#my concept of numbers is extremely garbage

[raveartts]

You'd think as an artist I'd jump at homework that involves drawing...but I really don't

#rave ramblees #i actually wouldn't mind if i didn't have to color it...on paper #and i have to draw flowers without having flowers to reference #well the drawing doesn't need to be GOOD it just has to show my idea #but then i need to be able to ESTIMATE how many flowers i need exactly #and ummmmmmmmm i can't estimate for the life of me #i either need 5 roses or 40 there's no in between here #my concept of numbers is extremely garbage

[creature-wizard]

FAQs & Newbie Orientation (Updated April 24!)

“What do you mean when you say ‘New Age’?” I am specifically referring to forms of spirituality that revolve around the idea that the Earth is about to enter an actual new age, commonly referred to as the Age of Aquarius, Fifth Density, or Fifth Round. If a belief system doesn’t include this, it ain’t New Age, even if it did emerge in the 20th century, even if Barnes & Noble puts books on it on the New Age shelf. (A Wiccan can be a New Ager, but the idea of a new age not a central part of Wiccan beliefs.)

“Why are you so critical of New Age and starseeds?” The short answer is, it's a belief system built on white colonialism, Orientalism, eugenics, hateful conspiracy theories, and always has been.

If you want longer answers, check these out: The Deal with New Age, in a nutshell New Age beliefs that derive from racist pseudoscience A quick intro to starseeds Various ways the New Age movement is shitty The New Age concept of ascension - what is it? Why New Age is thinly-veiled antisemitism/nazism Why David Icke’s reptilian aliens are sparkling antisemitism Starseeds: Nazis in Space? (Not my article) What is the New Age to Alt Right pipeline, and how do you stay out of it?

I also recommend checking out the #new age to alt right pipeline and #spiritual eugenics tags.

Now I want to be clear here, I'm not saying that everything associated with New Age is bad simply because it's associated with New Age. Many practices are harmless in and of themselves - the problem is the conspiratorial, morally polarized framework they're practiced in. For more info, see Some things associated with New Age that aren't inherently bad.

”What do you think of reincarnation, in general?” I think it’s fine to believe in reincarnation so long as you don’t act like it gives you special knowledge or wisdom, or entitles you to tell other people what to do, or entitles you to appropriate and misrepresent other people’s cultures and spiritual traditions, or tie it in with a conspiracist worldview. (Starseeds do all of these.)

“What if I’m alienkin, or I believe my soul comes from another planet?” Nothing inherently wrong with that! The problem with the starseed movement is its politics - it’s founded on a bunch of racist, ableist, colonialist garbage. (It’s no coincidence that a number of starseeds are outright Nazis.)

“What if I want to call myself a starseed, though?” That’s like wanting to call yourself a Nazi. There is something deeply wrong with you if you do. “Why are you so critical of ancient aliens?” See Spencer McDaniel’s excellent post.

“Do you think it’s wrong to believe in alien life?” No, I just think it’s important to be critical of what you believe about it, and why you believe it. If you believe in aliens, question your assumptions about them. What are you projecting onto them? Why are you projecting that? Is that projection a bit self-centered, whether positively or negatively?

“Why are you so critical of conspiracy theories?” Simply put, because conspiracy theories are tools of reactionary violence. Most conspiracy theories are derived from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a known hoax created to demonize Jews and blame them for the world's problems while justifying a return to monarchy; or early modern witch panic and blood libel. BTW, I recommend Justin Sledge's video on the Satanic Panic. "But isn’t there a bunch of evidence?” 'Fraid not. All of it's either fabricated (EG, the aforementioned Protocols), taken out of context (EG, the Dendera “light”), extremely subjective (EG, someone’s mystical experience), based on absurd standards of what constitutes "evidence" (being a depressed teen who liked heavy metal and D&D was taken as a sure sign being involved in a satanic cult in the 80's and 90's), or produced through flawed methods (EG, so-called recovered memory therapy), or questioning vulnerable people until the interviewers or psychologists finally got what they wanted to hear. (If you want to get an idea of just how much of a mess this was, and just how unethical and irresponsible things could get, I recommend checking out the You're Wrong About podcast's episodes on Michelle Remembers.)

"Wait, do you have actual evidence that false memories exist?" Yep, you only have to peek in on the starseeds to see hundreds of 'em. See my posts hypnosis is unreliable for memory recovery, and this is one way we know and false past life memories among the starseed movement. You might also take a look at Abducted by Susan A. Clancy. Also read my post here’s the trouble with hypnotic regression for an explanation of why it's so easy to generate false memories.

“But aren’t starseeds part of ancient traditional beliefs?” Literally no one has been able to produce a single scrap of evidence that anything like the New Age concept of starseeds existed before the Victorian period. However, New Agers are well-known for bullshitting about the age and origins of their beliefs. If you’re going to assert that starseeds are genuinely part of some ancient tradition, you need to provide some real evidence.

“What’s your problem with the Law of Assumption?” See this post and this post. See also: The prosperity gospel, explained: Why Joel Osteen believes that prayer can make you rich. (The Law of Assumption is closely related to prosperity gospel.) Why you should know about the New Thought movement (another closely related movement) "If the Law of Assumption is fake, what about the success stories?" "This Law of Assumption practitioner posted photos, doesn't that prove something?" Was Neville Goddard really trustworthy? No, modern witchcraft and the Law of Assumption are not "the same."

"Is X spiritual person a conspiracy theorist?" See this post, Is the spiritual person a conspiracy theorist? A list of red flags.

"I'm trying to get out of a shitty situation, what can I do?" See my post, "I'm in a bad place and need to get out, what can I do?"

"Why haven't you posted anything about X? Probably for one of the following reasons:

My primary focus is right wing conspiracy theories, and the beliefs/narratives that surround them.

I am a forgetful fuck; things can slip my mind indefinitely.

I literally do not know enough on this topic to say anything meaningful on it at this time.

I have simply never heard of X.

I literally did (maybe even post about it semi-regularly), but you missed it.

Please understand that researching conspiracy theories takes a lot of time and can be pretty draining. There's an immense amount of media to go through, and that media is often some of the most hateful shit you'll ever find. Sometimes I need days to decompress from it.

“Do you recommend any resources?” Yup, over here!

#pinned post

[identifying-guns-in-posts]

welcome!

i'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to guns, and thought randomly at some point that it'd be fun to start this gimmick blog and try to identify guns in various posts. however I do still kind of consider myself to be in the dunning-kruger valley, and gun identification is a bit more complex than car identification due to just how many variants of individual gun patterns there are, and how much easier it is to do modifications of them...

(ask / submission rules and other guidelines are further down in this post)

I'll try to at least identify the general pattern of the gun or any recognizable parts and cross reference with images and articles to make a decision. If your post or submission is from a particular piece of media, it's extremely likely for it to already be documented on the Internet Movie Firearms Database wiki website, so some answers will probably be pulled straight from there.

For example, the wiki clearly outlines that, in the above blog header, which is from the anime/manga Lycoris Recoil (IMFDB link here), Chisato (left) canonically uses a Detonics CombatMaster (variant of Colt 1911 pattern, chambered in .45 ACP), specifically one that incorporates elements of the Tokyo Marui Strike Warrior Airsoft replica (notable in the strike face compensator and modified rear sight). Takina (right) meanwhile uses a somewhat generic Smith and Wesson M&P9 PRO, chambered in 9x19mm, with the extended 5" barrel.

To make up for how garbage I am at getting specifics right, I may also offer some bits of trivia about the gun(s) in question and/or their implementation. For example, although Chisato's gun seems based off of the Tokyo Marui design, it notably has three port holes at the top of the compensator as compared to the single port in the original; it might be a bit more effective as a real compensator than the very-Airsoft cosmetic fixing of the TM replica. It also lacks the accessory rail in the anime. Additionally, Takina's signature sidearm, the M&P9, is extremely common in modern law enforcement (you might even recognize the handle of it in the "(A) Steal Officer's Service Weapon" meme), so it's a bit of a "cop gun" in a sense; which possibly matches how Takina essentially serves as the by-the-numbers half of the pseudo-buddycop pairing formed by her and Chisato. Interestingly enough, all other Lycoris agents are seen wielding Glock 17s instead...

asks

I'm always open to asks if you want to ask me anything, but if you want me to identify something, you should probably make it a submission!

submissions/tags

Only submit requests for identification of guns OR fictional gun reviews (more on that in another section)! Preferably memes and posts. You can also submit things from media like video games and anime, but you could probably get a faster answer through IMFDB than me >~>

If your submission or tag is for a "cursed gun" then some special rules apply. If it's a real life picture of some effed up monstrosity, I will do my best to identify it with a real, pre-built gun; otherwise, I'll try to identify parts that may have been used for it. If it's clearly an edited picture or some other form of drawing, concept, or very clearly fictional gun, this will be treated as a "Fictional Gun Review" instead.

Generally speaking I'm looking at "small arms" guns; I'm not super well-versed on artillery pieces and aircraft weapons and the like. I know a handful of rocket launchers and might be able to pick out a couple but those are also pretty hard for me.

Fictional Gun Reviews

I'm also a bit of a hobbyist game designer and like creating weapon designs myself! I can take a look at strictly fictional weapon designs and give some cursory criticism on whether or not the gun would actually function in the configuration it's in (checking things like barrel/bolt/magazine alignment, etc.), what parts of it I recognize from real guns, and an overall subjective rating.

about me

i'm a 21+ trans woman (she/her) and pansexual/biromantic disaster married to a hot butch wife. i'm also an independent game developer and secretly a streamer on another alias of mine. i like guns! i like the history of guns and the engineering of guns. personal favorites are sniper rifles, particularly the L96A1, the first military-specification sniper rifle made by Accuracy International, which served as the prototype of the Arctic Warfare line of rifles, popularized by Counter Strike's AWP (though the classification of "AWP" is incorrect for the particular weapon featured in the series, it's actually an AWM .338). favorite pistol is probably the Beretta 93R, a 3 round burst fire pistol with a similar pattern to the iconic M9 pistol. i also like the MP7 PDW (obvious half life 2 fan is obvious), the MAC10 (by far the coolest machine pistol to fire in akimbo lol), and the G36C (one of the first guns I ever decided to look up more information about many years ago after picking it up in Garry's Mod of all places).

#not a gun id #introductions #smith & wesson m&p #1911 handgun

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

‘Cabaret’ Review: What Good Is Screaming Alone in Your Room?

Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin star in a buzzy Broadway revival that rips the skin off the 1966 musical.

Eddie Redmayne, center, as the Emcee in Rebecca Frecknall’s revival of “Cabaret” at the August Wilson Theater in Manhattan.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Time

By Jesse Green April 21, 2024

Just east of its marquee, the August Wilson Theater abuts an alley you probably didn’t notice when last you were there, perhaps to see “Funny Girl,” its previous tenant. Why would you? Where the trash goes is not usually part of the Broadway experience.

But it is for the latest revival of “Cabaret,” which opened at the Wilson on Sunday. Audience members are herded into that alley, past the garbage, down some halls, up some stairs and through a fringed curtain to a dimly lit lounge. (There’s a separate entrance for those with mobility issues.) Along the way, greeters offer free shots of cherry schnapps that taste, I’m reliably told, like cough syrup cut with paint thinner.

Too often I thought the same of the show itself.

But the show comes later. First, starting 75 minutes beforehand, you can experience the ambience of the various bars that constitute the so-called Kit Kat Club, branded in honor of the fictional Berlin cabaret where much of the musical takes place. Also meant to get you in the mood for a story set mostly in 1930, on the edge of economic and spiritual disaster, are some moody George Grosz-like paintings commissioned from Jonathan Lyndon Chase. (One is called “Dancing, Holiday Before Doom.”) The $9 thimbleful of potato chips is presumably a nod to the period’s hyperinflation.

This all seemed like throat clearing to me, as did the complete reconfiguration of the auditorium itself, which is now arranged like a large supper club or a small stadium. (The scenic, costume and theater design are the jaw-dropping work of Tom Scutt.) The only relevant purpose I can see for this conceptual doodling, however well carried out, is to give the fifth Broadway incarnation of the 1966 show a distinctive profile. It certainly does that.

The problem for me is that “Cabaret” has a distinctive profile already. The extreme one offered here frequently defaces it.

Let me quickly add that Rebecca Frecknall’s production, first seen in London, has many fine and entertaining moments. Some feature its West End star Eddie Redmayne, as the macabre emcee of the Kit Kat Club (and quite likely your nightmares). Some come from its new New York cast, including Gayle Rankin (as the decadent would-be chanteuse Sally Bowles) and Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell (dignified and wrenching as an older couple). Others arise from Frecknall’s staging itself, which is spectacular when in additive mode, illuminating the classic score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and the amazingly sturdy book by Joe Masteroff.

In this production, Gayle Rankin’s Sally Bowles is meant to be taken medicinally and poisonously, projecting instead of concealing her character’s turmoil, our critic writes.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

But too often a misguided attempt to resuscitate the show breaks its ribs.

The conception of Sally is especially alarming. As written — and as introduced in the play and stories the musical is based on — she is a creature of blithe insouciance if not talent, an English good-time gal flitting from brute to brute in Berlin while hoping to become a star. Her first number, “Don’t Tell Mama,” is a lively Charleston with winking lyrics (“You can tell my brother, that ain’t grim/Cause if he squeals on me I’ll squeal on him”) that make the Kit Kat Club audience, and the Broadway one too, complicit in her naughtiness.

Instead, Frecknall gives us a Sally made up to look like she’s recently been assaulted or released from an asylum, who dances like a wounded bird, stretches each syllable to the breaking point and shrieks the song instead of singing it. (Goodbye, Charleston; hello, dirge.) If Rankin doesn’t sound good in the number, nor later in “Mein Herr,” interpolated from the 1972 film, she’s not trying to. Like the cough syrup-paint thinner concoction, she’s meant to be taken medicinally and poisonously in this production, projecting instead of concealing Sally’s turmoil.

That’s inside-out. The point of Sally, and of “Cabaret” more generally, is to dramatize the danger of disengagement from reality, not to fetishize it.

The guts-first problem also distorts Redmayne’s Emcee, but at least that character was always intended as allegorical. He is the host to anything, the amoral shape-shifter, becoming whatever he must to get by. Here, he begins as a kind of marionette in a leather skirt and tiny party hat, hiccupping his way through “Willkommen.” Later he effectively incarnates himself as a creepy clown, an undead skeleton, Sally’s twin and a glossy Nazi.

Having seen Frecknall’s riveting production of “Sanctuary City,” a play about undocumented immigrants by Martyna Majok, I’m not surprised that her “Cabaret” finds a surer footing in the “book” scenes. These are the ones that take place in the real Berlin, not the metaphorical one of the Kit Kat Club. She is extraordinarily good when she starts with the naturalistic surface of behavior, letting the mise en scène and the lighting (excellent, by Isabella Byrd) suggest the rest.

And naturalism is what you find at the boardinghouse run by Fräulein Schneider (Neuwirth), a woman who has learned to keep her nose down to keep safe. Her tenants include a Jewish fruiterer, Herr Schultz (Skybell); a prostitute, Fräulein Kost (Natascia Diaz); and Clifford Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wood), an American writer come to Berlin in search of inspiration. Soon Sally shows up to provide it, having talked her way into Cliff’s life and bed despite being little more than a stranger. Also, despite Cliff’s romantic ambivalence; over the years, the character has had his sexuality revamped more times than a clownfish.

The Schneider-Shultz romance is sweet and sad; neither character is called upon to shriek. And Rankin excels in Sally’s scenes with Cliff, her wry, frank and hopeful personality back in place. The songs that emerge from the boardinghouse dramas are not ransacked as psychiatric case studies but are rather given room to let comment proceed naturally from real entertainment. Rankin’s “Maybe This Time,” with no slathered-on histrionics, is riveting. It turns out she can properly sing.

The interface between the naturalism and the expressionism does make for some weird moments: Herr Schultz, courtly in a topcoat, must hug Sally goodbye in her bra. But letting the styles mix also brings out the production’s most haunting imagery. The intrusion of the Nazi threat into the story is especially well handled: first a gorgeously sung and thus chilling version of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” then the swastika and then — well, I don’t want to give away how Frecknall stages the scene in which Schultz’s fruit shop is vandalized.

That so many of these moments arise from faithful attention to the original material should be no surprise. “Cabaret” hasn’t lasted this long for nothing. Created at the tail end of Broadway’s Golden Age, it benefited from the tradition of meticulous craftsmanship that preceded it while anticipating the era of conceptual stagings that followed.

All this is baked into the book, and especially the score, which I trust I admire not merely because I worked on a Kander and Ebb show 40 years ago. That the lyrics rhyme perfectly is a given with Ebb; more important, they are always the right words to rhyme. (Listen, in the title song, for the widely spaced triplet of “room,” “broom” and, uh-oh, “tomb.”) And Kander’s music, remixing period jazz, Kurt Weill and Broadway exuberance, never oversteps the milieu or outpaces the characters even as it pushes them toward their full and sometimes manic expression.

When this new “Cabaret” follows that template, it achieves more than the buzz of chic architecture and louche dancing. (The choreography is by Julia Cheng.) Seducing us and then repelling us — in that order — it dramatizes why we flock to such things in the first place, whether at the Kit Kat Club or the August Wilson Theater. We hope, at our risk, to forget that, outside, “life is disappointing,” as the Emcee tells us. We want to unsee the trash.

Cabaret At the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; kitkat.club. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes, with an optional preshow.

Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. He writes reviews of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, regional and sometimes international productions. More about Jesse Green

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/theater/cabaret-review-eddie-redmayne.html

#eddie redmayne #cabaret #cabaret nyc #review new york times #broadway #eddie redmayne cabaret #cabaret nwe production #august wilson #theatre #cabaret 2024 #musical #cabaret musical

[fzzr]

The Eminence in Shadow is Premium Garbage

The Eminence in Shadow is the best anime of the Fall 2022 season. I enjoyed it more than Bocchi the Rock!, Mob Psycho 100 III, Chainsaw Man, Spy x Family Part 2, and all the rest, and it's not close. There's nothing else I looked forward to every week more.

We have to start with the protagonist. Cid "The Eminence in Shadow" Kagenou looks every power fantasy protagonist and attempted parody of the same dead in the eye and says, with the swagger of one who won before the battle began, "I am not here because I want your throne. It is already mine, and you sat upon it by my grace. Your time is past now, for I have come to reclaim what never belonged to you." Kirito hasn't finished grabbing a weapon before he is reduced to one inch cubes. Ainz Ooal Gown freezes in place, eyes empty, with no answer. Anos Voldigoad gives a knowing smile and steps aside. Rudeus Greyrat stands with tears in his eyes, grateful to be freed of his burden. Rimuru Tempest bows with grace. Maple doesn't know how she got here, but she's very happy for him. Kazuma and Subaru are nowhere to be found. A thousand other guys with messy hair and dark cloaks are silenced, with no time even to cry out.

The basic concept of Eminence is thus: Our protagonist has always wanted to be the ultimate badass. Realizing this is not possible in our mundane reality, he truck-kuns himself and is reborn in a fantasy world, intelligence and ambition intact. He does the usual isekai thing where he becomes stronger than anyone else with magic no one else uses mostly off screen - we're not here to see him struggle to earn his power. We do see him recruit Alpha, his first disciple in Shadow Garden, the underground antihero agency he made up to fight the Cult of Diablos, which he also made up. He decides for this scene that she will be descended from the hero to explain why those baddies wanted her blood.

Wait, "he decides?" That's right, Cid/Shadow is making it up as he goes along. He is playing a character, and the only way he knows how to do that is to actually become that character. While not being the magical Punisher, he plays a background character. He's not so good at that role - he keeps stumbling into relevancy. Eminence is improv, and Cid is very good at making things up and getting everyone to play along.

When Cid goes to the obligatory high school for aspiring magic knights (where he plans to be a C student), it turns out the princess in his class is the next target of the Cult of Diablos! Not one to leave a prompt like that unfulfilled, he yes-ands that encounter into one of the greatest statements of badassery you will ever hear. When Alpha and the rest of Shadow Garden show back up, he's grateful that they still enjoy their little game and are so accommodating of his quirks. He can't say that out loud, of course - that would break character. He just makes whatever cryptic statement feels right to him at the moment.

The world really does seem to revolve around Cid, and like the thousand shadows of his glory, he has no idea. As Shadow, the leader of a secret agency/cult of personality, he obviously has a harem of badass bombshell beauties in tight magic spandex, and just as obviously he's completely oblivious to their worship. As Cid, aspiring nobody, he has a separate, ever growing harem of less badass bombshell beauties. He is fully aware of their attention, but having an increasing number of ladies lusting after him doesn't fit the background character vibe, so he does his utmost to avoid their ever-compounding thirst. You heard me right - Cid/Shadow has two separate harems, so he gets to parody two different types of oblivious harem protagonist. There's even a power fantasy within that power fantasy, as the Shadow Garden harem regularly shows off how much better they are than Cid's collection of extremely eligible bachelorettes.

The 11/10 strength of Eminence is undoubtedly in its dialogue. In multiple places Cid/Shadow delivers lines with more impact as comedy than some of the most powerful statements in serious dramas deliver even once. I honestly struggle to find a comparison here. Monogatari is another shining example of dialogue, but even it never quite reaches that height.

Eminence does not have a deep emotional thread binding it together. It has no subtle themes woven into an intricate plot. The point of this exercise is unadulterated fun, and Eminence has that in spades. As for the rest of the factors that go into making a good anime great: The music is good all the time. The simple animation is consistent, and the expensive scenes really flex that budget. There's a bit of background CGI, but seriously who cares.

Conclusion

Score: The Eminence in Shadow is 9/10. Hammy, scenery gobbling dialogue can be found anywhere. Eminence manages to implement some of the best bad dialogue ever and it makes no apology, while also being gripping in its own way.

Recommendation: The power level requirement here is quite high. Eminence is only of interest to those already familiar with (and maybe a bit tired of) power fantasy/isekai anime. Additionally, it indulges in occasional fanservice you wouldn't want someone to see over your shoulder. However, if you do fall in the target audience you really should feel obligated to watch it.

Comparisons

I already said it's better than every isekai ever made. As a parody of power fantasies in general, it is perhaps best compared to The Misfit of Demon King Academy. That protagonist, Anos Voldigoad, is reborn with all the knowledge and powers of a nigh-omnipotent Demon King. He can literally reduce someone to a puddle of blood with the beat of his heart, and resurrect them with a snap of his fingers. Unlike Eminence, Demon King Academy has no winks at the audience - its position as parody is derived entirely from being presented as a straight implementation of the premise turned up to 20. As such, I think Eminence allows itself more room to play in that space. If you end up liking Eminence, Demon King Academy is a good pick for a follow-up watch.

How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend is the universal solvent of anime comparisons. It has many secret weapons, but the hook is in the title. Megumi stubbornly avoids classification under any well-established romcom stereotype. She's a nobody, a background character, a storytelling blank slate. In short, she is naturally what Cid tries his hardest to be. So, let's compare what these two anime think a background character actually is. Megumi defies tropes. Whenever someone tries to paint preconceived characterization onto her, it slides right off. You have to actually get to know her to understand her. Cid's view of a background character is instead someone you don't get a chance to get to know in the first place. He wants to be the guy who gets rejected to show that the love interest is picky. He wants to be the first guy to die in an action sequence to show the stakes are real. He wants to be disposable. So, to Saekano, a background character is someone you just haven't gotten to know. To Eminence, it's someone you never will. A subtle difference, but since Saekano is taking a look instead of taking the piss, it's the more interesting way to look at it.

Final Words

I will indulge myself in stealing borrowing from Susan Sontag's Notes On Camp. "Not only is Camp not necessarily bad art, but some art which can be approached as Camp... merits the most serious admiration and study." Eminence is not necessarily Camp, but it swims in those waters. I recommend you watch Eminence for the sheer audacity that it was made in the first place, but if you have a particularly open-minded professor and are desperate for a topic for a term paper, well... you might as well have fun with it, right?

#eminence in shadow #anime #anime review #isekai #shadow garden #parody #the eminence in shadow #kage no jitsuryokusha ni naritakute! #original post

[blowflyfag]

Pro Wrestling Illustrated: September 1996

FROM THE DESK OF…Stuart M. Saks

I THOUGHT I WAS in hell. 

Men were brawling recklessly, chairs were crunching skulls, and garbage cans were pounding backs. One-by-one, more men kept joining the fray. The fans’ screams of delight were drowned out by blaring rap music. I was there, yet I wasn’t. Everyone was involved in some way or another. Battlers. Spectators. Sound men. Security guards. Not me. I was merely an observer. Close enough to sense the raw emotions of the event, but far enough away to feel protected from the sheer horror of it.

“___ you,” one of the battlers screamed at a spectator who made the mistake of using the wrong finger to express his  view that the battler was number one.

An image of Lou Thesz came into my head. I eliminated it quickly. He should not be exposed to this! 

Then again, this isn’t for everybody. That’s what the promoters of Extreme Championship Wrestling keep warning us.

“ECW! … ECW! … ECW!” The spectators chanted in unison after seeing a sampling of extreme wrestling. These are not fans of wrestlers per se; they’re fans of the concept that nothing is to be held back in an effort to bring them what they want. Ever.

Brutality? Almost always. Breathtaking aerial wrestling? More than you’ll see anywhere north of the Mexican border. Beautiful women? Hey, 95 percent of the audience is comprised of males between the ages of 18 and 35, and after being Dudleyed into submission, it’s good for the eyes to look at Beulah McGillicutty for a few minutes. 

My walk through hell occurred in the strangest of places. This was not even the official ECW hell hole–the ECW Arena on the mean streets of South Philly. This was an auxiliary hell, in the quiet upper middle-class Philly suburb of Plymouth Meeting, in an all-purpose auditorium called Lu Lu Temple.

I was not there to cover wrestling matches on this evening. Bill Apter and Craig Peters were taking care of that. But Lu Lu (no relation to Ed Norton’s deceased dog) is only a few miles up the road from our Ambler offices, so, with my Friday evening free, I went merely to record my thoughts of the big picture.

Randomly …

***

[2 Cold Scorpio and Sabu literally risked their necks in their ECW TV title match. ECW fans have grown almost jaded by such action, and their reactions aren’t proportional to the efforts the wrestlers put forth.]

ECW belongs in the family-oriented Lu Lu Temple like that Charlestown Chiefs of Slap Shot fame belong in Madison Square Garden … I love the fact that some of the wrestlers made themselves available to the fans before the matches began. Craig Peters might not agree. He was sitting on the stage behind the seats with Beulah, taking credit for her being on the cover of June ‘96 edition of PWI, when a fan interrupted their conversation and said, “Hey Beulah, you’re in PWI.” Only this was the July edition, and the article the fan was making reference to was Craig’s “In Focus” column in which he rated some of the more prominent women of wrestling in various categories. This is great, I thought. More brownie points for Craig. Craig, however, knew he was in trouble. Beulah finished ninth on his list of 10! “Sex appeal–zero?!” she shrieked. Craig responded sheepishly: “But look at the reason why. You’re pregnant.”

“Zero?!” she shrieked. “But–” “Zero?!” … As match time approached, I heard a fan yell, “ECW rules!” Talk about your classic oxymoron. I bet you could fit a copy of the ECW rule book on one page of PWI—and still have room for pictures. There are no rules in hell. Referees? They have them, but they don’t even make a pretense of counting to four when traditionally illegal acts take place. The fans booed both referees when they were introduced, but I don't see why. They do exactly what the fans want them to do–nothing … I saw a young fan throw a flattened soda can toward the ring. The promoter also saw it. Acting swiftly and properly, he had the fan tossed … And, yes, there was wrestling at the Lu Lu Temple, too. In fact, I’d venture to say that the match between TV champion 2 Cold Scorpio and Sabu was one of the 20 best matches I have ever seen. Too bad the ECW fans didn’t appreciate it. About a minute into the match, many of the fans started with that ignorant “Boring!” chant. I suppose they just couldn’t wait for the wrestlers to get past that feeling-out phase before really getting down to business. 

[Beulah McGillicutty gave Craig Peters an earful when she discovered that out associate publisher had given her a zero in the sex appeal category in a recent “In Focus” column.]

But get down to business they did; more accurately, I should say get up to business. These two men performed aerial feats that rendered the term “high-risk” a gross understatement. In one memorable sequence, Scorpio had Sabu in trouble and mounted the turnbuckles. Sabu lifted himself off the canvas, ran across the ring, sprung off a chair that had been left near the ropes, and maneuvered his body so that he was able to grab Scorpio around the neck with his legs. Sabu then reversed his momentum and “Franken-steinered” Scorpio from the turnbuckles down to a table at ringside. When I was a young wrestling fan,  a dropkick was a spectacular move. This was beyond belief! The fans were appreciative; thy should have fallen out of their seats … I guess you can’t give people too much because their natural inclination is to always want more. Ultimately, you’ll have nothing more to give them, and one day you may even find them chanting “Boring!” rather than “ECW!”

#ecw #extreme championship wrestling #magazine scan #magazine transcript #PWI #pro wrestling illustrated #hi Beulah hiiii hi #stu saks doesn't get it ur beautiful to me girl #stus a hater in this and i believe in being unbiased #unless its to vince russo. fuck vince russo

[thequeenofsodor]

Rebecca.

OOOOH HO HO HERE WE GO I like Rebecca a lot. I think the way they implemented her into the show was clumsy at best, but I’m of the opinion that on paper at least, she’s a great presence among the cast. I love her optimism! And, honestly the fact that they put a streamlined Bullied Pacific into the show to begin with was enough to steal my heart. Its a class I’d wanted in the show for a long time, basically as soon as I learned that it existed and what its history was. The fact they introduced her as essentially Gordon’s understudy and poised her as the second Express Engine was also something that appealed to me, and given how often the concept came up in fanon, I’m sure it would have been to most other fans if it weren’t for all the BWBA about it! Last but not least, I have a soft spot for all the girl engines in general, probably a result of Underlying Gender Stuff on my end, haha. I’m going to be extremely controversial and say that even though the livery is stupid, I think it’s fine. Well, that’s a lie actually, I’d want to fix it by removing the stupid NWR lettering on the tender and putting her number there in its place. But otherwise... I’ve tried coming up with so many alt liveries for her (most of which are just the actual Bullied Pacific paint scheme but in Yellow/Red) but none of them feel quite right. I might not be trying hard enough I suppose, but I think the weird sunrise/sunset colors work. It might also be that I’m being biased because it reminds me of like, a bizzaro version of the Southern Pacific Daylight livery though, which is very striking and cool. I wouldn’t say her design is “good” overall, especially considering her CGI Model is a hot mess of reused assets and wonky proportions, but I think that overall, the yellow is not irredeemable.

I also feel like her episodes were somewhat stunted by the fact she never really faces any kind of harsh adversities. She wins Gordon’s respect basically over the course of her first day, and her first outing with the Troublesome Trucks is a subversion for the sake of subversion that feels very much like an unfinished rough draft. I feel like they wanted to go in a kind of a Squirrel Girl direction with her, where she comes out of any given situation the victor by being a genuinely nice person, but I think she needed to be put in some more compelling or dangerous conflicts for that to really work. I want to see her put into a real crisis! She would have been an excellent character to pair with Diesel for an episode, or really any other sufficiently antagonistic character. Hell, to go whole hog with the Squirrel Girl idea, why not have her defuse a DOTD-style coup by Diesel 10 just by talking to him and being a good friend? Really, I would have taken anything that was both exciting and funny, as opposed to... what we actually got.

I think a lot of people are dismissive of her just because she was a (seeming) result of the BWBA rebrand, and all that “rebecca and nia replaced henry and edward!! the woke feminist sjws are taking over!!!!” garbage. She’s not perfect in execution by any means but I think she has a lot of potential for dynamics and development that gets overlooked. I’ll need to remember to write up a bullet-points style HC post for her at some point because I have a good few of those, lol.

#asks #ttte #ttte rebecca #ttte opinions #djangodurango

[emmanuelouise]

Social Media Survival 101: How to Not Become A Victim of Doxing | Written By: Louise Baylon

In light of our discussion regarding online social networks (or OSN as I'll be referring to moving forward), I've decided to dabble into my own experiences and share some of my knowledge as a seasoned social media veteran - so to say. So far in this journey of mine to educate myself on how to handle my personal information online, I have been reflecting on new concepts presented by our instructor. I figured it might be a good change of pace if I am to reflect and share my own experiences this time!

OSNs are not easy to traverse, despite their simple interfaces and welcoming atmosphere - they are some of the most notorious places you can be on the internet. I should know, I have been through quite a number of social platforms and I have seen the ugly side of every single one. You have to keep in mind, OSNs isn't only a space where you can share your own content but it is also everyone else's and that can come with its own repercussions. Have you ever heard of the term 'doxing'? I trust that if you have been on the internet for as long as I have, if not longer, then you may have come across this term thrown around here and there. To those who are unfamiliar, the act of 'doxing someone' is to maliciously post someone's personal information out to the public without their consent or knowledge. Essentially, it is outwardly leaking someone's information to the public's eye. Now I myself have not been a victim of doxing (thankfully), but I have been a witness to it and I would like to share my few cents on the topic hoping that it may be helpful to anyone reading this. Albeit unofficial, I'd like to categorize doxing into two classifications - direct and indirect.

Direct Doxing It is what I call the textbook definition of doxing; someone leaking a person's private information to the public for whatever reason they might harbor. This type of doxing is usually performed by cybercriminals or by moderators who are tasked to snuff out cybercriminals.

One of the most common sightings for direct doxing are on online forums and chatrooms such as Twitter (also known as X) and Discord. When discussions get heated and turn into full blown arguments, it's not uncommon for someone to dox the other person out of spite. Putting ethics aside, the public rarely speaks up when it comes to doxing as it is usually done to individuals the majority agrees is problematic and who is spouting problematic nonsense to the platform. Some may see this as a form of online justice. Certain people believe that if you are bold enough to be spitting problematic content (or at least content that isn't inherently bad but they still disagree with) then you should be held accountable; it has always been a law of the land on social platforms. At first glance that belief seems to be justified, but always keep in mind that the internet is a land of unpredictable morals. If the real world is filled with garbage individuals, the internet is filled with the same garbage individuals who are given confidence to be more toxic by hiding behind usernames and anonymous identities. Even if you had done nothing wrong nor post problematic content, there will always be individuals who will dislike or disagree with your content and that is more than enough reason for them to attempt doxing you!

Indirect Doxing It is when information that should be private is shared to the public (unknowingly so) and the usual culprit - is you! It may vary from you posting a picture while on vacation with the location tagged to as simple as you liking a post.

This type of doxing is lethal as it is done unknowingly and extremely hard to avoid. OSNs pride themselves as platforms that allow people to connect with each other by sharing - keyword being share. In these platforms, you are encouraged to share more of your personal life and interests in order to connect with others who you may know personally, share the same interests, or both. And it is with this very feature that you may fall victim of doxing. There is this content creator from Tiktok (and I cannot for the life of me remember their username) who does content by finding the real names of his viewers. What happens is that someone will comment on his video saying "I bet you can't find me," and in a matter of minutes he can snuff out that person's government name. Depending on the amount of information available, he does a number of ways to snuff out the name. He opens the commentator's Tiktok account and looks for links to other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. From there he can look for full names which are usually found on bios or images. Sometimes when material is scarce, he checks the person's mutual friends to see if they've mentioned the name on their boards or tagged posts. He can even track unrelated accounts that contain the full name through liked posts, tagged locations, and check-ins. The point here is that by sharing, as OSNs encourage us, we are giving more and more material for strangers to find specific information about us. The Tiktoker I mentioned had no malicious intent yet he was able to find people's government names in minutes, what more if it were actual cybercriminals looking for your government name and location?

So how can you avoid falling victim to doxing? Here are five general rules of thumb you must keep in mind.

Rule 1 : Never Overshare When posting something, you should consider the potential consequences it can bring. Ask yourself "can this be used to dox me?" and proceed from there. If you really want to post something, limit personal details to the barebones minimum of what is necessary.

Rule 2 : Practice Exclusivity Not everyone needs to see that you are on vacation at this specific resort or you are going out of the country. Manage who can see your posts and can visit your account - better yet set your account private! If you want to flex being able to travel to other countries or have vacations on fancy places, then flex only to those you know - strangers don't need to be informed about that.

Rule 3 : Turn Off the Tracker Make sure you disable location services and untag locations from your posts. It's more than enough that you're posting about it, no need to tell people where you're precisely located.

Rule 4 : Choose Your Friends Wisely When adding someone as a friend who can view your posts, make sure that they are trustworthy or at the very least you've spent time with them long enough to know they are safe to view your content.

Rule 5 : Clean As You Go If you are done with a certain account of yours, don't just leave it idling - never to be used again. Clear out all information when moving to a new account or better yet deactivate or delete it if possible.

I know there are more out there, but these are just five rules that I live by as someone who has been on the internet long enough to witness the dangers of doxing. I know it will be a huge adjustment if you're not the type to practice these rules, but it does a whole lot in the long run. I've been able to explore OSNs for around a decade unscathed from doxing and hopefully this article will help you do the same as well.

Discussion Dates: 03/05/24 - 03/07/24 Images sourced from Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

[bendtsenejlersen49]

Best Apps For Galaxy Tab

There are more extra peripherals than most phones. Totally expect an excessive from one little app. The app can send free text messages and adds 3G with good WiFi connections. Uninstalling Apps - In case you have too many apps and would like to get rid of some there are several way to achieve it. The first way through using long press the app icon then drag and hold the icon over-the-counter trash can on your house screen, wait 2 seconds and drop the app in the garbage - now be uninstalled. The other way to uninstall an app is to go to; Device Dettings> Applications> Manage Applications > scroll using your list of apps and choose what you intend to uninstall. Stick to the prompts to uninstall the app. One more way to uninstall would be to do it through the marketplace. While the market app is open hit your menu choice. Select "My apps" and scroll through your apps to choose the one require uninstall. Choose the app and follow the prompts display screen to remove it from. These past couple of months, surge has continued, and now Facebook possesses a relatively stable monthly page view count of over 300 billion (just suppose the number, 300,000,000,000!). But Facebook isn't only an online messaging and picture sharing tool. Since the introduction of Facebook apps, users keep ability attempt and do a lot of other things without leaving the website, including play games, manage their period and finances, video chat and more. So, let's see how this fleshes outside in practical terms for Joe Real Estate Agent. Can a complete and well executed Mobile Marketing strategy really is?

Welcome Android newcomers! Looking at this point you will transform from a detailed novice for old instructor! Well, not really. But produce a foundational a huge step as they direction. This guide is needed for absolute beginners but will definitely offer fantastic insight individuals who to be able to playing around with Android devices for finding a bit. For people who have any questions please don't hesitate to comment or email. Remember! The concept of Control Target iOS 7 gives you the freedom in order to quick alternatives. This is displayed as a translucent panel on vehicle Zalo App on tripping. Control Center comprises shot cuts to access Bluetooth, brightness controls, Wi-Fi access, AirDrop, music controls and AirPlay shortcuts. Other shortcuts include stopwatch, camera, flashlight and calculator. As a hectic consultant, I've found it extremely valuable to this little app on my small iPhone that may allow me to be for sale to my customers and in addition my business contact. On one occasion I is at line at lunch then one of my most important clients pinged me with Lync. I able react immediately to his problem and fixed before We to order; the power of being available on Lync. Allowing to be able to see my status and the ability to alter my status on the fly makes this app that would like to be received. There is plenty of IM software in order to be downloaded to your free rim. The BeejiveIM for BlackBerry Torch can protect you money through the help of your current data for you to send and receive texting. That means no SMS charges. How cool normally? The BeejiveIM for BlackBerry Torch may have you chatting simultaneously on AIM, iChat, Yahoo, MySpace, Google Talk and keep in mind being wanting to use Facebook Chat. Your free torch will appreciate how easy it is on its battery. A variety of the IM programs could be a real power hog but not the BeejiveIM for BlackBerry Torch. With ordinary text messaging, you pay a specific amount for some number of text messages per nights. If in Tải Zalo go over your allotted text messages, you gives extra undertaking so. Undoubtedly are a contracts present unlimited sending text messages plans. However, it can be cause good deal strain on your monthly budget. Shooting videos at professional takes space in your SD card and each and every planning added with MMS messaging to share it, you may have to shoot with the low level of quality. This ensures it is sizable enough for you. Select the white balance setting if you are shooting several clips in one location although it is automatically enabled by default settings. After you are through with settings, hit the red Record button you have to the shooting. When you are done with the shooting, hit the red button in order to the clip. Some in the best applications are women who are useful even whenever you don't have your iPod/iPad around and "Dropbox" in the of those applications. This application stores files remotely and anyone to access or download the your iPod from everywhere you go! With Dropbox, absolutely use your iPod memory for more useful such things as more apps! Dropbox also has one button sharing capabilities allowing a person to share audio, video, pdf, txt, image files most with unique click! Finally, by a price though . to upload files coming from a computer to Dropbox thereafter accessing them via the iPhone, it allows easy transfer of files between computer and iPod from everywhere! There are many apps this specific phone can accommodate anyone personally. All you have look at is to get it along with the phone will handle everything for your entire family. This is the Motorola RAZR apps in abundance.

Mobile promotional are all very reputable ways for affiliates market their special offers. You can get $0.03 per click when you use mobile ads to get traffic with regard to your offer directly or web business. Mobile advertising networks are great to get the quality targeted traffic you need right from now on. One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you just promote your affiliate offers directly without creating a squeeze web post. Facebook also offers this feature. Features and processes in a mobile application should be limited. Ingestion . expect an excessive from one single app. Adding too many features or functionalities to your app should be a reason to fail. It is a good strategy for desktop level development, while for a mobile software. App developers should consider the users and their interaction with one activity. It is good to plan and scheme over functions but little. I've downloaded an abundance of free messaging apps in this little smartphone. Viber, Line, Whatsapp and WeChat which usually are popular. . i actually love Viber because you get everything you should. No flowery aspects. Just the good stuff! Ultimately its stability is hard to beat. Viber for Blackberry Beta and Windows mobile provides provisions for messaging and present the users with a solution to photo message and exchange calls. There are options reveal location information with other viber users. Viber can integrate the devices to identify existing contacts which were installed definitely been. They never choose from any friend request entire operation. There are full releases within the platforms. These pads include viber signature data with high quality HD voice calling and will eventually easily meet viber quality for ideals. On iOS 7 you obtain three groups of toggles situated at the top of the screen within an icon that reveals a report on notifications on tapping. Earn money . drawback appears that you won't be in a position expand the notifications or read e-mail messages from within the warnings. Kindle Zalo App: You can download Kindle app from Google Android marketplace. Zalo PC is able to download. After you sign lets start work on Amazon, regarding electronic books are easy to access . tap away, including thousands of free many. The application allows you to read books in landscape or portrait system. To be sure, all of elements serve a valuable role relating to the spectrum of MM, however, in and of themselves they are incapable of producing a result that comes to the ballyhoo. Let's establish some essential points of clarification on this particular matter to try and make experience of the whole subject as a result of bears particularly upon real estate Industry in one payemnt. By the end out of which one article, thinking about and implementing Mobile Marketing for the real estate agent end up being clear as a cloudless man in the moon. To be sure, wedding users and attendents elements serve a valuable role rrnside the spectrum of MM, however, in and of themselves they are incapable of producing an outcome that is equivalent to the news. Let's establish Zalo APK of clarification on this matter so that they can make a sense of the whole subject whilst bears particularly upon real estate Industry altogether. By the end of this article, doing and making use of Mobile Marketing for the real estate agent in order to be clear as the cloudless moon. Google may the ultimate messaging client, yet I feel they genuinely are a bit lazy in the toy box. What would make it perfect would be if we're able to download this client through your play store so regardless of Android phone we have, the app would still be available to us. Obviously if your running ICS or well over. If you will not want to be bothered with instant notifications, the Messenger app lets you switch your alerts from instant to "off for 1 hour" or "off until 8:00am" for a digest style notification. Just like chatting on this personal computer, this service will show you how to see when the person on the other half line is typing an e-mail. This will allow you to understand if someone is there to stay or if your person is busy.

#Zalo

[ganymedesclock]

A random collection of Sonic headcanons since I’ve been stimulating that part of my brain lately:

Sonic is the absolute last person anyone who’s spent time around him expects to be a foodie considering he eats like absolute garbage and gets away with it because his metabolism will kill him if he doesn’t eat like five meals a day so odds are decent any time he’s not up and about he is probably either napping or snacking. In defiance of this, he actually has a surprisingly worldly palate, since he’s been just about everywhere and has a high natural curiosity about food; he’s tried and enjoyed a lot of stuff, including weird stuff. This is a guy who just knows offhand what haggis tastes like. This also gets to him sometimes because he’ll occasionally get a hankering for like, the authentic street food of a specific city in a country two continents over and he can’t just drop everything and go GET some because there’s an OCEAN in the way

Shadow’s body naturally produces and maintains a pretty potent charge of energy which he uses for his chaos attacks. His inhibitor rings basically work as heat vents to bleed off the majority of that power so he can’t build enough of a charge to fry himself just by not letting off a chaos blast every five minutes. This process is normally silent and extremely subtle- under high duress however they may hiss and release steam because his energy levels fluctuate with his mood and because of his PTSD and other problems his adrenaline levels can spike (and thus, spike his energy) when he’s actually not in a combat situation and has nothing to use all that for. This is not a problem at all as long as he checks his inhibitors in for regular maintenance / keeps the emergency coolant reserves in them topped off, but it tends to scare the crap out of people the first time it happens.

Silver has asthma. Silver does not know what asthma is. Really his health overall is not great but on account of growing up in an apocalypse he has an actually really concerning pain tolerance and has internalized some really bad attitudes about trucking through it so after several people take him aside for an intervention and explain certain important concepts like the use of a rescue inhaler he’s genuinely astonished to realize how many incidental parts of his life are actually serious medical conditions.

Amy is a hobbyist magician and really good at sleight of hand. This messes with at least half of the superpowered people in her life because they KNOW she’s not doing that with literal magic but how did she do that. She’s also great at figuring out those puzzles where you remove two tangled threads without untying them at either end.

Big’s largely hermetic existence does actually get boring sometimes although he’s loath to go into Station Square further than the regular shop he buys fishing tackle from or the open-air farmer’s market where he sells fish, and he’s actually quite well-read as a result, though the majority of his reading is nonfiction. As a result there are a large number of topics where, if incidentally prompted, he’ll be able to explain the minutiae of it in intense detail. These interest areas include:

fishing as a sport

laws about hunting and fishing

the ancient echidna civilization

the entire plot of an obscure period soap opera in a language Big doesn’t speak and the original novel it was based on

engines

woodcarving

almost any animal that can be found in the mystic ruin rainforest basin and surrounding area (he started with frogs and didn’t really stop) 

amphibians in general

the history of umbrellas

badniks (sometime after Final Egg was abandoned, Big started wandering around its perimeter and scavenging both for interesting bits to expand/repair his house and out of genuine curiosity)

Jet’s actually a pretty darn competent thief when he keeps his ego out of the way, something that continuously surprises the main targets of his competitive streak.

Charmy’s actually a really deep sleeper which works since he often gets tired on long stakeouts. This will semi-regularly result in either Vector or Espio carrying a sleeping Charmy around. Espio will go for a fairly dignified piggyback carry while Vector will go with whatever position is the most efficient without compromising Charmy’s health. At least once he’s walked around the majority of Westopolis with Charmy dangling halfway out of a normal shopping bag completely dead to the world.

Omega adamantly maintains that his exclusive purpose is to be an efficient engine of destruction but he actually really enjoys looking his best. After a while Rouge picks up on this and they have several discussions about custom paint jobs. Omega thinks it would be interesting to try blue but vetoes the idea because he’s fairly sure it would go straight to Sonic’s head.

Rouge is a regular gym rat, not just because she uses muscles for her work but she just doesn’t feel right without a proper workout. Afterwards she tends to soak it off, so it takes a while for people to realize that her idea of a spa day involves 30lb weights, which she’s just fine with.

Tails is actually scared of a lot of things besides lightning; he sleeps with a nightlight and has bouts of social anxiety. He tries not to let this on because he thinks it’s childish and stupid and he’s clearly so smart he should be acting like an adult already right- needless to say, his friends are a lot more supportive when he talks to them about this. Knuckles uses the master emerald to charge a shard of ordinary crystal to give Tails a battery-less unfailing flashlight for his birthday one year.

The absence of light pollution on most of Angel Island and its usual cruising altitude affords it a great view of the night sky, especially from the slopes of red mountain. Stargazing is one of Knuckles’ main pastimes, and he also uses this to track the Island’s position as it moves.

#Sonic the Hedgehog #readmore #headcanons for standard gameverse

[captnjacksparrow]

Hi.

How is it possible that the studio let ops and eds of Naruto feature in the anime? I mean c'mon, even a child can see how romantic they are. The lyrics, the visuals, the story/feel and meaning, all of it!!

Kiss me kiss me all night?? Really? How else are people supposed to interpret it? Even if some other studio was commissioned to make them, it's not possible that they just brought the ideas for ops and eds out of thin air. They must have submitted the concept/storyboard/song/lyrics beforehand to Studio Pierrot. No way studio Pierrot was not aware of how romantic they were. Not possible. It wouldn't have happened without their tacit approval and permission. Studios just don't work that way.

I am sure the studio was very aware of Sasuke and Naruto's romantic love, the producers aren't stupid or inexperienced. So they deliberately let the eds and ops be.

So what, it was just queerbaiting knowing SNS would never actually happen? Fanservice? What else could it be?

Also, how cruel and fuck those fuckers. 😤

I cannot predict the exact reason, anon.

But I am pretty sure, it was not for Queerbaiting. Definitely not!!!

As you and I both know that the world we currently live in is majorly Homophobic. I am just speaking generally. The fact that we cannot even google 'Who was Naruto's first kiss?' and expect an honest answer that it was Sasuke. Please don't Google this question unless you want some extreme bleeding from your eyes, ears and nostrils. Same with Youtube, Twitter, Reddit... Like you cannot even talk about SNS in a general discussion.

So, what we can infer from this is that such Homophobic creeps does exists in majority.

If I really want to bait people to watch this Anime, why should I target people whose numbers are very less as compared to the people who constitutes the majority??? What do I even gain???

What I would do is to make some steamy scenes between SS and NH in all my ops and eds, and it would definitely catch everyone's eyes!!!

I've said this countless times and I will say it again, I don't ship SNS in a sexual way but as Soulmates. But if someone ships them sexually, I don't get bothered at all or rather I enjoy their content all the same. 

Having said that,

Just ignore those ops and eds for a moment... Let's talk about posters, most of which were drawn by Kishimoto himself.

Click on the picture for better resolution. Because there are lot of details in the following poster.

Now, what do you understand from this picture??? 

The above poster screams 'Sexual Innuendo' on many levels. Even to my unromantic eyes, I could see the hidden stuffs blatantly.

Naruto was seen eating watermelons and watching a battle between two beetles which was marked with Blue and Red... which indicates Sasuke and Naruto. And for every 4 wins, he strikes the name on the notepad that’s next to him, (you could see the words SA, NA written on the paper, meaning SAsuke and NAruto). It seems Red Beetle won the first round. LOL.

Sasuke was seen doing 'something questionable' while looking at Naruto. If anyone who claims that Sasuke's actions were normal, then they must be really naive. It’s just not!!!! No matter how you look at it....

Pinky was seen wetting over her beloved 'Sasuke-Kun'.... I mean she was literally wetting so bad... Look at the water getting sprayed from the water hose. Also look at the placement of her hands. ROFL.

Am just going to leave it at that!!!

What was Kishimoto trying to convey from this??? 

Pinky wets over Sasuke... Ok, we all know that. 

Sasuke, ummmm.... Also likes Naruto in THAT way??? That's a news to me!!!

Logically speaking, Sasuke is the popular character especially among girl fans. Everyone wants to self-insert with him in some way. If I am an author who created a character like Sasuke, why would I make him look at Naruto ‘like that’???... Instead I would get more money if Sasuke looked at Sakura in a teasing manner. Just look at the popularity of that hot garbage ‘Sasuke Retsuden’..... I could easily make a Sasuke’s version of 50 Shades of Grey and sleep on a Golden Bed. I don’t have to design a poster in this way!!!

And then there's this,

This is another handiwork of Kishimoto where Naruto and Sasuke were seen tilting their heads in the opposite direction and looking at each other like they were ready to kiss each other!!! I will forcefully make my sibling to get treated from the Hospital if she looks at me like that!!! 

And finally this...

Sasuke is looking at Naruto with some seductive sensual look. I think this is the movie poster of ‘The Bonds’. It’s not Kishimoto’s work but SP’s. Imagine if Sasuke looked at Pinky like this!!!! 

All these posters were drawn with some ‘Sexual Innuendo’... blatantly or subtly. What is the need for that??? Queerbaiting??? Well, if that’s the case, Kishimoto could’ve stopped with that famous Chapter 3, ‘Accidental Kiss’ and be done with it. There’s no need for VoTE1 and VoTE2 confessions. And all those repressed feelings and stuffs. 

Because the pattern of Queerbaiting is that you already know it in your heart that it’s a Joke. I repeat you will know it’s a Joke.

For example, Naruto and Sai. 

2 Chapters in, we saw Sai was making 10 Dick Jokes about Naruto 

and he was also seen interested in Naruto’s well-being like wanting to feed Ramen, protecting him from Sasuke and Karui’s attacks. 

This is called Queerbaiting. Making one of the secondary male character to be 'seemingly' interested in the Main Male Character and usually it won't go anywhere. And we know it.

As for Fanservice, I've seen one and SNS don't even qualify under that.

Yes, In Japan, KakaIru was the popular ship.... More popular than SNS. Hence, Kishi made a cute scene where Kakashi saves Iruka from Pain.

This is called Fan Service!!! It means you do something for the fans which doesn’t change the plot in anyway. 

What I call as an extreme fanservice was pairing up Naruto with Pinata and Sasuke with Pinky. Just imagine if Naruto married Pinky and Sasuke married Karin.... Do you see any change in the storyline of Boruto???? Absolutely Nothing. Still, Sasuke would have preferred to be around Naruto and his Son.... Naruto would have adopted a new kid called Kawaki. This is the laughable fact of Narutoverse. No matter whichever girl they marry...... Their bond would have remained intact. 

So Queerbaiting, Fanservice...... You guys can go out and eat popcorn!!!!!

All those Openings and Endings with romantic subtext, I see them as an extension of  What Kishimoto was trying to convey through his subtext in his Manga. And we should be happy that the Studio didn’t try to censor it.

Let’s take this one!!!! 

We saw Naruto’s important people in this same ending.... He had Iruka, Kakashi, Sakura (I seriously don’t know why this Biashhh was there.... probably to evade extreme homosexual vibe and since Naruto is the titular character) and then Sasuke!!!!

However when it comes to Sasuke’s side it was crystal clear.... It was just Naruto and Naruto alone. And that’s the truth. Otherwise why did he leave Naruto in VoTE1 with such a painful expression? Whereas with Sakura he looked like ‘Why is this girl coming in my way?’ especially he was showing his back to her the whole time???

So, the Studio knew it. They definitely are not some dunce who just want to spout some meaningless stuffs out to the public. They really did their utmost best to convey their relationship through these ops and endings. 

Especially this.... LOL!!!!

The sexual tension that was emitting throughout this ending was easily noticeable, even without the song ‘Please Kiss Me’!!! And this is the only ending that featured just Naruto and Sasuke. And with that Song placement, the tension becomes almost palpable.

Do I think this ending was accidental???

No freaking way!!!!! 

These are all carefully planned and produced with thorough inspection. So, just like you said, anon, the producers of this studio know what their relationship was. They did their utmost best to bring out Kishimoto’s drawings into Anime reality. Despite all of these, still people couldn’t see the story beyond the surface level probably because of Homophobia or Lack of Understanding a media and it’s subtexts. They conveyed what they wanted to say without receiving any strong criticism and at the same time people still believe they are brothers/friends. So, it’s a win-win situation on many levels for both Kishimoto and the Producers.

The Day when someone starts to question themself that ‘Why Naruto and Sasuke were hiding their feelings if they were just friends/brothers?’.... Then that day, they will surely come to understand the real relationship between Naruto and Sasuke!!!! 

#ask #sns #sasunaru #narusasu #sasunarusasu #sasuke #naruto

[foricecream]

Short Thoughts: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory

Sure, I bought the game only when it went on sale at 75% of the original price. Sure, I only felt drawn to the game because of some lingering nostalgia for the first two groups of DigiDestined. But, well, Hacker's Memory is more than special enough for me to share something about it. Very slight teasers/spoilers ahead.

Most anime franchise games end up being absolute garbage (like SAO, Naruto). They are cash grabs in very little disguise; they have bland universes, dull art, poor writing, and terrible combat. From the very start, Hacker's Memory strikes you with beautiful cutscenes, an impressive virtual reality concept that connects well with the Digimon anime universe, and an intriguing plot. Even though the majority of the game is spent in overly routine dungeons/URLs, there was clearly some love put into this game.

Inside of an inflexible RPG questing structure were a few of the most evocative, strange side quests I have ever experienced. One day, I helped a Digimon settle their love triangle, and then from the same quest board, I watched a bullied student break, then murder their bullying classmates by means of virtual reality. Both the mandatory and optional side quests are either all fluff or are unbelievably thick. Some things felt fully PG and then a sudden few things very much not. Even one of the main arcs is centered on a deep-seated, dependent obsession and a twisted love. All I'll say about the main plot is that I think they did really well with what I thought was going to be a stereotypical line.

The facial animations added a lot to a standardly silent main character. There are a decent number of dialogue options, even though none of them have any effect on the story. If someone or something in the game was really special, the writers and visual artists really went out of their way to show you how special. I'll leave this gorgeous, almost-indie still photo as an example (it moves in the game, and the main character moves through the space).

And then they used it very rarely, but some cutscenes received some extremely beautiful, fluid, better-than-TV animation. There's some great variation in animation between these beautiful cutscenes, the more 3-D game-based cutscenes, the more 2-D game-based cutscenes, and then the animations of the gameplay itself.

And of course! Getting to digivolve all the digimon was so much fun, somehow worth grinding for exp-boosting equipment. Then, if the gameplay for an rpg is in any way repetitive, rest assured, the music almost always runs in that vein. Still, there was some good quirk and humor in the soundtrack composition that made grinding and exploration a lot less bothersome than it should have been. My favorite fun track was, "I Can Clown Around Anytime, But I'll Dance." Then for the touching stuff, I'd recommend listening to "Memories" and "Cutting Away Memories," the last of which hits different after finishing the game. Gosh.

I'll leave a short photo stack at the bottom of this post to add to the intrigue. If you were a Digimon fan back in the day, even for a little while, this is not a bad game to pick up. I got the version that includes both games, so I'll probably end up playing Cyber Sleuth at some point. Probably after my audition next week.

I hope it's not too cold wherever you are and that you find some time to do something enjoyable and healthy.

- For Ice Cream

#digimon #cyber sleuth #hacker's memory #anime game #rpg #anime rpg #game review #toei animation #digimon cyber sleuth

[your-smart-mila]

10 UNEXPECTED FACTS ABOUT AMERICA

A month of living in the States opened my eyes to a lot. Almost 10 years have passed since my last trip to the USA. I don't know what has changed more - America or me. Or both of us. This time we drove across the country, from New York to San Francisco, visiting almost all key cities. I will share with you my impressions and thoughts about this great country.

1. There is no service in America. Alas, but it is. In five-star hotels, top restaurants, boutiques, in the first class of the two best US airlines, they do not know what premium service is. It just needs to be accepted.

2. The US economy is in a severe storm, and this is evident in everything: in the purchasing power of Americans, in the way cities and airports look. Even in the number of top brand cars on the road: there are very few of them.

3. America is a big branch of India, China and Mexico. Today, these nationalities make up approximately 60% of the US population.

4. The roads in the States are absolutely ugly. Even in key areas. And yes, there is no driving culture in this country at all. Any brake can afford to ride in the left lane. And on average. And in the right. In general, everything here is not according to concepts, but according to the rule "as I want, I rush at a snail's speed and in any row."

5. New York is deteriorating every year more and more. There is a lot of garbage in the city. Fifth Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Times Square - all this is no longer sweet.

6. In the center of New York, you can hardly see the sky, and you are always in the shade. The streets are so narrow and the buildings are so tall that it is extremely difficult to grab your piece of the sun.

7. California is beautiful! Insanely beautiful state. That's just crazy! Fell in love.

8. There is not much to do in Las Vegas. Of course, only if you are not a player or if you are not looking for vicious connections, because it is extremely easy to find them here. One street with hotels, where all the casinos, countless brothels and strip clubs are located. Here is the famous Vegas.

9. All social and economic life accumulate in a few large cities. Ordinary America is one house per mile and endless fields.

10. The American Dream is the most alive.

Friends, how do you feel about the USA? Would you like to visit there?

#Spotify

[docholligay]

Please rant/rave (well, we already know which one it will be here) about Harry Potter!

GEE I HOPE THIS WAS WORTH WAITING FOR

OH MY GOD. The level of hatred I have for Harry Fucking Goddamn Potter, the culture around Harry Fucking Potter, extending its poisonous tentacles even to the concept of young adult fiction, fantasy, and the United Kingdom as a country and people. 

When you being on this, you may think, “Oh, Doc will explain that Harry Potter sucks because JKR hates trans women” and I will say, oh no, dear reader, that is a fantastic reason to hate the author, and I really suggest we all continue to hate her, and perhaps not purchase the QUEEN’S TONNES of officially licensed merchandise and movies and theme parks that give her stupid little fucking hands all that cash, but no, that is not why I hate the work. There are a number of great works done by terrible people, and the further out the lens of history gets the truer this is. 

I hate Harry Potter because it fucking sucks, and mentally stifled an entire fucking generation. 

“Well, Doc, Harry Potter was really there for me when--” Oh my god I could not fucking care LESS about your personal emotion connection to “orphan wizard boy turns out to be a rich aristocrat yet somehow less woke than Cinderella though” I have personally emotional connections to hot fucking garbage pails of media properties, and if someone came barreling through talking about the myriad ways in which they were horrible, I would be like, “Oh, you aren’t fucking wrong, pal” 

Harry Potter gained wild ass popularity in part due to its magnificent sorting system of Smart, Brave, Evil, and Other, because there’s nothing liberals like more than being able to put everyone’s personality into an easily labeled box, which is why astrology is so popular, or for the intellectuals, Myers-Briggs, which is just as fake but with the veneer of science. This allowed people to give into the tribalism they so desperately liked to pretend they did not possess, and also allow them to write thinkpieces about “The misunderstood Hufflepuff” or “Slytherins aren’t all bad!” or really anything that allows them to write a very real piece about their very imagined oppression for being a part of a totally fake house in a children’s book. Excellent use of your sociology degree, Kai, I thought the addition of phrases like, ‘Content of socialization” and “axes of oppression” really spoke to the struggles you face when wearing a green and silver scarf. 

The other reason it became popular is that it’s essentially wallpaper paste formed into characters. I have read all of the books, and I could not tell you even remotely what Harry’s defining personality traits are other than “protagonist”. In American, at least, a large part of it was the fascination with all things British, with the idea of boarding school and prefects and uniforms that aren’t inexplicably chinos and polo shirts for nine year olds. It allowed children to project onto something so bland that it could be anything. And for children, THAT’S FINE. There is a great deal of bland media made for children, but what I’m speaking to is the fandom, which is largely well over the age of 18. 

Because if we look at the books, are they...actually good? Was it good, or did I experience it as a child? I mean, honestly, on a literary level, are they, or was it just like we all watched Friends, we did it because everyone else was doing it, because I have a distinct memory of a series that involves such greats as “magical geegaws with poorly defined rules that are quickly forgotten despite being able to solve later problems quickly” or “Everyone loves Harry or is a bad guy, or secretly loved Harry all along” 

Oh, speaking of, man, if this was an actual well-written book, wouldn’t it have been wild to have Snape’s whole thing be to teach us that sometimes people do good things for the wrong reasons? Instead of naming your fucking child after the guy who ‘protected you’ because he still wanted to bone your mom? “After all this time” “Always.” 

While all this could have been explained, we have Quidditch added into the mix instead because 20 pages of the goddamn Puppy Bowl is exactly what I was looking for while I was waiting for JK to move the goddamn ball on literally any of these actual magical concepts. 

Harry Potter is a fucking trust fund baby, star quarterback, who grows up to be a cop and marries his high school sweetheart. (Speaking of, why were we shocked that JKR turned out to be a piece of shit when this was and always has been the conclusion of Harry Potter? Why are liberals so fucking into this series that upholds structures like it ain’t no one’s business? It’s a series that opines that those beneath us “Muggles” should be kept in the dark from us) Literally, he finds out he is a wizard and has a dragon-guarded fucking VAULT OF CASH. At 11. It’s such a series for little tyrants, you are special from birth and need do nothing to prove it, here is a letter certifying as such. Oh, not only are you rich and the greatest seeker and have excellent quips, but also your parents were not only rebels, but the best of rebels, and so deeply involved that your parents were killed by the big bad personally, again, because you are so special. His mother’s love literally saves his ass over and over again, because he was SO SPECIAL. He fought Voldemort FROM THE BEGINNING, and WON.  It’s literally the most privilege baby fantasy in the world. 

“But Doooooooooooc, it’s for chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren” 

A) Yeah, and you’re 32, you’re making my fucking point about Harry Potter setting an entire generation up for intellectual failure to launch. 

B) Okay, and? I can think of a bunch of kids’ books off the top of my head that in no way require specialness to be given by birth so as to roll out the red carpet for master protagonist. The Hunger Games. Watership Down. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Chronicles of FUCKING NARNIA, about which I have only a small handful of particularly kind things to say. I’ve never read Percy Jackson, but it’s my understanding that despite his being a literal demigod, the attitudes of the supporting cast are allowed to fall between the extremes of “Appreciates Percy” and “naughty or will learn” Harry does nothing to improve himself even after knowing that he is HUNTED BY THE BIG BAD! “I won’t do this because I don’t like Snape”. So There” which, again, if this series were written with the slightest bit of care or know-how, could be a humbling fucking plot point! BUT NO THAT WOULD BE NAUGHTY. 

But the real reason I hate Harry Potter so much has everything to do with the fandom surrounding it, and how it intellectually stunted a generation of adults. The promise of Harry Potter was that it was supposed to make a new generation of readers, and so the popularity of them was pushed, and so there was discussion of teaching them in schools, but I tell you fucking what, I know a whole lot more folks who grew up reading Harry Potter that never advanced beyond reading YA, or even just rereading the entire series every year and that’s pretty much them done and dusted. 

In the attempt to recapture whatever it was about Harry Potter that attracted children (A lot of it was your peers doing it. I read them all as they came out, and it was literally the equivalent of watching the game so you could talk at the water cooler. That was never going to be recaptured) people, who by this time were likely in their teens, kept getting recommended stuff at the same and same level. No one ever felt pushed to read things that are challenging, to read things that have some of the concepts or themes of Harry Potter but maybe complicate. I know FAR more adults who read adult books that aren’t into Harry Potter, even if they were as children, than the reverse. 

But Doc, why is reading only books meant for 14 year olds a problem??? I mean I suppose I can’t convince you that comfort is not the job of literature or of life, it is the job of an easy chair, because Americans especially are decadent as fuck about being comfy cozy all the time and if anything causes them distress or pain it should be immediately avoided. But Maybe I can convince you that you’re fucking up these books for actual ass children who deserve to have their own writing section without adults bringing their fucking asses into it. They deserve their own spaces. There’s a number of YA editors who have talked about the difficult space YA now occupies because since Potter’s blowup, it’s no longer a niche category, but basically “adult easy reads” and so they have been buying books that are more about the tastes of adult buyers than of literal 14 year olds. 

Is that not...sad? To anyone else? Honestly, and this is not part of the essay because it’s a broader reaching problem, but CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS FOR FUCKING CHILDREN. The fucking 40-23 set really needs to get their shit together and grow up a little bit and engage in some fucking adult media, and maybe, if we support what we’re actually looking for FOR ADULTS, it will come to us. No one is saying you can’t read Harry Potter or watch some Cartoon Network show, but like, search your heart and come the fuck on. Engage in something more complex. If not for yourselves, for the kids getting shoved into simplified adult stories. It should not be about us. 

ANYWAY, my larger point is that it was Harry Potter, a badly written series about a magical boy who was chosen and magic and also rich and also a favorite of the headmaster and also more clever than most adults and also spoke the same magical snake language as the big bad and was also star quarterback, but at least there was a system in which you could buy a scarf in block colors and feel like you belonged to a team. 

(But not a sports team! lol handegg! I’m cool I don’t get into sports! Except Quidditch.) 

#TO say nothing of the fact that I haven't been able to wear gold and burgundy together without some dumbass comment for years #despite being a favored color combination #Anonymous #Eight Days 2020 #Holligay Rants and Raves #I didn't even GET to every point I had but it's been over an hour #GOD I HATE THIS FUCKING SERIES SO MUCH #Doc do you hate me for liking it? #oh sweet thing allow me to reassure you: Yes. Absolutely. #also the prose is god-awful #I've taught teenagers with better rpose

[rotworld]

A Rex Post

this is the guy you’ve known for years. you can count on him to pull your ass out of the fire, even if it’s a fire you started yourself. he’s reliable like that. strong enough to take the heat. strong enough to be dangerous, too, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t afraid of him sometimes. it’s something about the way he looks at you. there’s this hunger, this destructive yearning in him. for some people, love is the marks they leave behind.

rex is the second member of the we pariahs group and the closest thing they have to a leader. friends and associates would describe him as volatile, possessing both a gruff, forceful personality and a propensity for violence. underneath his hard exterior, he has a soft spot for you and romantic feelings bordering on obsession. unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to engage with these feelings in a way that doesn’t leave you bruised and bleeding. here are some things you’ve learned about rex:

he bounces between jobs, mostly gas stations and night stocking. before that, he was the enforcer for a local gang. quitting wasn’t easy, but he did it for you.

he’s the youngest of three brothers. family relations are strained, to put it mildly.

he has a fetish for extreme physical violence to the point that he has difficulty getting aroused without it.

if jay, rex, and levine all got in a fight, there are a number of factors that could determine who comes out on top. in a contest of strength, rex wins easily.

he’s a talented street artist.

sore loser was the first piece i wrote for the pariahs, before i realized i wanted to do more with the characters. since then, they’ve all changed quite a bit, but i still like to think of it as an important part of the timeline.

the event that splits up the group in the first place is you leaving your hometown for personal reasons. rex took it the hardest and was at his absolute worst in the days leading up to your departure.

he works in construction. while he still has a very short temper, he now manages his anger well enough to hold a steady job.

he acts casual, but losing you ruined him. he hasn’t had a steady partner since you left. after being reunited, he’s so desperate to hold onto you that he defers to levine when it comes to making group decisions.

all of the character concepts in the inhuman au are a little unorthodox, either being a blend of concepts or a deviation from an existing concept. rex’s is by far the most complicated and specific:

rex’s concept, in a roundabout way, was inspired by lucan’s pharsalia, an epic poem from ancient rome. in one scene, there’s a witch named erichtho who performs necromancy. erichtho is an unusual character because of how incredibly extra she is. she lives in a graveyard, does all kinds of depraved shit to corpses, and apparently has some sway over the gods themselves.

this is the kind of witch that is rex’s mother in the inhuman au. his father is something unspeakable.

he wasn’t raised by either of his biological parents, but was instead left in the care of a human couple who did their best to take care of him. he learned a lot about humans from his adoptive parents, and is especially skilled at maintaining human form because of them.

you met rex when you were both young children. you were the only person who didn’t have, or actively ignored, an instinctive impulse to avoid him at all costs.

and finally, rex’s playlist. his is called “oderint dum metuant.” it’s probably about as aggressive as you’d expect.

->how we kill stars - shaka ponk

->push it - garbage

->lecher bitch - genitorturers

->frozen - celldweller

->twisted transistor - korn

->full metal whore - lord of the lost

->sick like me - in this moment

->wolverines - queen adreena

->e.v.o.l - marina and the diamonds

->mercy - hurts

->dark in my imagination - of verona

#we pariahs #rex #i know what youre thinking #but rot wheres lights out why isnt that on his playlist #listen if i start adding msi i'll never stop #also i got the most incredible we pariahs related ask and i think i need to draw something extremely stupid #so stay tuned for that in the coming days

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Yeah, so I read your HP headcanons/analysis and I found it really well put. I was wondering about your thoughts on Dumbledore and who he really was as a person. (It’s okay if you don’t really want to reply :> )

We’re just getting all up into The Carnivorous Muffin headcanon land, aren’t we?

Well, this one’s probably obvious to anyone who reads my work.

I fall on the manipulative Dumbledore side of things and then some. Dumbledore is not only a bastard man but is a raging misogynist and extremely classist (which is funny because I don’t see too many people calling him out for those last two when to me canon all but shouts it at you). 

Basically, what it comes down to, is even taken in very good faith I simply cannot read Dumbledore’s actions as benign in pretty much every single goddamn decision he makes ever.

God, where do I even start here? I guess we can go chronologically.

Well, there was Dumbledore’s Wizard Nazi youth with an oddly Dorian Gray flare to it with Gellert. I think it’s fairly obvious why Dumbledore’s not exactly... good there so I’m going to skip past it. Suffice to say, it took his sister’s death (and maybe murdering his own invalid sister) for Dumbledore to stop planning world domination. Even then it wasn’t so much that world domination was wrong, but because his sister died and he was an asshole.

I’m going to go ahead and include CoG and Fantastic Beasts because I can (CoG, while a terrible movie, actually does entertain me in many ways). Anyways, before the films came out I always considered the younger Dumbledore far more stoic and brooding. He doesn’t get his eccentric persona until after the defeat of Grindelwald and was before then angsty mcangsts and an academic at heart. 

Well, per CoG, apparently he was a budding spy master long before defeating Gellert/Voldemort popped up. We see him manipulating Newt, sending him to Paris as his own agent, WHEN NEWT DOESN’T WANT TO GO AND HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THAT DUMBLEDORE USED HIM INTHE LAST FILM. Dumbledore writes off having used Newt for his own agenda with a charming smile but none the less it paints a pretty grim picture that Albus has always been... Albus. There has always been a greater good out there somewhere and the man is always using someone as a pawn.

Cut to canon and his treatment of Tom Riddle. Frankly, Dumbledore’s treatment of the young Tom Riddle, and even Tom Riddle just before he came Voldemort, is insane. The thought experiment I like to run is “replace Tom in those scenes with Harry Potter”.

Harry was a poor orphan, whose guardians would more than match what Mrs. Cole said about Tom Riddle, who had spurts of accidental magic now and then and enjoyed when his bully cousin was discomfitted. Now, imagine Dumbledore giving Harry his letter, and then pretending to light all of Harry’s possessions on fire to “teach him a lesson”. What the fuck?

Now, am I saying Tom Riddle wasn’t creepy here and that killing a rabbit was terrible. No. But I am saying Dumbledore had a horrible reaction to it and is proud of it years later. (Also, the fact that he uses this memory to convince Harry of how evil Tom is, is hilarious to me. Dumbledore, you were the shit that lit people’s wardrobes on fire. If I was Tom, I’d be upset too). 

Dumbledore is always like this with Tom Riddle. He thinks the worst of Tom even in points where Tom hasn’t done anything. I’m not talking about later when, yes, Tom did live up to Dumbledore’s fears but when Dumbledore treats him like garbage and actively sabotaged Tom’s career.

Anyways, cut to later when the Marauders are in school. One of the big things is that Dumbledore puts up a guerilla resistance gang OF SCHOOL CHILDREN. While most members are older, James, Lily, Sirius, Remus, and Peter are all only just out of Hogwarts. “Well,” you say, “It’s their choice and they did graduate. Surely Dumbledore wasn’t actually recruiting school children.” I point you towards canon, where Dumbledore convinces three actual school children that the fate of the nation rests on their shoulders and to go fight the good fight. So yes, Dumbledore canonically uses child soldiers and has no regret for doing so.

The other is letting James and Sirius off the hook for the Lupin incident. While Dumbledore talks the talk this showed that he was not willing to walk the walk. True, while getting them into major trouble would have involved outing Lupin (who was innocent in all of this) at the same time they were nearly responsible for the murder of another student. It’s very convenient that Dumbledore lets off the rich son of a lord, two individuals who later end up in the resistance movement (Potter likely funding part of it), and tells the impoverished half blood to sit down and shut up.

And in canon, yes, I believe that Dumbledore absolutely knew what Harry’s home condition was like. While the blood wards are an excuse they aren’t a particularly good one as for most of Harry’s childhood the Death Eaters were all accounted for. Harry was in no extreme danger from them. To not have had an inkling of Harry’s home life (when Harry even hints at it when wanting to stay over the summer, Harry runs away from home in third year, Fred and George see the bars on the window, and he even visits Harry’s home in sixth year) would be such laughable incompetence and stupidity it’s right out.

With that, I absolutely do believe what Snape showed us in the memory, the Dumbledore behind the scenes as it were. That Dumbledore knew fairly early that Harry Potter was a horcrux and began grooming Harry for suicide. Specifically, that’s what sixth year really is. All those memories of Tom Riddle, the pretext to get some memory from Slughorn, it’s an excuse for a smear campaign designed to convince Harry that Tom Riddle is inherently evil and must die at all costs, even Harry’s own life. 

Dumbledore didn’t need that Slughorn memory. Sure, it was useful to know Tom intended to make seven but think about it. How did Dumbledore know there’d be anything remotely useful in there? He doesn’t know that Tom actually drops a number on Slughorn. Even then, he doesn’t know whether Tom actually goes and does it. All of it felt like, “Harry, I have a super secret important mission that only YOU can do. Can you handle it, Harry? Because without this the country is surely doomed” And in that I mean it was an effort to win back Harry’s favor after the previous year meltdown, keep him busy, and start in on the excuse to show Harry some pretty damn innocuous memories of Tom Riddle and go, “See, HE IS EVIL!”

Due to this, I frankly think that the train scene was a hallucination on Harry’s part. Wishful thinking for some gentle explanation of how Dumbledore had not cruelly used him for years and intended his death. 

Well, that and it never made much sense that Dumbledore could predict Harry’s a) becoming the master of death b) miraculous second resurrection.

In the first case, Harry becomes master of death because of wand lore bullshit and happenstance where Harry happens to save Draco’s life. Dumbledore had no idea such a thing would happen. Dumbledore’s plan was for there to be no master of death, as the wand would default to having no owner when Snape defeated Dumbledore on Dumbledore’s orders. That Draco got the wand is a sort of Deus ex Machina. Sorry guys, Dumbledore intended Harry to die.

More, even then, while Dumbledore was very into the occult of these things we leave canon without any idea if these things are even responsible for his resurrection. They’re just relatively nifty objects with a legend behind them. There was nothing concrete to suggest that, should Harry happen to get all of them, he would be able to rise from the dead.

Otherwise onto the misogyny and classism parts.

In terms of misogyny this is from every time Dumbledore talks about Lily Evans or Merope Gaunt. In the case of Lily, she’s this weird Madonna figure whose love for Harry was so powerful it saved his life. That she also happened to make these blood wards Dumbledore cannot reproduce and extended her protection to Harry wherever he went is irrelevant. It’s her love that counts. That feminine, maternal, love purer than all others.

Basically, Dumbledore seems to be of the belief that women are flowers. The best of women are these demure, selfless, brave women who sacrifice themselves for their children. Yikes, Dumbledore.

Merope’s the really bad one though. Merope’s tale is how she drugged and raped a defenseless muggle for months and then he escaped. Dumbledore spins it into this Victorian tale of woe where Tom Riddle Sr. THE KIDNAPPED RAPE VICTIM is the asshole here who abandoned Merope to the merciless cold world. How dare he. 

It’s very clear that Dumbledore doesn’t see Merope, or women in general, as people. Instead these weird Victorian ideals who can be tragic victims of circumstance.

As for the classism.

While Dumbledore’s very against the pureblood culture we see in the Malfoys a lot of his treatment of Tom Riddle feels very... classist. The big one, which is a little tangential but I say it counts, is Dumbledore’s theory that children of rape are incapable of love. Granted, he’s saying this while convincing Harry to kill himself for the good of the cause and there is a real world parallel in that alcohol/drugs while pregnant is a very bad idea that can lead to extreme mental and physical health disorders. That said, we’re talking love potions at conception, and it always read more as “rape babies” vs. specific drugs. And that is... just yikes on so many levels.

Now, do I agree with manipulative Dumbledore we see in many fics? No, because Dumbledore’s not that stupid.

He doesn’t need to borrow money from Harry’s vault, he doesn’t need to pay off Hermione and Ron to be Harry’s friends, he doesn’t need to choose Harry’s friends for him, he doesn’t need to manipulate Harry’s memories directly. He doesn’t need to do any of this because he got what he wanted just fine in canon.

Dumbledore is one of the smartest characters in canon, far smarter than Harry, and he doesn’t have to stoop to such outrageous schemes to get what he wants. Poorly concealed smear campaigns convincing Harry to commit suicide are more than enough.

#ask #anon #headcanons #albus dumbledore #manipulative dumbledore #dumbledore is pretty damn evil guys #as in there is pretty much not a single action you can point to where i'll say it was reasonable and not in some way underhanded #except maybe his choice in wardrobe #the man has some elton john style