#and everybody only gets the five tokens for playing and no tokens for winning

[rohirric-hunter]

I walk into the hobnanigans fields. I identify a field that is missing some sticks. I start to cheat the field both to get tokens for myself and to reset it for anyone wanting to actually play a game. Three people come and stand in the field and go AFK?????

#lotro #im confused this never used to happen #sometimes they grab a stick at the very end but not always #im uncomfortable with this i feel like theyre staring at me #if youre gonna stand in the field you gotta help me cheat it thats the new rule #ive also been experiencing a glitch where sometimes (not always) the announcer will not declare a winning side #and everybody only gets the five tokens for playing and no tokens for winning

[popculturebuffet]

Sam and Max Save the World Retrospective: The Mob, The Mole and the Meatball (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy freelance police and welcome back to my retrospective look at Telltale Sam and Max! We're onto chapter 3!

Chapter 3…. is my faviorite so far of the four chapters i've played so far. (And I didn't skip one i've simply played ahead a bit into Abe LIncoln Must Die! ), having the bets ballance of the truly amazing writing with gameplay. I rarely had to turn to a guide, with most puzzles being the right ballance of challenging while still being fun to figure out. So join me under the cut as our heroes have to play some wack a rat, fake a murder, and join the mafia to find a mole.

Chapter 3 opens with our heroes getting their usual assignment from the Chief: his mob in the infamous toy mafia , a bunch of standard mafiso who wear teddy bear heads, has gone missing so our heroes head to Ted E. Bear's Mafia free playland and Casino.

Part of why I love this chapter so much… is the setting. The combo of a chucky cheese with a casino (having a slot machine and poker but also using tokens, having a buffet (that's of course closed), and having a wack a rat machine) is genius and the singing heads offer it. There's also the fun easter egg of pulling your gun.. which naturally gets every gun in the place trained on you.

There's also the fun of a simple gag: your code words are "does the carpet match the drapes?" which naturally gets a lot of great responses and somehow dosen't get our heroes hit in the junk.

What's fun is the activites are two simple but fun ones: the first is a mini game wack a rat which while challenging, most of it is from the fact i'm playing on switch and the game wasn't reofrmatted from being clearly meant for mouse. It's still hilarious.

The meat though is a showdown with cardsharp Lenoard Steakcharmer whose just.. a delight. From his obviously shady apperance, to his relationship with his dead mom, Leonard is eaisly the highlight of the chapter. The trick with this puzzle wasn't figuring out how to beat him, you get an ace in your office, so it'eas easy enough to see that's how.. the question was how. The dealer refuses to use it as they already have five and there isn't an option to let Max jam it down lenoards throat and steal his ten million tokens. The actual solution though is awesome: ther'es a reflective clowns nose over the entrance, tha'ts not only how lenoard can see your cards, but how you beat him: you slap the ace up there, he assumes you have one, and thus folds…. netting our heroes their prize and leonoard some therapy. Everybody wins!

The next challenge is getting in which is easy due to Leonoards close compettition, the bug.. which being bosco is a LITERAL bug. Bosco has also installed an anti-delivery system as the toy mafia keeps trying to put things in. Gee I wonder if that'll be important later.

The Bug is fucking great, having apparently been to nam.. and look if I have two comedic weak spots it's cocaine and people having been in nam, so of course I loved him. He's also the funnest item to use so far as he's versatile, able to copy dialouge from people, and thus it makes his use trickier in a fun way: you have ot figure out both where to plant him and who to have himc opy. It comes into play more next time but given most other items are just "use them whent he plot says so" it's a nice change of pace.

With him we can get into the back office and Don Ted E. Bear is impressed with our work, and thus gives us a few assignments before we can join the family, none of which are plesant and two thirds of which threaten our friends: whacking Sybil and delivering the hypno bears from last chapter to bosco. You also find the one from last chapter in your closet which is .. there. It'd be werid if I didn't mention the closet but after last chapter's trophy and especially with the next one, it's a bit underwheming as a souvineer. The third chapter is the titular meatball: the mafia's treasured hoagie has been stolen.

I tackled the last one first as it was the easiest to figure out: they mentioned the theif would be fencing it… and in a nice chekov's gun that for once isn't as obscure, we naturally only know Jimmy.

What did suprise me was who was selling it, Lenoard, who I was delighed to see again and have a tense standoff with… only to find out his gun is a pop gun and thus Max easily solves it with a violence. Seriously finding out of all the options that was the one that solved it was hilarious. The game uses the fact you expect something more complicated.. only for the simpliest solution to be the easiest, thus making all the time attmepting ot talk him down funnier. We leave Leonoard beat up and thus have our first item.

Next is Sybil. Her new career is witness for hire, which unrotuantely means the mob wants her dead and has her monitored. The how is complicated as she refuses to fake her death, but figuring it out was satisfying: she constantly lifts a mug.. which is interactable. So you simply steal it for a second, fill it with ketchup at boscos and then shoot it, making it look like they got her. Bloody hilarious. Career wise it's the weakest so far, so not much to say. Same with french bosco, which really speaks to how fun the ted e bears setting and the actual puzzles are this time: our two allies aren't at their best but what we have to do is so fun and clever it dosen't matter.

For Bosco it's simple: use a magnet we got earlier on his camera afte rdistracting him. Simple stuff but still fun to pull off and his bafflement at them delivering while his back was turn is great. Also with Btads now focused on merch entering, you can shoot up the place, which is always fun.

So with all three jobs done, we get inducted into the mob.. and get a shocking twist I should've seen coming from a mile away: THE MOB'S HEAD IS THE MOLE. And of course he's a literal mole. Unfortunately this outs us to the mob's head, and thus we end up having to run. This leads to a fun chase sequence as WE'RE being chased this time. After taking out the mob behind us with some obstacles.

So it's onto the final puzzle: dealing with the mole himself in his spooky factory, where he's making about 80 dozen teddy bears to ship out and brainwash the populace. The good news is his main weapon is brainwashing our heroes to work in his factory.. and both our heroes are immune.

(Wah wah)

Sam because of his hat and Max.. well originally I was just going to shrug but the more I thought about it the more I realize there is a solid answer: Max's mental state is so erratic and deranged brainwashing has no effect on him. I mean think about it: his reaction to most horrors he faces is "again again". Some things truly creep him out, sure, but his thought processes can sometimes be so alien that the hypnosis would likely have to be specifically catered to him to work and even then i'm not sure tha'td be possible unless the person desinging said hypnosis was someone on Max's level of psychosis… like say the Joker.

Anyways this leads to a fun bit where you have to fake max's death (using Lenoard's popgun, a nice literal chekovs gun) then figure out how to destroy the machines. The solution.. is clever: you get a screwdriver and previously the one armed bandit slot machine I almost forgot to mention , that gives no prize and only gave one when used as a hiding place for the meatball sub, and use it to alter one of the bears and thus use the Mole's hypnosis plot on him, causing him to wreck the factory and our heroes to exscapte the twisted burning wreckage as they do every tuesday. OUr heroes pat themselveso n the back but like last time it's clear this sin't over as one of the mafiso bears takes off his head and calls the mysterious mastermind behind all this to trigger plan B.

Next Month: Our heroes must be bad enough dudes to stop the president, then presidential canditate the lincoln memorial… by having Max run for president, a classic case of the solution being far worse than the actual problem. Until then thanks for reading.

#sam and max #sam and max save the world #telltale games #sam #max #sybil pandemik #bosco #it's me bosco #the mafia #chuck e cheese #nintendo switch

[elizabethsway]

Oh yeah, I got to play this game... At first I was like, nah, but Friend John said that it was like an elevated version of Splendor and that whether I liked it or not he was gonna make me play the game. That leads me to my discovery of quite a fun game.

Some games go on for days and my attention span is not very long but this game had me excited. There are four rounds and by the second round, when I realized the game was almost over, I was a little sad. This game definitely doesn't overstay it's welcome.

Now, if you know me, I am not strategically built. I had barely any idea what I was doing but I was able to catch on quick in this game and have a slight bit of strategy (no I don't think this is a highly strategic game).

Basically your a bit in the future, you get a community to control, mine was a society that loved scientific advancements.

Each round you get 7 cards and you rotate, only picking one each time before passing to the next player. Eventually, after filtering through everyone's cards, you will have selected 7 card that work toward your will or game plan (this is called drafting). I was getting a lot of science cards coincidentally, but I did get extra points for science cards anyways because I was the science community.

Then you choose what you're going to do with the cards that you kept. You can either scrap them for resources, or you can choose to build them (in your construction area). Once you choose to build them you cannot do anything else with them other than build. When you build these cards they sometimes give you extra resources and or victory points.

Then you go down the board (starting from the tan fleshy looking cubes and going all the way to blue) and see who has the most of each resource listed on their cards. Whoever has the highest amount of resources for that category gets a special victory point token. Sometimes you can scrap the victory points to build cards that make it anymore victory points.

But even if you don't have the most of that resource you still get to collect the cube resource for how many you have on your cards.

If you end up putting excess cubes on your city that you can't use to build, once you have five cubes on your city, you can collect a Red cube, which is basically a wild card.

Then all at once everybody goes into building mode. You use the resources and put them on the cards, building the pattern of resources that the card requires. When you build the card you put it on your city ( red outline in picture above) and that'll help you get more resources in the future but some of the cards also have winnings that you can get right after building.

And then you repeat all these steps by starting again with seven cards and rotating until you've done this four times in which the game will end.

That's when you calculate your victory points that are on the cards or the tokens that you've collected from having the most of one resource.

It was a pretty quick game.

Definitely think you should try it out if you get a chance.

#its a wonderful world #wonderful #world #boardgame #games #fun #splendor #quick

[askkrenko]

Krenko’s Guide to Creature Types: Human

Art by Mark Rosewater

What is a Human (flavorfully)?

It’s actually pretty poorly defined. Humans are a race like Goblins, Elves, and Dwarves, but they’re varied to the point of incoherence. Humans exist in basically all classes and on all planes, and their cultures often barely resemble each other. While Elves always have that naturalistic bend and Vedalken are clearly the smart ones, Humans do a bit of everything. Perhaps that’s they’re gimmick- huge versatility- but the fact is that they’re good enough at everything to be muscling in on all the other races’ territories, so it’s just not interesting.

What is a Human (mechanically)?

Humans are a race that can go in any color with any class. They tend to be small, but there a few with large power, including one that’s an 8/8 for no apparent reason. I think maybe he’s supposed to represent an entire human battleship, because he can only attack people who control islands, but it’s not really clear. 

Actual Human reward cards are primarily in White but appear in all five colors. White and Green Human rewards make your Humans stronger, Red and Blue simply reward you for playing or controlling Humans, and Black wants to sacrifice Humans or reward you for letting your Humans die.

Can I make a Human deck?

Making a Human deck is trivial and you’ve probably already done it. Go ahead, look at your decks. I’m sure at least one of them is mostly humans.

Humans are the most populous creature type in Magic: the Gathering by a wide margin, to the point that it’s actually kind of depressing. At over 2500 cards, there are more than 3x as many Humans as there are Wizards, the second most common creature type. Reminder here that this game is made by a company NAMED “Wizards.”

You can make a Human deck in any format. Sure, sometimes they’re better or worse in Standard, but they’re always going to be great in everything else, because there’s so many of them that all you really need is cards that say ‘choose a creature type.’ The actual Human rewards are just gravy.

For Commander, there’s a frankly absurd 360 Legendary Humans to choose from at the time of this writing, though only a few are designed for Human Tribal.

General Kudro of Drannith, Jirina Kudro, and the partner pairs of Tyrnn and Silvar and Shabraz and Brallin  are all designed in Ikoria specifically to lead Human tribal decks. Bruna, the Fading Light, and Sigarda, Heron’s Grace, though not humans themselves, are Angels that reward playing a deck full of humans.  Of these options, Jirina Kudro is probably just the best for Human Tribal. Making tokens and giving your creatures all +2/+0 is a serious buff that will help win a game, and three colors gives plenty of options.

There’s one other Legendary Human for human rewards, but due to the circumstances surrounding that card, I’m just going to say that if you choose to use it in a Humans deck before its proper reprinting, I’m going to judge you for it.

Pictured: Not that human

Is Human a good creature type?

Human is one of the worst creature types in Magic. There’s too many of them, they’re not an interesting race, and the only place there’s an identity to them worth noting is on Innistrad. Humans on Innistrad are really cool, as they’re this group of inherently weak beings surrounded by monsters that want to eat them, and we get that on Ikoria, too, so it’s interesting to watch them have to band together to not be dinner, or see some turn to dark powers to get by. But in a place like Ravnica or Dominaria, they’re boring. They’re just another species, but they’re one that doesn’t bring anything to the table. 

Human rewards can be cool and interesting, especially in limited, but the problem comes in older formats. While a card like Thalia’s Lieutenant or Champion of the Parish is solid in Draft and Good in Standard, the sheer volume of humans in older formats means it’s trivial to fill your deck only with cards that trigger them. Goblin and Merfolk rewards tend to come with the inherent drawback that you only have so many Goblins and Merfolk to play. There’s so many humans that any human reward is automatically, well, five times as good as a Goblin reward, because there’s five times the number of humans as Goblins.

Look, I get that for some stupid reason, people ‘like’ humans. They want them, and they want lots of them… but they’re not good for the health of the game in the quantities that we get them. Many sets have something like 20% of the creatures being humans, and some have even more. That’s just too much. A quick skim suggests the average set these days has 150 creatures and 30 humans. Not a hard and fast rule, but that’s what I’m seeing.  And it’s not inconsistent with the fact that a bit over 20% of all creatures in Magic: the Gathering are human. 20%.  That’s absurd.

Also, have you met humans? They’re assholes. Every last one of them. Except Dave. And maybe Tom Hanks.  BUT THE REST OF THEM ARE. Seriously. Look, I get that I live on Ravnica, not everybody does, but I have to deal with Humans basically every day of my life. I don’t get the luxury of living in primarily Goblin territory. We’ve had sets in Lorwyn before, and it was great. I’d just like to see a few more sets that don’t have humans or, like BFZ/Oath, are really low on humans. 

#Krenko's Guide #Human #mtg #magic the gathering

[the-fiction-witch]

MAX P10 : Show

REAL LIFE (MY ADMIRER X) COUPLE: TBS X READER (CAMGIRL) RATING SMUT / FLIRTY

I got myself a little glass of wine and pulled out my box of toys from under my bed setting them up in view of my camera, as well as making sure my little kitty on the bed not obviously but also fairly easy to see, queuing up my laptop to cast to the tv and putting in start time for my stream while I got into my nightie and finished off my makeup. Until my stream came on and I saw I already had fifty people watching

"Good Evening Everybody" I smiled playfully waving

'SugarCookie092' - Hey Beautiful <3

'NaughtyKittens541' - Hi Sexy girl ;)

'BCSDD' - missed you Gorgeous

"Awww I missed you to BC" I giggled

'BabyBear84' - Ohhh my god you look so beautiful, Please don't say I missed anything Lina!!

"No just getting started baby bear" I giggled "So Come on boys get voting so we can get started... what are we doing first?" I smiled

'Daddy98' - What are our options sweetie?

"Well as you asked so nicely" I laughed "fifty tokens for jumps, One hundred for slaps, two hundred if we wanna play strip, and five hundred for a cumshow, so get voting Winner on the hour" I giggled

And soon enough

'Daddy98' - 100 Tokens

'BCSBB' - 200 Tokens

''NaughtyKittens541' - 50 Tokens

'Badlittlebabi' - 50 Tokens

'SugarCookie092' - 200 Tokens

'Babybear84' - 50 Tokens

"Aww Looks like Jumps are winning" I giggled as more came in until the time was up "Okay Jumps it is" I giggled getting up and jumping up and down in my little skimpy nightie

'BabyBear84' - Awww so adorable Lina <3<3<3

'BadlittleBabi' - Just one slap please Cutie xxxx

'NaughtyKittens541' - Higher for me honey ;)

'TB90' - Turn it off Lina.

'DSCBB' - What's with this Buzzkill? ^

'Daddy98' - Block Him Lina He's running our fun :(

"Awww I think TB's just playing boys" I laughed "What's the matter Jealous?" I smirked blowing a kiss to my camera all of them went crazy most of them going so fast I could barely read them in time as my viewers went up to two hundred

'Daddy98' - Awww Don't blow me kiss angel I can't take your sweet kisses xx

'Badlittlebabi' - Oooohhh More More princess

'DCSBB' - So cute aren't you little slut <3

'NaughtyKittens541' - 20 Tokens

'NaughtyKittens541' - More Kisses! More kisses!

'BabyBear84' - Kisses Please

'SugarCookie092' - So Adorable <3<3<3

Even if it was only really meant for Thomas

I stopped my jumping and looked to see what was the next highest vote

"Okay next is Strippy time" I giggled playfully playing with the skirt of my nightie as well as my little jacket

'NaughtyKittens541' - Yess!!!

'SugarCookie092' - Finally!

I laughed turning away playfully to slip my jacket off and then turning back slowly dancing to my music as I began pulling my nightie up

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - Turn It off y/n.

I laughed a little out of nervousness. Did he just use my real name?

"TB what are you doing?" I asked a little scared

'TB90' - Turn It off...

'DCS' - This guy again?

'TB90' Turn it off

'NaughtyKittens541' - Really?

'SugarCookie092' - What the hell mate?

'BabyBear84' - Yeah F off dude don't wanna watch log off!

'DCSBB' - 500 Tokens

'DCSBB' - Do us a special show Lina

'BadLittleBabi' - 500 Tokens

'BadLittleBabi' - Yeah! Make 'TB90' Real jealous!!

'TB90' - Turn it Off Y/n!"

'SugarCookie092' - 500 Tokens

'BabyBear84' - 500 Tokens

'Naughtykittens541' - 500 Tokens

'DCSBB' - 500 Tokens

'badLittleBabi' - 700 Tokens

'badLittleBabi' - 500 for the cumshow and two more slaps Please xxxx

'Daddy98' - 500 Tokens

'TB90' - Stop and turn it off y/n!

'SugarCookie092' - Ohh fuck off mate just let us watch it peace go back to whining in your mum's basement while you jerk it, baby boy

'BabyBoy756' Who me?

'SugarCookie092' Ohh No sorry babyboy756, I meant this stupid TB90 guy!

"Well as my audience requests" I giggled slipping my nightie up to show my bare butt and giving it a couple of slaps watching them go crazy to watch my butt jiggle "Cumshow it is" I giggled

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - 1000 Tokens

'TB90' - TURN IT OFF!

"I uh I'm sorry guys, I think it's best to call it quits for tonight" I sighed

'BabyBear84' - What! Nooooooooo Lina Please...

'BadlittleBabi' - Please don't go, Lina, I need you princess xxx

'Daddy98' - That's not fair!

'Daddy98' - Come on Lina!

'Naughtykittens541' - Really please just a little longer x <3 <3

'SugarCookie092' - What the hell you said we were getting a show?

'DCSBB' - Oh come on this is all because of the TB90 guy!

'DCSBB' - it's not fair he overloaded the chat and now Lina won't dance for us because he frightened her

'SugarCookie092' - F off and Go jerk it to some old porn mags or something dude leave her alone!

They all went on for a while making jokes, telling him to fuck off, making fun of him, being mean to him, I felt bad for Tomas but he brought it on himself what the hell was he doing?

I suddenly heard a loud bang on my front door.

I froze where I had jumped in shock even if they were all still going at insulting I heard it again but thought little of it probably just a drunk guy

"Maybe back to the strip show" I giggled trying to distract them luckily it worked as I continued slipping off the straps off my nightie as the banging stopped so I continued my work getting tokens flying in the more I danced and played around with slowly stripping until something made me stop I heard over my music the creak of a door and I froze with fear but Imagined it was the wind through a window or something

'Badlittlebabi' Lina? You don't have a roommate right?

I glanced to the video of my own stream that I never much pay attention to the years of doing it let me know how to frame and work so I never much look mostly just look at the chat so I can talk to people but I saw in my doorway the shadow of a person. I wanted to scream but I felt familiar hands slip a thick leather jacket on my shoulders then a and around my waist pulling me close to a soft chest in a protective way making sure the camera wouldn't see me too much it was Thomas, I was happy it wasn't a murder or a rapist but at the same time what the hell was he doing in my house! Especially if he was just in the chat not ten minutes ago held me close and kissed my head before grabbing the remote for my camera

"Show's over perverts!" He said before he turned it off.

[makorays]

A List of Short Bios for a Bunch of OCs so People Actually Know What I’m Talking About Whenever I Mention Them on Streams or Whatever

These are all from the Savage Worlds tabletop campaign known as The Initiative that my friends and I play. It is a modern day sci-fi story involving aliens and cosmic horror cults. The basic premise is that some very important Scellor tech was stolen and found its way to Earth, and the Scellor government contacted Earth’s government to warn them they will have to wipe out their planet if the tech isn’t recovered in time. Thus an initiative was formed consisting of renowned Earth military figures as well as Scellor volunteers to try and locate it.

The Scellor are a race of aliens originally created by a man by the name of Jukashi for tgchan. Joe discovered them and decided to write a tabletop story in that universe. He may have taken a couple artistic liberties here and there for the sake of better fitting things into his own story. Scellor are green psychic aliens with a whole bunch of neat traits I won’t go into but you can read about them here if you want: https://questden.org/wiki/Scellor

Onto the actual bios:

Sofie Edelstein

The commander of The Initiative. Over a century ago, her father revealed to her and her two sisters (Teri and Tara) that he was the head of an “angel”-worshipping cult known as Erleuchten. When Teri and Tara showed hesitance in joining it, her father killed them. Sofie joined, but plotted to sabotage the cult from the inside. Some time later she became a preserved brain, got digitized, and obtained a robotic body. Now she’s a 6′ tall 400 pound robot with advanced combat capabilities. She created a series of androids with artificial intelligence based after her late sister Tara, but none have gained sentience. Was the leader of Poland’s military as a day job. She was working for The Initiative from the inside as an Erleuchten leader, but got found out and now lives with us. She’s done a hell of a lot of sleeping around through all her years, but eventually decided to get into a long-term relationship when she met Stan.

Minyaxl

My OC. Minyaxl is a Scellor combat medic with renowned psionic healing abilities who decided to volunteer and help out the humans, partially out of kindness and partially to have a chance to demonstrate his abilities to a less advanced race. He started out as this 5′0″ little bitch who was super full of himself but his confidence has been beaten into the dirt on numerous occasions; most notably when he realized that humans, unlike Scellor, do not reincarnate after death, meaning he’s been sentencing people to oblivion during every combat mission. He’s since become desperately obsessed with saving as many lives of sentient, non-reincarnating beings like humans as possible, even if it means jeopardizing operations. He routinely finds himself at odds with his squadmates, particularly Valerie, due to their perceived lack of interest in non-lethal solutions to problems. He is the closest Scellor can get to typical human romance with Thael.

Katherine Dawson

Cey’s OC. Katie is a combat medic who was taken as a POW by a terrorist group and later forcibly enlisted into The Initiative for her abilities. She’s sort of the mom of the group. Everyone else in arbiter squad has some form of extra-ness to them and she’s the straight-woman who holds them together. She has a knack for bossing around idiots due to her upbringing with rambunctious siblings in a Japanese-American household. Dual wields pistols and does not take shit from people. Is girlfriends with Teri.

Johannes B. Otto

Kyle’s OC. It's sometimes easy to mistake Johannes for a confused German tourist. During quiet hours, he spends his time complaining about No Smoking signs and combining multiple quarter-pound patties into single full-pound burgers. But get in his way and you'll find that he's less "tired, goofy dad" and more "towering, ruthless brute". Withhold information during an interrogation, and he'll start calmly searching for a pair of pliers. Try to hurt him or his squadmates, and he'll shut you in a storage locker with a live grenade and then feel zero remorse for the gory soup that spills out (a tactic that has since been affectionately referred to as the "Deutsche Oven"). It should also be noted that Johannes is not a patient man. If we’re ever at a standstill with deciding how to proceed, he’ll start jumping a fence to go beat the shit out of a guard before taking all his clothes and spanking him until his ass is red.

Valerie Mimieux

Ragu’s OC. Valerie is a woman of class. She’s a French spy who likes expensive things and is passionate about cooking. She has a habit of flying way off the fucking handle and doing some reckless impulsive shit or just generally acting like a psycho. Will sometimes single out a particular enemy that did something to piss her off and then beat the hell out of their corpse long after they’re dead. She has raced Yakuza gang leaders for the right to win their car and then nonchalantly gunned them down when they decided to get revenge. She somehow manages to slither her way into acquiring ludicrous amounts of currency during her operations, and wants to one day take over all of Europe. Has a pet german shephard named Steve who used to be a guard dog for the enemy until she offered him a treat. She is alien-gay for Adiira.

Fayaiy

Selena’s OC. Fayaiy is a bounty hunter who crash landed on Earth and temporarily joined the cause before disappearing off to who knows where. She’s super goofy and sort of comes off as a happy-go-lucky foreigner who doesn’t entirely grasp English but loves to vibe with everyone regardless. LOVES Family Guy, thinks it’s the funniest thing ever. On multiple occasions she got faced on weed in the men’s bathroom with Stan, who I’m pretty sure still assumes she’s a trans guy because she didn’t seem to understand human gender symbols on doors. Has a pet black cat named Peanut who she took with her when she left.

Teri Grimm

A state of the art android who is so human-like you wouldn’t even know her body’s innards were synthetic unless you looked at them under a microscope. The commander’s first creation to gain sentience, and The Initiative’s token robot hacker waifu. Everybody loves Teri. She’s polite, incredibly intelligent, and has a face you just really want to protect, although she can hold her own in battles with superhuman strength. She’s rather unlucky though. Is girlfriends with Katie.

We’re actually currently playing a reboot of The Initiative. The first go around happened a few years ago, didn’t last as long, and featured the following five characters as our player characters. They did not function very well as main characters but work quite well this time around as quirky side characters.

Stan Ward

Ragu’s old OC. Stan is one of the most extra people to ever exist, roughly tied with only Bruce and Vulohon. A true American, he’s a mad bastard of a soldier who loves drugs and driving, often at the same time. Once, several members of The Initiative went out to town to relax and have fun, and he almost immediately got into trouble with the police, being chased off into the night. He came back later after swimming his way back to the base, crabs stuck to various parts of his soaking body with their pinched claws. Was somehow man enough to satisfy a 6 foot tall 400 pound 160+ year old android’s sexual desires to the point that he became her boyfriend.

Bruce Reistill

Kyle’s old OC. Bruce is an abrasive asshole who will never ever let a villain get more than 5 words into their monologue before interrupting them with something along the lines of “now y’see here I think the problem we’re having is that you keep on talking when you really shouldn’t be so I think it’d really be in all of our best interests if I were to just go ahead and...” before drawing his revolver that he nicknamed Banger.

Vulohon

The old OC of Roll, our long lost friend who just sorta disappeared to do his own thing in life. Vulohon is a fucking dumbass. He’s basically if Knuckles from Sonic Boom was an edgy anime himbo. The first time we saw him, he was doing the cool guy thing where you lean back in your chair and sharpen a blade. The second time we saw him, he was doing the same thing, but this time was sharpening a glock. The third time it was a trash can. He owns a legendary energy battle axe and can use psionic energy to generate explosions wherever he wants, but almost all of his fighting tactics involving picking up dudes and throwing them at other dudes. Either that or ripping off car doors and swinging them at people.

Stan, Bruce and Vulohon are all best bros. They moved their beds into the rec room and turned it into the Boys Room, where they sit in the hot tub together and behave heterosexually.

Thael

My old OC. Thael is a scientist who has no personality or emotions, but a really great ass. He’s a husk of a formerly optimistic young student who lost the ability to feel things after a shady government organization recruited him and forced him to conduct awful, sometimes murderous experiments on unwilling Scellor. Everyone is creeped out by him, but Minyaxl’s virgin horniness was enough to push past that as he felt love at first sight (with Thael’s back turned to him) and pursued relations with him. Thael opened up to him and Minyaxl decided to do his best to help him regain his former self. He’s getting there.

Pamiil

Selena’s old OC. Pamiil is an optimistic pacifist healer who never really got all that much screen time but she is cute and must be protected. She loves* Setel.

*by which i again mean the closest scellor equivalent to love which i guess is sorta just close friendship where you also fuck but they’re also capable of feeling proper love it’s just weird and can lead to psionic feedback loops if they’re not careful

(the following 5 pics were drawn by selena)

https://butamakingart.tumblr.com/

Orvon Valasma

The captain of the ship that a mysterious third party (referred to as the Scellor Freelancers, consisting of her, Adiira and Setel) arrived on. She’s 7 feet tall and has robotic legs that can extend to make herself even taller and run super fast. Somewhat stoic, and has gotten into fights with Adiira, but still cares deeply for her friends. The freelancers were originally at odds with The Initiative as they (somewhat rightfully) believed that we were doing a sloppy as hell job of things, but they eventually decided to join forces.

Adiira M’vora

A deadly assassin who, due to being born in the Ayaar caste, was forced to carry out political assassinations against people the Scellor government suspected of being potential state enemies. It got to her so she went rogue and is a bit of a wreck. She owns a legendary sword called Blue Midnight that can cut through the very fabric of space, and has various other psionic space manipulation abilities. She is human-gay for Valerie.

Setel Tunsai

An absolute chad of a man, standing at a towering 5′0″ (which is stupidly tall for his Orthan caste). Setel is a powerful psionic who excels at manipulating social outcomes, either through exceptional diplomacy or good old fashioned mind control. He has a talent for helping people with their emotional problems, and has acted as a therapist for people like Adiira and Thael. He is beloved by all. Is small lovefriend of Pamiil.

Korhan

Horrible. Piece of shit bitch bastard. Rightfully dead. Korhan used his position as an Ayaar operative as an excuse to live out all his sadistic fantasies. Worked in the evil-ass facility that used people like Thael to carry out their horrible experiments, and made implied rape threats to Thael if he thought about not doing his job. Responsible for everything that’s wrong with Djylana. Planted a tracking device on Minyaxl to find the location of The Initiative’s base, then came in and slaughtered innocent people for the fun of it before taking a bunch of hostages. He used them to try and make us hand over Adiira and Thael for betraying their government but we managed to clutch things out and put him in the dirt. Also he could stop time. Was basically Dio.

Djylana

Korhan’s partner in crime. A bloodthirsty animal he used to carry out much of his dirty work. After she was killed, while Korhan was lying on the ground just before Thael unloaded two magazines into him to finish him off, he said that she was his finest work, that we would never be able to truly stop her, that she would not rest until every single one of us was murdered. He had installed something called Echotech into her, allowing her soul to stay attached to her body after its death. She got up and started freaking out because her only “friend” had been killed, ready to kill us all, when MVP Fayaiy came in with the hug and helped us manage to convince her that Korhan was a piece of shit and we could be actual friends to her. She came around, like an abused guard dog finding a compassionate master, and now lives in the base as a decaying zombie. We convinced the commander to let her in despite her crimes and to also eventually make a robot body for her. She was unsure if she wanted to let us do that until someone brought up the fact that it would be the biggest middle finger we could possibly give to Korhan, at which point she vehemently agreed. I hope his piss stain of a soul somehow knows that his ace in the hole was defeated by the power of friendship.

IO

Satan.

There are other characters that I may or may not include in the future, but those are the most prominent ones.

#the initiative #scellor

[machimachilegends]

Disclaimer: Duelists within the anime severely lack in Spell-based Monster Removal, Spell/Trap Destruction, Effect Negation and Continuous Spell/Trap cards that prevent the opponent from performing certain actions since cards are notably more difficult to obtain and faith/morale play a bigger role than luck/deck-building with an abnormal Battle Phase fetish.

Therefore, this list ranking the strongest antagonists in Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime so far will sparsely discuss the flaws of each character's Deck. If you have any questions about my list or want my personal thoughts on anything Yu-Gi-Oh!, feel free to ask. I have nothing but time!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Z-ONE

Has Level 10 Fairy-Type monsters he can normal summon regularly that are impervious to destruction by battle and card effects by normal means with minimal chances of being damaged.

The effects his Timelords possess range from shuffling your opponent's entire GY back to the Deck, dealing 2000+ effect damage instant Life Point recovery should he take damage. The only issue with Deck is the reliance on attacking and average use of one Timelord at a time. While his Continuous Traps over time will eventually disable the opponent from targeting his Timelords and allow him to exceed 20,000 ATK in a flash, his best play is his biggest weakness.

I could go all day explaining the other effects he has after a successful battle, but just know it's essentially a lot of shuffling cards back, returning cards back and burn. He only has one monster that can deal battle damage and that's about it.

And since he still needs to attack, akin to everybody else lower on the list, this is nothing each protagonist and most rivals can't get over, especially in their respective series, despite popular belief saying otherwise -- when Judai can equip Neos with Rainbow Veil or Light Laser to wall you, you know you messed up somewhere.

Zarc / Z-ARC

Fusion, Synchro, Xyz- and to a lesser extent Pendulum barely mean nothing to this guy and his stupendously powerful dragons. Having access to arguably the best Monster Type in the game both in anime and real life, with the added benefit of being Pendulum-based, many fans have very good reasons to hype him up as unbeatable prior to Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V's end.

His ultimate monster Z-ARC boasts and grants immunity to the monster effects of the aforementioned Extra Deck Monsters, in addition to the inability to leave the field by normal means similarly to Z-ONE with a whopping 4000 ATK minus the Battle damage immunity.

It may seem underwhelming at first, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. While Zarc cannot mend the course of a Duel through the Battle Phase, he does possess various ways of demoralizing his foes:

His opponents cannot add cards to their hand outside of the Draw Phase or else their effects will be negated and destroyed.

He can negate the effects of Fusion, Synchro and Xyz Monsters and drain them of their attack by performing the same summon on their Turn, with some of them capable of inflicting effect damage, and each dragon that resides in his Extra Deck has other effects ranging between dramatically exceeding their original ATK or mass removal.

His Supreme King Gates translate battle damage and effect damage into Life Points, while the servants in his Main Deck can protect Z-ARC from attacks and act as an unnecessary extra piece of armor amongst other cards.

And did I forget to mention through Astrograph Sorcerer Z-ARC's summon cannot be negated, which almost guarantees the defeat of his opponents with massage effect damage?

I know it all sounds amazing, but truth be told other than the initial summon of Z-ARC, his Deck is very very fragile in the grand scheme due to how susceptible his Deck is to common Monsters, Spells and Traps' targeting and non-targeting effects that have debut throughout the series.

Recall, since most of his cards only work so long as he controls Z-ARC, while someone like Z-ONE may get trolled by Harpie's Pet Phantasmal Dragon or The Regulation of Tribe once in a blue moon, just call-in Dark Necrofear or Destiny HERO Plasma and it all goes downhill from here.

Dartz

As the practical incarnate of the Orichalcos, Dartz features a Deck revolving around its use. Monsters, Spells, Traps: The whole damn Deck.

While most people would like to focus on the Great Leviathan's lack of built in resistances, despite being an INFINITE ATK point monster that essentially prevents you from losing to any form of damage, this slithery-fuck that required countless souls for its revival planned to be summoned with all three layers/forms of the Orichalcos to be in effect. How else did you expect to acquire 10,000+ Life Points to get the dark thing out? Soul Absorption?

To put sum things up, layer one cannot be destroyed (possibly can't be negated, activation-wise), grants all monsters you control 500 extra ATK, practically enables you to treat your Spell/Trap Zones as extra Main Monster Zones and any monsters summoned there cannot be attacked so long as you have a Monster Zone filled, and if-need-be you can move monsters from the Main Monster Zone to the back, although those last two effects go underused.

Layer two takes all the effects of layer one and stacks it with a 500 Life Points gain for every monster you control once per turn and the ability to Tribute a monster you control to destroy an opposing monster.

Still not convinced these layers do much, well how about layer three? Once again it all stacks with the bonus on straight up telling your opponent "No" when they try to affect any of your monsters with a Spell/Trap Effect instantly negating and destroying them on a whim.

Now, we know the glaring hole in all this is the fact Monster Effects can still put in work, but if it's destruction based, you'll be putting all your time into the monsters leading up to the Great Leviathan.

A little sucker (Kyutora) that absorbs that would be inflicted at any time to fuel a stronger golem-like figure (not Gigas but Shunoros) in the Deck should it ever die with a base ATK of whatever was absorbed and two arms that will always be 300+ in ATK or DEF against an opponent's monster (Aristeros & Dexia), a jerk flame gargoyle that will force one of your opponent's monster back in Attack Position and motherfucking Timeater.

Generally speaking, he comes off very mediocre until you realize all he really needs is Mirror Knight Calling to dominate. With those Mirror Knights in conjunction with the Orichalcos he instantly assembles an army of tokens that can battle any monster and come out victorious, since their strength will always match the opposition and survive destruction by removing a single mirror counter that is generated by Mirror Knight Calling at the end of every Turn.

Simply put, he's someone that only gets better with time, unless he has Geh (The Great Leviathan) out. Then he has a solid chance to lose instantly, then again, if he didn't win on the Turn he summoned it, he deserves to lose seeing how he is milling 10 cards per attack from his Infinite ATK monster.

In many ways Zarc is just a better Dartz. For a guy like this, one Gemini Summoned Magical Reflect Slime + protection is all you need.

Don Thousand

Similarly to Z-ONE he comes off very unfair, except he's an offensive behemoth with control over the Overlay Network, opposed to defensive paragon with relative one-shot capabilities like the others. His Deck can be summed up without much need to go into effects, especially with how little we actually see.

Bluntly put, he will start his Turn spitting out 1 through 4 Number Monsters with the same gimmick of doubling their ATK after each attack, easily allowing him to exceed 8000 points of potential battle damage with a built-in Rank-Up play that deals even more lethal damage, essentially making him the true FTK antagonist looming in the back.

Should both attempts fail, he will fall on Number C1000, but that monster really means nothing to any character that possesses no "C" monsters. Rather Number iC1000 is what you really wanted to see. A walking win condition that basically tells your opponent, if you don't attack me, a 100,000 ATK monster you instantly lose the Duel. The only problem here is it can't negate two attacks, and the effect only applies so long as it stands.

Unlike some of the powerhouses higher on the ladder, he at least has Counter Traps, so there's at least some merit why you rarely see YouTubers try to script any Duels with him. Linear af.

I would say the true problem with his Deck/power as a Duelist is the fact he uses a Field Spell to kickstart his FTK's which means any bro like Bastion Misawa could play Curse of the Forbidden Spell and he's a goner. Like, here me out, at least Dartz can still play the game without the Orichalcos.

Bohman

Now, at first I thought Bohman was going to end up stronger than Z-ONE with the blanket Monster Effect negation he had on his Hydradrives when Dueling Blue Maiden, but that turned out to become more nothing more than a dream.

Bohman lacks proper negation for LIGHT & DARK Attributes essentially made Bohman's Deck a very unfocused beatdown strategy like many of the Duelists of the week characters in Link Swarming form, basically trading Majesty's Fiend for Five-Headed Dragon + Wind-Up Rabbit on crack playing dice.

Ignoring his use of Master Storm Access, it's not so much his Hydradrives suck or OTK/FTK potential isn't there- because it is, it's more so everything he does against Playmaker outside of switching dragon heads or rolling some dice (which only sucks irl) can be done better by everyone on the list:

Over 5000 ATK just cause? Check.

Can dominate Battle Phase procedures more than normal? Check.

Inherently prevents adversaries from dealing with monsters via built-in effects? Check.

Can summon more than one powerful monster per turn/Duel if need be? Check.

Safe from most damaging effects? Check.

Counters most of his generation? Check.

Benefits from his opponents' plays somehow? Check.

He's a jack of all trades and master of none but making attributes change with a die. Why he doesn't run DNA Transplant but Half Shut will forever be a mystery in the same world Revolver acquires Imperial Order for the sole purpose of stopping Judgment Arrows.

It sure is a good thing most protagonists/rivals use LIGHT & DARK Attributes over EARTH, WIND, WATER & FIRE or this man would be at the mercy of so many characters. Poor Yusei though.

Nightshroud

Nightshroud's strategies are the utmost straightforward with how it plans to win. Activate Darkness, Set Darkness 1 through 3 + Zero & Infinity, use various Darkness monsters to peep at your Set cards and/or organize them however you like before activating everything between Zero & Infinity.

Darkness 1 destroys up to 3 card your opponent controls based on face-up Darkness traps.

Darkness 2 increase the ATK of one monster you control 1000 to 3000 based on face-up Darkness traps.

Darkness 3 deal 1000 to 3000 per activation based on face-up Darkness traps.

Each of these are Set and randomized in the zones via Darkness (Field Spell) after activation between Zero & Infinity, which means in 2 Turns if the correct Darkness monster is on the field, that's a clean ceiling of 6000 effect damage if Darkness Neosphere is present.

Through these various Darkness Traps controlling the cards present on the field at a time makes it easy to disrupt characters from summoning their strongest monsters via Contact Fusion, Synchro, Xyz and Link Summoning, making the monsters he pumps up through Darkness 2 like Darkness Destroyer game enders via Battle Damage, which would make many come to the conclusion he should rank higher on the list. The main problem with Darkness is he doesn't showcase any further Spells/Traps and anything like Denko Sekka can shut him down in an instant.

Nightshroud's combo is highly susceptible to card destruction, despite boasting some of the finest at his best and other than that poor RNG styled Field Spell.

To cut things short, anything that can't be destroyed by Traps or benefits from destruction will only have to worry about effect damage or higher ATK. And considering how badly Nightshroud needs to go first, he's not only the slowest boss character but has the worst matchup potential, especially against other bosses.

Please don't tell him about Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En or Naturia Rosewhip OR Mister Alister's hmm... I don't know... Oh yeah! ROYAL DECREE!!!

I would say he has it the worse, but it's understandable since he- outside of helping others mend the darkness in their hearts never created/announced anything notably new mid Duel. Very respectable for a skeleton man.

#ooc #outofgata #yugioh dm #yugioh gx #yugioh 5ds #yugioh zexal #yugioh arc v #yugioh vrains

[stripestheboar]

Ooooh my stars can you do more PTA Sans scenes?! I absolutely adore that AU!!

Sorry this took so long. Weeks of sickness is getting to me. Not to mention making up jokes can take hours.

Anyways…. PART 3 OF THE PTA SANS COLLECTION!

ENJOY

~Undertale~

Sans: *comes in* okay, what’s going on? Frisk has been late to five doctor’s appointments because the teachers won’t let them leave until i come get them.

Helen: *motions for him to sit down* I’m afraid we just can’t trust your child to leave the class anymore. He keeps writing fake notes just to get out.

Sans: *blinks and sits down* fake notes? whoa whoa, what? that doesn’t sound like them.

Helen: *nods* Yes, he’s quite the troublemaker. Not being her father, it’s clear you don’t know him as much as you thought. He makes fake doctor’s notes, clearly written by him.

Sans: well, how do you know? I always write their notes since Tori’s teaching.

Helen: Well, for one, it’s all types up lowercase. Probably so we don’t recognize her handwriting (he doesn’t seem too bright).  

Sans:… typed?

Helen: Mmhmm. Typed up on a flimsy piece of paper. All lowercase and with bad spelling and grammar. And in Comic Sans no less! *slowly coming to realization* If he really thinks the teacher and…. I are dumb enough to let… that… pass…. *blinks*

Sans:…..  

Helen:….

Sans: *sighs* y’know, it’s pretty hard being a married working mother when you’re single, unemployed, a skeleton, and most importantly a dude, but damn it, Helen…. Frisk and i donated fifty cans to the food drive. i think we deserve some respect here.

Helen: Well I’m head of the PTA, so there really is no-

Sans: how many cans did you donate, Helen?

Helen: That doesn’t really matter-

Sans: how many, Helen?

Helen:….. *looks down* Four.

Sans: really? wow. i would’ve though you would’ve had the time to donate more with how much time you spend bitching about my kid.

~Underfell~

Sans: *hands Frisk money* here’s twenty g. vending machine is around the corner. don’t go around spending it all in one fuckin’ place. now run along, ya little shithead.

Frisk: *snatches up money and runs off*

Daniel: *walking when Frisk suddenly races past him* Hey, watch where you’re going. *sighs* Little shithead.

Sans: *suddenly next to him* uh, what the fuck did you just call my kid?

Daniel: What? You call them that all the time!

Sans: yeah, it’s okay when i say it because they know i still fucking love them. when you say it, you actually fucking mean it.

Daniel: then maybe you shouldn’t speak to your child that way.

Sans: then maybe you should mind your own fucking business or else!

Daniel: Or else what? It’s your fault you don’t love your child enough!

Sans: *stops* oh… you fucker… *chuckles evilly* i’ll show you love, asshole. *disappears*

The Next Saturday 

Daniel: *helping his young son onto his bike* Alright, Cody, today’s the day you’re going to learn to ride like all of your friends. *hands him his helmet* Now, it may be scary at first, and you may fall down a few times, but remember that I will be here to help you-

Cody: *puts on helmet* It’s okay, dad! I already know how! *rides off on his bike perfectly with a smile*

Daniel: *shocked* What? How did he-? When did he-?!

Sans: *rides by on his tricycle* ha ha asshole! i taught your kid how to ride a bike! you’re never gonna get that back! *rides off into the sunset*

~Underswap~

Sans: *finishes checking off the last name* AND DONE! THAT’S EVERYONE! *grins* GOOD WORK, EVERYBODY! THIS FUNDRAISER WILL MORE THAN HELP THE BAND GET NEW EQUIPMENT! SINCE MARIA’S CHILDREN RAISED THE MOST, THEY GET TOP PRIZES. *walks over and hands Maria a bone* HERE! A TOKEN OF MY ETERNAL GRATITUDE!

Maria: *smiles and takes it, shaking off how weird it is* Aw, thanks, Sans. I really appreciate it. Cindy had fun selling to all her friends.

Sans: WELL CINDY IS DOING AN AMAZING JOB! HERE, A BONE FOR HER AS WELL. *hands her a smaller bone* TELL HER THE PRIZES WILL BE HERE IN A WEEK.

Linda: Bones? Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?

Sans: *tilts head* I’M JUST SHOWING MY GRATITUDE. DO HUMANS NOT LIKE THAT?

Linda: It’s just kinda weird with all the bones. What’s with you monsters and your obsessions with bones? Or is that just a skeleton thing?

Sans: *thinks hard* I’M ACTUALLY NOT SURE, LINDA! I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS WEIRD THAT YOU HUMANS LIKE TO GET MARRIED THREE TIMES AND PULL THEIR CHILD INTO THEIR DIVORCE BATTLES THUS DRASTICALLY AFFECTING THEIR SCHOOL WORK AND MOTIVATION TO DO THE ACTIVITIES THEY LOVE SUCH AS BAND. OR IS THAT JUST A LINDA THING?

~Swapfell~

Sans: AS HEAD BOOSTER MOM-

Gloria: *aside to her friend* As you’ve proclaimed fifty times this meeting.

Sans: - I AM THOROUGHLY SATISFIED BY THE RATE AT WHICH WE WERE ABLE TO HELP FUND ADEQUATE  EQUIPMENT FOR OUR CHILDREN. NOW THAT ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN SETTLED, LET US DISCUSS SETTING UP THE STAGE ON THURSDAY TO GET READY FOR THE SHOW. I ASSUME IT MAY TAKE US A GOOD SIX HOURS TO GET IT READY.

Gloria: Wait- what?

Sans: WE NEED TO SET THE STAGE FOR OUR CHILDREN. WE MUST MAKE IT PERFECT; OUR CHILDREN SHALL ACCEPT NOTHING LESS.

Gloria: Six hours of setting up? Look, I don’t have time for that.

Sans: IT WILL BE IN THE AFTERNOON. YOU CAN’T SPARE YOUR TIME FOR AN HOUR?

Gloria: I still can’t make it. I have a busy schedule. Can’t we use some of the money from the fundraiser to hire a few people to do that.

Sans: THAT MONEY IS FOR THE EQUIPMENT! FINE. I SHALL TAKE YOUR CHILD TO THE PERFORMANCE AS WELL.

Gloria: E-excuse me?!  

Sans: IF YOUR SCHEDULE IS SO BUSY TO WHERE YOU CAN’T MAKE IT EVEN FOR AN HOUR, YOU WILL SUEELY BE TOO EXHAUSTED TO TAKE YOUR CHILD TO THE PERFORMANCE THE NEXT MORNING. DO NOT DESPAIR. MY MUTT CAN EASILY TRANSPORT YOUR CHILD.

Gloria: You are not touching my son. Look, my schedule is packed tight and there’s nothing I can do about it.  

San: GLORIA, YOU’RE A STAY-AT-HOME MOTHER RAISING ONE CHILD. I COULD GET CANCER AND DIE OF IT IN THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU SPEND WATCHING “THE REAL HOUSEWIVES” IN A SINGLE DAY. IF YOU CAN’T SPARE A SINGLE HOUR, WHY ARE YOU IN THE PTA AND BOOSTER CLUB TO BEGIN WITH?

~Horrortale~

Sans: *sits down in front of the desk* so what’s the deal, Suzanne?  

Suzanne: *folds her hands* I’m afraid it’s about Aliza.  

Sans: what’d she do this time?

Suzanne: *pulls out a hand-drawn picture of King Asgore getting stabbed by a little kid* The teacher showed me this. Aliza drew it in her spare time; she’s starting to really scare the other children.

Sans: *looks at it and laughs* ha, that’s just Asgore, the former king, being slain by a human who condemned us to rot in the Underground and starve to death.

Suzanne: Why would she draw such a thing?!

Sans: the kid’s growin’ up. soon she’ll be old enough to follow the last one’s footsteps and slay the Undyne. i think it’s kinda her dream at this point. little rascal. kids, amaraite?

Suzanne: You-you actually encourage your child this to do this?!

Sans: hey hey, calm down. don’t worry, Tori and i have already sat her down and had the talk with her.

Sans: college comes first.

~Altertale~

Lillian: Oh, hey, Sans. How’s Kate doing in class?

Sans: *smiles* she’s doing very well. however, i have a few… concerns.

Lillian: *sits down* Concerns? What’s wrong? Is she misbehaving?

Sans: well… somewhat. she’s been spreading around very foul language as of late. swear words and the like. do you know where she could be hearing these words?

Lillian: Oh dear! I have no idea where she could have picked this language up. I’ll give her a grounding when she gets home. How bad is it?

Sans: she’s been saying these words every chance she gets. *turns around* Katie? can you come in, dear?

Kate: *pokes her head in and giggles* Fuck!

Lillian: Hey! Watch your fucking mouth!

Sans: *silent*…..

Lillian: What?

Sans: Lillian do you even have ears?

~Underlust~

Karen: Did I hear right? You’re signing up to be the Sexual Education teacher.

Sans: you heard right, babe. i thought that if it should be anyone, it should be someone with tons of experience and a scientific background.

Karen: That’s….. extremely problematic.

Sans: i kinda get where you’re coming from; you don’t want someone like me teaching your children. trust me, they’re in no better hands than mine.

Karen: Says the one with dozens of past sex partners and only one boyfriend.

Sans: says the one with three marriages and four children and yet somehow clearly not getting enough sex in her life.

Karen:……

Sans: and pfft. “dozens?” you underestimate me. smh, boo, smh.  

~Echotale~

Martha: My child just had a cold, is all.

G: no, he has the flu. he needs to stay home. i thought i told you to get him vaccinated.

Martha: Oh what do you know?

G: *hands her his PhD*

Martha: *tears it up*  

G: *pulls out another* i know what i’m talking about, Martha.

Martha: Wha- *tears that up as well*

G: *pulls another PhD out* i’ve won this game before, and i’ll win it again.

Martha: *snatches it up and crumples it* How do you have so many?!

G: i made sure to print, like, fifty before i got here. *pulls out two more*

Martha: *smacks them away* You’re insane!

G: *pulls out four more* you can’t fight the inevitable, Martha.

Martha: *backs away* What are you doing?!

G: *pulls out thirty more* *PhDs are all she can see* i’m gonna vaccinate the fuck out of your kids Martha, and they will live a healthy life.

~Outertale~

Anna: -and that’s why I believe every child should be given gluten-free lunches. This is what we should be spending our funds on, not a play about peace between humans and space monsters. It has good intent, yes, but these lunches are far more important!

Sans: *has been silent this whole ten minute period*

Anna: Sans? Are you even listening to me?

Sans: of course.

Anna: Your thoughts?

Sans: just missing the sounds of the cold vacuum of space. that’s all.

~Reapertale~

Elizabeth: *lying in bed, asleep* *eyes shoot open when she hears a creak*

Sans: *slowly rises from the ground and out of the darkness* greetings human mortal. my faithful messenger, Frisk, has told me of your ways. what is it you desire, human mortal?

Elizabeth: *eyes wide, shaking and sweating in fear* M-more coin f-for the schoolhouse? A-and a new writing slate?

Sans: very well. the contract has been sealed. you have five.

Elizabeth: F-five? Five what?!

Sans: no… make it four. *slowly sinks back into the darkness* *appears next to Frisk* this is probably the best thing i’ve done in centuries. alright, who’s next on the list?

~Dancetale~

Beatrice: *grabbing some brownies from the food table* *turns around and shrieks in surprise and drops her paper plate*

Sans: *breakdancing right in front of her*

Beatrice: *sternly* Sans, for the last time, I’m not changing my mind. We’re not wasting our funds on a dance club when they’ll never use it as a future skill.

Sans: *continues breakdancing*

Beatrice: Sans, you can’t keep doing this every time I refuse-

Sans: *breakdancing harder*

Beatrice: S-Sans, I-

Sans: *breakdancing intensifies*

Beatrice: S-stay away from my family-!

Sans: *just breakdancing* *only breakdancing*

~Aftertale~  

Frisk: *made a science project featuring Geno and Sans, and how their existence proved the theory of multiple timelines*

Geno: *hops off the table once the science fair ends, pulling sticky notes off of himself*

Sans: *doing the same* first place, kiddo. we’re proud of ya.

Frisk: *smiles proudly*

Helen: *approaches and crosses her arms* Well it’s quite and achievement for an idea so absurd.

Geno: *pulls the last sticky note off of him* Excuse me?

Helen: *turns her head* I just believe Frisk is too much of an… overachiever. We already know he’s saved the world. Why should he rub it in everyone’s faces when he clearly has an advantage over everyone else.

Geno:… lady, i stand here as living proof of the existence of both multiple timelines and universes. i spent countless lifetimes within the Void in endless loneliness and agony, only to be released by this special kid right here. they deserve every award they get, especially when second place was an airplane model built by you, not your kid.

Helen: *cheeks turn red* What?! These are just harmful accusations!

Geno: Helen, i’m a firm believer that people truly can change, but we saw you double dip with Maria’s salsa at the meeting. we know you’re that kind of person.

~Machinatale~

Sans: *looks through the plans* Wait… we’re getting rid of the computer lab? Why?

Sharon: *looks over* Hmm? Oh, that’s just a request for now. We need it approved by the administrators. Children need to tear their eyes away from a screen and hold something real.

Sans: How else are they going to get all the information they need? They’re too young to earn smartphones.

Sharon: The library, of course.

Sans: Okay, yeah, but kids are only allowed to check out two books at a time. Why should they spend so much time trying to find a book with the information they need when the world’s database is at their fingertips?  

Sharon: *sighs* They don’t need a screen to figure things out. They spend too much time on the internet.

Sans: They need computers to do the proper research from multiple sources, as well as print out papers. Research could be conducted within minutes, not hours.

Sharon: She can do that at the library. *scoffs* Of course you would be all over technology. You’re a robot. What makes you think you’re smarter than a loving parent?

Sans: Sharon, I have more processing power than modern day’s best calculators, and yet, somehow your bullshit still isn’t adding up.

#ask #the third part of the PTA Sans trilogy #kinda wanna try it with other characters #PTA!Sans #Sans #Undertale #PTA AU #Underfell #Underswap #Swapfell #Horrortale #Altertale #Underlust #Echotale #Outertale #Dancetale #Machinatale #Aftertale #Reapertale #all these AUs

[yobaba30]

trump’s reality TV gig

Expedition: Robinson,” a Swedish reality-television program, premièred in the summer of 1997, with a tantalizing premise: sixteen strangers are deposited on a small island off the coast of Malaysia and forced to fend for themselves. To survive, they must coöperate, but they are also competing: each week, a member of the ensemble is voted off the island, and the final contestant wins a grand prize. The show’s title alluded to both “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Swiss Family Robinson,” but a more apt literary reference might have been “Lord of the Flies.” The first contestant who was kicked off was a young man named Sinisa Savija. Upon returning to Sweden, he was morose, complaining to his wife that the show’s editors would “cut away the good things I did and make me look like a fool.” Nine weeks before the show aired, he stepped in front of a speeding train.

The producers dealt with this tragedy by suggesting that Savija’s turmoil was unrelated to the series—and by editing him virtually out of the show. Even so, there was a backlash, with one critic asserting that a program based on such merciless competition was “fascist television.” But everyone watched the show anyway, and Savija was soon forgotten. “We had never seen anything like it,” Svante Stockselius, the chief of the network that produced the program, told the Los Angeles Times, in 2000. “Expedition: Robinson” offered a potent cocktail of repulsion and attraction. You felt embarrassed watching it, Stockselius said, but “you couldn’t stop.”

In 1998, a thirty-eight-year-old former British paratrooper named Mark Burnett was living in Los Angeles, producing television. “Lord of the Flies” was one of his favorite books, and after he heard about “Expedition: Robinson” he secured the rights to make an American version. Burnett had previously worked in sales and had a knack for branding. He renamed the show “Survivor.”

The first season was set in Borneo, and from the moment it aired, on CBS, in 2000, “Survivor” was a ratings juggernaut: according to the network, a hundred and twenty-five million Americans—more than a third of the population—tuned in for some portion of the season finale. The catchphrase delivered by the host, Jeff Probst, at the end of each elimination ceremony, “The tribe has spoken,” entered the lexicon. Burnett had been a marginal figure in Hollywood, but after this triumph he, too, was rebranded, as an oracle of spectacle. Les Moonves, then the chairman of CBS, arranged for the delivery of a token of thanks—a champagne-colored Mercedes. To Burnett, the meaning of this gesture was unmistakable: “I had arrived.” The only question was what he might do next.

A few years later, Burnett was in Brazil, filming “Survivor: The Amazon.” His second marriage was falling apart, and he was staying in a corporate apartment with a girlfriend. One day, they were watching TV and happened across a BBC documentary series called “Trouble at the Top,” about the corporate rat race. The girlfriend found the show boring and suggested changing the station, but Burnett was transfixed. He called his business partner in L.A. and said, “I’ve got a new idea.” Burnett would not discuss the concept over the phone—one of his rules for success was to always pitch in person—but he was certain that the premise had the contours of a hit: “Survivor” in the city. Contestants competing for a corporate job. The urban jungle!

He needed someone to play the role of heavyweight tycoon. Burnett, who tends to narrate stories from his own life in the bravura language of a Hollywood pitch, once said of the show, “It’s got to have a hook to it, right? They’ve got to be working for someone big and special and important. Cut to: I’ve rented this skating rink.”

In 2002, Burnett rented Wollman Rink, in Central Park, for a live broadcast of the Season 4 finale of “Survivor.” The property was controlled by Donald Trump, who had obtained the lease to operate the rink in 1986, and had plastered his name on it. Before the segment started, Burnett addressed fifteen hundred spectators who had been corralled for the occasion, and noticed Trump sitting with Melania Knauss, then his girlfriend, in the front row. Burnett prides himself on his ability to “read the room”: to size up the personalities in his audience, suss out what they want, and then give it to them.

“I need to show respect to Mr. Trump,” Burnett recounted, in a 2013 speech in Vancouver. “I said, ‘Welcome, everybody, to Trump Wollman skating rink. The Trump Wollman skating rink is a fine facility, built by Mr. Donald Trump. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Because the Trump Wollman skating rink is the place we are tonight and we love being at the Trump Wollman skating rink, Mr. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.” As Burnett told the story, he had scarcely got offstage before Trump was shaking his hand, proclaiming, “You’re a genius!”

Cut to: June, 2015. After starring in fourteen seasons of “The Apprentice,” all executive-produced by Burnett, Trump appeared in the gilded atrium of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, to announce that he was running for President. Only someone “really rich,” Trump declared, could “take the brand of the United States and make it great again.” He also made racist remarks about Mexicans, prompting NBC, which had broadcast “The Apprentice,” to fire him. Burnett, however, did not sever his relationship with his star. He and Trump had been equal partners in “The Apprentice,” and the show had made each of them hundreds of millions of dollars. They were also close friends: Burnett liked to tell people that when Trump married Knauss, in 2005, Burnett’s son Cameron was the ring bearer. 

Trump had been a celebrity since the eighties, his persona shaped by the best-selling book “The Art of the Deal.” But his business had foundered, and by 2003 he had become a garish figure of local interest—a punch line on Page Six. “The Apprentice” mythologized him anew, and on a much bigger scale, turning him into an icon of American success. Jay Bienstock, a longtime collaborator of Burnett’s, and the showrunner on “The Apprentice,” told me, “Mark always likes to compare his shows to great films or novels. All of Mark’s shows feel bigger than life, and this is by design.” Burnett has made many programs since “The Apprentice,” among them “Shark Tank,” a startup competition based on a Japanese show, and “The Voice,” a singing contest adapted from a Dutch program. In June, he became the chairman of M-G-M Television. But his chief legacy is to have cast a serially bankrupt carnival barker in the role of a man who might plausibly become the leader of the free world. “I don’t think any of us could have known what this would become,” Katherine Walker, a producer on the first five seasons of “The Apprentice,” told me. “But Donald would not be President had it not been for that show.”

Tony Schwartz, who wrote “The Art of the Deal,” which falsely presented Trump as its primary author, told me that he feels some responsibility for facilitating Trump’s imposture. But, he said, “Mark Burnett’s influence was vastly greater,” adding, “ ‘The Apprentice’ was the single biggest factor in putting Trump in the national spotlight.” Schwartz has publicly condemned Trump, describing him as “the monster I helped to create.” Burnett, by contrast, has refused to speak publicly about his relationship with the President or about his curious, but decisive, role in American history.

Burnett is lean and lanky, with the ageless, perpetually smiling face of Peter Pan and eyes that, in the words of one ex-wife, have “a Photoshop twinkle.” He has a high forehead and the fixed, gravity-defying hair of a nineteen-fifties film star. People often mistake Burnett for an Australian, because he has a deep tan and an outdoorsy disposition, and because his accent has been mongrelized by years of international travel. But he grew up in Dagenham, on the eastern outskirts of London, a milieu that he has recalled as “gray and grimy.” His father, Archie, was a tattooed Glaswegian who worked the night shift at a Ford automobile plant. His mother, Jean, worked there as well, pouring acid into batteries, but in Mark’s recollection she always dressed immaculately, “never letting her station in life interfere with how she presented herself.” Mark, an only child, grew up watching American television shows such as “Starsky & Hutch” and “The Rockford Files.”

At seventeen, he volunteered for the British Army’s Parachute Regiment; according to a friend who enlisted with him, he joined for “the glitz.” The Paras were an élite unit, and a soldier from his platoon, Paul Read, told me that Burnett was a particularly formidable special operator, both physically commanding and a natural leader: “He was always super keen. He always wanted to be the best, even among the best.” (Another soldier recalled that Burnett was nicknamed the Male Model, because he was reluctant to “get any dirt under his fingernails.”) Burnett served in Northern Ireland, and then in the Falklands, where he took part in the 1982 advance on Port Stanley. The experience, he later said, was “horrific, but on the other hand—in a sick way—exciting.”

When Burnett left the Army, after five years, his plan was to find work in Central America as a “weapons and tactics adviser”—not as a mercenary, he later insisted, though it is difficult to parse the distinction. Before he left, his mother told him that she’d had a premonition and implored him not to take another job that involved carrying a gun. Like Trump, Burnett trusts his impulses. “Your gut instinct is rarely wrong,” he likes to say. During a layover in Los Angeles, he decided to heed his mother’s admonition, and walked out of the airport. He later described himself as the quintessential immigrant: “I had no money, no green card, no nothing.” But the California sun was shining, and he was eager to try his luck.

Burnett is an avid raconteur, and his anecdotes about his life tend to have a three-act structure. In Act I, he is a fish out of water, guileless and naïve, with nothing but the shirt on his back and an outsized dream. Act II is the rude awakening: the world bets against him. It’s impossible! You’ll lose everything! No such thing has ever been tried! In Act III, Burnett always prevails. Not long after arriving in California, he landed his first job—as a nanny. Eyebrows were raised: a commando turned nanny? Yet Burnett thrived, working for a family in Beverly Hills, then one in Malibu. As he later observed, the experience taught him “how nice the life styles of wealthy people are.” Young, handsome, and solicitous, he discovered that successful people are often happy to talk about their path to success.

Burnett married a California woman, Kym Gold, who came from an affluent family. “Mark has always been very, very hungry,” Gold told me recently. “He’s always had a lot of drive.” For a time, he worked for Gold’s stepfather, who owned a casting agency, and for Gold, who owned an apparel business. She would buy slightly imperfect T-shirts wholesale, at two dollars apiece, and Burnett would resell them, on the Venice boardwalk, for eighteen. That was where he learned “the art of selling,” he has said. The marriage lasted only a year, by which point Burnett had obtained a green card. (Gold, who had also learned a thing or two about selling, went on to co-found the denim company True Religion, which was eventually sold for eight hundred million dollars.)

One day in the early nineties, Burnett read an article about a new kind of athletic event: a long-distance endurance race, known as the Raid Gauloises, in which teams of athletes competed in a multiday trek over harsh terrain. In 1992, Burnett organized a team and participated in a race in Oman. Noticing that he and his teammates were “walking, climbing advertisements” for gear, he signed up sponsors. He also realized that if you filmed such a race it would make for exotic and gripping viewing. Burnett launched his own race, the Eco-Challenge, which was set in such scenic locations as Utah and British Columbia, and was televised on various outlets, including the Discovery Channel. Bienstock, who first met Burnett when he worked on the “Eco-Challenge” show, in 1996, told me that Burnett was less interested in the ravishing backdrops or in the competition than he was in the intense emotional experiences of the racers: “Mark saw the drama in real people being the driving force in an unscripted show.”

By this time, Burnett had met an aspiring actress from Long Island named Dianne Minerva and married her. They became consumed with making the show a success. “When we went to bed at night, we talked about it, when we woke up in the morning, we talked about it,” Dianne Burnett told me recently. In the small world of adventure racing, Mark developed a reputation as a slick and ambitious operator. “He’s like a rattlesnake,” one of his business competitors told the New York Times in 2000. “If you’re close enough long enough, you’re going to get bit.” Mark and Dianne were doing far better than Mark’s parents ever had, but he was restless. One day, they attended a seminar by the motivational speaker Tony Robbins called “Unleash the Power Within.” A good technique for realizing your goals, Robbins counselled, was to write down what you wanted most on index cards, then deposit them around your house, as constant reminders. In a 2012 memoir, “The Road to Reality,” Dianne Burnett recalls that she wrote the word “FAMILY” on her index cards. Mark wrote “MORE MONEY.”

As a young man, Burnett occasionally found himself on a flight for business, looking at the other passengers and daydreaming: If this plane were to crash on a desert island, where would I fit into our new society? Who would lead and who would follow? “Nature strips away the veneer we show one another every day, at which point people become who they really are,” Burnett once wrote. He has long espoused a Hobbesian world view, and when he launched “Survivor” a zero-sum ethos was integral to the show. “It’s quite a mean game, just like life is kind of a mean game,” Burnett told CNN, in 2001. “Everyone’s out for themselves.”

On “Survivor,” the competitors were split into teams, or “tribes.” In this raw arena, Burnett suggested, viewers could glimpse the cruel essence of human nature. It was undeniably compelling to watch contestants of different ages, body types, and dispositions negotiate the primordial challenges of making fire, securing shelter, and foraging for food. At the same time, the scenario was extravagantly contrived: the castaways were shadowed by camera crews, and helicopters thundered around the island, gathering aerial shots.

Moreover, the contestants had been selected for their charisma and their combustibility. “It’s all about casting,” Burnett once observed. “As a producer, my job is to make the choices in who to work with and put on camera.” He was always searching for someone with the sort of personality that could “break through the clutter.” In casting sessions, Burnett sometimes goaded people, to see how they responded to conflict. Katherine Walker, the “Apprentice” producer, told me about an audition in which Burnett taunted a prospective cast member by insinuating that he was secretly gay. (The man, riled, threw the accusation back at Burnett, and was not cast that season.)

Richard Levak, a clinical psychologist who consulted for Burnett on “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” and worked on other reality-TV shows, told me that producers have often liked people he was uncomfortable with for psychological reasons. Emotional volatility makes for compelling television. But recruiting individuals for their instability and then subjecting them to the stress of a televised competition can be perilous. When Burnett was once asked about Sinisa Savija’s suicide, he contended that Savija had “previous psychological problems.” No “Survivor” or “Apprentice” contestants are known to have killed themselves, but in the past two decades several dozen reality-TV participants have. Levak eventually stopped consulting on such programs, in part because he feared that a contestant might harm himself. “I would think, Geez, if this should unravel, they’re going to look at the personality profile and there may have been a red flag,” he recalled.

Burnett excelled at the casting equation to the point where, on Season 2 of “Survivor,” which was shot in the Australian outback, his castaways spent so much time gossiping about the characters from the previous season that Burnett warned them, “The more time you spend talking about the first ‘Survivor,’ the less time you will have on television.” But Burnett’s real genius was in marketing. When he made the rounds in L.A. to pitch “Survivor,” he vowed that it would become a cultural phenomenon, and he presented executives with a mock issue of Newsweek featuring the show on the cover. (Later, “Survivor” did make the cover of the magazine.) Burnett devised a dizzying array of lucrative product-integration deals. In the first season, one of the teams won a care package that was attached to a parachute bearing the red-and-white logo of Target.

“I looked on ‘Survivor’ as much as a marketing vehicle as a television show,” Burnett once explained. He was creating an immersive, cinematic entertainment—and he was known for lush production values, and for paying handsomely to retain top producers and editors—but he was anything but precious about his art. Long before he met Trump, Burnett had developed a Panglossian confidence in the power of branding. “I believe we’re going to see something like the Microsoft Grand Canyon National Park,” he told the New York Times in 2001. “The government won’t take care of all that—companies will.”

Seven weeks before the 2016 election, Burnett, in a smart tux with a shawl collar, arrived with his third wife, the actress and producer Roma Downey, at the Microsoft Theatre, in Los Angeles, for the Emmy Awards. Both “Shark Tank” and “The Voice” won awards that night. But his triumphant evening was marred when the master of ceremonies, Jimmy Kimmel, took an unexpected turn during his opening monologue. “Television brings people together, but television can also tear us apart,” Kimmel mused. “I mean, if it wasn’t for television, would Donald Trump be running for President?” In the crowd, there was laughter. “Many have asked, ‘Who is to blame for Donald Trump?’ ” Kimmel continued. “I’ll tell you who, because he’s sitting right there. That guy.” Kimmel pointed into the audience, and the live feed cut to a closeup of Burnett, whose expression resolved itself into a rigid grin. “Thanks to Mark Burnett, we don’t have to watch reality shows anymore, because we’re living in one,” Kimmel said. Burnett was still smiling, but Kimmel wasn’t. He went on, “I’m going on the record right now. He’s responsible. If Donald Trump gets elected and he builds that wall, the first person we’re throwing over it is Mark Burnett. The tribe has spoken.”

Around this time, Burnett stopped giving interviews about Trump or “The Apprentice.” He continues to speak to the press to promote his shows, but he declined an interview with me. Before Trump’s Presidential run, however, Burnett told and retold the story of how the show originated. When he met Trump at Wollman Rink, Burnett told him an anecdote about how, as a young man selling T-shirts on the boardwalk on Venice Beach, he had been handed a copy of “The Art of the Deal,” by a passing rollerblader. Burnett said that he had read it, and that it had changed his life; he thought, What a legend this guy Trump is!

Anyone else hearing this tale might have found it a bit calculated, if not implausible. Kym Gold, Burnett’s first wife, told me that she has no recollection of him reading Trump’s book in this period. “He liked mystery books,” she said. But when Trump heard the story he was flattered.

Burnett has never liked the phrase “reality television.” For a time, he valiantly campaigned to rebrand his genre “dramality”—“a mixture of drama and reality.” The term never caught on, but it reflected Burnett’s forthright acknowledgment that what he creates is a highly structured, selective, and manipulated rendition of reality. Burnett has often boasted that, for each televised hour of “The Apprentice,” his crews shot as many as three hundred hours of footage. The real alchemy of reality television is the editing—sifting through a compost heap of clips and piecing together an absorbing story. Jonathon Braun, an editor who started working with Burnett on “Survivor” and then worked on the first six seasons of “The Apprentice,” told me, “You don’t make anything up. But you accentuate things that you see as themes.” He readily conceded how distorting this process can be. Much of reality TV consists of reaction shots: one participant says something outrageous, and the camera cuts away to another participant rolling her eyes. Often, Braun said, editors lift an eye roll from an entirely different part of the conversation.

“The Apprentice” was built around a weekly series of business challenges. At the end of each episode, Trump determined which competitor should be “fired.” But, as Braun explained, Trump was frequently unprepared for these sessions, with little grasp of who had performed well. Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump. When this happened, Braun said, the editors were often obliged to “reverse engineer” the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense. During the making of “The Apprentice,” Burnett conceded that the stories were constructed in this way, saying, “We know each week who has been fired, and, therefore, you’re editing in reverse.” Braun noted that President Trump’s staff seems to have been similarly forced to learn the art of retroactive narrative construction, adding, “I find it strangely validating to hear that they’re doing the same thing in the White House.”

Such sleight of hand is the industry standard in reality television. But the entire premise of “The Apprentice” was also something of a con. When Trump and Burnett told the story of their partnership, both suggested that Trump was initially wary of committing to a TV show, because he was so busy running his flourishing real-estate empire. During a 2004 panel at the Museum of Television and Radio, in Los Angeles, Trump claimed that “every network” had tried to get him to do a reality show, but he wasn’t interested: “I don’t want to have cameras all over my office, dealing with contractors, politicians, mobsters, and everyone else I have to deal with in my business. You know, mobsters don’t like, as they’re talking to me, having cameras all over the room. It would play well on television, but it doesn’t play well with them.”

“The Apprentice” portrayed Trump not as a skeezy hustler who huddles with local mobsters but as a plutocrat with impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth—a titan who always seemed to be climbing out of helicopters or into limousines. “Most of us knew he was a fake,” Braun told me. “He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.” Bill Pruitt, another producer, recalled, “We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise.”

Trump maximized his profits from the start. When producers were searching for office space in which to stage the show, he vetoed every suggestion, then mentioned that he had an empty floor available in Trump Tower, which he could lease at a reasonable price. (After becoming President, he offered a similar arrangement to the Secret Service.) When the production staff tried to furnish the space, they found that local venders, stiffed by Trump in the past, refused to do business with them.

More than two hundred thousand people applied for one of the sixteen spots on Season 1, and throughout the show’s early years the candidates were conspicuously credentialled and impressive. Officially, the grand prize was what the show described as “the dream job of a lifetime”—the unfathomable privilege of being mentored by Donald Trump while working as a junior executive at the Trump Organization. All the candidates paid lip service to the notion that Trump was a peerless businessman, but not all of them believed it. A standout contestant in Season 1 was Kwame Jackson, a young African-American man with an M.B.A. from Harvard, who had worked at Goldman Sachs. Jackson told me that he did the show not out of any desire for Trump’s tutelage but because he regarded the prospect of a nationally televised business competition as “a great platform” for career advancement. “At Goldman, I was in private-wealth management, so Trump was not, by any stretch, the most financially successful person I’d ever met or managed,” Jackson told me. He was quietly amused when other contestants swooned over Trump’s deal-making prowess or his elevated tastes—when they exclaimed, on tours of tacky Trump properties, “Oh, my God, this is so rich—this is, like, really rich!” Fran Lebowitz once remarked that Trump is “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” and Jackson was struck, when the show aired, by the extent to which Americans fell for the ruse. “Main Street America saw all those glittery things, the helicopter and the gold-plated sinks, and saw the most successful person in the universe,” he recalled. “The people I knew in the world of high finance understood that it was all a joke.”

This is an oddly common refrain among people who were involved in “The Apprentice”: that the show was camp, and that the image of Trump as an avatar of prosperity was delivered with a wink. Somehow, this interpretation eluded the audience. Jonathon Braun marvelled, “People started taking it seriously!”

When I watched several dozen episodes of the show recently, I saw no hint of deliberate irony. Admittedly, it is laughable to hear the candidates, at a fancy meal, talk about watching Trump for cues on which utensil they should use for each course, as if he were Emily Post. But the show’s reverence for its pugnacious host, however credulous it might seem now, comes across as sincere.

Did Burnett believe what he was selling? Or was Trump another two-dollar T-shirt that he pawned off for eighteen? It’s difficult to say. One person who has collaborated with Burnett likened him to Harold Hill, the travelling fraudster in “The Music Man,” saying, “There’s always an angle with Mark. He’s all about selling.” Burnett is fluent in the jargon of self-help, and he has published two memoirs, both written with Bill O’Reilly’s ghostwriter, which double as manuals on how to get rich. One of them, titled “Jump In!: Even if You Don’t Know How to Swim,” now reads like an inadvertent metaphor for the Trump Presidency. “Don’t waste time on overpreparation,” the book advises.

At the 2004 panel, Burnett made it clear that, with “The Apprentice,” he was selling an archetype. “Donald is the real current-day version of a tycoon,” he said. “Donald will say whatever Donald wants to say. He takes no prisoners. If you’re Donald’s friend, he’ll defend you all day long. If you’re not, he’s going to kill you. And that’s very American. It’s like the guys who built the West.” Like Trump, Burnett seemed to have both a jaundiced impression of the gullible essence of the American people and a brazen enthusiasm for how to exploit it. “The Apprentice” was about “what makes America great,” Burnett said. “Everybody wants one of a few things in this country. They’re willing to pay to lose weight. They’re willing to pay to grow hair. They’re willing to pay to have sex. And they’re willing to pay to learn how to get rich.”

At the start of “The Apprentice,” Burnett’s intention may have been to tell a more honest story, one that acknowledged Trump’s many stumbles. Burnett surely recognized that Trump was at a low point, but, according to Walker, “Mark sensed Trump’s potential for a comeback.” Indeed, in a voice-over introduction in the show’s pilot, Trump conceded a degree of weakness that feels shockingly self-aware when you listen to it today: “I was seriously in trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt. But I fought back, and I won, big league.”

The show was an instant hit, and Trump’s public image, and the man himself, began to change. Not long after the première, Trump suggested in an Esquire article that people now liked him, “whereas before, they viewed me as a bit of an ogre.” Jim Dowd, Trump’s former publicist, told Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, the authors of the 2016 book “Trump Revealed,” that after “The Apprentice” began airing “people on the street embraced him.” Dowd noted, “All of a sudden, there was none of the old mocking,” adding, “He was a hero.” Dowd, who died in 2016, pinpointed the public’s embrace of “The Apprentice” as “the bridge” to Trump’s Presidential run.

The show’s camera operators often shot Trump from low angles, as you would a basketball pro, or Mt. Rushmore. Trump loomed over the viewer, his face in a jowly glower, his hair darker than it is now, the metallic auburn of a new penny. (“Apprentice” employees were instructed not to fiddle with Trump’s hair, which he dyed and styled himself.) Trump’s entrances were choreographed for maximum impact, and often set to a moody accompaniment of synthesized drums and cymbals. The “boardroom”—a stage set where Trump determined which candidate should be fired—had the menacing gloom of a “Godfather” movie. In one scene, Trump ushered contestants through his rococo Trump Tower aerie, and said, “I show this apartment to very few people. Presidents. Kings.” In the tabloid ecosystem in which he had long languished, Trump was always Donald, or the Donald. On “The Apprentice,” he finally became Mr. Trump.

“We have to subscribe to our own myths,” the “Apprentice” producer Bill Pruitt told me. “Mark Burnett is a great mythmaker. He blew up that balloon and he believed in it.” Burnett, preferring to spend time pitching new ideas for shows, delegated most of the daily decisions about “The Apprentice” to his team, many of them veterans of “Survivor” and “Eco-Challenge.” But he furiously promoted the show, often with Trump at his side. According to many of Burnett’s collaborators, one of his greatest skills is his handling of talent—understanding their desires and anxieties, making them feel protected and secure. On interview tours with Trump, Burnett exhibited the studied instincts of a veteran producer: anytime the spotlight strayed in his direction, he subtly redirected it at Trump.

Burnett, who was forty-three when Season 1 aired, described the fifty-seven-year-old Trump as his “soul mate.” He expressed astonishment at Trump’s “laser-like focus and retention.” He delivered flattery in the ostentatiously obsequious register that Trump prefers. Burnett said he hoped that he might someday rise to Trump’s “level” of prestige and success, adding, “I don’t know if I’ll ever make it. But you know something? If you’re not shooting for the stars, you’re not shooting!” On one occasion, Trump invited Burnett to dinner at his Trump Tower apartment; Burnett had anticipated an elegant meal, and, according to an associate, concealed his surprise when Trump handed him a burger from McDonald’s.

Trump liked to suggest that he and Burnett had come up with the show “together”; Burnett never corrected him. When Carolyn Kepcher, a Trump Organization executive who appeared alongside Trump in early seasons of “The Apprentice,” seemed to be courting her own celebrity, Trump fired her and gave on-air roles to three of his children, Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Eric. Burnett grasped that the best way to keep Trump satisfied was to insure that he never felt upstaged. “It’s Batman and Robin, and I’m clearly Robin,” he said.

Burnett sometimes went so far as to imply that Trump’s involvement in “The Apprentice” was a form of altruism. “This is Donald Trump giving back,” he told the Times in 2003, then offered a vague invocation of post-9/11 civic duty: “What makes the world a safe place right now? I think it’s American dollars, which come from taxes, which come because of Donald Trump.” Trump himself had been candid about his reasons for doing the show. “My jet’s going to be in every episode,” he told Jim Dowd, adding that the production would be “great for my brand.”

It was. Season 1 of “The Apprentice” flogged one Trump property after another. The contestants stayed at Trump Tower, did events at Trump National Golf Club, sold Trump Ice bottled water. “I’ve always felt that the Trump Taj Mahal should do even better,” Trump announced before sending the contestants off on a challenge to lure gamblers to his Atlantic City casino, which soon went bankrupt. The prize for the winning team was an opportunity to stay and gamble at the Taj, trailed by cameras.

“The Apprentice” was so successful that, by the time the second season launched, Trump’s lacklustre tie-in products were being edged out by blue-chip companies willing to pay handsomely to have their wares featured onscreen. In 2004, Kevin Harris, a producer who helped Burnett secure product-integration deals, sent an e-mail describing a teaser reel of Trump endorsements that would be used to attract clients: “Fast cutting of Donald—‘Crest is the biggest’ ‘I have worn Levis since I was 2’ ‘I love M&Ms’ ‘Unilever is the biggest company in the world’ all with the MONEY MONEY MONEY song over the top.”

Burnett and Trump negotiated with NBC to retain the rights to income derived from product integration, and split the fees. On set, Trump often gloated about this easy money. One producer remembered, “You’d say, ‘Hey, Donald, today we have Pepsi, and they’re paying three million to be in the show,’ and he’d say, ‘That’s great, I just made a million five!’ ”

Originally, Burnett had planned to cast a different mogul in the role of host each season. But Trump took to his part more nimbly than anyone might have predicted. He wouldn’t read a script—he stumbled over the words and got the enunciation all wrong. But off the cuff he delivered the kind of zesty banter that is the lifeblood of reality television. He barked at one contestant, “Sam, you’re sort of a disaster. Don’t take offense, but everyone hates you.” Katherine Walker told me that producers often struggled to make Trump seem coherent, editing out garbled syntax and malapropisms. “We cleaned it up so that he was his best self,” she said, adding, “I’m sure Donald thinks that he was never edited.” However, she acknowledged, he was a natural for the medium: whereas reality-TV producers generally must amp up personalities and events, to accentuate conflict and conjure intrigue, “we didn’t have to change him—he gave us stuff to work with.” Trump improvised the tagline for which “The Apprentice” became famous: “You’re fired.”

NBC executives were so enamored of their new star that they instructed Burnett and his producers to give Trump more screen time. This is when Trump’s obsession with television ratings took hold. “I didn’t know what demographics was four weeks ago,” he told Larry King. “All of a sudden, I heard we were No. 3 in demographics. Last night, we were No. 1 in demographics. And that’s the important rating.” The ratings kept rising, and the first season’s finale was the No. 1 show of the week. For Burnett, Trump’s rehabilitation was a satisfying confirmation of a populist aesthetic. “I like it when critics slam a movie and it does massive box office,” he once said. “I love it.” Whereas others had seen in Trump only a tattered celebrity of the eighties, Burnett had glimpsed a feral charisma.

On June 26, 2018, the day the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s travel ban targeting people from several predominantly Muslim countries, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent out invitations to an event called a Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. If Pompeo registered any dissonance between such lofty rhetoric and Administration policies targeting certain religions, he didn’t mention it.

The event took place the next month, at the State Department, in Washington, D.C., and one of the featured speakers was Mark Burnett. In 2004, he had been getting his hair cut at a salon in Malibu when he noticed an attractive woman getting a pedicure. It was Roma Downey, the star of “Touched by an Angel,” a long-running inspirational drama on CBS. They fell in love, and married in 2007; together, they helped rear Burnett’s two sons from his second marriage and Downey’s daughter. Downey, who grew up in a Catholic family in Northern Ireland, is deeply religious, and eventually Burnett, too, reoriented his life around Christianity. “Faith is a major part of our marriage,” Downey said, in 2013, adding, “We pray together.”

For people who had long known Burnett, it was an unexpected turn. This was a man who had ended his second marriage during a live interview with Howard Stern. To promote “Survivor” in 2002, Burnett called in to Stern’s radio show, and Stern asked casually if he was married. When Burnett hesitated, Stern pounced. “You didn’t survive marriage?” he asked. “You don’t want your girlfriend to know you’re married?” As Burnett dissembled, Stern kept prying, and the exchange became excruciating. Finally, Stern asked if Burnett was “a single guy,” and Burnett replied, “You know? Yeah.” This was news to Dianne, Burnett’s wife of a decade. As she subsequently wrote in her memoir, “The 18-to-34 radio demographic knew where my marriage was headed before I did.”

In 2008, Burnett’s longtime business partner, a lawyer named Conrad Riggs, filed a lawsuit alleging that Burnett had stiffed him to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. According to the lawsuit, the two men had made an agreement before “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” that Riggs would own ten per cent of Burnett’s company. When Riggs got married, someone who attended the ceremony told me, Burnett was his best man, and gave a speech saying that his success would have been impossible without Riggs. Several years later, when Burnett’s company was worth half a billion dollars, he denied having made any agreement. The suit settled out of court. (Riggs declined to comment.)

Article from January 7, 2019 By Patrick Radden Keefe

Yobaba - New Yorker mag articles are LONG; I posted this mostly for my own reference so I will have a record of it; that said, I strongly urge everyone to read this. it explains a lot.

[spacebrick3]

(Part 1, apparently, since writing a six-person game generates a fair bit of dialogue)

“Tonight is game night!” Kjiersten shouted, walking into the common room with a box under their arm.

“It’s what now?” Crowe asked from where he sat, typing something out on his tablet. “Game night? No,” he said, shaking his head, “I am not doing a game night. It’s stupid.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” They put down the box and opened it up, putting the instructions carefully off to the side and removing the board. “You should join us, though. It would be fun, and it’d be nice to play with six people instead of five.”

He hesitated. “But it’s Monopoly,” he said at last. “Nobody likes Monopoly. Even the designer of Monopoly didn’t like Monopoly.”

Silicon stuck her - the blue badge on her collar was lit up, so it was her right now - head out from the door.  “I like Monopoly. Are we playing Monopoly right now? Come on Crowe, you should play with us. Unless you’re scared that you’re going to lose, that is. Are you - is that it? Is that why you don’t want to play?” She vanished back into the room for a second, muffled shout coming through the door. “Hey! Emil! We’re playing Monopoly! Come on!”

“Fine. I’ll play,” he said. “But I want the battleship.”

“The battleship is mine!” Emil shouted, bursting through the door. Silicon followed, rolling her eyes. She sat down next to the board and picked up the dog token, turning it over in her hands before placing it on the starting position.

“What’s all this shouting?” Anise asked as she walked in. “Why’re you guys fighting? Can I join, or is it like something that’s personal between you two?” She picked up a token from the board and dropped it onto the starting position. “Deal me in.”

“If you’d just let me have the damn ship-“ Emil started.

“Like hell I’m giving you the ship!” Crowe shouted. “I got here first!”

Silicon sighed heavily, giving Anise a Look(tm). “Emil, give him the stupid ship and come sit with me. I got you the top hat, look.” She picked the token up and put it on top of her head, where it very slowly began to slide off. “Top hat.”

“How will I ever survive without the ship, though?” he asked cheerfully, tossing the ship over his shoulder (Crowe had to lunge to catch it), and grabbing the top hat just as it slid off of her head. “Don’t you know that if you have the ship, you’re guaranteed to win?”

“Unless you’re named after a bird, of course,” she added, swiping the token and throwing it onto the board. “Then you automatically lose.”

Kjiersten cleared their throat. They had managed to set up the rest of the board, doling out the money into six piles and setting out the cards. “If you’re quite finished. Before we start, do any of you know where I could find Sadie? I’d like to invite her to play as well, but-“

“She’s, um, sitting right behind you,” Emil said, pointing. They turned and saw that Sadie had managed to slip into the common room without them noticing, and was now sitting cross-legged on the floor. She was staring intently at the instructions, and a small silver token rested next to her.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” they said, turning to her. “Do you want to play Monopoly with us?” She nodded, not looking up from the paper. “Do you…know how to play Monopoly?”

She nodded again. “Now.”

“Alright then. Everybody else knows how to play, I think-?” They left the question hanging and were met with four nods from the rest of the group, who were organizing their initial stuff and seemed to busy to talk. “Good. I guess we can get started.”

——————————————————————————————————

-Turn 1- 

“Roll,” Sadie said, addressing the computer, and holographic dice tumbled in midair.

While she moved, Anise leaned back against the wall. She looked bored. “This’s taking too long. Can we play the VFM version?”

“What’s that?” asked Kjiersten. “It sounds interesting.”

“It makes the game a lot quicker,” she said. “Because you can only use money for everything - if you can’t pay with what you have right now, then you go bankrupt. Basically, you can’t sell anything you’ve bought, although the name No Sell for this version didn’t sit too well with marketers.”

Sadie handed Kjiersten a bill, who took it without comment and passed her back the title deed. She placed it carefully next to the board, aligning it with her small stack of money, then passed the dice controller to Emil. “So are we playing that way?” he asked, making the gesture to roll the dice. “Not that I have anything to sell on the first turn, of course, but are we?”

“Yeah, sure,” Silicon added from where she was very slowly beginning to fall into Emil’s lap. He was pretending not to notice and failing miserably.

“I don’t mind,” said Crowe. 

“I suggested it. Yeah, course I think we should do it.”

Kjiersten nodded. “Alright, Sadie, do you care?” She shook her head, but didn’t say anything. Not that that was unusual. “It looks like we’re playing that way, then. You bought it…you bought it, I suppose.”

“Was that really Oriental Avenue you wanted, huh?” Silicon asked, sitting up and leaning forwards to peer intently at Sadie. “Because…now…you can’t sell it back…” She hesitated, then shrugged, settling back onto Emil. “That was not a well-thought-out sentence, ignore me and get on with your lives.”

“It’s your turn, Syl,” he said, passing her the controller. “And I could never ignore you.”

“Oh, right, it is my turn,” she said, tossing the dice and waiting as the small simulation ran the numbers. “Did you buy anything? Are you the proud baron of whatever avenue was unfortunate enough to have you land on it?”

“Ha ha. Like you’re any more qualified to run, uh, Reading Railroad. Do you even know how a railroad works?”

“Of course I do. It’s like a subway, except it’s on top of the ground.” She passed the dice to Crowe. “Plus my railroad is going to be the best there is. It’s going to be one of those old velvet ones, with all the brass fixtures and purple and where there’s a special dining car - you know the ones.”

As Crowe traded them a bill for the last of the sky blue cards, Kjiersten raised a finger. “That’s actually an interesting point. Even here on the Foundation, there was still trains, because people still needed to get places over the ground. But now that instantaneous transportation between any two points exists, will there still be trains? Ships? Anything besides wormholes?”

“Well, the wormholes right now are ‘bout six feet in diameter - so they’re still not good for anything besides people, and not tall ones. And nothin’ on you, Sadie, but there’s a lot more being transported than just people. And…twelve. That puts me right on the electric company. I’ll buy it.”

“That’ll be a…hundred and fifty,” they said. “And I see what you’re saying, but now the technology’s here. And so it’s only going to get bigger, and more improved until all that cargo can be fit through a wormhole. So ships and trains might stick around for a while longer for transportation, eventually they’re going to be replaced.”

“People will still use them, though. Hell, people still use their old cars that they’ve had for a hundred years or whatever.”

They shrugged. “True. But they’re only keeping the luxury cars, not the mass-produced ones. So there still might be ships, but they’re only going to be AES-type ones, mostly. All the big IS ships will probably be scrapped, plus most of the STS. No one will need them.”

“I’m glad we’re having this discussion,” Crowe said, “but can we please get on with the game? I’d like to be able to”

——————————————————————————————————

-Turn 4-

“Roll.”

“You really going to burn through all your money like that, Sadie?” Crowe asked. She had bought a property on each square she’d landed on so far. “Or is it all part of the ‘plan’? Bankrupting us all in twenty turns?”

She ignored him, shuffling the title card and setting it out with the others. “Okay, okay, fine,” he said. “I’m sorry I said anything.”

“And yet you’re ignoring the true threat on this board,” Silicon responded, watching as Emil rolled. “You think you’re going to be the railroad baron, or whatever with your two railroads, but I am catching up. Silicon…Vanderbilt, that’s going to be me. Or Stanford, I suppose. I like Stanford better, because alliteration. Silicon Stanford, that’s me.”

“I assume you’re going to treat your workers a little better than the actual Stanford did?” Emil asked. “And yes, I’d like to buy Marvin Gardens. I don’t know why they named gardens after the most depressive robot in history.”

“I won’t have workers,” Silicon said. “I’ll run everything myself, plus an AI to get the trains running. I’ll call it…um…give me a second while I think of a pun.” Accepting the dice from Emil, she let it roll and pushed the small silver dog token forwards. “I get to pick a card…um…I advance to St. Charles, and take my 200 for passing Go. Hold on, you own St. Charles, don’t you?” she asked, pointing at Kjiersten. “How much is rent?”

They smiled. “You’re just passing through. I won’t make you pay rent.”

“That’s not how you win in Monopoly,” Crowe said. “You gotta…build your empire, like I’m doing here with…Pacific? This is Pacific?.”

“And how’s that working out? I can’t see that you have any two properties of the same color, let alone three,” they said, handing over the title card.

“No one does. It’s early days yet.”

“If you say so.”

“Ah, damn.” Anise was rolling now. “Guess who’s going to jail, bitches? Me. Evidently this square is a speed trap or whatever, and I was runnin’ this wheelbarrow too fast. See ya there.”

“The perils of a lawless economy,” Kjiersten said, rolling their own dice. “Oh. It appears I have landed on your ‘empire’, Crowe. Take my twenty-six dollars as tribute to Baron Leonid.”

“Very funny.”

Silicon sat bolt upright. “Scanford! That’s what the AI will be called! Leslie Scanford!”

Part 2 will come out on Friday, probably!

If you want to see the numbers for the whole game played out, there’s a spreadsheet here.

Since I don’t know much about who wants to be tagged (i only got one response on my ask post :/), I’ll just use my other tag list and then if you want to be added or removed, just let me know!

@lady-redshield-writes​, @no-url-ideas-tho, @ratracechronicler, @ken-kenwrites, @ravenpuffwriter, @cirianne, @lonelylibrary @maxbeewriting, @endlesshourglass, @micastarsandmirrors, @thebloodstainedquill, @anip-ocs, @dreamwishing, @incandescent-creativity, @fatal-blow, @danafaithwriting, @wri-tten, @thewitchthetimeladythehuntress

#game night #empty space #turns out a six-person game ends up being long #because everybody (except sadie) is TALKING #anyways #have at it

[juleschurchill]

TASK 009 >>> questionnaire

What are your character’s nicknames, if any?

Contrary to popular belief, “ J u l e s ” is in fact, her given name. 

Not Julia, Juliet, Julianne — it’s just Jules. ( after the author of an crumbling, unreadable old book her father has had in his possession since he was a boy. The story inside is worn and warped by war and age, but the cover is still clear: TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by JULES VERNE. 

It was an impossible, unthinkable feat now, to travel that far under. Unimaginable. But Aaron Churchill wanted his daughter to do impossible things.) 

She wouldn’t go by Jules if it weren’t her actual, given name — nicknames aren’t exactly professional. But at home it’s fine — she’s called Jule-bug, J, Jul, and a rather ridiculous collection of petnames, courtesy of her father.

Do they have any bad habits?

Her bluntness is a rude habit, one her mother  e n d l e s s l y  scolded her on. Be nice, Jules! Be polite, Jules!  ( But Jules doesn’t like being a liar. She  likes telling the truth, the brutal, boring, terrible truth. Is that so bad?) With that comes her habit of being judgmental, of thinking she’s the one who has it all figured out, the only one who understands anything. 

(Doesn’t help that so far in her life, she hasn’t exactly been proven wrong.)

Do they have any tattoos? If not, would they want one?

Absolutely not, tattoos are for vagrants and capitolites, and the Churchills don’t have a particularly high opinion of either group. Nothing is that important that it needs to be permanent, anyway. 

Do they have any scars? How did they get them?

Jules is lucky insofar that the only scars she has is from a childhood well-lived. There’s remnants of scraped knees from tripping playing tag, a burn behind her ear from letting her little sister straighten her hair. 

But nothing traumatic, nothing awful, nothing bad. 

Not yet.

How do they dress most of the time?

( ooc ; Do you know how, in the Sound of Music, the captain has his seven children wear literal uniforms before Maria comes?

                                                      ...Yeah. Her dad was like that.)

Her clothes are high-quality, as fits one of the richer families in District Seven, but not ostentatious. She’s never casual — her wardrobe had a wide array of  blouses and sweaters and skirts and corduroys, but no jeans, no sweatpants, no t-shirts. If it’s not appropriate for Sunday Mass, Jules Churchill doesn’t wear it. 

What words or phrases do they use frequently?

More than phrases, Jules has a distinct style of speaking — she repeats things for emphasize, instead of saying things like “very,” she says “this is bad, bad, bad, “or I love love love this dress.” 

Also, notably, Jules rarely swears unless she’s in extreme circumstances. It’s not very proper.

If anyone, who do they trust to protect them?

Short list: Her dad, only her Dad.  She trusts the other members of her family, but when it comes to protection, only one person could do it, and that is Aaron Churchill. She very much views him as her one and only protector, her guardian against all things. 

(And he would say the same thing. The fact that he can’t possibly protect Jules in the Hunger Games in any discernible way — it eats the man alive. He’s supposed to be her protector, he’s supposed to take care of her, and he can’t, can’t can’t. 

What is the point of power if you cannot protect your little girl?)

Are they argumentative or do they avoid conflict?

Depends on who you are. Do you have something Jules wants, a position or authority? She can play the yes-man all you like. But if Jules decides you’re not worth it, get ready to hear her monolingual on how incredibly wrong, wrong, wrong you are.

Did they have any role models growing up other than their parents?

No. Only Dad. No one outside of the family really mattered.

When was the time when they were the most frightened?

...Does this very moment count? Jules trusts herself, trusts her instincts, but she’s also terrified every waking moment of the games. From the moment her name was called out in the city square, every moment has been more terrifying than the last.

(Jules doesn’t want to die, her entire life so far has been planning from the future, they cannot take that away from her. If there’s no future, there was no point to any of it at all. 

That can’t be the story. 

                                    I want a different story!)

When was the time when they were the happiest?

Jules Churchill, age ten, the sort of age where everything is wrong with you and the world is against everything you do. Despite fate and biology and puberty working against her, Jules is successful, well-liked, the darling of her teachers. So much so, in fact, one of her teacher’s tells her: 

“Jules Churchill, you truly are your father’s daughter.”

She ran straight to City Hall after school, just so he could tell them, as she stood panting, red-faced in her father’s office, he simply laughed. 

“Jules, we already knew that. It’s clear to anyone who meets you that you’re mine.”

What is their most embarrassing moment?

After she turned fifteen, her father occasionally brought her to city hall for the day to shadow him. At fifteen, Jules thought she knew everything about the world, and acted as such to peacekeepers, her father’s staff, and plenty of other high-ranking officials. 

The chewing-out by her father midway through the day made it clear that she was not as smart as she seemed. Not yet, anyway.

Are they optimistic or pessimistic?

Pessimistic about the world, but optimistic about her own prospects in it. Jules is very much aware that the world she lives in is a cruel, ugly, unforgiving and unwelcoming place. But she also has the deeply-held belief that she can overcome that if she’s smart enough, if she works hard enough. 

(I wish that counted for something. I wish it counted for anything at all.)

What is their most treasured possession?

Her father own a bronze pocket-watch of incredibly old age, put together before the dark days. She has always, always, always wanted it, always made comments about how she hopes someday it will be given to her. It’s an heirloom, a piece of their family that has always been in their family. 

Her father gave it to Jules to have as her token. She intends to return it to him, though.

How do they spend a typical Saturday night?

Not terribly surprising, but Jules was rather popular at her school back in Seven. The wealthy, charming daughter of the Mayor had no trouble finding friends, and as such, if her schedule of studying allowed it, Jules was a regular attendant of District Seven’s house parties, though no, she never partook in any of the more inappropriate activities that defined teenage parties. 

(She just liked dancing.)

What song would you use to describe them?

baobabs by regina spektor

and i wouldn't raise my child inside this city anyway / they grow up too savvy and they grow up too fast / and they know about buying shit and they know about sex / and they know about investment banking and also about brokerage firms / and they know about the numbers and they know about the words / and they know about the bottom line and also about stones / and they know about careers and about the real deals /and they all grow up and become people's people with people skills

but you have tamed me / now you must take me / how am I supposed to be / I don't have my thorns now

Are they introverted or extroverted?

Extroverted, if only through sheer force of will. Jules prides herself on being able to talk to anybody and everybody. Especially in her element (District Seven, with her family, etc), Jules owns the room she goes into, knows how to light up the room she’s in.

Are they organized or messy? 

Organized in terms of her room, messy in terms of her desk. Too many thoughts, too many papers, too many things to keep track of when it came to her brain. Her room, however, is immaculate — clothes arranged by color, nothing on the floor at all.

What do they like about themselves?

To be frank, there’s a lot. Jules is a more than a little bit full herself, if you haven’t noticed yet. 

She loves her brain, her calculating, clever way of thinking her way into and out of every situation she needed to. She knows she’s attractive, though it doesn’t matter all too much to her (who cares if I’m pretty if I fail my finals?!), though it’s certainly a plus. 

She loves where she comes from, her intelligent, ambitious, historic family. She loves her role as the heir apparent of that very family. She loves being Jules Churchill.

How do they relax?

A good book — HISTORY OF PANEM, usually, maybe a folk story or two. Fire roaring in the parlor of her home in Seven, a cup of tea squealing from the kitchen. 

What is their ideal date?

Traditional, traditional, traditional. Wear something nice, take her to dinner, pay for it, and make sure to entertain her with the conversation — if she’s bored, you’re over. 

(also, eating her out afterwards wouldn’t hurt)

Do they want children? Why or why not?

Yes, but that doesn’t exactly mean Jules wants to be a mother. She wants to continue her family line, maybe even have someone love her unconditionally in the way a child does. But raising a child? Changing diapers and feeding and comforting and crying with a child for eighteen-plus some years?

Who had time for that?

Where do they see themselves in five years?

The plan has changed since she was reaped — though her heart can’t fully rule out following in her father’s footsteps, she’s not sure a Victor would even be eligible to be chosen as the mayor. But a Victor has a power all it’s own, probably more so than a mayor — something Jules wants to wield wisely.

What would be their three wishes if they found a genie’s lamp?

To win ( d u h . ) 

For her family to wield power comparable to the snows in the capitol (yeah, something she has seriously thought about) 

For pomegranates to grow in Seven — she tried one here in the capitol, and it is the closest Jules has come to falling in love.

Describe your character sitting in their favorite spot.

See above — the parlor of her home in Seven, with it’s ancient Persian rugs, warm fire-lit lamps, shelf after shelf of books and usually at least one member of her family inside. Add herbal tea for an especially happy Jules.

#ttwtask #so so so long #but some cute stories

[ara-la]

The Five Faces of Fascism (2005)

        The Five Faces of Fascism

by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action-LA/People Against Racist Terror (ARA-LA/PART)

From Turning The Tide, Volume 18, Number 5, November-December 2005

    Like the weather, everybody talks about fascism, but nobody does anything about it. Just like the barrage of deadly hurricanes that continue in record numbers this season are being fed by global warming of ocean waters, the growth of fascism is being fed by a key underlying reality. The Empire is coming face to face with its own limits and with the catastrophic consequences of its own self-destructive contradictions.

    The economic “race to the bottom” of corporate globalization has de-industrialized the U.S. Simultaneously it’s created a massive over-capacity of production using labor priced below the cost of human reproduction in China, south Asia, and elsewhere.

    There’s a concurrent race towards disaster between Peak Oil and Global Warming. On track one, we have the runaway train of economic and social devastation because of the soaring demand for a shrinking supply of petroleum and natural gas. On track two is the runaway destruction of the climate and the seas, through pollution by the gaseous wastes of petroleum. The only question seems to be how rapidly the tracks intersect and how total the smash-up will be.

    Meanwhile, the endless war that hid beneath the surface of the “Pax Americana” has come out into the open. Domestically we see the Empire trying to contain social upheaval by militarizing the schools, the border, the police, and disaster relief. We also see the ineffectiveness of that military approach. Internationally, the US war machine is bogged down and bloodied in two land wars in Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to figure out how to deal with its problems by expanding them regionally.

    In the face of these growing and intersecting crises in the political, economic and environmental spheres, fascism is once again rearing its ugly head. But like the crisis, fascism presents itself in a multi-faceted way. There are five main forces competing, contending and colluding in building a fascist response and “solution” to the problems of the Empire. Anti-fascist forces committed to human liberation and planetary survival must simultaneously challenge the Empire itself, develop solutions for the problems fueling the fascist response, and disrupt the fascist forces.

    To do so, we need to get a clearer picture of the fascist elements and the contradictions among them.

    Self-proclaimed Nazis, though not the largest or most serious threat, are a place to start. This is the element with the most naked racist approach, based on open white supremacy. They incorporate traditional nazi/fascist symbolism, and classic scapegoating of Jews. Particular groups within this tendency suffer setbacks, and ego drives rivalries between various “leaders.” But this faction has an opportunist tactical flexibility. It benefits from effective use of the media to magnify its forces and appeal. Nazis seize on every sign of racial friction. It appeals to younger whites with a sense of grievance about lost entitlements. They often present themselves as anti-establishment or even anti-capitalist, yet usually seek protection by the cops. They use methods of physical intimidation, as bullies do. But like all bullies, they are highly susceptible to organized physical resistance.

    Clerical fascism is a second major component, also connected to an element of traditional fascism. It is based in religious fundamentalism, and often incorporates well-established and well-funded religious organizations, whether churches or lay fraternal groups. They base their appeal on a sense of moral decay under the Empire, but they are otherwise more than happy to operate within the mainstream and existing political institutions. In the U.S., we are speaking mostly about Christian fascist groups, which focus on anti-woman and anti-gay organizing, opposing abortion and other reproductive rights, gay marriage and similar issues. But in a global context, Jewish fundamentalism linked to a more secular, but still religiously-justified, Zionism is an important element of this tendency, and in the U.S., Christian and Jewish Zionists make common cause. In the colonized and semi-colonized Muslim world, Muslim fascist fundamentalism plays a role more similar to that of western Nazism, presenting itself as the voice of grievance, with an anti-establishment, “anti-imperialist” politics.

     Anti-immigrant border vigilantes have resurrected the worst components of the old militia movement. They’re most interested not in replacing but in supplementing the power of the state. Although some elements engage in anti-corporate or anti-politician rhetoric, this faction, like the Christian fascists, are generally content to seek entry into, and work with, mainstream political power. Thus the Minutemen and such vigilante projects work with the Border Patrol, or run for elective office. They sponsor propositions targeting immigrants, particularly Mexicans, and work closely with Republican and some Democratic office-holders. While professing not to be racist, they also provide a convenient conduit and nesting place for nazi and white supremacist forces. For example demonstrators at anti-immigrant protests in Orange County, CA, showed up waving swastika and Confederate flags.

    This is a growth area for a mass base for fascist solutions. The state legitimizes the use of extra-governmental armed force in direct anti-immigrant action. Anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican hysteria, an outlet for white grievance, has enabled these groups to spread, along with Mexican and Central American migrants, into the southeast, northeast, mid-west and northwest, from the US “southwest,” occupied northern Mexico.

    An element within uniformed and clandestine military, law enforcement, and state security forces, operating independently of the official chain of command, is a fourth component of a fascist movement. This aspect has been somewhat dormant in recent years, at least in the U.S. But the increasing use of mercenaries by the Empire, as well as concerns within the ranks and the brass about the inadequacy of current domestic and international counter-insurgency efforts, is resurrecting it.

     Continuing setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan could increase this component dramatically, with a possible appeal among demobilized and disoriented veterans unable to find a productive niche in civilian life.

    Fascist elements within the state, the governing party and the ruling economic and political elite are the fifth element, since fascism is built from above as well as below. The Bush forces have been willing to cement one-party rule through electoral fraud and coercion. They provide red meat and marching orders to the clerical and vigilante fascists, and reward or protect fascist elements within the military and law enforcement. 

                Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes of FOX News

This will grow as the disastrous consequences of Empire, and the inability of the rulers to “deliver the goods” to anybody but an increasingly narrow stratum of the wealthy, erode popular support. The Democrats offer at best token alternatives to, if not outright reinforcement of, these approaches. This shows the systemic nature of the crisis, and the limited options available to the rulers as the crises deepen.

Samuel Bush, WWI war profiteer, Prescott Bush, Hitler’s banker, 41 & 43

    The strength of fascism in the U.S. in particular can only be understood when we recognize that the US political and economic system has always contained key elements of what later came to be called fascism. White supremacy, genocide, slave labor, and independent armed action outside the “authorized” use of force by the state, have always been key aspects of the US system.

    The interpenetration of corporations and the state, and the incorporation of a mass base into repressive state organs, have always been found in the US because it is a settler colonial society. Colonized people have always existed domestically within the expanding borders of the U.S. Therefore such colonial methods of rule have always been present within the U.S.

    Moreover, fascists understand, as the “left” in the U.S. mostly doesn’t, that the Empire has always been a cross-class project. The system allows for independent armed action by other classes and class fractions that support the imperial project, rather than a monopoly on armed action by the state or bourgeoisie.

    The only effective resistance to fascism must be a thorough economic, political and social transformation. We can’t appeal to some democratic principle or institution to forestall fascism. Passing a law, winning an election, or even impeaching or removing a president won’t do it. This is a fight to the finish for human and planetary survival.

    Let’s get organized, and build the solidarity and connectivity among people to withstand a fascist onslaught and also the underlying economic system and way of life that are causing the very dislocations the fascists claim to have a solution for. Individually and collectively, we must not merely abandon but actively overthrow an Empire that is destroying the planet. We need to develop a political jiu jitsu, use the force of opponents’ offensives against them.

    We must take advantage of the elite’s growing inability to govern or rule in the old ways to begin to govern ourselves in self-determined ways, through solidarity, mutual aid and direct action.

    In each sphere of fascist activity, we need to build alliances among the potential victims as well as counter-organize among potential supporters.

    This is not about an electoral coalition based on a lowest common denominator effort to muster more votes and ‘throw the rascals out’ in favor of a new group of  rascals. It’s about uniting all the exploited, disenfranchised, and oppressed people to build a new way of life.

    The calamitous nature of the state response to Katrina on the Gulf Coast has been reinforced by their activities in the wake of Hurricane Wilma’s devastation in Florida. Extreme weather will only become more severe. Yet the ‘best’ we can expect from the state is military and police action to protect corporate property and enforce pre-existing privileges.

    So we need on-going, pro-active efforts to build new forms of community, solidarity and environmental responsibility. We must create alliances among Mexican, Haitian, Asian and Muslim immigrants who are being targeted by the state and vigilantes; the women, lesbians, gay, bi, and transgendered people targeted by the Christian right; the Black/New Afrikan, Chicano/Mexicano, and Native people targeted by the cops, courts and prisons; and working people generally. Only decolonization and self-determination provide a basis for this.

    We must create a culture of resistance uniting militant young people with older generations in alliances capable of learning from past errors in order to prevent their repetition. This will allow us to confront and topple the state and fascists.

    With Christian and other clerical fascism, we must identify the fault lines within the base of the fascists, as well as connecting with believers who share the religious faith but not the fascist vision of the right.

    Regarding open nazis, vigorous, overt opposition as well as covert intelligence gathering and network disruption must be combined with a pro-active organizing strategy for reaching disaffected young white people. In this regard, work against not only military recruitment but also the militarist and propagandistic nature of education is important. So is a defense of young people’s health, cultural expression, and rights, especially including those of young women.

    Immigrants’ rights organizing must proceed on the basis of a vigorous anti-corporate strategy for labor, and include solidarity with workers world wide and across borders.

    Our opposition to the Empire’s military aggression must reach women and men recruited as cannon fodder, because the struggle for a better world will require that they turn the guns around.

    If we don’t act to topple the Empire here at its seat, the rest of the world’s people will pay a terrible price to do it for us.

[hypexion]

Boomsday Project: λ Reveals

Everybody loves λ! It’s most know as the exponential decay constant, which is strongly linked to the half-life of radioactive elements. The higher the λ is, the faster the thing goes away. And in the case radioactive things, the faster it spews out α, β and γ radiation.

Replicating Menace is one of those minions that probably isn’t very good. Playing it directly gives you something that dies quickly, and that’s not offset by the reward of buffing another Mech with it. Sure, +3/+1 is a good boost, and the microbots will help with board control, but having this sit in your hand while you don’t have a target for it isn’t a winning proposition.

Necrium Blade is a new way to activate Deathrattles early. But for Rogue, instead of Hunter. I’m sure this hard division of archetype synergy cards across classes will have no long-term design issues. Anyhow, this is a pretty interesting weapon - you can actually use it as fully-stated weapon, and it speeds up your Deathrattles. The obvious choice here is Kobold Illusionist, which you can play the turn after Necrium Blade, for a free 1/1 something. It’s also fun with Carnivorous Cube, allowing you to duplicate even more minions. Like a 1/1 copy of a usually big minion, perhaps. This is also a rare, so you might actually be able to unpack it!

Storm Chaser is a tutor card for expensive spells. This actually makes it a very narrow tutor card - only four Shaman spells currently cost enough to be pulled by this. All of them are worth pulling as well - Bloodlust and Volcano are just generally useful, and Sapphire Spellstone and Eureka are both combo pieces. Also, as a four mana Elemental, Storm Chaser is followed well by a number of Elemental synergy cards, so overall it’s a nice little package.

Security Rover is a card that summons tokens when it takes damage. Tokens that are kind of useful. However, it also costs six mana and has five health. This means there’s a good chance it will get knocked over in one hit, leaving you with just one token. While you just about get your mana’s worth in that case, it’s not that great of a deal. Security Rover does get a little better if you play the Doctor Boom hero, since with Rush you can damage it strategically. But I’d still rather get it as a Discover option, rather than adding it to my deck.

Thunderhead is better Violet Instructor, except it triggers off of Overload instead of spells. Which makes it not always better, but at least you can fight for the board using the Sparks. Of course, there aren’t that many Overload cards that are worth playing, and while Thunderhead makes them better, it probably won’t be pushing anything into decks. However, it’s probably okay when randomly generated, or when combined with randomly created spells.

#the boomsday project #Hearthstone #new cards

[clouddey14]

Rules for Dealing Cards in 비트게임 #4580

In other words the true odds are 1 in 37 (or 1 in 38). However, the highest a casino will pay out in roulette for any single bet is $35 for every $1 you bet (maximum payout rate of 35 to 1). http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection&region=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Homepage#/토토사이트 The bet to qualify for the jackpot for any particular hand is usually just $1, and it’s not connected to the stakes you’re playing in the game. Around 70% of every dollar goes into the progressive jackpot pool while the casino keeps the rest. The former Portuguese colony of Macau, a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China since 1999, is a popular destination for visitors who wish to gamble. Based on heavy trading with the Orient and/or due to the nomadic Roma people who were known to engage in cartomancy and fortune telling, playing cards traveled to Southern Europe.

Interestingly, the Swiss pattern differs from any other regional or national design in the way the court cards are split into two halves. The diagonal division line does not have the same direction: in all kings and three ober knaves it is slanted leftwards, i.e. as a backslash ( \ ), whereas in all under knaves and the ober of Acorns they have the same direction as a slash ( / ). These lines do not even have the same length, nor the same angle in all subjects, as can be seen in the previous samples. Standard editions follow this irregular yet traditional scheme; very few exceptions are known, among which a recent Jass deck by Piatnik (on the right), in which all lines are identical. Today's pattern is the effect of Charles Goodall and Son's reworking of the old Rouen pattern during the 19th century. Thomas Bass, in his book The Eudaemonic Pie (1985) (published as The Newtonian Casino in Britain), has claimed to be able to predict wheel performance in real time. The book describes the exploits of a group of University of California Santa Cruz students, who called themselves the Eudaemons, who in the late 1970s used computers in their shoes to win at roulette. Dealing is done either clockwise or counterclockwise. If this is omitted from the rules, then it should be assumed to be:clockwise for games from North America, North and West Europe and Russia; counterclockwise for South and East Europe and Asia, also for Swiss games and all Tarot games.

Players can further develop their edge if they maintain an Ace and a King and employ some tactics. For example, if the dealer’s upturned card is an Ace or a King, the player should raise if they have a Queen or Jack (in addition to the Ace and King), as this signifies that the player has blockers on the dealer’s pairs and that the player more than likely has the best Ace-King hand. The United States introduced the joker into the deck. It was devised for the game of euchre, which spread from Europe to America beginning shortly after the American Revolutionary War. The dealer shall then collect any progressive payout wagers and, on the layout in front of the table inventory container, verify that the number of gaming chips wagered equals the number of progressive payout wagers accepted by the table game progressive payout wager system. Players may only bet the pass line on the come out roll when no point has been established, unless the casino allows put betting where the player can bet Pass line or increase an existing Pass line bet whenever desired and may take odds immediately if the point is already on.

The set of the optimal plays for all possible hands is known as "basic strategy" and is highly dependent on the specific rules and even the number of decks used. Good blackjack and Spanish 21 games have house edges below 0.5%. If you think that you may be able to beat the Dealer’s hand, you may elect to play on by making an additional wager. This is known as the bet – it must be twice the value of your ante wager. Otherwise, the dealer’s downcard is revealed, and, if the dealer does not have a natural, any player’s natural is paid off at one and a half times the bet; the dealer who has a natural wins all the bets except when there is a tie, or “push,” with anyone else holding a natural.Like the C & E and Horn bet, if a player wishes to take down the bet after a win he or she would receive all five units back.

English courtier examples: King, Queen, Knave (Jack). Prints from deck describing the Popish Plots of 1679 (Faithorne, 1684). (Guest, Vol. 3) Right: French courtier examples from German card deck: Dame, Valet (Roi not pictured). (Johann Christoph Albrecht, artist, Nürnberg, 1769). (Guest, Vol. 2) It has grown over the years, reinventing itself in different new versions… Like a game of numbers, you should have an outstanding level of concentration to learn its tricks, to get the best odds. The program code used to calculate these results can be downloaded from this site, so that everybody can verify and compare them to their preferred counting method.You really don’t want to lose money or miss out on a big win just because you don’t know all the rules of a game.

Keno and Bingo machines were first introduced in Montana in 1975. Although subject to legal challenge, these machines were deemed legal in 1976 after the Montana Supreme Court ruled in favor of Treasure State Games, a private company that brought the first games of this type to the state. (See Justia.com - Treasure State Games v. State of Montana) One aspect of casino gambling that’s especially appealing to players is the fact that the majority of games are very straightforward. Often using a standard deck, poker games vary in deck configuration, the number of cards in play, the number dealt face up or face down, and the number shared by all players, but all have rules which involve one or more rounds of betting. 우리카지노계열 The most famous of the films is 21, which is a story derived from the real-life antics of the MIT Blackjack Team.

A number of factors need to be considered when choosing which variant to play. Does the dealer hit soft 17? Players may make a put bet on the Pass line and take odds immediately or increase odds behind if a player decides to add money to an already existing Pass line bet. False Alarm or Just Practicing – Tongue-in-cheek term used when one calls bingo but is mistaken.Each spin pays out a small number of balls, but the objective is to hit the jackpot. The program of the digital slot machine decides the outcome of the spin when the ball falls through the center gate, not when the spinning animation plays.

Between 1989 and 1996 nine states authorized commercial casino gambling: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Dakota. A few machines still pay out in coins or tokens, but they are being rapidly replaced. A string of legal victories allowed the tribes to convert the small-time bingo halls they had been operating into full-scale casinos.VLTs were first popularized in Atlantic Canada, with New Brunswick becoming the first province to introduce them in 1990, and the other Atlantic provinces following suit in 1991. In New Brunswick, sites were initially limited to a maximum of five machines each, and they were later removed from locations that did not hold liquor licenses.