#fight over the state of a fictional country and i have fucking theories about how itll go down

[existentialintrovert]

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#can't believe im actually sitting here prepared to watch two teenagers and a collection of 20 odd year old who are way to in to dnd #fight over the state of a fictional country and i have fucking theories about how itll go down #like i dont think tubbo is the traitor otherwise its like reusing the sl against schlatt pre festival #but sam is looking pretty sus with what hes saying #but didnt he say he was teaming with whoever was loosing anyways so its irrelevant #niki traitor arc... while im not sure how much of an effect it would actually have on the server that would be cool as fuck #ALTHOUGH post traitor eret disappeared from the sl more after the reveal and is only just starting to get back to the main sl #and niki is already super underrated i dont want her to become even less involved with the main sl #cause i really like her streams shes so chill but everyone talks over her in the vcs #also i still kinda stand by the 'dream is actually a traitor to schlatt' theory #ik he wants chaos and said it was on pogtopia side BUT like it would make sense character wise given his role in the festival era #and what he said to tommy when he gave him all his old gear #idk i defo dont think its tubbo #tommy is on the table but unlikely. like he protests too much imo but it doesnt fully make sense for it to be him yknow #technically could be wilbur but back when the traitor thing was announced he was still just wanting to blow shit up #philza theory honestly is still peak. unless he ends his stream before the war #cause it would make sense for him to be streaming while it happens and then to switch over to the server once things kick off #cause then the pogtopia lot wouldnt see it coming cause they wont get notifs with his changed title and stream #but idk how realistic it is #i feel like theyre the only ones who are big enough players to have an effect though #other than fundy or quackity but considering they only just betrayed schlatt that would be a little underwhelming imo #certainly ot more suprising than erets betrayal #but i do doubt thats gonna be topped #i think dream was just psyching them out tbf #techno is the obvious choice #but i honestly think that pogtopia doesnt stand a chance if they loose him #cause they dont s #stand a chance against dream alone let alone everyone else

[pigeonxp]

YGCMA songs and how they relate to c!Wilbur based off of yesterday’s lore (in my biased opinion)

This is so dumb and i literally don’t care. I can’t think about anything else other than doing this synopsis even tho like 28480329204 other people are going to do it. idc. 

(I listened to the songs earlier, and i’m also listening to them as i write the opinions. these are basically just my thoughts while listening tbh. im also not doing the full song, just some things i feel relate within each song)

- Jubilee Line

the lines at the beginning of the song, “hate to see you leaving / a fate worse than dying” could relate to how wilbur feels after tommy gets pulled back into the overworld. or, he could be referencing L’Manburg and how he hates to see his country leaving him (ouch). 

then we have the lines “your city gave me asthma / so thats why im fucking leaving / and your water gave me cancer / and the pavements hurt my feelings”. This could be in relation to L’Manburg as a whole. He put everything he had into L’Manburg and it only ended up hurting him in the end. yikes. 

now we have “shout at the wall / ‘cause the walls dont fucking love you” repeated. This could be in reference to when he said he was fucking kicking and screaming to get out of the train station. hes screaming and he doesnt care because it doesnt matter to him. it doesnt love him just like how the people of L’Manburg didnt love him. wilbur get therapy challenge.

so based on the lore from yesterday, we know that c!wilbur’s limbo was a train station (props to fanartists. i love you.), presumably the YCGMA album cover type deal. when he sings “Theres a reason / that London puts barriers on the tube line / theres a reason / that London puts barriers on the rails” repeated. if the train station looks like how they do on the album cover, there could be barriers where he is. maybe hes trying his best to just kill himself over again by jumping onto the tracks. just in an attempt to escape. jfc 

“theres a reason they fail”. he was still in the train station, wasnt he?

- Saline Solution

for this one, i feel like hes pretty far into the void and regretting his decision to have phil kill him. hes tired of being in a fucking train station for years on end. 

“i think this time im dying / im not melodramatic / im just pragmatic beyond any / reasoning for thinking ive got / fuckin rabies or something.” hes so fucking sick of being in this goddamn train station and he thinks hes dying. hes so pent up and sick of being there, maybe hes just in so much pain that he feels like hes dying. if hes been there for a while, hes probably bound to go crazy at some point, hence the “pragmatic beyond any reasoning.”

“I think ive lost my mind / blurring the fact and the fictions” this feels like he really does believe hes going crazy and is mixing up the things he really knows and the things his mind is creating for him. maybe this is when tommy first arrived and he cant tell if he real or not (thats a stretch but i figured id share it anyway.)

“I think ive made my choice / im a deceased playing victim / slip the face, slip the victory” he quite literally says that hes a deceased playing victim. hes literally saying hes dead HAHHAHAH anyway. maybe hes blaming himself again, because us c!wilbur apologists all know that hes very good at doing that.

“Sit secluded in hatred /.../” hes sitting in a fucking train station for god knows how long beating himself up over and over again and just hating himself. hes all alone. with himself. someone he fucking loathes.

this is honestly all i have for Saline Solution, but i will definitely add more later if i get different theories. 

- Since I Saw Vienna

This is my favorite song on the album and my comfort song so that could factor into this bit ahaha

im going to skip through this one a little bit and go to the line “The roads are my home, horizons my target / if i keep on moving, never lose sight of it / treating my memory of you like a fire, let it / burn out, don’t fight it, try to move on” this sounds like hes reminiscing on his home in L’Manburg and his presidency was something he relied on and he would fight to get it back, but now that hes dead and said that it should remain that way that he should just let it go. trying to move on from his symphony, forever unfinished. 

 “its been sixty weeks since i saw vienna / a bandage and a wide smile slapped across my face / ill pick up my hiking boots when i am ready / and ill put down my roots when im dead.” THESE LINES FUCK ME UP IN GENERAL BUT HOW THEY RELATE TO C!WILBUR RN IS JUST SUIBHYSBUSHDXNSKJDNHBD YK???? in the context that vienna is L’Manburg and he died, its saying that its been a long ass time since hes seen it and hes faking being okay about his death. he misses it but doesnt want to admit it. the picking up the hiking boots when hes ready is him moving on from his L’Manburg, and putting his roots down when hes dead is finally being okay with not living there/being an important part of it. he believed his death was the best for the people in L’Manburg and L’Manburg itself. it seems like hes still trying to convince himself. 

“Ill be gone then, for when you must be alone.” hes gone. hes dead. hes in the train station. he left the L’Manburgians alone and hes alone in his limbo. man. 

- Losing Face

this song is angry. hes so fucking angry. my thoughts are that this is about the following presidents after him. he feels like the L’Manburgians were happier without him and im pretty sure he believed that even when Schlatt was president. this is so evident in the lyric “Is he better than me?” Hes literally asking if the other presidents were better than he was. he doesnt believe he did everything he could to be the best president, even though we all know that he gave everything that he was into that country and then some. he broke himself for the L’Manburg but he doesnt believe hes enough. sheesh.

“Ive seen him / ive been him / ive felt the same way” even though he cant see the new presidents being president, he knows what its like. he knows that they might break under the pressure. hes been there. he knows how if feels. yikes. 

“Ive lost all meaning / ive lost my sense of hope” this feels like when he was nearing the end of L’Manburg when he blew it up, and that he feels like trying to win it back is pointless. he has no hope for it anymore, so why not give up? his mental state is already shit yk so i cant really blame him for feeling that way. 

“i dont care / i want you here / as long as youre happy, i dont care” this line. this fucking line. hes lost hope in being president, but he doesnt care. he just wants the L’Manburgians to be happy. that was his whole thought process while he was president. he didnt matter to himself, he just wanted them to be happy. he sacrificed his mental state for them. cries in wilbur apologist.

- Your Sister Was Right

this is my second favorite song on the album i think HAHAHAH

anyway

“I use everyone i ever meet / i cant find the perfect match / abuse those i love / while i ostracize the ones who love me / back.” wowie wow wow fucking ouchie. He feels like he uses his friends. this whole thing is a projection of his shit ass mental state rn fucking hell. he feels like hes abusive. thats what everyones been telling him. they tell him he was awful and a shit president and all that jazz even though hes been killing himself trying to be the best for them but its still not enough (pigeon projecting? more likely than you think)

“every time that i miss you / i feel the way you hurt / and i dont deserve you / you deserve the world / though it feels like we were built / from the same dirt.” man. hes dead lol. he misses the L’Manburgians. not only were they his supporters, but they were all his friends too. every time he misses his friends he feels their pain of when he first blew up L’Manburg. he feels like because he caused them all pain that they dont like him and that they never liked him and that he is undeserving of their friendship. he still wants to be friends with them. he still loves them. he still wants the best for them. he thinks theyre so much better than him even though they all created L’Manburg together. in reality they are all the same, but their actions impact each other and he feels that his actions make him worse than them or less than. fuckisonmdfnpbhife

“and i hate to say it / but your sister was right / dont trust english boys / with far too much free time” sister is dream mayhaps. fuckngeionsfjg that hurt sorry uhhh anyway yeah sister is dream?? he did say that wilbur would be a shit president and he believes that hes a shit president so he thinks they were all right about him being a shit president  fbhjebinfnejg. maybe sister is just everyone who didnt believe in wilbur. man....

“a fucking waste of time” do i even need to explain this one? he fr doesnt belive hes worth it anymore and that hes literally a waste of time. hjkfbhnfve

- La Jolla

this one feels pretty far into train station limbo to me as well. namely from “and im lonely / there i said it” this could either be him being lonely as president and feeling like he doesnt have anyone to talk to really because hes too busy trying to hold himself together for everyone. either that or hes lonely in the station and didnt want to admit it because this is what he wanted. he wanted to die. he wanted to be dead because he believed thats what everyone else wanted and he just wanted the best for them. 

“i could go away / i could pack my things and be gone before you wake” he could leave if they asked him to. he would do anything for them. 

“you know ive tried hard to love me too / it always seems to fall in, through” this line already physically pained me but now it hurts even more having to relate it to a character i love. we already know that his mental state was declining as his presidency continued, but this would confirm that hes just trying to love himself even though he can never seem to get it right. 

“my own personal sunset” this is just the ‘this is my sunrise’ line but different. my man misses the sun. fuck. 

- I’m Sorry Boris

this song is almost definitely from a long ass time in the limbo. 

“and im sorry / but, boris / im leaving / im not good for anyone here” boris represents L’Manburgians!! hes talking about how hes leaving the world by planning on killing himself. fuck. 

“we reached the end of a decade” mans been dead for a decade. sheesh. 

he then goes on to say that he cant believe hes leaving, he doesnt think he wants to leave them, but he thinks its whats best for them.

he talks about how they do all of these bullshit things before helping you and i know its in reference to london but for the sake of my sanity its about the presidency role and how it will fuck you up before bothering to help you not want to kill yourself.  

should i do a separate post about how i visualized it/about how i thought about the song in paragraph form like a lowkey explanation? idk how to explain it but in this one i wanted to just cover some of the lyrics of the songs and my thoughts on them. i think c!wilbur wrote these in the limbo after he died. i know this is also shit and Not Good, but i really just needed to get my thoughts out before it killed me. i also didnt reread this. its probably repetitive and shit yk. i do Not Care. id also love to hear thoughts on this if yall want to. if you made it this far i love you please hydrate and eat today and youre so sexy ahaha 

“and even though im finished / im not quite done with it” even though hes finishing his symphony by blowing it up, hes now realizing he wished he hadnt blown it up and that he hadnt killed himself. man. 

-

#tw death #tw suicide #wilbur soot #ycgma #dream smp #tommyinnit #dream #c!wilbur #fuck i love this album

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 99

Here we have the aftermath of the Warlord Bowl. 

Here, we finally... FINALLY get to see Jokul as a person and not a far-off mysterious bad guy. Consciously, there was never any intent to compare Jokul to people who don’t understand how politics work: @zommbiebro​ isn’t even American, for one thing, and therefore neither is Jokul. However, reading it on the last pass before posting, I realized how it could be taken.

The part that isn’t relevant to the chapter: While I didn’t mean that comparison, please make sure you vote in any local elections available to you, if it doesn’t risk your life. No matter how much you feel your vote doesn’t matter, it does. If everyone who didn’t vote decided to do so, it would change the world.

In my own country, I’ll be taking time off work - because I have that ability - and taking local people to polls that ordinarily would be inaccessible to them within their district.

Back to the chapter relevant stuff: Thank you to @zommbiebro​ for giving me such a good character to play with, @charlylimph-blog​ for reading to ensure entertainment, and @baelpenrose​ for beta reading in every way that entails.

After a quick dinner at the first mess we came across - and true to my promise, I didn’t cook anything - Arthur, Antoine and I reconvened with Jokul in my office. As agreed, he brought only two of his own people, who sat on either side of him in a mirror to how I was bracketed by my own friends.

Unfortunately, they entered as I was mulling out loud the possibility of making hot pot for family dinner one night.  Even less fortunately, the ginger who I had thrown in the gym was one of the people who walked through my door while I was debating the logistics of meat versus vegetarian options.

“She doesn’t even take us seriously!” the nasal voice complained, interrupting me.

Simultaneously, several things happened. I opened my mouth to retort, Arthur put a hand over my mouth, Antoine pushed my shoulder back into the chair.

And Jokul spoke up.

“We agreed to meet with them if Farro beat me in combat.  He did, we are here, and there will be no further argument on the matter.” If anything, he sounded weary rather than angry. “She did not even request that we cease acting against her, only that we meet as equals. It is the least we can do.”

I didn’t even know forehead cramps were a thing until I gave myself one with the speed of my eyes widening. Slowly, Arthur lowered his hand so I could speak. “Right,” I coughed. “So, there are a few things I want to know.”

“Such as?” 

“Why am I your target?” I blurted out. Of everything, this was the one that was weighing heaviest on me. I felt if I could understand that, I would know how to tackle the rest. 

To my frustration, he fucking shrugged. “You are emblematic of everything that will destroy our chance at a new start,” he stated calmly, like he was telling me his name.

I sputtered before regaining my composure. “How? How am I doing something badly?”

“You only want to consolidate power, rule over the masses!” the red-haired toady honked at me.

The overblown statement and Jokul’s subsequent glare at his own man was a level of ridiculous I couldn’t handle at that moment.  Laughing ruefully, I wiped away a tear that warned me I was close to hysterical. “I don’t want to rule over anyone, dude.  If I had my preference, I would only decide what I want to eat once or twice  a week for the rest of my life.”

“But you rule over the Council,” Jokul pointed out in a confused tone.

“I don’t rule anyone, buddy. I am on the Council largely against my will, and mostly because no one else who is qualified even wants my job. Trust me, I’ve tried.” Gods had I tried.

His next statement was significantly less confident. “But you took the reins of power…”

“I am a glorified event coordinator and human resources officer. I have a staff of exactly two. One is my sister, who has been in her role longer than I’ve been in mine and only listens to me when it’s convenient. The other is my assistant, who is British as hell and listens to me on about equal level with my cat.”

“The Baconists! Your assistant was part of that rebellion! You must have known and hidden it from our hosts!” I had to give him some begrudging credit. Even he didn’t sound like he believed his own words, and if the smug look from Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber on either side of him was anything to go by, that wasn’t his own theory.

Time to set the record straight, it seemed. “Okay, quick reminder: that bitch tried to kill me,” I enunciated carefully, leaning forward as I spoke.  “She nearly succeeded. That wasn’t a cover up, it was her realizing that I talk to myself in the shower and listening long enough to hear me think through what was going on. As far as hiding her intent from our hosts… You’re only half right. Miys doesn’t read minds, contrary to what people think, they only read intent. That nutjob really did think she was doing the best thing for the universe by wiping humanity off the proverbial map. Nothing for Miys to pick up, she actually had what she thought were good intentions.”

“You have built yourself to be this legendary hero -”

“I didn’t build myself to be jack. Effing. Shit. If I had my preference, I would give you my position, and open a restaurant that does cooking classes.” When he opened his mouth to interject, I held up a hand to stop him. “Miys likes me because I talk to myself, even in my head, and so badly that they can still hear what I am saying when I don’t move my lips. I only survived being attacked by a crazy person because I treat the person who saved me like, you know, a person? Make sure he’s okay, give him his space when he wants it, sass him back when he wants to be sassy. It was just sheer, dumb luck, and I’m not even sure it was good luck, because voila!” I flung my hands wide at the current situation, forcing both Arthur and Antoine to duck. A quick glance at Antoine only rendered one of his eloquent shrugs. Must be handling the situation okay if he doesn’t think I need help.

I was less concerned with Arthur’s opinion, not because I didn’t care, but because I knew he would jump in when he felt it was needed, without prompting or permission.

“So you do not want to rule over us all?” Jokul asked carefully.

“I don’t even want to top one of my boyfriends consistently.”

“Sophia!” Antoine hissed with a miserable expression, while Arthur burst into a coughing fit. I wasn’t sure if the latter was trying to cover a laugh of choking. 

Jokul, on the other hand, seemed to take that at face value  “Then why are you in power? Explain that.”

With a heavy sigh, I tried again. “I’m not in power. Decisions are voted on by the Council. If someone brings me an idea for a class, or an architectural project, or a medical possibility, I pass it off to the Councilor who handles that and let it go from there.” Emphatically, I pointed at my own face. “Again, glorified events coordinator and HR.”

“And yet, you have your pet warlord sitting beside you. Explain that away,”Tweedledumb - the brunette on Jokul’s other side - accused.

I whipped my head to look at the subject of that statement before looking back across the table. “Arthur?” I asked, jerking a thumb in his general direction. “You do realize he’s a teacher first, right? Warlord out of need, but that ‘need’ was protecting the students in his history class when everything went to shit? Don’t get me wrong, we butted heads like you would not believe when we first met in person. But we realized halfway through what looked to be one hell of an argument that we knew each other for - fuck, like, a decade? Maybe less? - before the End. I didn’t ‘win him over.’ We just realized we’ve always been friends.” With a shrug I glanced back at Arthur, who also shrugged before nodding.

“Too convenient, Councilor.” Tweedledumb gloated. “You just happened to be friends with someone who - “

“Oh for FUCK’s sake!” Annnnd there it was.  Someone had reached his limit for diplomacy and stupidity. “We met on a fanfiction site writing a crossover of two of the worst pieces of science fiction ever written and mutually infected each other! FUCK!” Crossing his arms, he started muttering to himself. “Not like finding someone to kick your asses is hard…”

After a glare at the darker-haired idiot, and with an expression that looked like he was entirely regretting his choice of people for this meeting, Jokul schooled his features before addressing me directly. “Fanfiction?” he asked in a skeptical tone.

And the dirty truth comes out, I thought with another sigh. “StarDoc and Warhammer 40K, okay? It was fun, no fandom to cheese off, nothing smutty. Just… fun.” When the nostalgia threatened to overtake me, I shook my head vigorously. “The point is, we knew each other for years Before the world went to shit, and only realized when one of my friends landed in his class and there was a data error.  I don’t even like violence.” Antoine gave me a skeptical look so I clarified. “Usually.”

“And yet you are a combatant!” Jokul stated with certainty, clearly on more familiar ground.

Angrily, I scowled at Tweedle-the-ginger before leaning forward to look into Jokul’s eyes. “Look. I don’t know how it was in Canada, with your mooses and shit, but I really, really want to know: Do you honestly believe that anyone who got through the After did it without learning how to defend themselves? Even more, that any woman who made it, didn’t learn to fight dirty?”

“Not if you know how to have people defend you - “ Jokul tried before I cut him off.

“They don’t defend me because I’m helpless, let’s be clear. They defend me because I will only fight back if I know my life is on the line. But, on the same page, I will protect my friends and family from anything, without reserve, and die for them. No hesitation.” With a deep breath, I sat back rather than jumping over the table.  “I have my flaws, and my sister will tell you the biggest among those is that I trust too easily.  I assume the best in, literally, everyone.”

“Except smartass teacher, apparently,” Arthur said in a fake cough that fooled exactly nobody.

After making a face at my friend, I turned back to the moose in the room. “What that means is, I don’t try to defend myself until it is literally your life or mine. Or both. I don’t really care at that point, because I assume I’m not going to make it. I just want the person I’m fighting to go down with me.” Trying to imitate Charly’s most savage grin, I put on a forced-cheerful tone. “Now, tell me, Jokul. Who would rather have faced in that fight, knowing that?”

His eyes darted between Arthur and myself as he swallowed hard, mulling the implications of that. “You would kill and die for your friends’ safety and health, even if you would only protect yourself at the last moment?” Here, he scoffed. “There is nothing exceptional or even special about that. Many who were in power in the After felt the same.”

“Except I don’t want power,” I repeated in a tone that I previously reserved only for small children. “I just told you that.” In the corners of my eyes, I saw both of my friends nodding so hard I was concerned for their spines.

Before I could try to reason with Jokul any more, Arthur jumped in. “If you’re both done arguing righteousness, let me explain a few things. Jokull. First off, Soph actually doesn’t want to rule, or be on the Council. She told you this. She’s also bitched about it to me, her sister, and anyone else who will listen, at length. On top of being too trusting, her biggest flaw is actually an impulsivity problem, in general. But she’s not an autocrat.” As he gestured, I saw his eyes glaze over, his voice taking on a serene tone that was entirely too familiar. “If Soph was a real autocrat, she’d have let us have our little duel armed, with my sword and - I presume you’d have had an ax? Maybe a broadsword? You look like a broadsword guy... any rate.”

“However,” he continued, leaning forward with a thoughtful expression, like he was puzzling something out. “she made me promise not to kill you. Think about that. After you’ve been nothing but a headache and a threat to her and her family for months, she makes me promise not to kill you. I wanted to, you know.” The wistful sigh that accompanied that statement was entirely unnecessary and I was certain he only did it to irritate me.  “I wanted to kill you and have your lifeless corpse thrown out of the airlock like trash, not because of the Council, not because your Viking gimmick wears out in a hurry, but because you made the mistake of threatening a friend, then slapping a student. I had no idea if you were actually going to seriously harm any of them, and I didn’t care. The threat alone was enough to make me decide I wanted you dead.” Tapping his chin briefly, he pointed at Jokul without actually looking at him. “Because you were an unknown quantity, but no matter whether or not you were actually the threat you claimed to be, your corpse would be harmless.”

Arthur shrugged before looking Jokul in the face. “That’s how warlords handled things in the After, isn’t it? When someone threatened your people, or when someone threatened mine? I didn’t negotiate. I didn’t warn. I doubt you did, either. I took them at their word, and I did unto them first. And I’d bet you did the same. ‘Peace’ was what you called it when everyone who wanted to make war on you or your people was dead. That’s what the After taught me, that’s what it taught you.” After emphasizing his point by gesturing between the two of them, he shook his head.  “And that impulse, that set of lessons? That's not what humanity needs right now. Our skill set as leaders is not what humanity needs right now. If you want humanity to have a fresh start as you claim, drop the hostility, drop the self-righteousness, and actually try listening. Do you want a genuine peace with the Council?” Thoughtfully, he stroked the hilt of his sword where it laid across his lap. 

I knew it was the fondness of being reunited with a long lost limb, but Jokul didn’t know that. 

“Or a warlord’s peace with me?” In a creepy way, Arthur’s tone was downright perky. “I prefer a genuine one. A warlord’s idea of peace is one of the things I want to leave in the ashes of the After. That’s why it’s the Council who make the rules here - not warlords.”

With an alarmed expression, Jokul very slowly glanced at me. “Did he just threaten to kill me and shove me out an airlock?”

“No, he’s pouting because I wouldn’t let him do that,” I answered honestly.  The topic had come up, for a solid fifteen seconds.  I was even reasonably sure Arthur had been joking.

“I don’t - “ Arthur started  indignantly before being cut off by Jokul.

“He makes a good point. Our skills as warlords are not what is needed in this new world. I let myself believe people who told me that the Council in general and you specifically wanted to hoard power and privilege over us, just like the people who led Earth to where it ended up.” He glanced nervously at Arthur, who was still stroking his sword, before forging ahead in a somewhat squeakier tone. “If someone who has had real power agrees that you and the Council are the best option, then I will at least try to see how that would work.”

Here, Antoine joined the conversation. “Militant strength and ruling by force aren’t the only forms of power. We do not want that sort of power over us anymore. The Council leads because the people on this ship largely want to follow them.  That is the kind of power no one can force.  It has to be earned.”

“But the Council still makes decisions without our will - “

Shaking my head, I angrily flicked open my datapad and shot a file to him like I was thumping off an insect. “No, Bjornson, we don’t.  I was elected to my position - without my knowledge, might I add - by the people I represent to the Council. Every decision we make, the people on this ship get a vote with the exception of an emergency like what happened on Level One.  There wasn’t time to have a vote on how to handle that.”

“Although, we have had a lot of emergencies lately, so I understand the confusion,” Arthur interjected.

Is this what hallucinations feel like? I wondered. There was no way in frozen hell Arthur just made a point in Jokul’s favor, but the calm, resigned look on his face told me that, at some point, he seemed to have made peace with having to treat Jokul Bjornson as a sentient being. I was going to pass out if I kept sighing, though. “Okay, true. But everything else - Insert Winter Holiday, the swimming area, the diving docks, food festivals, permanent low stimulation areas throughout the ship, Galactic Core education - those were voted on by the people on this ship, with an overwhelming majority in favor.”

“What about the alarms?” Jokul pointed to his own head for emphasis.

“Also voted on, believe it or not,” I confirmed. “ And most of the ship agreed that there was more benefit in not running into people who would react badly to unexpected touch than there was discomfort at the alarms going off.”

“I tested them myself, monsieur.” Antoine offered. “So I am well acquainted with the volume they are calibrated for, and I do not appreciate you disabling them.  My staff have had to work around the clock to treat the damage your people have caused to others on this ship, who are terrified to leave their quarters now.”

Jokul looked a bit guilty at that, as well as his entourage.  Looked like he hadn’t considered that. “Would you believe me if I told you that was originally an accident?” he admitted sheepishly.  “One of the engineers thought it would be funny to shock another one in the neck with a low level electrical current, right behind the ear.” He turned his head and pointed to a small burn scar in the same place. “It took days for them to notice that the proximity alarm didn’t work anymore.”

To my shock, Antoine started swearing angrily in French, so fast even the translator couldn’t keep up. “Sophia, if I find out Charly Harper is the cause of this…”

Jokul shook his head vigorously. “I can assure you it was not Miss Harper.” His focus slid over to me, eyes wide.

Either this motherfucker just lied to keep Charly out of trouble, or she really was innocent.

“That explains why Derek and Zach couldn’t figure out how they did it,” Arthur pointed out. “You can’t hack into something that’s shorted out.”

Jokul spoke up again. “It also… may? Have caused some translation inconsistencies?”

“So the shock corrupted more files than just the alarms,” I stated in clarification.

“Several, in fact, yes…. Specifically signed languages and tonal languages.”

“That’s… that’s at least a third of the ship…” I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to sob in horror or laugh hysterically.

Jokul groaned before cradling his head in his hands. “I am aware, yes.”

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#the miys #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #apocalypse #found family #earth is space australia #hfy #aliens #science fiction #original fiction #my writing

[taggedtforswears]

Episode 10 Author Notes

Becca and Hannah Davey love music! So much! They love music a lot and have many feelings about music! Sometimes, all these feelings come from a really slammin’ soundtrack. Other times, we make the feelings all by ourselves in the fanmix factory. Either way, we’re having a great time talking about the value that music can bring to a piece of media or to a fandom. Some songs show up on a bunch of shipping playlists, some soundtracks are perfect to study to and also have the benefit of making you think about Captain America: Winter Soldier at the same time. Do you need music recs? We have you covered this episode. Do you want to hear two theories on how to build playlists? HD and Becca each discuss their own fanmix-building techniques. It’s a nice, meandering chat about music and all the value it lends to our lives and our stories, so sit back and enjoy!

Listen to this week’s podcast episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts! You can also email us at [email protected].

Episode Notes

Thor: Ragnorak Fight Scene but the background music is Brittney Spears’ ‘Toxic’

Hey Brother - The Adventure Zone Animatic/PMV by Stardust In June

Here’s a brief article about how the composing process works!

A link to Hannah Davey’s Lord of the Rings podcast!

Songs Referenced In This Episode

Buckle in, friends, this is going to be a long list.

Misirlou - Dick Dale (Pulp Fiction)

Hallelujah - Rufus Wainwright (Shrek)

On My Way - The Proclaimers (Shrek)

Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin (Thor: Ragnarok)

Rocky Road to Dublin - The Dubliners (Sherlock Holmes) (note HD says ‘Rocky Road to Galway’ in the podcast; they have listened to this song a frightening number of times but still they were wrong and always fuck up a reference and this is fine.)

The Call - Regina Spektor (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian)

Into the Unknown - Panic! At The Disco (Frozen II)

Sticks and Stones - Jonsi (How To Train Your Dragon)

Hoist That Rag - Tom Waits (A Most Wanted Man)

Hi Ho - Tom Waits

Into the West - Annie Lennox (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King)

A Far Green Country - Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King)

Forbidden Friendship - John Powell (How To Train Your Dragon)

Wonder Woman Theme - Hans Zimmer & Junkie XL (Batman v. Superman)

Upward Over the Mountain - Iron & Wine

Stuck In The Middle With You - Steelers Wheel (Reservoir Dogs)

Khabberni Keef - Khansa

Toss A Coin To Your Witcher - Joey Batey

Promise - Sunna Wehrmeijer (She-Ra)

Again - Yui (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood)

Trøllabundin - Eivør

Soften and Shake - Olivia Broadfield

Hollywood Forever Cemetery - Father John Misty

Soundtracks Referenced In This Episode

Nostalgia Listens: The Lion King, The Parent Trap, Shrek

Study Soundtracks: How To Train Your Dragon, Pride & Prejudice, Theory of Everything, Little Women, Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Movies That Don’t Deserve Their Soundtracks: Suicide Squad, Twilight

Soundtracks That Mix Old and New Sounds: A Knight’s Tale, The Witcher

Children Show Soundtracks: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Steven Universe, Avatar: The Last Airbender, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Soundtrack That We Don’t Have a Category For: Wind River (HD mentions in the ep, but this movie really freaked them out in theaters though the soundtrack is POWERFULLY GOOD so uh. Watch with care if you choose to watch it, it has a strong rape trigger warning)

Fanmix Songs Referenced In This Episode

Eden (Hozier) - Good Omens

I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You (Elvis Presley) - The Adventure Zone

Hey Brother (AVICII) - The Adventure Zone

Make Out (Julia Nunes) - The Magnus Archives

Becca’s Good Omens Fanmix

Further Reading

Bliek, F.S. (2018). “The Sonic Space of the Lord of the Rings trilogy: A study in the role of sound production in the soundtrack for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.” Utrecht University Repository.

Boltz, Marilyn. (2004). “The cognitive processing of film and musical soundtracks.” Memory & Cognition, volume 32, 1194–1205.

Chełkowska-Zacharewicz, Maria & Mateusz Paliga. (2019). “Music emotions and associations in film music listening: The example of leitmotifs from The Lord of the Rings movies.” Roczniki Psychologiczne, 2, 151-175.

Romano, Aja. (2020, Jan. 30). “The masterful deceit of “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,” explained.” Vox.com.

Williams, Rebecca. (2013). ““Anyone who Calls Muse a Twilight Band will be Shot on Sight”: Music, Distinction, and the “Interloping Fan” in the Twilight Franchise.” Popular Music and Society, 36(3), 327-342.

Young, Matthew. (2007). “Projecting Tolkien's Musical Worlds: A Study of Musical Affect in Howard Shore's Soundtrack to Lord of the Rings.” Bowling Green State University. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 

Music/Sound Effect Credits

Intro: ‘The Messenger - Silent Partner’

Outro: ‘Brain’ by Lobo Loco via Free Music Archive

Filler Music: ‘Work Wonders’ by Lobo Loco via Free Music Archive

#tagged t for swears THE PODCAST #podcast #fandom #fanmixes #music #music recs #HD and Becca Recommend #soundtracks

[mylifeatwar]

Book 2, Chapter 2, Page 3

Archived Text Follows:

It’s still not midnight in my timezone yet so this page totally counts as being on time! In all seriousness though, Matt had this page done hours ago but I was kind of in the middle of a tattoo session and wasn’t really available to post it. That’s on me, not him

I really love this fucking page by the way, especially the shading in panel 2. There’s also some great foreshadowing here, but I’ll let you folks find it yourselves.

Something that Matt and I were joking about recently was language and accents in the MLaW verse. While the language that Free Marketeers is essentially supposed to be English (though they call it Treadspake) the accent is pretty different. It took me forever to find but here’s an example of what someone with a heavy Free Market accent sounds like to someone who doesn’t speak Treadspake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa-lmcdlq4A&list=FLWEkhqIkBE080OHhK-mC85g&index=1

You can already imagine how that colors most people’s perception of the average Free Marketeer.

Thanks for reading!

– Luther out

Comment Text Follows:

lhsc - Oh ho, Lulu is going to defend her favorite asset. Always bet on the Lulu.

Gillsing - So Free Marketeers aren’t big on enunciation, huh? I guess I’d need to hire a translator to understand them then. Oh. I see what they did there.

Killercow - BOP DAP BOODLY DAP DAU. Also, is lulu like, majorly huge? She looks at least a foot taller than the guy next to her, and she’s taller than Big Al by quite a bit.

plaintextman - Yeah, mista Patenge mentioned it during the long-winded discussion started around chapter 1’s cover: http://www.mylifeatwar.com/?p=26“ Lulubelle merely appears at a normal height because she’s been shown standing next to Captain Theroux, who is a very… very large ogre of a man. We made them this way as a response to the mecha genre being full of diminutive female characters, most often relegated to a non-combat role who spend way too much of their time stating everything they feel.” And MLAW is slowly but surely defying that “softy women” trope more and more (without — so far — overdoing it).

Mr. Patenge - Lulu-Belle (and her friend Missy) are around 6’3″. It’s all those chemicals and hormones in the milk man… also in the soda, the water, the coffee the air, the beer and, for some reason, the toilet paper.

Killercow - I gotta get me some of that toilet paper! Being 6’4 without, I’d probably be a freaky giant!

Iarei - Dat reflection.

Grudgesettler - Fridge with legs versus Lulubelle. Taking all bets, remember the house charges a 15% gratuity from all proceeds. A question, if I may. This one is regarding the competitive nature of the Free Market and their attitudes towards monopolies. From your answer regarding an earlier question about the util, I gather that for the most part, monopolies are disliked. My question is this: what guarantees the continuation of this competition instead of the eventual creation of a series of monopolies? I suspect that the Free Market doesn’t have much in the way of Anti-trust laws. Excellent page. I especially love the perspective shot in the second frame.

Zarpaulus - Three words: Mega-fun food inc. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that they do a thing to prevent monopolies, real life economic Libertarians don’t so why would fictional ones?

rfaramir - You don’t have to fight monopolies, so long as you have no State which can grant one. So-called “natural monopolies” are rare and not a problem to the free market. Think of a one-of-a-kind mineral mine. Consumers did fine before the mine was discovered, life got better when it’s otherwise-unobtanium made production more efficient, but if the price goes too high, the free market will work at creating alternatives or doing without, going back to previous production modes without the others-unobtainable substance. Potential competition keeps monopolists from charging truly damaging monopoly prices.

Iarei - That simply is not true. You’re drawing an imaginary line in the sand between ‘monopoly’ and ‘dictatorship’ that does not exist. “A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned”. In any hypothetical ungoverned free market, the most powerful monopoly necessarily assumes the role of governance. You’ve heard of ‘company stores’ right? Any barrier to entry for competition that exists under a corrupt government is going to exist in a free market system. The only difference is that the company wouldn’t need to bribe any politicians. A question was raised earlier in this comic – “How can Fizziz stay in business if their product is both foul and poisonous”. If you’ve been paying attention here you should already know the answer.

Killercow - No, it tends to be governments that aid monopolies. In a perfectly free market, in theory, a monopoly can’t hold any power because as soon as the price becomes too dear, another company can come and offer competition at a lower price. These are opportunistic people, who would jump at a chance to undercut a company that was being a little too excessive with their prices for their worth, and without a government to aid in forcing opposition out of business, or breaking strikes and such, monopolies would be much harder to obtain. Not impossible, but extremely difficult. For example, look at the role the security contractors play. On one page it is mentioned that Mega Fun Foods is subsidizing their losses to keep them fighting, and it is mentioned that “Few enough companies can do our job”. While they don’t hold a monopoly, because of the couple of other security companies, which keep them from overcharging, they are a specialized and presumably expensive commodity. They have skills that are rare and useful, and charge more for it. But even those skills are not unique to one company. As for Fizziz, I think that was supposed to be more of a joke than a serious commentary on monopoly, but it may have also been something else, like it has a niche market of… I don’t know, horse pee lovers or something. Or it might be an acquired taste. Or maybe they used to offer good products and now people just blindly buy the brand.

Iarei -  Monopolies help themselves, they don’t need a government to do so. All they need is thugs they can pay to shoot anyone not working the line or a sufficiently high barrier to entry. What magic power do you think you have over a monopoly that you don’t have over a government? A working government acts as a check against monopolies. Like, the government that’s literally fighting a monopoly owned mercenary company in this comic? The comic you’re reading? As far as monopolies you might be familiar with go, how about your ISP? If you live in the US I can all but guarantee you you’re overpaying. That’s in a country where the government nominally has legislation intended to prevent monopolies. In this example, it has nothing to do with the government, it has to do with the fact that those companies are better off ripping off the customers in their respective fiefdoms than expanding their infrastructure into areas with competing services with competitive rates. What do you think would happen if your gas, electricity or water were held by a private entity that could set it’s own prices? I’m sure some competing company can come out of nowhere and set up competing utility lines, right? Free market magic, goo! I’m sure you can find your own solution when prices for necessities become to prohibitive, right? Want a drink of water? Hope your rain barrel’s full or you’ll be buying from T. Boone Pickens. Oh no your house is on fire? Don’t worry, Marcus Licinius Crassus is here to help! Someone’s robing your house? Store? Did you pay your protection fund? Oh, and while this is getting beside the point remember that without a government there’s no regulation on things like ‘can that company dump toxic waste in my river’ or ‘can that company sweeten it’s drinks with lead acetate’. Is our governments perfect? Are they even moderately close to good? No, probably not. It still beats the ever living hell out the alternative.

Plaintextman - Remember that regulations like ‘minimum wage’ and ‘standard bread price’ come from governments. These are made to keep monopolies in check, or rather, to effectively grant the common man some power over companies, in turn evening out the concentration of power. However, also true that insane-level OHSA requirements, government-tendered projects to large companies and overtly strict permit regulations are all government-implemented things that can make it hard if not impossible for small players to get in the game, thus supressing competition. So yeah, it’s not really so much a question of whether there is a formal government or not. More a question of how those in power act, for they are the ‘government’. And this is ultimately determined by what kind of rights (formal and de facto) the common man is granted. Do you have the right to shop somewhere else without fear for your life? The right to your own property? Freedom of speech? I love the idea of free markets. They’ve been so successful over the centuries because of that awesome self-correcting mechanism of ‘competition’; just about every city ever had a market place where businesses could offer and compete, much more than can be said of less natural systems like communism. But “total objective freedom” doesn’t really exist, so no market can be truly “free”. Illegal (drug-) industry is example of an ‘anarcho-capitalist free market’ environment that’s also extremely unfriendly to just about everyone except those in power. And the reason why boils down to how uncaring those in power (“government”) are and how little power the common person (consumer) it given: as long as they pay nobody really gives a shit about them. And if they stop paying by say, buying from a cheaper supplier, they might as well die along with that supplier.

motorfirebox - I like the tan lines.

#comic #webcomic #boxing

[isoscelesfriction]

The Los Angeles Conundrum // Mike Davis’s “City of Quartz”

Photo by @gerrymaravilla

After hearing and reading about it for over a decade, I finally decided to pick up City of Quartz -- the fascinating and sprawling examination of Los Angeles by historian and urban theorist Mike Davis. 

As a Los Angeles native and current resident, I couldn’t turn away from Davis’s seemingly revelatory discoveries and criticisms of the city I call home. 

Below are my favorite passages. 

"It became apparent to me that a people would never abandon their means of livelihood, good or bod, capitalistic or otherwise, until other methods were developed which would promise advantages at least as good as those by which they were living” -- Job Harriman, 1911

...it is all too easy to envision Los Angeles reproducing itself endlessly across the desert with assistance of pilfered water, cheap immigrant labor, Asian capital and desperate homebuyers willing to trade lifetimes on the freeway in exchange for $500,000 ‘dream homes’ in the middle of Death Valley.

We talked about the weather for a while, when I asked them what they thought about Los Angeles, a city without boundaries, which ate the desert, cut down the Joshua and the May Pole, and dreamt of becoming infinite. They had watched it in Sal Salvador, in endless dubbed reruns of I Love Lucy and Starsky and Hutch, a city where everyone was young and rich and drove new cards and saw themselves on television. After ten thousand daydreams like this, he had deserted the Salvadorean Army and hitchhiked two thousand and five hundred miles to to Tijuana. A year later he was standing at the corner of Alvarado and Seventh Streets in the MacArthur Park district near Downtown Los Angeles, along with all the rest of yearning, hard working Central America. No one like him was rich or drove a new car - except for the coke dealers - and the police were as mean as back home. More importantly no one like him was on television; they were all invisible. 

Los Angeles (and its alter-ego, Hollywood) becomes the literalized Mahagonny: city of seduction and defeat, the antipode of critical intelligence. 

...noir has nonetheless remained the popular, and despite its intended elitism, ‘populist’ anti-myth of Los Angeles. 

“Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a goose with corn...endeavoring to eat up this rapid avalanche of anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a goat It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming population for the simple reason that it has never had any urban character to impact. On the other hand, the place has retained the manners, culture, and general look of a huge country village.” -- Morrow Mayo

Los Angeles understands its past, instead, through a robust fiction called noir.

“From Mount Hollywood, Los Angeles looks rather nice, enveloped in a haze of changing colors. Actually, in spite of all of the healthful sunshine and ocean breezes, it is a bad place - full of odd, dying people, who were born old of tired pioneer parents, victims of America - full of curious wild and poisonous growths, decadent religious cults and fake science, and wild cat enterprises, which, with their aim for quick profit, are doomed to collapse and drag down multitudes of people . . . a jungle.” -- Louis Adamic 

“You can rot here without feelings it.” -- John Rechy

Sociologically, 1940s noir was more typically concerned with gangster underclasses and official corruption than with the pathology of the middle class. 

The result feels very much like the actual moral texture of the Reagan-Bush era: a superstition of corruption that fails any longer to outrage or even interest. 

Indeed for a while the more famous of the exiles could fancy themselves Hollywood sahibs: happy white people under the palm trees, feeding themselves on an economy run by invisible servants. 

‘in which the city is at once an endless text always promising meaning but ultimately only offering hints and signs of a possible and final reality . . . like a “printed circuit” - or a freeway.’ -- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

They have become so integrally involved in the organizations of high culture, not because of old-fashioned philanthropy, but because ‘culture’ has become an important component of the land development process, as well as a crucial moment in the competition between elites and regional centers. 

... a ‘sympathetic ecology for architecture’ and excoriated the elitism of critics who failed to consult the actual desires o the masses. 

...L.A. artists are in a desperate state, fighting over scraps, without career opportunities, funds or housing’.

As a result Black and Chicano cultural avant gardes have either been decimated or forced to retreat from their community constituencies of the co-optative shelter of the universities and corporate arts establishment.

...while the Mission Revivalism of Lummis’s generation relied upon a fictional past, the World City hoopla of today thrives upon a fictional future. 

The city is a place where everything is possible, nothing is safe and durable enough to believe in, where constant synchronicity prevails, and the automatic ingenuity of capital ceaselessly throw up new forms and spectacles

...Régis Debray once put it, ‘revolutions revolutionize counter-revolutions’

...land development is still Souther California’s most lucrative large industry with annual profits as high as 50 percent 

...conservative, pro-developer majorities control the boards of supervisors in every Southern California county except Santa Barbara. 

The Times’s dilemma, in other words, almost precisely outlines the problem of ruling-class hegemony in a postmodern city of secessionist suburbs and burgeoning barrios. 

Like Downtown, Hollywood is becoming a colony of the world economy. 

‘Community’ in Los Angeles means homogeneity of race, class and, especially, home values. 

The master discourse here - exemplified by the West Hills secessionists - is homestead exclusivism, whether the immediate issues is apartment construction, commercial encroachment, school busing, crime, taxes or simply community designation.

Slow growth, in other words, is about homeowner control of land use and much more.

The starting point is to reconstruct the white-supremacist genealogy of its essential infrastructure: the homeowners’ association. 

Some homeowners’ associations are entirely voluntary coalescences of perceived common interest; many others are mandatory enrollments (pre organized by developers) of all residents of a track or planned unit development.

...overriding purpose was to ensure social and racial homogeneity.

‘The reasons for creating of moving to a . . . minimal city was not to signal something unique about one’s demand for public goods, but to insulate one’s property from the burden of supporting public services. 

...a hypocritical attempt by the rich to use ecology to detour Vietnam-era growth around their luxury enclaves. 

“Those immortal ballads, Home Sweet Home, My Old Kentucky Home, and The Little Gray Home in the West, were not written about apartments . . . they never sang songs about a pile of receipts.” -- Herbert Hoover

...’homeowner opposition to multi-family construction,’ steming from mobilizations of the early 1970s, that has constrained the supply of land for multi-family housing.

Cal Trans engineers have warned that without a quick fix of mass transit, ‘the system isn’t going to break down, it’s going to explode’. 

As Silver explained, ‘people don’t organize to fight for something, but they organize to fight against something’.

It is no surprising that poor people, especially renters, will choose jobs over environmental quality when the two are artificially counterposed. 

The ‘Second Civil War’ that began in the hot summers of the 1960s been institutionalize into the very structure of urban space. The old liberal paradigm of social control, attempting to balance repression with reform, has long been superseded by a rhetoric of social warfare that calculates the interests of the urban poor and the middle class as a zero-sum game.

Yet white middle class imagination, absent from any first hand knowledge of inner city conditions, magnifies the perceived threat through a demonological lens.

Although architectural critics are usually oblivious to how the built environment contributes to segregation, pariah groups - whether poor Latino families, young Black men, or elderly homeless white females -- read the meaning immediately. 

...and the middle-class demand for increased spatial and social insulation. 

...public architecture is America is literally being turned inside out, in the service of ‘security’ and profit. 

Moreover, with the post-liberal shift of government expenditure from welfare to repression, carceral structures have become the new frontier of public architecture. 

‘Can you imagine the mind fuck of being locked up in a Holiday Inn?’ -- Inmate at DTLA prison

But as long as the actual violence was more or less contained to the ghetto, the gang wars were also a voyeuristic titillation to white suburbanites devouring lurid imagery in their newspapers or on television.

In 1982, for example, following a rash of LAPD ‘chokehold’ killings of young Black men in custody, [Chief Gates] advanced the extraordinary theory that the deaths were the fault of the victims’ racial anatomy, not excessive police force: ‘We may be finding that in some Blacks when [the cartoid chokehold] is applied the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do normal [sic] people.’

He was alleged to be reaching suspiciously into his pants; more importantly, he was a ‘suspected gang member’ - a category that now seemed to justify abuse or even execution. 

...it seems probable that the first generation of Black street gangs emerged as a defensive response to white violence in the schools and streets during the 1940s.

...it is not surprising that Parker’s LAPD looked upon the ‘rehabilitation’ of gang youth in much the same was as the arms industry regarded peace-mongering or disarmament treaties. 

But too often Crippin’ came to represent an escalation of intra-ghetto violence to Clockwork Orange levels (murder as status symbol, and so on) that was unknown in the days of the Slausons and anathema to everything that the Panthers had stood for. 

At a time when economic opportunity was draining away from Southcentral Los Angeles, the Crips were becoming the power resource of last resort for thousands of abandoned youth.

“Gangs are never goin’ to die out. You all goin’ to get us jobs” -- 16-year old Grape Street Crip

Although terrorism is always portrayed precisely as inarticulate male-violence, authorities expend enormous energy to protect us from its ‘ravings’, even at the cost of censorship and restriction of free speech.

‘the fighting mood of the 1960s has been replaced by a sick apathy or angry frustration’.

As the Los Angeles economy in the 1970s was ‘unplugged’ from the American industrial heartland and rewired to East Asia, the non-Anglo workers have borne the brunt of adaptation and sacrifice. 

The Latino Eastside gangs, by contrast, are still trying to catch up. Dealing largely in homegrown drugs, like PCP, amphetamines and marijuana, with relatively low turnover values in a market consisting almost entirely of other poor teenagers, they are unable to accumulate the fineries or weaponry of the Crips. They have yet to effectively join the world market.

“Left to themselves and the principles of Adam Smith, the cosortia of Medellin investors would no more see themselves as criminals than did the Dutch or English venturers into the Indies trade (including opium), who organized their speculative cargoes in much the same way . . . the trade rightly resents being called a mafia. . . It is basically an ordinary business that has been criminalized - as Colombians see it - by a U.S. which cannot manage it’s own affairs.” -- Eric Hobsbawm

While their parents may still measure the quality of life by old-country standards, the iron rations of Tijuana or Ciudad Guatemala, their children’s self-image is shaped by the incessant stimuli of L.A. consumer culture. 

...the church unavoidably assumed a central role in Latinos’ search for power.

The real issue remained empowerment versus paternalism. 

#Mike Davis #City of Quartz #Los Angeles #California #Quote #Quotes #Reading Log

[untitledporkchop-blog]

The Predator: Chris Kyle

The Predator has failed to reinvigorate the series for a myriad of reasons, and all of them contribute to an overstuffed mess that screams design by committee. It sounds like what started as a carte blanche for director Shane Black didn’t quite make it through to completion. But there’s one cook in the kitchen that stood out to me among the others: the United States Department of Defense.  We are well past the point where US military involvement in the production and content of popular media is only a thing of conspiracy theories. The recent reveal that the DoD bothers to make tweaks to seemingly unrelated films like Meet the Parents opens the floodgates to a world of patriotic tampering.

That The Predator would have sought and/or taken tweaks from the DoD is far from a stretch:  The plot centers hero army ranger, Quinn McKenna [Boyd Holbrook], along with a gaggle of veterans taking a detour from battling the VA’s medical records system to fight space poachers, as well as an ill defined shadowy American intelligence agency. There are more than the requisite amount of Ooh Rah Moments™. For all their slapstick foibles, the soldier crew is dripping a casual heroic everyman energy, and they effectively sacrifice themselves for their brave leader. There are lines here and there that are a little too enthusiastic about the troops to escape suspicion, and some changes were clearly made to soften anything that could be taken as criticism. Things like a line from the trailer that refers to McKenna’s sniper squad as “killers” making the change to the neutral term “snipers” in the movie. The movie’s growing patriotism-for-pay hit’s a peak with a list of accolades barked out by McKenna’s neglected wife [Yvonne Strahovski] to confirm to the group that our hero sniper is “the man that I think he is”.

The crew of soldiers all fit into that post-Vietnam era image of happy-go-lucky, morally complex (but ultimately honorable) grunts.  They each have a “hilarious” mental illness slapped onto them like one-note character name tags, and McKenna, their de facto leader, bears a striking resemblance to the American Sniper himself: Chris Kyle. Both are snipers, family men, massively decorated, generically white-sports-bro handsome, etc., but the resemblance deepens.

The gulf between the film version of Chris Kyle and reality has been well covered, both by others and by Chris Kyle himself who was fairly open about his sociopathic hatred for everyone from those labelled “military-aged male”to black Americans trying to survive a catastrophe. While the hunting of the latter may have been a fiction, there really is no clearer a sign that the real Chris Kyle considered himself more of an apex predator than a conflicted warrior for hearts and minds.

Quinn’s resemblance to Kyle’s two clashing images is a result of a movie that in many areas tried to push two opposing things together, not realizing in the best case that tends to cancel them out and in the worst case, makes something sinister. Here it’s the attempt to have Quinn be both someone who is brave, honorable, and loving of his family; but also a really heckin’ cool badass who’s maybe off his rocker a little (in a cool way that is badass). It’s not impossible to merge the two, in fact it has been done plenty of times, but The Predator ends up telling us that Quinn isn’t only super good at murder, he loves it.

Right off the bat Quinn makes bets with his fellow rangers on the lives of the cartel leaders he’s about to snuff out (assassinations in a foreign country no less). From there he moves on to out gunning dozens of black clad shadow government goons as well as taking shots at a regular sized predator and his big hunting pooches. So far so suspend-able, as belief goes, that this is just a regular action hero. But the real turn comes in the form of a joke that’s set up when Quinn tells his son, a horribly dated representation of an autistic child and soon to be apex predator himself, that the difference between a soldier and a killer is that a killer enjoys what he does. That grim shouldering of mortal sin already grinds up against the gusto with which Quinn celebrates his ability to out-murder others, but sure. The knockdown comes when Quinn, captured by smug intelligence agency goons, blames his captors for making him lie to his son. He snuffs the guards and sadistically quips: “Because I really enjoyed that.”

Quinn’s sociopathy tends to be highlighted in contrast with his driving motivation to keep his child safe, but he seems equally invested in passing on this trait to his nerdy, bullied son. Quinn’s murderous fist pumps are often echoed by the little predator in training, though perhaps he’s already well on his way. Near the child’s introduction he informs a mailman that the postal service exists solely on the corpses of his father’s conquest, more or less. How gangsters in another country figure into “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” etc. is beyond me. Apparently US civilians aren’t really of too much concern either as the child, wearing the over-sized predator mask as a Halloween costume like some sort of slasher ET, vaporizes a household of degenerate heavy metal fans and barely blinks. In what is both the movie’s third act twist and top jaw droppingly moronic moment, we’re told that lil Quinn is actually the object of the mega-predator’s DNA assimilation quest. Harvesting autistic children’s hunter-killer genetics so a two story tall sweaty monster can go on more safaris, fucking yikes.

As we trudge on through this presidency, we’re seeing the kind of films that would attempt to make a buck off of our nation’s newly invigorated fascist contingent. There’s a part of me, despite my obvious feelings, that feels like the Quinn-Kyle connection has to be coincidence borne of various cultural tides. The other part of me looks at how a top tier military operator fighting a troop-disrespecting intelligence organization looks a lot like the “deep state” conspiracy storylines popping up in work like Stephen Segal’s magnum opus Way of the Shadow Wolves. Or I can look at how Quinn starts the movie off killing pseudo-MS13 members in Mexico; a blurring of the line between policing and war, as well as a classic dogwhistle for those who see Mexican immigrants as fundamentally criminal. For all Quinn’s patriotism, which America does he represent? The one that annihilates the corrupt shadow order to take control. The one that leverages its experience killing potential invaders abroad to kill outsiders from the stars that might try to lay a finger on it’s genetically superior, lily white progeny.

#the predator #predator #chris kyle #imperialism #movie #movies #untitledporkchop

[rudimentaryrumblings]

How much things can change in a year. It never really ceases to amaze me. Every time I think about how much change happens in a year it seems to get bigger and bigger. I wonder if it will always be like that. Probably not, I guess once one settle properly into their career and long term relationship, change becomes small and incremental. Perhaps our circumstances will change, but not really our core.

It’s an interesting thought, I think. Because the last year, and I guess the upcoming year feels very formative for me. What I’m doing now, what I’m learning, what I’m deciding about my personal ethos and philosophy will stay with me for years.

I think in the past, that thought would have scared the shit out of me. But not so much at all now. Before, about two years ago (or even less), I was quite a mess. Recovering from that nonsense I went through with Vidhi, sluttily rebounding all over the place, going back to Sam again, even though I knew it was stupid (and of course it panned out to be quite stupid of me. I called her the other day, not sure what I wanted or expected, but more on that later perhaps).  That’s just the relationship stuff. I was meandering, not knowing what to do, feeling, believing that I was destined to be the family fuck up (I always felt like I was disappointing my dad and letting him down as well), and that I would be unhappy and unfulfilled forever. I was sleeping in the wee hours of the morning, waking up in the evenings and was generally quite depressed. It was quite a bad phase I think.

And then it all changed. Not suddenly like that, but it all changed when my dad “suggested” that I go work at his company, Dovetail. It was challenging. Changing my lifestyle to a work cycle, and also learning how to be a professional (still learning on that count). Learning how to balance my work life with my personal life. I sacrificed my relationship with Fayiqa to get my shit together, though I was still in love with her. Maybe I didn’t have to sacrifice my relationship, I could perhaps used it as a source of strength and motivation. I think I made a mistake in that, because she’s a fantastic, wonderful and smart girl, and I lost her because of it. Best not dwell on that too much.

Anyway, eventually I did get my shit together. I have small lapses with being disciplined about going to work on time, but that’s such a small thing. One that I’ll fix given time. Since getting my shit together, I feel fulfilled at work, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about an industry I knew nothing about. I’m stable, and happy, and have a very decent work-fun balance in life. I’m motivated to learn more by myself, be It through courses (need to be a bit more disciplined with it at the moment though), or through reading non fiction books (Ramchandra Guha is fucking brilliant, can’t believe I’ve never really interacted with him considering he’s my classmate’s father). I’m pretty committed to work, and that makes me feel happy (I could be more committed and I’m working on that). I have a good group of friends, I enjoy staying at home, it’s not stressful at all since I got my shit together and that was a major source of consternation and fighting between me and my parents.

Things are good. Things are looking up. And that’s why I’m looking at these formative months positively. I like where my head’s at. I’m learning more and more about the country and caring about it more. Learning to understand the plight of women in our country. Learning, learning anything at all helps me feel fulfilled and like I’m moving forward. I have a profound sense of gratitude towards my education (such as it was), and want to help the kids at home, because their school is the fucking pits. I think I’m more open minded now as well. The course on Philosophy I did helped with that I think. I think that my approach, or rather disdain for social media and clownish media is well placed (I would though of course, it’s my own thoughts). I feel like I’m maturing well, and have helpful advice for people who ask or need it.

  The keys to me being happy and stable in bullet points:

Having learned to concede an argument or let one go with my parents (this has taken an all to extreme form with my mother though). Also helpful with friends that you tend to disagree with.

I can only control myself. Not others. I have to do what I can to be happy.

Go out usually at least twice a week to blow off steam.

Stay the fuck away from the topic of Vidhi. It still pisses me off so much.

Youtube learning when in the car. Channels like Crash Course and Film theory are a great fun way to learn stuff and to make use of time being stuck in traffic.

Fuck social media. It’s so ridiculously inane and fake. It’s just a place to look at pictures and message people when you can’t meet. Or for some reason talk over the phone. Or find the occasional interesting article from a very filtered newsfeed.

One doesn’t always have to productive. It’s oh, so important to have balance.

Read the news. Keep up with the world. It’s depressing as fuck sometimes. But it’s so important to be connected to reality.

SILVER LININGS. The most important thing. Shit happens in life. Bad shit. But even the worst thing that happened to you, it thought you something, you learned something, you became stronger. It may have been bad that it happened, but at least make the most of it. It’s the only way to stay sane.

FRIENDS. Second most important thing. Or maybe tied first. It’s so important to have a good, tight circle of friends. People who you can talk to about serious shit, people you can grab a casual drink with, people you can travel with, and people that you can paint the town red with. It’s hard to find all of that in one person, but when you do. NEVER let that person go. Relationships come and go. Friends (can be) forever.

I have more stuff to write, but can’t be bothered right now. I suspect the next time I write again, which knowing me will be in six months, I’ll be in a different head space. It always interesting to go back to and read and compare your own mental state.  

[thunderbirdlovelove-blog]

 Rising Above & Letting Go of 3D Static

Humor me, will you?  I’m a firm believer in ‘Anything is Possible.’  I look at the world a lot differently than a lot of people I know.

I have a theory I want to share. I’m fully aware that I’m sometimes right on, & sometimes way off.  I’m still learning & will forever be a ‘Student of the Universe!’ This blog began as a Facebook comment, but as the words poured out of me, I realized I had way more to say on the subject.

Please note my intention – it is not to upset anyone, nor to say one way is right & the other wrong. There is no right way to spiritually evolve.  We’re all on similar but distinct to the individual spiritual journeys.  If anyone tells you there is only one way, they’re full of shit.  All I know is what worked for me & I share my lessons & my life in the hopes it will help even just one other suffering soul.  My intention is to offer you a different perspective – a ‘What if..’ 

Maybe I’ll help you release yourself from what weighs you down – specifically all the concern, frustration, anger & fighting, since the election, re the election.  I feel that heavy load of low vibrating negativity in the Conscious Collective.  And I’m calling it the ‘Circling the drain.’  

I want you to be happy, to be free, to live in a constant state of joy.  

It IS possible.

  I feel so compelled to help others,  I see SO MANY PEOPLE SUFFERING NEEDLESSLY !  It doesn’t have to be that way!  People learn from their experiences, yes, but I’m convinced that after I went through all that crap & came out the other side shining, that I must be destined to help humanity. I’ve seen a better world.  It is possible. And it is coming.  How fast it gets here depends on each one of us.   Yes, I’ve been called crazy, but I don’t mind. 

‘They’ say there’s a fine line between genius & insanity – you can’t keep digging down the rabbit hole without losing a couple of marbles along the way! 

Perhaps I’m just a little bit insane 😍  Yes, I’m still figuring it all out.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO ME AT THIS POINT IN MY JOURNEY, IS TO SUCCESSFULLY CONVEY HOW I GOT TO THIS PLACE OF TOTAL JOY, TOTAL FREEDOM, TOTAL BLISS IN MY LIFE.

I know what I know cuz of what I’ve seen, felt & experienced.  I KNOW we’re not alone in the Universe.  I KNOW the world is one big illusion.  I can’t really prove it to you though. That’s not how it works. All I can do is tell you there is a door. You have to decide to see if it’s there & go through it. But I never underestimate the power of planting a seed.

Once you ‘get it’, the simplicity of it all is mind-blowing. But you don’t get it – til you get it.  Trying to explain it winds up sounding like explaining Calculus in German to a  3-year-old from Uruguay.  A more than slight exaggeration – I think you get my point 😊 You have to come to the realization of the life lessons through YOUR experiences.   (Think of anything your parents told you when you were a teenager.  “Don’t drive if you’ve been drinking.”  I can almost hear the collective dismissive ‘Yeah, Yeah’s.’   Cuz it can’t happen to them. But when it does, that is the thing that will teach them the lesson – the Experience.)  Even knowing this, the energy that roars inside me will never stop planting the seeds.

I’m confident in my abilities to motivate & inspire. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my entire life – this is my purpose.  This is my mission. One thing I don’t lack is passion.  There is ALWAYS a positive side.  It’s up to you to find it. Can’t find it? CREATE IT!!  Reality doesn’t exist until you create it. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day you are making choices.  A lot of people don’t realize this.  And it kills me.  The choice is yours in every moment, what can I do to make you realize the tremendous power you hold, IN EVERY MOMENT?!

  This is the pic that made all of this pour out of me. He is upset at the ‘out-of-touch celebs’  wanting to overturn the election.  And I couldn’t agree more.

My comment began as a ‘slight diss’ to those who were commenting. Rather than discuss the content/subject of his quote – it went right over their heads – they instead choose to dismiss him because he too is an actor. I scrolled down & scanned the many comments, hoping to find someone who agreed or disagreed with the quote & why.  But all I saw were a bunch of people who obviously need to take a step back cuz they just don’t see the big picture.

“Chuck Woolery, an actor?! Next you’re gonna tell me Crocs are the nicest shoes ever? Chuck Woolery has a total 11 movie credits on IMDB since 1972.  That’s 45 years.  He has only 2 credits since 2000.  And I’ve hardly heard of any. I haven’t heard his name in eons!! I have a distant memory of him hosting a game show back in the 70’s or 80’s.  I would hardly call him a celebrity.  On a celebrity scale from say Bobcat Goldthwait or PeeWee Herman to Will Smith or Brad Pitt, he wouldn’t qualify to be their gofer’s gofer in the superficial bubble of Hollywood’s Fantasyland.  With that said, I think he’s totally on point – I think he made a very accurate assessment. Watching people get all upset over who the president is is exhausting.  Not to mention a complete waste of time.  Unless of course, you enjoy being a Pawn in their Game.  Hey, it’s your life..”

(At first I thought Hillary Clinton would have been the lesser of the two evils –  then I thought maybe he was.  Then I realized I was having a 3D thought & realized it is completely & totally irrelevant. Just a face, just a puppet.  Even if the persona we saw on TV was the real deal, Trump’s gonna be in for quite the shock when he realizes how little power he actually has.)  I wouldn’t give a flying fuck if they elected SpongeBob Squarepants.  Who they parade around is nothing more than a mascot.  To distract you from questioning & realizing what is really going on.) 

  Let’s talk hypothetically. Let’s say Donald Trump is playing a part. A part in a crazy over-the-top drama slash action slash mystery slash thriller show. He plays an outrageous character – so outrageously wrong for the part – jaw-droppingly shocking, that it drives viewers crazy.

But that’s what ‘shows’ do – they try to shock, elicit a reaction. Cliffhangers, scandals, killing off main characters – whatever they can to get people talking.  They do their best to cause so much hoopla for ratings. They lie, they fabricate, they PRETEND.  They work in the Illusion Industry.  We see it EVERY DAY.  Wicked mind-blowing science fiction, alien invasions, UFO’s, violent car crashes with tons of carnage, missiles obliterating whole cities, machine gun frenzy killing sprees able to kill hundreds in no time, Zombie apocalypses, etc, etc etc.  We’ve seen it all!  There’s not much they can’t do with computers & technology these days.  I seriously wouldn’t put anything past them.

YOU THINK IF IT WAS ALL PEACHES & CREAM ANYONE WOULD WATCH? NOPE! 

Not a movie.  Not a show.  And not the election.  People would find it boring, the ratings would go down the toilet, & the show gets cancelled.  We call that a Lose-lose & that’s not how the corporate greed machine sustains itself.

So why is it, when these people SEEM to leave the ‘Hollywood Arena’ (trust me – some never do), that all of a sudden people believe everything these same people tell them, cuz it’s ‘on the news’ or, ‘Well, he’s in his real life, not on a tv show, so it must be real.  It must be true.’

  If you think the puppet holds anywhere close to the power of those invisible string pullers behind the scenes, you live in la la land.  If you believe every speech, quote & appearance they make must be real if it isn’t in a movie or tv show, you live in la la land.  He’s rich, he has a huge ego, and oh look out the cameras are rolling!!  It’s not a stretch to think that maybe, maybe, he’s Exaggerating?   Ever heard of shock value?  It’s in the corporate greed handbook on the very first page:  Keep them distracted with nonsense so we can rob them blind & fuck them over.  If you still think the government is ‘for the people’, you live in la la land.  THIS IS NOT TO PISS YOU OFF – IT’S TO WAKE YOU UP!  IT’S TO RELEASE YOU FROM THE INVISIBLE PRISON YOU KEEP YOURSELF IN!

    I don’t think I could possibly care any less about the puppet they choose to parade as the leader of the country.  It just doesn’t matter.

IT’S FAR FROM A STRETCH TO IMAGINE THAT MAYBE, JUST MAYBE you might be being played.  To say no, absolutely not – that would that mean you take what you see on tv & in the news as golden truths ?!  Say it isn’t so!  A lot of us, including me at the time, kept expecting Candid Camera to jump out of the bushes & say GOTCHA!  cuz this couldn’t possibly be real life.  It’s Bizarro world!  The Twilight Zone!  I remember hearing a few people close to me explain to me their take on why this was a good thing.  I can remember being secretly outraged – I was shocked that people close to me thought like that – I even wondered, ‘Do I really know these people at all?’  I remember thinking, ‘I just may have to cut these people out of my life!’ It wasn’t til I realized how low energy those thoughts were, & completely subtracted myself from the situation, subject & any concern for the issue & took a big giant quiet step back.   ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys.’  It’s just an illusion.

 I saw the big picture. I remembered that it’s all just an illusion.  Quantum Physics proves that reality doesn’t exist until we measure/observe/create it.

WHAT WOULD YOU ALL BE DOING WITH YOUR TIME & ENERGY IF YOU STOPPED FIGHTING EACH OTHER?  The pro-Clinton people?  The-pro Trump people?  Has it ever occurred to you that THEY DO THIS ON PURPOSE?

HAS IT EVER OCCURRED TO YOU THEY HAVE YOU RIGHT WHERE THEY WANT YOU?? 

OBLIVIOUS PAWNS.  Pawns, being played.  I say this to wake you up, not piss you off.  I feel that you can’t possibly see the big picture from so close to the project.  Take a step back & start vibrating above the petty nonsense.

We the people MUST stop fighting each other.  We the people need to realize who the real oppressors are.  We the people need to stop giving our money to the big corporations, Big Pharma, and all the other corrupt systems in place.  IF WE STOP FEEDING THEM THEY WILL STARVE.  We need to put down our guns.  Our judgments. Our hate.

Right now they have us right where they want us – busy fighting each other while they callously take all they can for them, without so much as a hint of conscience or principles, leaving less & less for us.  All the while convincing us with their soulless ads with subliminal messages subconsciously convincing us to buy what they’re selling, what we really don’t need & we seriously can’t afford.  But hey, keep it up – if you don’t mind being fooled.  I don’t want people to be fooled anymore.  I want humanity to be in a constant state of Peace, Love, Harmony & Unity ☮💖✨

It’s sickening when you see through the bullshit.  And it’s also the most freeing & enlightening thing that has ever happened to me!

Lastly, I’m calling out these people – It has to be said that watching people TRAMPLE EACH OTHER TO DEATH on Black Friday for that flatscreen tv that some dude on your tv TOLD YOU TO BUY – has to be one of the most pathetic displays of humanness or lack thereof I have ever seen.   Seriously, give your head a shake!  Wake Up! 

  I am so grateful that I am AWAKE.  

Do some research!!  The info is right at your fingertips every single day.  WAKE UP!  Don’t you know who really runs things?  You’ve heard of corporations, Big Pharma, Monsanto, Trillion dollar families like the Rothschilds & the Rockefellers & the Federal Reserve?  Do you have any idea how the world really works?  

Do you know what goes on behind the veil?  DO YOU KNOW THERE IS A VEIL? 

Food for thought!  Buen provecho 😎

I know this won’t resonate with everyone.  And that’s ok. I have a hard time hiding my impatience for the world to wake up. But for those it does resonate with, I hope it frees you from your self-imposed constraints – that will bring me such an incredible joy that I could not explain.

When I research, what resonates sticks & what doesn’t goes.  If something gives you goosebumps, you’re on the right path.  That’s a sign from the Universe my friend. My daily intake of info tries & fails to quench my insatiable thirst to know everything there is to know before I go.  WHAT A RIDE 😎

Keep what resonates, leave the rest.

        Oblivious Pawns  Rising Above & Letting Go of 3D Static Humor me, will you?  I'm a firm believer in 'Anything is Possible.'  I look at the world a lot differently than a lot of people I know.

#Enlightenment #Harmony #Love #Peace #Unity