about the fact that they all put the ring on the pointer when that's not the intuitive position to place a ring? For security reasons alone you should put it on your middle finger so it doesn't accidentally slip off. Oh right, I forgot. Magic ring.

I love how Alec's voice wavers and you just know he sends Jace away because he'll start crying if he doesn't (even if in this screen cap Alec looks weirdly happy). Btw headcanon that Jace didn't realize something was up at first and was only tipped off when Izzy asked earlier if Alec was okay, and then he prodded at the parabatai connection and realized... there was nothing. Just a solid wall of nothing, because Alec's been sealing off his feelings completely.

1) Wow, Simon, your condolences are amazing. 2) Please, explain? Is she in a coma? Walking around as if she'd had a lobotomy?? But whatever, just skim over this, she's a minor character anyway and nobody cares about her *shrug*

This is the LAZIEST plot convenience I ever had to see with my own two eyes. I really can't work up the energy to rage about this. Just, wtf. Then again, not calling ahead with vital information seems to be Luke's Thing, just remember the 3x15 disaster. At this point it might as well be considered a character trait of him and no longer plot convenience. *sigh* Also, Shadowhunters are major creeps, am I supposed to believe they don't have a few liters of all of their soldiers' blood stored away somewhere, for reasons?

Uh-huh, Izzy. And if you care to remember, that was about 20 episodes ago. And since vampires have a constant craving for blood they seem to have some kind of metabolic. If you want to tell me that Jace's blood is still IN Simon, then either a) he's been chipping away at the Jace-blood-stash he has hidden in his second gastric and if that runs out he'll no longer be a daylighter or b) Jace's blood went into Simon's cells and changed him on a molecular level..... in which case, to extract it they'd have to remove it, un-daylighter-ing Simon in the process. Or maybe just parts of him? Imagine if he was a daylighter except for his left arm or something. In any case, this is majorly ridiculous and I can't believe I have to suffer through this.

????????????? Who opened that portal? I mean, if he had to call on a warlock to get away, wouldn't it have been easiser for Izzy and Co. to stop him from running through that portal and make him donate some blood first? Instead of forcing this bullshit logic on me? Ugh. But I get it, this is necessary to justify a Sizzy scene. Whatever.

Hahahhahha.

Which means nothing, since Jace can activate his runes without his stele. Or did they forget that part again?? I mean, it's been half a season since he last did that.

“And if it wasn't for our connection I suspect you'd do it again.”

lolololol hilarious.

HAHHAHA WILL YOU STOP WITH THE HILARITY

Honestly, the way they all act I get the distinct feeling I'm watching an exasperated kindergartener and two particularly clingy toddlers vying for her attention XD

Uuuuhhhh yeah hit me with more Malec Flashbacks to make me feel shitty, why don't you.

Okay, consoled. Btw thanks for confirming another headcanon that between the two of them Magnus is the one easier swayed by puppy eyes.

HAHAHAHA of course my mind immediately interpreted that as a misguided pun about Magnus being a Prince of Edom hahahaa wtf Alec

Dammit, his eyes. You can really see how he's allowing himself to start dreaming about it.

Also, can't believe they had a kiddie talk with at least some seriousness, what, two months into their relationship?? Haha. And internally Madzie was like “Uh boring grown up talk, at least I got my sprinkles.”

See, this is what I have problems with. On the one hand, even with all his emotional turmoil going on, Magnus is still enough in his right mind not to fall for Asmodeus's sweet talking, but on the other hand he revisits all of those memories and doesn't realize Alec breaking up with him can't have been real? This doesn't really add up. Either he is out of his mind with emotions that he can't see this very very strange happening for being something fishy (then he shouldn’t have been able to so easily resist Asmodeus), or he's still level-headed enough not to be driven by emotions entirely (then he should have realized the breakup was fake).

toddler fight intensifies

I'M WHEEZING HAHAHAHAHAHAH R U FOR REAL. Also remember my statement from last week? Where I said “I mean, in a way it's nice to know that Demonic Clary isn't smarter than Regular Clary.” Turns out she's so much worse than Regular Clary XD

Lol Raphael is that still you talking or the Plot Point? Because ngl, when I saw that sneak peek promo thingy where Jordan eyes the dramatically last vial of serum in the Institute I immediately thought they want to cook up a conflict there, where he steals the last vial needed to help save Clary and bla bla bla. I really hope they don't go down that road because I feel he should be better than this by now. *sigh* In any case, while I enjoyed the first part of this plot line with Raphael coming here to make reparations, this feels really forced and convenient.

OH MY GOD THANK YOU SIMON FOR ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS WTF I NEED ANSWERS

Wow can't believe they pulled this obvious and clearly unfitting parallel to Sizzy. I mean, Simon lost his glasses back in S1 and even before that Izzy noticed he was hot in like ep 2. She's been appreciating him as a friend since at least 2B if not sooner. So please don't pretend that she just didn't notice what a great guy he is, because she did. She knows he's someone you can count on, who's there when you need him, with advice or a joke or just to listen to you. She knows all this, and has for seasons. But, surprise surprise, you don't fall in love with everyone who's a great guy and a good friend. That is a thing. Friendships are a thing. Anyway, at least I can wholeheartedly agree that in any possible scenario Izzy is the hot girl XD

HAHAHA JACE THAT'S PAYBACK FOR ALL THOSE TIMES YOU INTERRUPTED MALEC HAHA KARMA IS A BITCH RIGHT

.......or just use glamors to look like Downworlders. Just saying.

Jonathan using the cuts to get a secretive chest grab in on Jace, but I know all those sleazy tricks and you can't slip that feel-up past me #busted

*weeping tears* yeah, and he'll never get the real deal. what a tragedy.

“...the Downworlder club. I think the runes front and center on my neck make a compelling argument, don't you agree?” Also the foreboding background music totally spoiled this 'twist.' (I'm using ''s because it was totally obvious this wouldn't work.)

Look I just love Alec, okay. I LOVE ALEC.

*waves hand* elite guard *waves hand some more* blue mark on his neck *smacks self in the face with waving hand* look i'm pretty sure Meliorn doesn't have a mark like this and he's like, the only Seelie that gets regular screen and talking time with the queen. But I'm way too behind schedule to start looking into it, I might edit something in here later (or never ahahaha).

OH DEAR THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

YES YES YES PLEASE

DUUUUDE WHY ARE YOU GIVING HIM IDEAS WHAT THE HELL

Also, remembering that short sequence of Magnus shooting red magic at his temples from the promo doesn't bode too well for the rest of the episode. Dammit.

You had one job, Lindsay. One. Job. (Yes, please imagine the Loki Gif here. I just love him a lot, okay. Loki <3<3<3)

(^pls imagine her little disenchanted headshake because any screen caps I tried to take made her look drugged out of her mind lol.)

Yep, this is it. This is it.

Sooooo.... how exactly did they persuade the bouncer? Just curious.

HAHAHAAHAH duuuuuude hahahhaa.

........when exactly did Jonathan spy all that? I mean, I've been having questions about the pacing since that ep with the Baby Jonathan Flashbacks, because that manibus whatever demon? Referring to 2x05. So Jonathan only got to earth after that? Howwww? Not thanks to Valentine, right, since he didn't even know Jonathan existed until 2x15 where Jonathan intercepted him from his portal to Idris? And didn't they say Sebastian Verlac disappeared half a year ago?? How does that all match up?

In any case, I feel like the seelie queen suddenly having a warlock boy toy who she can't order into her realm and who she has monthly scheduled appointments with that the whole shadow world knows about is a) totally absurd b) pretty ooc for her and c) reeking of plot convenience. They just couldn't find a better excuse for her to be at a certain place at a certain time. They should have made her attend a fashion show, or hell, a gardening contest. Would have been more credible than whatever this is.

“I grab the queen. Clary portals the three of us away.” “The four of us, including the queen.”

HAHAHHAHAHHA I CAN'T XD XD XD #slightly consoled

WHEN THE HELL DID JONATHAN READ / WATCH THE SHINING ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW WTF!!!!!

1) This doesn't work in real life. Do you have any idea how much time it takes to catch a snow flake or a raindrop this way? I know because I've tried, and the anwer is ages. 2) Seems a very uneconomical way to distrubute drugs. Whoever invented that business model must be in deep depts by now. 3) What kind of shitty plan was that on Jonathan's part? Get Jace on drugs, he'll surely expose himself to be a traitor? I hate the fact that it works. I hate that everyone's shitty plans always work (re: Sizzy's dilettantish prison infiltration) because that's why they all keep making shitty plans. Positive reinforcement and all that. The only one who always gets punched in the face for making okay-to-good plans is Alec, and that's why he's the overthinker. So unfair.

“Well this is awkward because I just stole it for you.”

So frakkin predictable. Also, how did he steal it from the table when Izzy and Simon where guarding it?? It clearly was still there when Maia left and like

Did Jordan just grab it and run? So many questions.

Don't get me wrong, that whole forging the sword sequence was super badass, but like, if you're wielding scorching hot metal it seems a little impractical to just wear security goggles and a leather apron. There were freaking sparks flying and Izzy ducked. What the hell. What about, idk, unconventional but, a protective suit?? And Simon isn't any better. “Oh, I could die from this sword? Just lemme hide behind this doorway real quick.” *sigh* One of these days a character should die because of dumbass behavior, maybe that'd teach them all a lesson.

Also, this is totally logic. They had a splinter from the original sword that they then made tons of serum from, which they saved 3 vials of..... and somehow this was still enough to forge a whole new frikking sword that's apparently just as powerful as the original one. I don't even know where to start with this bullshit.

.................dude, if you wanted to persuade her you should have pointed out the ring to her. But maybe this isn't about logic at all, this is about wanting to know if he is Clary's first choice without logic or reason, and that would make sense for his character, even if it's not the most sensible or productive course of action.

Me, during the fight scene: “Wow, I believe all that Seelie guard slaughtering is not going to end up in a Downworlder vs Shadowhunter war again..... ha..... hahahaha.”

Arguing with a possessed person. Again. Honestly this is the, uhhh, fifth time this happens on this show? And people just seem to never learn. SIGH

Yeah, by not following the plan and acting stupid, so my sympathy is pretty limited aka non-existent. Btw his slide across the Institute floor was hilarious. And also, pretty nice of Clary not to just kill him. This is the second time she's spared him. Interesting.

ISTG IF THIS SCENE ENDS WITH A CLIFFHANGER IF HE GOES THROUGH WITH IT OR NOT IMMA FLIP MY SHIT

*manic laughter* I love that this makes so much sense. Asmodeus needs Magnus's heartbreak so he'll be susceptible to Asmodeus's influence. So his motives are shitty. On the other hand it's not as if what Asmodeus says to Magnus isn't the truth. Fighting through this will make Magnus stronger, no doubt. Knowing he can be this low and still get back on his feet without running away and succumbing to the pain. And I'm glad, for obvious reasons, that Magnus didn't go through with the memory removal because ain't nobody got time for those issues. Mending the breakup in a satisfying was will be hard enough as is. Back to the scene at hand, I gotta say I love this about Asmodeus: He doesn't lie outright, he mostly lies by omission, and he speaks enough truth to really screw with everyone's perception. It's awesome. He is such a great antagonist and his dynamic with Magnus is highly fascinating.

Conclusion: Not enough Malec (seriously, their only scenes together are flashbacks? the frakkin audacity) but tbh I'm still too high on endorphines since the memory removal didn't happen that I'm mostly okay with it. And the Jonathan-Jace comedy was nice.

#shadowhunters #3x19 #magnus bane #alec lightwood #isabelle lightwood #clary fray #jace wayland #asmodeus #simon lewis #jonathan morgenstern #maia roberts #kyle #luke garroway #raphael santiago #reaction

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vlgeo439019-blog · 5 years

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What is the future of rural spaces?

Anna Mae’s Bakery & Restaurant in Millbank, Ontario.

At the beginning of this course I had a pretty vague understanding as to what rurality was. As most naive young folks believe, I had this impression of rural spaces that was very much agricultural-based, leaving little wiggle room for other ideas and different perceptions of the countryside to exist, those of which were very much inspired from nature and the outdoors. I am now entirely a believer in the diversity of rural spaces in Canada, those of which range from small, quaint little towns such as Millbank, Ontario to what one could call the vast wilderness in both Banff and Jasper National Parks.

With all of these landscapes, rural by nature of course, one must beg the question - what is their future? In the next 50 years what will become of these places, the vast diversity of rural spaces that we have all come to know and love?

I found this question a little disheartening, to be truly honest. Not the question itself, but the direction my answer was going. Based on what I’ve learned throughout this class, rural spaces are far from appreciated within society. Not only is the rate of urban expansion and sprawl growing, but there are no measures to prevent this from occurring. Land preservation initiatives are overall very ineffective in Ontario and other areas in Canada. In addition, with an increased number of people moving into cities, urban areas are pressured to expand despite perceived barriers such as green space.

For the purposes of the blog prompt this week, I will discuss each of these issues in detail.

Urban Expansion, Sprawl, & Population Growth:

As I’ve illustrated in other blog posts previous to this, urban expansion is a serious issue in Ontario. In a report released by the University of Guelph titled “Protecting Southern Ontario’s Farmland” (I’ve definitely referenced this before), a significant amount of land, more particularly the agricultural landscape, is continually threatened due to urban development and sprawl.

Between 1981 and 1986 prime agricultural land represented 59% of all land in Canada that has been converted to urban uses. In 1996 19% of all Class 1 agricultural land in Canada was occupied by urban development - this percentage increases each year. In fact, urban centres consume land equal to the size of Hamilton, Ontario every year.

At the current rate an additional 260,000 acres (1,070 square kilometres) will be urbanized by 2021 in areas north of Toronto, a space almost double the size of Toronto currently.

How do we combat this? How do we inspire change to protect our farmland and precious green spaces?

I don’t know if there is an adequate solution to this problem. In Toronto for instance, census data from 2016 indicates that this city grows at a rate exceeds the national average. Since the last census in 2016 the population of Toronto increased by 6.2 percent, representing nearly 2 million people. City planners are encouraged by legislation and the creation of the Green Belt to build upwards rather than outwards, but at some point these restrictions will not be enough. This is especially the case with a growing immigrant population.

Nearly half of Toronto’s population is represented by new Canadians, those of which move to the city for the resources, jobs, and the pockets of familiar communities this urban centre provides. Homes need to be built, apartments need to be raised - the need for housing will not vanish any time soon, not in Canada’s largest city and most substantial immigrant ‘magnet’ so to speak. Toronto remains as Canada’s top destination for migrant populations, despite a growing interest in the prairies.

Lack of Land Preservation:

Some people believe that a growing movement to protect and preserve rural landscapes will help to prevent urban expansion and sprawl. The Greenbelt for instance, is considered as a great success in southern Ontario. With over two million hectares of valuable farmland, forests, wetlands, and watersheds protected in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region, development initiatives are virtually non-existent. The Places to Grow Act, developed alongside the Green Belt, legally reinforces and encourages the growth of major cities where it is needed most - downtown cores.

The Green Belt.

Or so people think.

Yes, both the Green Belt and Places to Grow act are successful, but what about those spaces beyond the Green Belt? Areas like Shelburne, Guelph, and Barrie?

Leap-Frog Effect:

This legislation has unknowingly curtailed the development of new subdivisions and housing complexes to the edges of the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) - to those communities and municipalities that have access to major highways such as 400 and 401, but are not necessarily prepared for a new commuter population. This anomaly is recognized as the leap-frog effect.

Changing Land-use in Southern Ontario. The large red area in the centre of the map is the Simcoe County area.

The above map is from a research project conducted by Jonathan Scida using GIS technology. According to this figure, many municipalities within the southern half of Simcoe County, just outside the reach of the Green Belt, have experienced increased levels of urban sprawl and development. This is a result of close access to major highways and arterial roads, those of which are viable transportation options to access Toronto for employment purposes.

Developers are drawn to this land because it’s largely unprotected, land is cheap, and people will flock to these areas for a chance to live in homes that are within reach of the city. As a result of this, those communities outside of the Green Belt are largely ignored and are forced to face continued development and loss of agricultural land. This is a problem as 70% of Ontario’s prime agricultural land lies outside of the Green Belt boundary.

No Legislation to Protect Agriculture:

What about legislation?

As I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, this is largely ineffective as well. Currently the protection of agricultural land isn’t legislated in Ontario - in Canada. The Green Belt may exist, but it does very little to change how agricultural land is treated in regards to its land use. Yes, this land may be used to produce food, but on a legal-level it is considered the same as land that is used for purely commercial or residential purposes, all the result of the Planning Act, 1990.

As illustrated within a report released by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, “Ontario’s current land-use planning system is geared towards the accommodation of urban (residential) development and other urban-related land uses within the framework of “good planning principles”. Within this framework, farmland is typically viewed as a background landscape upon which development is to be painted, or in other words, as tarmac in-waiting”.

As this continues to occur other policy tools such as land easements, stewardship programs, and land trusts prove to be inadequate. These tools are largely undeveloped and depend on volunteers for their successful functioning.

In addition, decisions are routinely made that negatively impact agricultural interests and often act to ignore the needs, wants, and demands of farmers. Plans are often put forward that undermine agricultural interests and there is very little pressure and motivation for planners and developers to evaluate the true impacts of their activities on the ability farmers have to preserve and act as stewards of their lands. Parcels of land are often divided as a result of construction and serve as barriers between farmed lands.

Despite the fact that agriculture is integral to Canada and Ontario’s economy, policy and decision-makers are deaf to the needs of farmers. Farmers have no voice, and this is only going to increase in the near future if legislation and planning does not change.

Tourism & Creative Destruction:

Finally, in the future rural tourism is likely to increase across Canada and within the province of Ontario. Rural areas offer tourists an assortment of unique experiences that are not easily replicated elsewhere in the world. Not only does the countryside offer people the ability to relax, experience nature, and the great outdoors, but allows people to develop an appreciation for a culture, history, and heritage that is unlike their own.

St. Jacobs Market.

St. Jacobs for instance, a community 20-30 minutes north of Waterloo in Ontario, offers tourists the chance to experience the local Mennonite culture and purchase local foods, goods, and produce from an internationally recognized farmer’s market, one that is home to over 300 vendors offering a good deal. If people have the desire to do so, they may partake in a horse and buggy ride, walk on some of the local trails alongside the Conestoga River, or check out the model railway downtown.

Although these experiences are largely successful in bringing tourists into the area, generating jobs for the local population, and a surge of wealth that acts to help renew the community, it must be mentioned that many rural towns and villages that become tourist hubs often succumb to what is known as the “tourist gaze” or “creative destruction”.

What do these terms mean?

Rural spaces such as St. Jacobs are heavily transformed and commodified to meet the needs of tourists, largely urbanites. Heritage is over-exaggerated and buildings and destinations are designed to appear as though they originate right from a time in the distant past. A perfect example of this is the Tim Hortons in St. Jacobs. This building, as seen below, is purposefully designed to look very similar to a ranch.

St. Jacobs Tim Hortons

Yes, this may act to preserve rural areas and St. Jacobs in a sense, but it must be argued that the authentic aspect of rural communities is lost as a result of this. The opinions, stories, and views of local populations are lost as a result of continued changes that reflect the urban view of what constitutes as rural (rural idyll).

Will this be the case for all rural towns and villages in the future? I really hope not, but I have my doubts.

As I mentioned a bit earlier, I’m more than a bit disheartened. The future of rural communities and landscapes is looking pretty bleak, especially based on all the research we’ve had the opportunity to conduct in class. Fortunately, I haven’t lost all hope.

I think that it’s our responsibility as educated citizens and students to play a role in advocating for rural spaces. We need to fight for the voices of farmers and open up the metaphorical political, social, and economic doors that act as barriers to their speech and allow them to be heard within society. We need to fight for better land-use laws and legislation to protect farmland and green spaces. We need to fight for the better management of tourism - authentic tourism if that’s even possible. We need to be spokespeople for our home and native land (insert Canadian national anthem here).

I know that I’m hardly inspiring, but I think that my point has been made. We need to do better and make better decisions if we plan on improving the future of rural spaces in Canada. We can’t expect positive change to happen - we need to be advocates and make positive change happen!

- Vanessa

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