#my goodness op i think you succeeded at your goal

[leviathan-supersystem]

I want to thank you for posting about how insane the effective altruism community is and how Thielian it is like 6 years ago (maybe even further back). I've been on tumblr only sparsely since then but when i heard about how the ftx billionaires were part of this thing i thought of your posts and how right they turned out to be. I bet a lot of people remember this. So much seems to have metastasized about the things you were warning about (what feels like) very early on. Thank you for braving some deeply annoying reactionary interlocutors back then and being a voice of reason

thank you, it means a lot that you say that, i do consider my investigation into lesswrong and related to be some of the best work i've ever done, and i do think that if i hadn't been there sounding the alarm on that, a lot more people on tumblr could have gotten roped into that whole scam. like i really can imagine that whole thing getting a lot uglier if i hadn't warned people.

and like when that whole saga first started, i had no idea things were going to get so wildly out of control, like the way that it all started was that me and my mutuals were getting harassed by a bunch of people with "rationalist" in their bio, and i was like "okay who the hell are these people and where are they coming from" and i honestly didn't expect there to be anything substantial. i thought the answer would just be "they came from reddit" and that's it. so i was completely blindsided when i started digging and found out all this absolutely buck-wild shit about AI cults and Thiel funding. needless to say i found a lot more dirt on them than i was anticipating.

i'm about to go into tinfoil hat territory for a minute here, but i surmise that there is a particular psy-op strategy that involves the creation of two ostensibly opposed ideological factions which in truth serve the same broader ideological goals, positioning the "conflict" between them in such a way that people are compelled to take sides, and then leading the people on either side of that "conflict" into basically the same ideological trap. so for example, in the 80's there were a bunch of televised debates between christian figures and the church of satan, and it was this whole big broader culture war thing, presented in such a way that people would be compelled to take one side or the other, but in the end both sides of that debate were pushing a right-wing ideology which was identical on the most important points (anti-egalitarian/anti-socialist/anti-democratic. i'll be getting more into detail on that in an answer to another ask, i'm cleaning out my inbox right now).

similarly, with the recent upsurge in christian populist conspiracy theorism on tumblr these days, i can't help but imagine how much worse the scenario would be if the lesswrongers had succeeded in really taking root on tumblr and harassing the communists off the site, as they were clearly trying to. like i can imagine instead of the debate on tumblr being between "bill gates is bad because he's an evil wizard trying to give us the mark of the beast" vs. "no, bill gates is bad because he exploits his workers, poisons the earth, and is hoarding land and resources, etc" we had a scenario where the lesswrongers had supplanted the communists and the debate was between "bill gates is bad because he's an evil wizard trying to give us the mark of the beast" vs. "no, bill gates is good :)." honestly too horrible to contemplate.

[raayllum]

Hi!

First of all, thank you for everything you do for the fandom. I always love your screenshots + meaningful text combinations, they are so good! Thanks to you I have also added some new amazing songs to my playlists (Dark Horse and Anti-hero included).

I have a question and a song to share. First goes the question: do you happen to know any, just ANY tdp fanfiction which explores the what-if scenario where team Zym loses the Battle of the Storm Spire? If not, it would be great if you shared your own thoughts about it. Like, what if Viren & Aaravos succeeded in draining power from Zym? What would happen then? I tried to find something on Ao3 but all I got was a couple of works focused entirely on Viravos or something about reincarnation. Which is fine but not exactly what I am looking for.

I'd also like to share a song with you. It's Storm by Blackmore's Night. As the title suggests, it's about the storm and I've been fascinated with this song for a few years now. Maybe you'll like it too :)

Aww thank you so much, that is so sweet!! I can't think of any fics or headcanon posts I've seen like that along those regards, but I do have a tag for canon divergences in general and one for my specific explorations.

I think the biggest thing to consider would be if Zym was successfully killed or not.

1. Zym lives

This means the kids can potentially, if frantically, flee, with Janai and Amaya and any other surviving Sunfire elves being captured. Soren and co. could go looking for other archdragons (I'm sure Rayla would've heard of Rex Igneous) or Earthblood allies who would either worry about the encroaching invasion and/or recognize Zym as the future heir and advocate for his sovereignty. The biggest change here is that Lux Aurea is like, even more devastated, and I could see Janai being executed bc she's the next heir, but who knows

Kids come back six months later with an Earthblood army (also don't think the monster-humans would survive or thrive well long term, so that depletion could be over time) but it may not even matter, depending on what Aaravos' endgame (release?) was for harvesting Zym in the first place

2. Zym dies

This one is trickier, as it leaves us with a very heartbroken Ezran (the mind/soul link so recently formed and so brutally severed) and with no draconic heir. As long as Zym was alive, the kids would have hope, so with him gone I think they'd be very dejected (and of course, grieving their friend). I could see Ezran falling into a depression of sorts, just because he'd probably blame himself for his handling of the kingdom's troops, and he was the closest to Zym. Callum would delegate more time/thought to his brother as a result, leaving Soren and Rayla to maybe bond a bit more in terms of leading the group and figuring out what to do next, bound by the goal of keeping the remaining princes alive until they can figure out a plan. (Callum would also probably get his hands on a dark magic book, Just In Case, because I don't think he'd been willing to hold anything back now that he and particularly Ezran are Viren + Aaravos' #1 targets, in terms of eliminating any kind of uprising).

I could see Rayla bringing everyone back to the Silvergrove, as it is cloaked by illusions, and they can still interact with objects even if no one can see them, so it's kind of the perfect place to hide. Then maybe Callum and Rayla would go look for again, arch dragons or possible reinforcements, leaving Soren to look after Ezran when they'd do reconnaissance, since Rayla is their Xadian guide and Callum doesn't want her to go alone

This would probably be more of a slow build, and I could see them travelling to Duren as well (which, I suppose Aanya would be captured and executed for treason against the Pentarchy, just because Viren could - although I could see Claudia feeling bad/awkward about executing a girl who's not much younger than herself? Unexpected imprisoned Aanya and sympathetic conflicted Claudia bonding? Opeli gets executed, hopefully Corvus escapes). But yeah, two years before they can come back and take the throne, and I could see Callum and Rayla both becoming a bit more cut throat because they've had two years of like, protecting Ezran at the forefront, and surviving in the wild long term when you're hunted fugitives is just a different kind of experience. Ezran, because of their sheltering, remains just as kind, but he's much much Sadder in his day to day presentation, and that never entirely goes away

Depending on whether the Illusion stabbing happened - and let's just say that it didn't - I could see Claudia trying to reach out to and track down Soren, convinced she can get him to come home now that 'his side lost' and 'there's nothing left for him there anymore, can you get over your identity crisis and come home'. So I feel like Soren would actually probably be Angrier at Claudia in his scenario here than he is in canon, just because he sees more of the long lasting destruction and doesn't have victory to make him worried about his sister

Feel free to send in other asks and thoughts about this lil scenario (either one), it's definitely an interesting one to consider! Or any other canon divergences, really - I have a tiny list of ones I know I want to write drabbles for at the very least

#canon divergence #requests #AU #amber-in-the-rough #tdp #prompts #a thousand times which isn't half enough #s3 #3x09 #thanks for asking #the dragang #castle kids #plus rayla hi rayla #the dragon prince

[sixteenthshen]

post-finale stuff

Possible spoilers. Beware

Last night, I happened to check the scriptwriter's Weibo and saw that she had liked this fan's post. It's the only non-work related Weibo post that she had liked, so of course, I went to read it. 

The fact that this is the only fan post she's given her approval to must mean that it is on point and she agrees with the characterisation. I thought it's pretty good, so I've gone ahead to translate it here. I own 0 rights to this. I just thought it's a good perspective that may help others like me who struggled with the ending. 

I think I've mostly made my peace with it now, and to sum it up:

Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all that they are. 

A-Xu never once blamed Lao Wen for how things turned out because he understood that. And he’s clearly a better person than I am (lol).

Let me be clear about my stand - the real victim of how the drama unfolded in the last six episodes is WKX. When we feel our hearts ache for ZZS, it's because the show let down WKX (the character). If your heart is only hurting for WKX during episodes 33-34, you should try to ship WKX with someone else, ok? If you think the last six episodes were great and that WKX was very romantic (and only romantic), then I honestly don't know what to say. 

I ship wenzhou. That means I like both Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu. I want them to love each other, be good to each other and live happily ever after. And I want them not to be OOC. 

The rest behind the cut. Spoilers for the whole drama. 

------- 

First, the source. Here is a link to that Weibo post, by 爱吐槽的栗小姐. I will delete this if requested by the OP - because this is really in a grey area imo. But I think the intention of a public post is for it to be shared? (especially something like this, which argues a point) 

Secondly, the poster does try to be fair in her post, but as the problem here is WKX's ruined characterisation, ZZS's character is analysed primarily concerning this issue only. There's quite a bit left to ZZS's character and backstory that isn't relevant. I believe that's why the post doesn't elaborate on it, or so I hope.

-------

Ever since WKX faked his death, I received three to four waves of fellow sister fans' mournful wails: "Lao Wen actually faked his death; does he have a heart?" "They were supposed to be of the same heart and treat each other with honesty. How did they regress?" "What happened to their innate soulmate-ness?" "Why does A-Xu always say to face things together, yet Lao Wen always keeps his plans from him?" "A-Xu loves Lao Wen, yet Lao Wen only loves himself"…….

Wait. What have you guys misunderstood about the meaning of soulmates? 

Soulmates are about values, but a person's behaviour… that's methodology FFS! 

(Do they no longer teach this in political affairs class in high school anymore?) 

Wenzhou, these soulmates, are incomparably compatible and mesh well in terms of values. According to the scriptwriter, the entire jianghu wants and tries to get the pieces of Glazed Armour, save the two of them. Not only do they not care for the peerless martial arts, immense power, nor the massive wealth that the Glazed Armour represents, they don't even care for the power they hold in their hands –Ghost Valley and the Window of Heaven. Both of them willing to give it up without a second thought. 

Before they met each other, they were so tired of (ZZS) and so angry at (WKX) this earthly world that they didn't even want to live on anymore. 

After they met each other, they gradually began to feel the warmth in this world again. How nice it would be if they could live in seclusion, hand in hand and just bask in the sun. 

In this world, where everyone else is fighting for power or wealth, they are true soulmates. To intelligent people like them, whether or not they're honest about their identities or secrets is merely a matter of formality. They had already determined their attraction to the other's soul early on and have never doubted it. 

There may be some here who would criticise loudly at this point, "Then can't you be more considerate for your soulmate (the actual phrased used is "spiritual companion")? A-Xu has said many times, let's face everything together, I'll bet that you will be honest with me. If you really love him, then why can't you care for his feelings?" 

----- You guys, you've never been married. 

If two souls meeting can naturally resolve all behavioural conflicts and disagreements, then the theory of "breaking in" * would not exist. 

Let us take a look at what kind of a person WKX and ZZS each are.

Wen Kexing, he's a lone wolf. 

After his parents' death and his entering the Ghost Valley, his smooth sailing life suddenly fell off a cliff. Ever since then, the only person he could rely on was himself. That deep-seated hatred is carved into his bones, yet he can't speak of it to anyone else. He isn't the same type of person as the rest of the ghosts in the Ghost Valley; he isn't the same type of person as A-Xiang, who he raised. If we talk about the world and everyone who lives in it, he doesn't have any fetters or feels any (positive) emotions. 

His supposed craziness is a form of indifference. He's indifferent to others' lives, nor his own, because he just doesn't care. (T/N: I think he does care for his own life, but only for revenge, after that, he's indifferent. Indifferent isn't suicidal. I don't know why some fans seem to be confusing the two. Although he didn't plan to, if he somehow manages to stay alive after getting his revenge, WKX will continue to live on, even if it's only to keep A-Xiang happy because he is indifferent.)

Growing up like this, being solitary became his style. He's used to doing everything alone, used to making his own decisions, used to digesting all his emotions himself. 

Every time he argues with A-Xu, he digests his emotions himself. The next day, he faces A-Xu with a smile again. 

This is how he loves, to take it upon himself to face danger, difficulty and pain alone. It's how he had supported A-Xiang all these years in the Ghost Valley and what he's used to. 

While Zhou Zishu, he's a lead horse (of a herd). ** 

Since a very young age, he's taught to take responsibility. He's used to bearing everything on his shoulders, be it the responsibility of his family or the responsibility for the Four Seasons Manor, even the responsibility for saving commoners from disasters. 

Unlike the lone wolf, the lead horse is ultimately a social animal. 

Regardless of his identity as the Manor Lord of the Four Seasons Manor or the Leader of the Window of Heaven, he's always the one to lead the herd and rarely fights alone. So, A-Xu not only has leadership ability but more than that, he also knows how to be tolerant and accepting of the differences of his team members. You can see the various ways he managed to influence Lao Wen along the road; he's firm when he needs to be and soft the other times. It's absolutely textbook in managing your lover workplace management. 

Zhou Zishu believes in communication whenever there's a problem, that they should be open and honest. So, teamwork is what he's used to. 

Does it mean that when a horse and lone wolf fall in love, that there won't be a breaking in period? 

Obviously not. 

I guess this is where some may say again, "isn't this part of a character's arc/development? The two of them quarrel time and time again. Did WKX not grow at all from it?" 

Of course, after meeting each other, they both grew and saved each other.

When he first left Window of Heaven, A-Xu was lonely with regret. Unlike the lone wolf who's used to doing everything alone, a lead horse without the last of his herd has no way to bear the bone-deep loneliness and merciless self-recrimination.

ZZS wandered around this world aimlessly until Lao Wen started pestering him, until he picked up Zhang Chengling, right up until he felt he hadn't singlehandedly destroyed the Four Seasons Manor. This lead horse finally regained a goal in life. He gained a partner and a lover. Lao Wen sticks to him, Chengling relies on him, and the abandoned Four Seasons Manor became like-new in his hands. He finally reconciles with himself. 

When he first came out of the valley, Lao Wen carried a rage strong enough to burn the world down. But when he met A-Xu, he also met the beauty of the world. 

When the Four Sages of Anji died, WKX understood how he caused innocent suffering. When Gao Chong walked to his death knowingly, he understood that although some may desire power, they could still be righteous and upstanding people. When he learned of everything Long Que sacrificed to protect his family***, he finally relaxed his guard. 

There were so many types of good people and things that he saw along this journey that he hadn't seen in the Ghost Valley. When A-Xu told him he was a good person as they basked in the sun, he genuinely wanted to return to the human (vs ghost) realm and be a good man. 

Along their journey, A-Xu made up for the morals and values that WKX lost in the Ghost Valley and showed him a new world outlook. He appeased Lao Wen's anger, tempered his extremism. The process wasn't easy, but not that difficult either, because, in the end, Lao Wen is kind at heart. 

But in the end, being a lone wolf is how he survived and succeeded in a place like the Ghost Valley. When A-Xu was so heavily injured and needed a lot of rest (for Wu Xi) to save his life, Lao Wen suddenly recalled his enemies and how such an excellent opportunity to take revenge just fell into his lap. Everything was in place, and all he needed to do was hide it from A-Xu; he could leave for a short while and have it settled quickly. Upon returning, he could then live happily ever after with his wife. To a crazy lone wolf, why would he not take a gamble? 

What he couldn't predict was the news would've been leaked (to A-Xu), and he didn't know that by doing so, he would've forever lost his love. 

Both of them were using their own methods to love the other person. Zhou Zishu is more forgiving and accepting because being forgiving is in his blood. While what WKX learned in his years in the Ghost Valley is -- love needs to be protected, like how he has A-Xiang, who he considers a sister, call himself master (to protect her). 

Only when faced with painful consequences can a person's deep-rooted habits and approach to things change. So I don't think faking his death ruined the characterisation of Wen Kexing, but I regret that the last two episodes did not have a scene to show us Lao Wen's heartbreak when he learns the truth. 

Until I know what it feels like to have lost you, I will only love you in my own way. 

T/N: 

*I can't think of the correct phrase for this as I don't read all that much about relationships >< please let me know if you know of it. Here, I'm referring to the process of wearing something new (like shoes) that will hurt at the start until it becomes soft and comfortable. 

** I did some side-reading, and omg, A-Xu is TOTALLY the lead mare. Although he's not the stallion and weak/dying for most of the show, he's the head of their little family, and he expects "to be obeyed", aka, I'm not going to learn how to cook. Call me for dinner. Kthxbye. 

From Rutgers' website: A herd of wild horses consists of one or two stallions, a group of mares, and their foals. The leader of the herd is usually an older mare (the "alpha mare"), even though one stallion owns the herd. She maintains her dominant role even though she may be physically weaker than the others. The older mare has had more experiences, more close encounters, and survived more threats than any other horse in the herd. The requirement of the lead horse is not strength or size; if this were so, then humans could never dominate a horse. Dominance is established not only through aggression but also through attitudes that let the other horses know she expects to be obeyed.

***I think this is important here because WKX wasn't crying for his loss. I think a big part of him was realising not everyone in the world was callous and turned their backs on his parents, that he could've gone his whole life without ever discovering what sacrifices some people have made. Good people suffer quietly and in silence. It's a big moment to realise he was wrong about many things that he had let hatred blind himself to the world. Because although he was sad about the Four Sages and somewhat shocked by Gao Chong's death, he hadn't truly faced up to his actions until now. 

(screenshot of the scriptwriter liking the above post) 

------

To add: 

I'm not sure how many of you read my "opinion" posts, but I've been struggling to find a way to accept the last six episodes of Word of Honor.  I first tried looking at open forum postings, comments, and Tumblr posts. None of it worked because it was just arguing and emotions and no one made points good enough for me to accept things. 

So I gave up and went back to reading Chinese sites. I found many posts discussing the plot. Some I liked, some I didn't, but none satisfied my need for a reasonable explanation. I felt they had biases (both ways), or else it lacked logic. After a time, I realised that I should be looking for WKX-stans (or pro-WKX fans) because they would be more motivated to explain his side, but also because well-written posts by wenzhou-fans & ZZS-stans made me super sad.

I'm sorry, but those who keep trying to explain why the ending was good completely missed that episodes 32-34 are the real problem to those who don't like it and only focused on 36. I can understand if people don't think those episodes are a problem, but no one could provide an articulate and sensible reason. There are just too few well-reasoned plot-focused posts in English (sorry). I've seen too many examples of WKX-fans arguing with people who are upset about the ending, backed by nothing more than "look how much WKX suffers, woe is him. And how romantic is this????" *dies* 

Lastly, if you spot anything inaccurate, let me know & I will correct it.

#word of honor #word of honor meta #wenzhou #opinion #i think this counts as meta #if you think the drama did WKX justice #and that he can do no wrong #in the last 6 episodes #.... #...... #srsly #you can't claim to ship wenzhou #& think the last 6 eps are perfect

[itsclydebitches]

No one should of trusted RWBY+ with fucking anything, let alone saving the world (LIKE REN SAID THEY SHOULDN’T BE MAKING DECISIONS ON) and now look. Two cities destroy, millions dead or homeless, and Salem half-way to completing her goal that might get everyone killed. Yeah, Ozpin totally should apologize for not trusting these idiots.

At the very least the story might have pulled some plot strings to "prove" that Ozpin should have trusted them from the start. Like with Oscar succeeding with Hazel. We know that success required him to go OOC and that in a story with more consistent characterization/realistic reactions from its cast, Oscar would have definitely failed... but that doesn't erase the fact that he didn't. No matter how badly executed, the story essentially argues, "Oscar was right to trust Hazel because look, Hazel helped him" and we might have gotten something similar with the group: "Ozpin was wrong to mistrust them because look, when they learned the truth everything got better."

But, uh... things got so much worse.

The group drove Ozpin away rather than proving that they were actually different from everyone else who learned about Salem. Then they nearly lost the Relic at the farm. They tested the fragile trust between the kingdoms by stealing from Atlas and in doing so got a Leviathan to attack a city. Then they lied to Ironwood - the exact thing Ozpin supposedly shouldn't have done to them. They actively divided their allies - you know, the thing Salem wants. Not splitting the group to complete two separate tasks, Ruby - by turning on the Ace Ops and Ironwood. Ruby told everyone about Salem, which realistically should have caused massive grimm attacks across the entire world. They lost the Relic because they never bothered to put it in the vault. They also ended up losing the last question because of that. They lost the Staff because they stupidly took it out of the vault. Their Maiden was killed, again. An entire populace is displaced and currently getting picked off by grimm. They knowingly, willingly, and deliberately destroyed an entire kingdom when they didn't have to.

Oh, and then five out of ten “died.” If there was any part of Ozpin that held back out of worry for their safety, that’s been proven correct too. They weren’t strong enough, or smart enough to survive this war. Within just a few months they were (we’re meant to believe) killed. 

Putting aside, for the moment, that a story needs conflict and failure on the part of its protagonists, everything that has happened since Volume 6, to my mind, proves Ozpin right. Not just in terms of "Wow, when I tell people about Salem they hurt and betray me" but also "Wow, somehow I don't think this group of teenagers with one year of training is ready to be the linchpin of this war." Because that's what they wanted by demanding every secret: to be at the very center of the fight, to be making the tough calls, to play at being the world's hero. The problem is, their idea of a hero is still someone who fixes everything with an epic punch to the face. When that fails... they crumble. Cue Ruby sitting around in the mansion half the volume. Should Ozpin have trusted his inner circle? It's debatable. Lionheart ran to Salem the second he learned of her immortality, Qrow sunk deeper into his alcoholism and gave up the fight, but Ironwood took it in a stride and kept pushing forward. Theodore we don't know yet. So it's pretty up in the air whether that would have assisted Ozpin, or just made things worse that much faster, but then that's not really the question here. Should he have told the group? Should he have deliberately made these teens generals in this war? The plot says, "Absolutely not." Because when they made themselves the generals through force - stealing the question, lying to Ironwood, defeating the Ace Ops, hijacking Amity - things have consistently gotten worse. Nothing we've seen on screen the last three volumes says, "See? Look how much better things are once Ozpin was forced to trust love and put his faith in this team."

And what slays me is that the show so desperately tries to backtrack on this with the fight between Ren and Yang:

Ren: Are you kidding?! We don’t know the first thing about being Huntsmen. We clearly weren’t ready.

Yang: Were we not ready when we saved Haven? When we took down a Leviathan? We got the Lamp to Atlas.

Ren: And then we lost it! And after that, when we had to make real decisions, we got every single one wrong.

Yang: I’m not going to pretend like we did everything perfectly, but if we’d done nothing, things would be even worse than they are now.

Ren: How could they possibly be worse? We are stuck out here while Salem has the Lamp and Oscar. We’ve got no plan, no army.

Yang: We’ve got the Maiden!

Yang is forced to omit so much information to make the team look good here and Ren is only allowed to point out one (1) thing she omits: "And then we lost it!" Yang fails to mention that they didn't save Haven, Blake's army did. So yeah, one member of the team, but it's not like they got in there and kicked epic ass. Weiss nearly died. The Relic was only saved because Raven decided she didn't want it anymore. The group barely held their own and then won due to good timing and the bad guys taking each other out/changing their minds. They were going to defeat two Maidens? Lucky them one Maiden took the other out and then decided to hand them the Relic.

Took down a leviathan? Funny how she fails to mention that they drew the leviathan there in the first place and that Cordovin's drill is what did it in. Even Ruby's eyes is a single person ability that only works on grimm, not at all useful for the human-based problems Ren is talking about. They got the Lamp to Atlas? Yeah, and then you lost it. Getting it to Atlas is literally meaningless when the villains still managed to steal it, that victory a direct result of the group's stupid decisions. It's like going, "I successfully got water out of the boat" and failing to mention that the boat still sank. Oh, and also you could have plugged the hole at any point and just... didn't. The boat sinking is absolutely on your hands. When pressed just the tinniest bit, all Yang can come up with is that they've still got the Maiden, someone who will be attacked, hacked, and murdered by the end of the volume. Everything else? "but if we’d done nothing, things would be even worse than they are now."

That's a very big claim from someone ignoring all her failures. And of course, soon after this Ren dares to use Jaune's lack of training as an example of how unprepared they are (valid), he gets mad, the duo later tells him to open up more (he literally just did), and then the story drops his anger for a semblance upgrade instead. RWBY banks on us just believing Yang, carried along by everyone - all the way through to Nora - going on about how Very Very Wrong Ren Is - because if you actually consider these themes of trust and ask whether Ozpin was wrong to hold back... there's not a lot to challenge that decision. The go-to argument would be, "The heroes made things better once they knew the truth, ergo, they should have known the truth from the start" but the group has continually made things worse. It's not even a temporary problem anymore. No matter that they'll inevitably win, Atlas is gone. They've done irreversible harm to the world and yeah, they're trying to do good, they're trying, but this isn't the story of some teenagers forced into a conflict and doing what they can with the hand they've been dealt. This is the story of some teenagers who forced their way in, so when things go wrong... that's on them, no matter their intentions. They are now responsible, just as much as Ozpin was responsible. Except the story refuses to admit that, continually positioning Ruby as an innocent child in need of reassurance, not the licensed huntress who stole control from Ozpin, lied her way into a new inner circle, attacked former allies to avoid the consequences of her own actions, and presented herself as the world's savior... only to then cry because she never had a plan to begin with. We've got a fantastic story here about how Ruby wasn't ready, none of her friends were, and their naïve belief that they were the heroes of this tale - running after the White Fang, then Cinder, then Salem herself - has done incredible harm within a delicate, multi-generation war. We might have started telling that story if the group had actually sat with Ren's accusations and admitted their mistakes. Instead, we're left with this ridiculous claim that no matter how bad things get, it's always better than the alternative of the group not being involved at all. Because they're the heroes, remember. Their goodness they provide is, supposedly, inherent. The only problem is we no longer have a plot that supports this claim.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas

[ncisladaily]

Renée Felice Smith was only six years old when she knew that she wanted to be an actress and storyteller, but people tried to dissuade her from her chosen career path, telling her it was an impossible goal. Luckily, Smith’s parents weren’t among the naysayers, and today she’s living her dream, starring as Intelligence Analyst Nell Jones on NCIS: Los Angeles (Sundays, 9 p.m., CBS) and co-authoring her first children’s book Hugo and the Impossible Thing with her creative partner Chris Gabriel.

So, when her French Bulldog Hugo was diagnosed with a brain tumor, Smith once again ignored the doubters and found the best vet possible to give Hugo a shot at life rather than listen to those who told her it was “just truly impossible.”

“We just knew we had to try for our little guy, and we’re so glad we did because he was with us for another two beautiful years, just grinning, growling and running around the yard like the wild man that he always was,” Smith tells Parade.com in this exclusive interview. “So, we’re so glad we fought for him and advocated for him.”

When Hugo finally passed, Smith and Gabriel knew they had to tell his story to inspire others to conquer the seemingly impossible things in their life. So they wrote a story about a little dog named Hugo, who succeeded where others didn’t even try as a result of his bravery, curiosity, teamwork and persistence.

“The love is still here, and it needed someplace to go, so now we have the book and Hugo’s message that now we get to share with the world, which I’m just so grateful that it’s become real,” Smith adds.

Related: NCIS: Los Angeles‘ Daniela Ruah Speculates About Whether Kensi and Deeks Will Survive the Obstacles Ahead

This Sunday night, Smith will be back with some teamwork of her own when NCIS: Los Angeles returns with a new episode dealing with technology, which is something that Nell excels at. In the “Imposter Syndrome” episode, NCIS obtains a hard drive containing a realistic deep fake video of a deceased terrorist and must retrieve the dangerous technology behind it. However, when the team’s comms are hijacked during their mission, they find that one of their own has been a victim of its potential.

And, spoiler alert, Smith says that in the May 23 Season 12 finale, Nell will finally be reunited with Hetty (Linda Hunt)! But how that will play out remains to be seen.

“Linda was essentially sidelined by the pandemic, but, very exciting, I do share a scene with her in our season finale and it’s one of the most memorable scenes of my time on NCIS: LA, so I’m very grateful to have her back as my scene partner,” Smith says.

For more of what Smith had to say about her real-life Hugo and Hugo and the Impossible Thing, as well as more NCIS: Los Angeles scoop, read on.

With your background, a movie seems a more natural project than a book about Hugo. How did it turn into a book?

Chris, my other half, and I are lovers of all types of books. We grew up with children’s books and some of the most impactful stories and lessons we feel that we’ve learned in our lives we learned in the pages of those books, so we really wanted to create this modern classic, a book that kids, or quite frankly, anyone nowadays could really benefit from.

Especially right now, we’re all dealing with our own version of the impossible thing, and we’re trying to find our way to the other side. What better way to inspire you and yours to go out and conquer whatever your impossible thing is than through a storybook following this spirited French Bulldog through the forest, kind of this yellow brick road, Wizard of Oz structure? He meets up with his forest friends and they end up helping him through the impossible thing. It’s really a story about bravery, curiosity, teamwork and persistence. We wanted to encourage that in our readers, both young and young at heart.

Tell us about Hugo and his battle with his brain tumor.

Hugo was diagnosed with a brain tumor and we were truly beside ourselves. It was an out-of-body experience. He was a feisty, curious, wild man who was quite literally sidelined by this potentially terminal disease, and we just knew that we didn’t want to give up on him, and he wasn’t giving up on himself. Every step of the way, we would say out loud, “Hugo, just let us know, buddy, do you want to keep going?” And he met us with this enthusiasm for the process every step of the way. And that is truly why we kept going.

Did Hugo instill in you the belief that the impossible might be possible? Or did you already have that?

That’s interesting. I think the process really showed us that if you ask the questions, oftentimes the people who ask the questions are the people who find the answers, and this process really reiterated that. He inspired us to advocate for him, because animals are helpless on their own, but we could do something about it. We could ask the questions; we could be his voice. I’m just so thankful that he was always this bright light that had this insatiable curiosity for life. He definitely imbued that in me, and I know he imbued that in Chris. He did inspire us to help him conquer his impossible thing. If he didn’t have the fight in him, if he wasn’t such a spirited dog, I don’t know if that would’ve happened, but he was singular in a way. I reference him as my canine son, because he was. He was my baby.

On NCIS: Los Angeles, Nell is torn these days. She feels Hetty tricked her into taking the job when she said she didn’t want it, but she has the support of her team and also Kilbride. So how do you think she’s feeling these days?

She really is at a crossroads in her life. I think a lot of young women find themselves at this point, where they are very good at their job, but is it the job that they always saw themselves in? Is it the job they saw their future selves thriving in? I think for Nell, she’s really questioning whether she wants this to be her story, and in the process, she’s really finding her voice this season. There’s a scene with Sam Hanna, LL Cool J‘s character, that recently aired, where she spells out her frustrations in her position as de facto operations manager and how she’s struggling to keep the plates spinning. And she tells him that he needs to get on her team. It was a really stern moment for Nell.

I don’t think we’ve really ever seen that. Actually, LL Cool J and I were talking about what a different flavor this scene is bringing to the show because Nell usually is quick with a quip, but she doesn’t often drop the hammer in this way. And this season, we really do get to see Nell drop this hammer, stand in her power, and let people know that she needs help and she’s questioning this process.

I think that’s the side of being the operations manager that we didn’t really get to see very much with Hetty because she had everything under control. So, it’s kind of fun and new to see the person, who may be greener in the position, find her way in this new position of leadership.

How much has COVID affected what we’re seeing this season? Is that why we don’t see more of Linda Hunt, to keep her safe? And I noticed there are fewer people in scenes, especially in ops.

You’re absolutely right. Our show did an incredible job managing the crisis that was the pandemic and continues to be the pandemic. We are tested five days a week. Our crew was incredible in keeping everyone safe. The was goal to keep everyone safe, and we were, in turn, able to create 18 episodes of television, which is incredible.

You were just picked up for your 13th season, so it isn’t over yet, but when you look back, what will you take away from it?

Oh, my goodness. We’re a family, you know, but it’s been a mini-film school for me as well. My time at NCIS: LA has been educational. I just pinch myself how lucky I am that I was able to quite frankly lock onto a job like this for so long. In our industry, stability as an actor is not something you often experience. So, to have this group of people who I’ve grown to love and really consider extensions of my family, I’m just so grateful for the time. I feel like I’ve been a student. I feel like I went to school all over again for 10 years.

With Linda being this master in her craft, I can’t even quantify what I learned from her and most of it happens when we’re waiting to do our scene. It’s in those moments that I hear the stories from her childhood and the stories from early in her career, just these nuggets of wisdom that I have now in my little carpet bag.

From your work outside NCIS: LA, it seems as if maybe long-term, you’re more interested in being behind the camera and writing, producing, directing.

It’s interesting, often as actors, we’re part of someone else’s story, we’re carrying out someone else’s vision, but I’ve always been a storyteller. As a kid, I would essentially write my own little plays and perform them in the yard and direct my friends and family, my sister, namely, in those plays. And for as long as I remember, I’ve always wanted to tell stories. So, yeah, that is where I see myself heading in the future.

You’ve said that you knew at age six that this is what you want to do. And you were lucky that your parents supported you.

Oh, 100 percent. I wouldn’t be standing here today if they hadn’t instilled confidence in me and in my creativity. They really created an environment that fostered out-of-the-box thinking, and I’m so grateful for that.

Which takes us full circle back to the impossible just might be possible.

It’s so true. If you’re curious enough and brave enough and you have the support, obviously, of your community, I think that’s the missing piece in a lot of these puzzles. It’s really the support because you can’t get there alone. No one can. The one-woman show does not exist. It’s an ensemble; it’s a production.

#s12 #Renee Felice Smith #Linda Hunt #ncis la #ncisla #NCIS Los Angeles

[greylunar]

Hey!! I'm a hot mess right now who cant enjoy art anymore so if you could help me solve this out I would appreciate but i understand if you can't so here's the deal: Is being rich while people are starving unethical? And if so how can I enjoy my favorite artists, rich people, knowing this? I mean it's obvious you want you and your loved ones to live comfortably but there's a point where is just too much, right? And all these big artists that I love they are way above the threshold of too much.

This is probably my favorite ask I’ve ever gotten only because I wasn’t really expecting anyone to ask me about this particular political and philosophical question, and I, an anarcho-socialist English major, have some thoughts on the subject, to say the least. Let me preface this by saying there’s no right answer to this question, as much as I wish there was one, and I can only give my opinion and how I’ve chosen to go about my life. That said the majority of people on this site are still pretty young. I’d encourage you to take my opinion with a grain of salt and ask other people you trust and read more theory so you can form what you think is the right way of going about consuming art for yourself! Regardless, I’m really proud of you for asking this and interrogating these sorts of topics within yourself, it can be hard to maintain the balance of keeping hope while attempting to live ethically within capitalist society, but the fact that you are trying is commendable, and it’s my hope that more people asking questions like this will bring about the change we wish to see in the world c: 

Alright, answer under the break!

For starters, yes, I do believe being rich is unethical. While there is a multitude of reasons for this being the case, the one you brought up (hunger) is more than enough reason on its own. Now, no one rich person could end hunger, or at least not permanently. Estimates on how much it would cost to end world hunger range from 7 billion to 265 billion USD annually according to the IFPRI, which sounds wild right off the bat, since those are two unfathomably different numbers, but basically the difference boils down to the 7 billion dollar approach aiming to reduce malnutrition to World Health Assembly goals in about 15 years, and the 265 billion plan aiming to actually end world hunger (reach a “zero hunger target”) within about 20 years by targeting the sources of hunger, mainly being poverty and agricultural infrastructure. 

So when you hear people say things like “why doesn’t Bezos end world hunger” one short answer is that he can’t. But the fact that he can’t doesn’t really matter because what really matters is he’s not trying. Without getting into liquidizing stocks and all that nonsense, if the ten richest people in the world made a one-time donation of 60 billion each, we would have enough and then some for the first two years of that zero hunger target plan by that alone. And the “poorest” of those ten billionaires would still have a net worth of 15 billion, which is still an unfathomable amount of money. 

I say all of this to point out why it still matters to say the rich aren’t doing enough to end world hunger, and not to say that this is my ideal plan for solving it (which involves a lot more social restructuring and abolishing the value-form). I think if someone wakes up with billions in assets it a capitalist society in which the median “living wage” (which includes covering basic expenses, building savings, and having “fun money”) in my country is roughly $67,700, they must have woken up on one of those days and thought “oh hey what if I ended hunger in my home town” or “oh hey what if I funded a food co-op in a food desert nearby” or maybe even “what if I fucked around and tried to end world hunger” and then they didn’t. They turned around and went back to sleep, or went to a business meeting where they continued to exploit their workers or did whatever it is they do that I will never understand. And I think that is unethical. 

Here’s the thing, and I’m sure some people will disagree with me on this one (I’m more than happy to read anyone’s replies and take them into account going forward) there’s a difference between corporate wealth and celebrity wealth. Do I fucking hate looking at pictures of Drake’s mansion? Yes, completely. Do I think that, like Mark Zuckerberg, he should be tried for crimes not limited to aiding and abetting ethnic violence in Ethiopia and failing to remove a militia event in Kenosha in which people planned to kill BLM protesters and then did, proceeding to lie about it in order to continue to profit off of the traffic and internet buzz white supremacists provide his site with? No, because Drake is not Mark Zuckerberg and there is a difference between what crimes it takes to make and uphold a 170 million dollar net worth versus a 98 billion dollar one. While I’m not jazzed to say the least about millionaire celebrities lounging in their wealth, in a way they are a very successful worker being rewarded by a capitalist society in exchange for a service they provide. So yeah, I feel more comfortable cheering on John Boyega for succeeding in a system set against him than I do any corporate capitalist.

That said, there are ways to support the art you love and strive to consume art more ethically. Support local artists, black artists and other creators of color, artists who support sustainable printmaking or give part of their proceeds to charities you care about. In terms of music, for every band you like that has problematic views there are thirty small bands with similar sounds you can support if you go looking. If you find a band you think is doing great work, support them on Bandcamp or buy a CD, and if you really want to listen to Kanye’s Power because its just that kind of day, listen to him on Spotify, where they’re literally paying people jack shit for it.  If you’re going to participate in a capitalist society (and if you’re not, let me know how since I haven't figured that one out yet haha), reward the people you feel good about supporting. 

Speaking of which! One of my favorite rappers noname has an online bookclub that uplifts POC voices by featuring two books a month.  It’s awesome, noname is awesome, and I feel good whenever I listen to their album for the thirtieth time because telefone is the best. There’s art out there for you to feel good about loving. Sometimes it just takes a little digging to find.

I think my last note is going to be this: art is human. Art isn’t capitalist. People have been making art before capitalism and they’ll be making art after, art is an expression of the pain and hope and past and future of us, and we need it. To try and cut yourself off from consuming art to distance yourself from capitalism won’t work, because we need art to be human, and it was never capitalist in the first place. You aren’t evil or unethical for wanting to consume art, that’s the most natural urge in the world. It is a sign that our system is unethical if it makes us feel guilty for the things that make us human. So consume art, love it, love the people who make it, because its the good stuff. It’s the stuff that makes the rest of this more hopeful and more worth it. I know this can all feel like so much sometimes. But you’re not alone. There so many people out there working to make the world better and brighter, and making art to get us through it. I love you, and I hoped this helped even a little bit and I’m sorry its so long haha. I hope today is a little better for you than yesterday, and tomorrow’s even better than today c:

#long post #like longest fucking post sorry #tal asks #noahvincent33 #cw violence #cw death #what else do people blacklist #capitalism #bezos #cw hunger #cw food #ask to tag #taliesin blathers

[warsofasoiaf]

Have you been playing the Last Of Us II?

I have not, but I have been following the story. Given how recent the release of the game is, I’m throwing a cut here. There are spoilers for the game, as well as for the finale of Honest Hearts from Fallout: New Vegas, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Spec Ops: The Line.

The idea of the cycle of revenge is a good one, there’s a lot of dramatic heft and human experience to discover there. The idea that revenge hollows out a person, costs them much, particularly their humanity, is another good idea. My problem is, it’s not done well.

The struggle to let go of such a primal desire to focus upon building something worthwhile (in the game’s case, family and a worthwhile life as seen in the farm scenes with JJ). And in the end, we see it does cost Ellie a significant amount. She loses her family, and the last scene shows us that she can’t play Joel’s song on her guitar because she lost her fingers, literally losing a piece of Joel’s legacy. In the scenes beforehand, she says “I want to teach you how to play guitar,” so the guitar really sums up everything she’s lost: Dina, JJ, and the worthwhile life that they could have had together.

However, this game handled this core with incredibly clumsiness. Similar to what I discussed in the ending of the Honest Hearts DLC, the game has an unusual fixation where only the named characters have any sort of meaning to the plot. The other people who Ellie kills on her journey, who have their friends cry out their name, can still be a part of this cycle of violence. This was emphasized in Joel’s death scene. Abby is the daughter of one of the surgeons at the Firefly camp that you kill in the first game, you never see her but her presence shows that even nameless characters like this faceless surgeon have loved ones that feel true loss when you kill them, but this same care is not extended to the other human characters within the story. Abby matters because she has a name and a lost parent, but what about these others guys in the Washington Liberation Front? They’re still just mooks that you kill as part of the gameplay, their losses aren’t explored, the only relevance they have is through named character Abby. This cheapens and hollows out the theme because the entire plot hinges on the effects of your actions toward a nameless enemy in the first game.

The game also didn’t handle the idea that you playing the game is a bad thing; that your character is bad for doing the things in the game well. This is a modern thing that games have started to enjoy reflection on as they grow in maturity and processing power, but it has to be done right, and this game failed. The Last of Us Part 2 is a linear experience, you can’t put down the controller and end the cycle that way because the game simply doesn’t continue, the story beats remain unresolved and Ellie learns nothing until you reach the climatic scene where she does. Red Dead Redemption 2, by contrast, gave the player’s redemptive arc real meaning because you had such control over your character’s conduct. Arthur still died, that much was a given, but the depth of how you played the character gives his actions in Chapter Six weight. Getting the members of the gang to a safe landing with the imminent collapse is reason to keep going. John Marston, Abigail, Mary-Beth, the flamboyant Mr. Trelawney, the players has grown to love these characters the way Arthur does. You have to play through to help them out as you can, such as helping Sadie rescue Abigail, being happy that Tilly was able to take Jack to safety, the loss as Bill and Javier chooses Dutch over you. If Arthur finds redemption, he forsakes the stash box in order to help John Marston escape, if he doesn’t, Micah gleefully murders Arthur and says that you’re no better than he is. When Charles and John discuss Arthur, they say he had changed, and it’s significant because Arthur and the player were the ones who did it; it’s an acknowledgment of your action. We don’t see that here. If you say that Ellie shouldn’t lose her family, you cannot stay at the farmhouse and explore that, the game demands that you follow Abby and choose the cycle of revenge until Ellie doesn’t.

The trick of pulling off a player examination narrative is a delicate art. A developer must recognize that ultimately, the game is something that the buyer purchased to experience. The Last of Us is a story-focused title, the characters sold the world and the themes within it. It was not a third-person action/survival horror despite that being the core element of gameplay, but rather a character examination piece in a fictional post-apocalypse. You have to play the game to experience the character arc. The ultimate goal of Ellie ending the cycle of revenge is her growth as a character, so the game really can’t shame you for playing the game to reach that conclusion. If the game says “what you’re doing is wrong,” that falls flat because the entire point is that the character has to recognize what she is doing is wrong and you can only do that by playing the game to its conclusion. To show an example where this succeeded, Spec Ops: The Line did this instead by playing on the power fantasy of the military shooter genre, and constantly referenced it as such by having Konrad mock the player by saying “do you feel like a hero yet?” and other related matters. Such meta elements aren’t in play here, because the entire selling point of The Last of Us is the human drama, not a shallow power fantasy.

So, while there was good elements of writing, I’d say that this game had key points of writing failure. I can celebrate that Naughty Dog tried to make something serious, but I think it flopped due to a lack of conscientiousness in applying the themes the whole way through.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#the last of us part 2 #writing #video game reviews

[gascon-en-exil]

To be fair, I've always seen CF as a pretty obvious villain route. Its not as extreme as say, the Demon Path in Soul Nomad, but you are joining the one person thats an antagonist in all other routes and you are helping her accomplish her goals of reconquering the continent. But CF stands out because its the only route who changes the entire progression of the story, and it does it in a way that makes Edelgard look better. Rhea gets away, Edelgard doesn't get a foothold in the kingdom by [1/4]

assasinating the regent, and Dimitri wasn't set up for execution. A majority of her more extreme and unarguably darker actions are simply not present in CF. But that's not because Edelgard seen in CF is a 'changed' Edelgard or a 'good' Edelgard. The circumstances and change in story in CF simply hasn't allowed her to go to the same extremes she does in all the other routes. That is what is making her look 'better'. The change in CF is in the story itself, not in Edelgard as a character. [2/4]

Imagine instead a CF where you end up joining her through the actions she does in the other routes. You wake up after the timeskip with Rhea already been captured and hidden away in Enbarr like on all other routes. You're now supporting an Edelgard that is halfway through conquering the Kingdom after assassinating their Regent and framing Dimitri for it, while pushing hard at a neutral alliance while a desperate Claude tries to hold his country together. [3/4]

Despite getting what she wanted in the first half, she's now hellbent on 'unifying' the continent, even against the will of the people in it. This would be a pretty obvious villain route, wouldn't it? Theres nothing wrong with enjoying antagnonists or playing as a villain. I've just seen so many people that seem so desperately to want Edelgard to be 'good', even though a lot of the evidence in game just says otherwise. [4/4]

Yeah, the problem with the story differences between CF and the other routes is that they have nothing to do with Edelgard or with Byleth’s decision to side with her. I saw some people a few months ago trying to rationalize Cornelia not enacting her coup in CF as a sign that Arundel had less influence on Edelgard because of Byleth’s presence, but I don’t really buy that because it occurs during the timeskip on the other routes...you know, when Byleth’s not with Edelgard in CF either. My headcanon for that is that either Arundel or Cornelia felt that, with the church relocated to Faerghus, the chance of the coup succeeding had dropped significantly. That however falls back on another arbitrary change, with Rhea not captured at the Battle of Garreg Mach. That’s not because the Imperial army doesn’t use Demonic Beasts in CF as I’ve seen a number of Edelgard’s fans claim; they’re still carrying out their blood experiments on villagers in Part 1, the army has Beasts in their ranks in Chapter 11, and the playable army in CF is explicitly a small special ops force separate from the main Imperial army that would logically not make use of such large and cumbersome beings. 

There’s no Watsonian (in-universe) reason why Rhea isn’t captured in CF; it’s a change solely to allow the player to still feel like an underdog even when they’re on the side that instigated the war and is invading the rest of the continent. That is however why I say Edelgard has no character arc in CF. She opens up to Byleth, is surprised when they side with her, mopes around Garreg Mach for half a decade doing nothing because of a plot contrivance, and then once Byleth comes back she just wins and wins and wins some more and the one time she appears to lose something - when the Agarthans nuke Arianrhod - she lies about it to everyone and just handwaves it as something Hubert can deal with in the postgame. All of her personal development come Part 2 pertains to her romantic feelings for Byleth, and as is the case for all of this game’s self-insert romances it has no bearing on the plot and no proper resolution unless you pick her as your S rank.

While I think the idea of a CF with the same story structure as the other routes is intriguing, I’m not sure if it would feel like it would have very strong stakes provided we’re still including a Byleth with no personality who never questions what Edelgard is doing and certainly wouldn’t turn against her at any point. Who would even be the final boss? It couldn’t be Edelgard, I wouldn’t buy Rhea breaking out of her imprisonment for no apparent reason, and neither Dimitri nor Claude has the buildup to function as such if they’re mostly following their roles in the other routes. Thales in an evil vs. evil final clash, maybe?

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Crimson Flower #Edelgard von Hresvelg

[almassadlive]

Six Figure Mentors Review - What Does It Take To Succeed?

I joined the SFM back in 2014. At the time it had only been running for four years. I didn't know what to expect but I had been burned a few times online with a number of business type courses promising to help me earn money. My lack of experience back then and my desperation was partly responsible for some of my failures. But also, many courses taught tactics which were already becoming out of date.

Some of the courses I bought taught how to get your website up in the Google rankings. If you've ever tried this, you'll know it isn't easy. It was far easier 20 years ago admittedly. But now, getting ranked for your website is becoming much more difficult.

So back to The SFM. When I joined I decided I needed to start afresh and although I had learned a number of skills, I still hadn't really made any money on the internet. With the exception of buying and selling on eBay, the other strategies I had tried just didn't get any traction.

After joining, I was immediately impressed with the information I was getting. The "over-deliver" strategy clearly worked on me! I also benefitted by joining under someone who helped me make my first couple of high ticket sales. This happened within a few months. However, I didn't fully understand the business system or what was involved. Although I'd made a couple of quick sales, for not much work, I hadn't entirely been responsible for those sales. The affiliate who referred me had set up a Facebook advertising "co-op" and helped a number of people get some traction.

After my first sales, I stopped advertising and simply took the money! This seemed like a lot of money to me back then. It was a couple of thousand pounds. I now realise that I should have re-invested it back into the advertising, which is what I am doing now, now I understand the business better.

Having made an 'early win' gave me confidence in the business system which is one of the main selling points of what The SFM offers. It also offers top-notch training too - more so now than back in 2014 when I joined. Now, I am a member of a number of Facebook private groups which I can sit in on, and watch 'over the shoulder' of those who are succeeding in this business.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't an easy business to learn. Some of my main problems have been my 'grab it and run' mindset and scarcity mindset which has stopped me from taking some important action steps. The SFM training program caters very well for this. In fact, one of their main strengths is undoubtably their ability to install an ideology of personal growth. Without this, you really will be fighting some internal battles as I have definitely done. This will hold you back if you don't overcome your mental barriers to success.

It's not for everyone either, admittedly. The business system itself is expensive and for some prohibitively so. But for anyone wanting to make full time living from the internet, I'd say The SFM is a good place to go. You'll need to work hard and invest though, and it's no easy ride. But it does offer something which many want - a digital business system which can be run from anywhere. The possibility of financial freedom, however far away you believe it to be.

If you only want the training, I'd say that was worth the money at the lower levels too. I had a failing kung fu school running when I joined and now it's doing really well. I attribute that to much of the learning and understanding I have picked up from the SFM training and education platform.

You can't really expect to earn a living though if you only join at basic level. Only by at least getting to Elite level will you be able to access the higher ticket product commissions. But if you want to learn some digital marketing and mindset skills, it's worth the training and community even if you don't want to make a full time career out of it. The community on its own is a hugely powerful resource and has benefitted me both personally and professionally.

After my first couple of high ticket sales, I decided to focus on blogging and the cheaper strategies of generating traffic. I simply didn't have a budget to risk on advertising. I decided that if I got free traffic, the sales would be worth more in profit, which is true. The problem is, the strategy I used (blogging) isn't the best one, particularly in a very competitive niche like affiliate marketing and "money-making online". I know there are people doing well with social media marketing and other free strategies, but I didn't go down this route.

The people who are making the real money with The SFM are those who go all in. They position themselves at the very top tier of the business system and promote the SFM themselves as partner level affiliates. This means they can earn the highest possible commissions from the business. Some products are sold at $35,000. Those at the top level can earn 40% of this in commissions, but they need to purchase the product themselves in order to have it in their 'online store'.

There's a lot of learning to be done too. I thought I'd make it work very quickly and be sitting on a beach counting my money. But as I persevered through the difficulties, I have changed and understood that it's a business like anything else. It's no magic bullet to instant riches. Just a business model with products within it that anyone can sell.

In order to put the most expensive items in your own personal online 'shop', you need to purchase them yourself. Reading the reviews today that I've found about the SFM I see a lot of scepticism. Many say it's a scam. Well, it's not a scam, it's real. But it's easier to say it's a scam and not have to do all the work involved in making it happen. There's plenty of people who are making it work for them, and creating amazing lifestyle businesses of their choosing.

The SFM started in 2010 and have recently partnered with Microsoft Lynda (Under the LInkedIn umbrella of companies). Microsoft Lynda now offer their own 6,500 training courses as part of the SFM curriculum.

DigitalMarketer (The world's longest standing and most highly respected B2B and B2C marketing training company) also partnered with SFM and now offer their own training as part of the SFM curriculum.

I don't think these companies would partner with any organisation that wasn't providing huge value, was well established, and wasn't 100% above board.

Since joining The SFM in 2014, I've seen some huge changes in myself. I've had to face myself and see my own limitations as stopping me move forwards within the business. Your thinking and mindset have a huge amount to do with whether you can make a success out of entrepreneurship. It's much, much easier to discount something as a scam, than it is to look within and grow yourself alongside a business.

If I had quit on my journey, I would have missed out on a greater opportunity than I could fathom at the time. I struggled and struggled, but much of my struggle was with my lack of understanding of the business model and of my own limitations. I was programmed with a poverty mindset which viciously fought against spending money. To get into the space of knowing that I need to spend in order to earn was a huge shift in my mindset.

I'm far from the best performer in The SFM, at this time, but what I've learned about myself and about my inner limitations is invaluable for the rest of my life. I will continue to learn and never quit, so watch this space, you doubting sceptics out there!

For those who are thinking about joining The SFM and to do so would mean severe poverty, I'd suggest to get in a better financial position first. I scraped by and took some chances, but it's not easy. If you are determined in this business though, there's no reason you can't make it happen. But if you can't afford it, I'd suggest another program if it's going to put you in debt.

The SFM program is more than just a sales funnel with digital products in it. It's an "all-in-one digital business system and training platform. The goal is to make long term digital entrepreneurs who can sustain an income and thrive from the sale of products over the internet. That means there's a whole lot of work to be done, if you're going to make this a full time living.

It's definitely not for the timid. Expect to be pushed, and expect some discomfort if you're going to do what you need to make it work. Remember too that affiliate marketing is performance related. No one owes you a living! You need to take charge of yourself and your business in order to make it work! Good luck!

[tekka-dan]

I was informed of some disturbing news today regarding my best favorite boy Sasuke Uchiha and what his ultimate outcome will be in Borutrash.

Tumblr deleted my first initial rant, so I had to sit down and write it again. Not to fret though, re-writing has given me some clarity and all of you are going to witness my first hand unresolved, but subsiding, rage with the way Borutrash has handled Sasuke Uchiha’s character.

For anyone that’s new to my blog, content, posts: I am heavily against Boruto [as a character, manga, story, concept, anime] so if you’re a fan person of this series and you don’t like disputes or negative opinions your cue to dip is here.

You’ve been warned. Moving on.

Starting off, those of us who remember Sasuke Uchiha from the older days of Naruto [part 1] can easily summarize his character in one word: avenger. As the storyline progressed Sasuke became more than a so-called avenger and he started to gain some heavy handed, much needed, development. If you can recall that much, you would also recall that Sasuke was the “oppositional” character in the earlier days of Naruto. Meaning, Sasuke was the character that didn’t abide by rules, he did whatever he needed to advance but it was for his own sake and decision. He joined the academy to avenge his clan and become stronger to defeat his brother. When he meets Orochimaru that opportunity [to become stronger] arose and he took the bait (eventually—lets forget the part where he was kidnapped against his will, tortured and then kidnapped again).

So with all of that being addressed for his character, Sasuke choosing to follow under Orichimaru’s footsteps, this made Sasuke enter the “antagonistic” role. The reason this role was important for Sasuke [as a character] is because we are given context for his motives outside of the sunshine protagonist. Sasuke knew what his goals and ambitions were from the very beginning and also from the beginning he was being overshadowed by a bumbling fool that couldn’t even throw out milk on time. Sasuke didn’t have time for that, so he fucking bounced like the cool kid he absolutely was. Being on the “dark side” gave depth to this shallow story because once Itachi Uchiha made his appearance, and his role in the black ops and being a double agent was revealed — suddenly this sunshine village with its sunshine protagonist isn’t all sunshine.

Sasuke leaving the village was the best thing he ever did in this series and he is one of the four main characters that had a vision that he never got to achieve and questions he never got answers to. When Sasuke left the village, we are only in the mindset of him as a person and what he’s trying to achieve. We aren’t in Konoha village where the Will of Fire exists, where “I don’t believe in letting comrades die” comes into play — no, fuck all of that, we are simply inside Sasuke Uchiha’s mind and all Sasuke Uchiha thinks about is murdering Itachi for killing his clan and wanting to understand why Itachi would murder his clan in the first place. These are concerns far more prevalent than doing stupid ninja tasks or whatever the fuck Konoha participated in since all they seem to do is evoke war, genocide and havoc. Nothing seemingly important happened in this village up until Sasuke departed and suddenly everyone gives a fuck about saving the last Uchiha.

I seriously wonder what the Third Hokage was thinking. He (and Danzō) coaxed an actual child/teenager (Itachi) to slaughter his own clan in order to silence their people and then they are surprised when the surviving member of that clan flees the village.

Like Konoha is full of fucking dumbasses I swear. So that’s why I’m glad Sasuke did leave and it was eventually at his own free will. That also ties into my next point.

Sasuke represented oppression. His entire clan represented oppression. Them standing up against the Konoha System represented oppression. And it isn’t enough that every single member of them dies, it’s last member flees the village, and he goes on to save the same village that oppressed him to then become fodder and succumbing to pointless death in the continuation series?

Let me repeat that: Sasuke represented oppression. Now they are silencing him - and everyone that came before or after him - forever. Eternity. They expect Sarada to carry on the Uchiha genes but we aren’t remembering that she’s only half. We are forgetting that she [somehow] learned about the massacre from books in a library. She hasn’t learned anything from Sasuke or Sakura themselves. Why is that? Because they are trying to silence it forever.

This entire series feels like some massive “fuck you” propaganda because it doesn’t sit well to me. The character that represented oppression, stands up against the system as the last remaining member who can do so, he’s beat down without given a single answer to the questions he poses and then he’s forced to atone for sins he didn’t commit / shouldn’t be apologizing for to then go on to have an offspring he wasn’t ready for to then be killed off?

Is it not enough to just admit you wanted Sasuke Uchiha around for shipping bait and to ensure his uchiha bloodline succeeds him? Because that’s what it is.

They don’t give a single shit about his character and if Naruto didn’t spend 400 of 500+ episodes chasing him to reiterate Sasukes importance than guess where Sasuke would’ve died?

The same place Itachi would have.

Sasuke Uchiha and Itachi Uchiha would’ve both fought to the death, not a single brother would’ve walked away from that. And you know what? This would’ve been an honor to him as a person and as a character. Because up until he faces Itachi his only goal was to defeat his brother and learn why he did what he did. Itachi told him (albeit on his death bed) but I assure you they would’ve wrapped Sasuke Uchiha’s character up then and there and let him perish along with Itachi.

But they didn’t. Why? Because they needed Naruto to beat him into submission. They needed Naruto to remind the audience why Sasuke was considered an antagonist and why leaving the village is forbidden. They needed Naruto to brag about becoming hokage to preach about saving everyone, except the “everyone” excludes every single slaughtered and slain / deceased member of the Uchiha Clan, you know, the only people that ever truly mattered to Sasuke. Nah but it’s alright, sunshine protagonist Naruto needs Sasuke around to remind Sasuke that “he knows how he feels” and “believing in his word can make everything better”.

What makes matters worse about them killing Sasuke who represented oppression after they killed and degraded his character is that other characters who opposed the system were killed off long before their characters could be succeeded or milked.

Example 1: Yahiko / Pein.

Everyone knows what became of Pein and everyone is aware of the Yahiko that existed before the Pein. Everyone knows that Yahiko was the Naruto of his village, wanting to make a difference and have the world be a better place. Except, when the poor young sap tried to achieve this goal, he was killed tragically during an incident that was incredible miscommunication. Dying at the hands of his friend is what was supposed to make that moment less painful but it only sparked the rage in what became the Pein we all knew that destroyed Konoha.

Pein / Yahiko was the embodiment of oppression.

Everyone knows how that played out, I don’t need to repeat the entire chapter and how the questions Pein asked Naruto were never answered, rather he was given a mediocre bullshit half ass speech that made him surrender and sacrifice himself.

Example 2: Neji Hyuuga

Before Naruto’s dreams were drilled over and over into our heads, there was Neji who represented oppression in a literal sense, preaching it to his cousin during their battle and then to Naruto during theirs.

When Neji was killed off, people were upset because his character died for nothing without atoning for a single damn thing. Neji was born a slave and died a slave and we are supposed to believe (and be happy) that during death he was free.

Is this what people expect for these characters? That only in death can they find peace, freedom or happiness? What a pathetic and crippling message that presents.

You see the picture I am painting here? It’s not looking too good, is it? There’s a fucking pattern to it, that’s why. The only difference with Sasuke Uchiha is that his bloodline was extinct so they needed someone to carry it on. Pein (who was Nagato) is an Uzumaki so his bloodline continued. Neji is a Hyuuga and his bloodline continued. Sasuke is the only one who hadn’t and they couldn’t do away with his character until they had a certain someone he could procreate with, regardless if they had a lick of chemistry.

I’m not saying you can’t kill off characters from stories, sometimes characters do need to die, eventually they will anyway. However there are better ways to kill your characters and writing stories that don’t disregard their pasts or completely ravage their futures.

Sasuke’s entire history is being erased and everyone else who represents the same thing were also erased.

When Hinata speaks about Neji (if she does?) does she talk about the hierarchy and what it did to him and his father to her kids? No, because they want to forget about it, they are ashamed of it so they hide these facts.

When Naruto speaks to Boruto (if he does?) does he mention Nagato or even Jiraiya? Does he talk about his former sensei enduring a war, taking on an orphaned group of three and then having to return to their village being slain? Does he talk about the brutal systems the other villages carry on? Again, no. Because these are things they are ashamed of, they want to never have be mentioned or brought up again.

Those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it, as the old saying goes.

What makes this worse for Sasukes character after death is that his reunion with his “family” feels cheap and downplayed. The only character trait they knew how to write for his character is to be distant and/or absent. Because of that Sasuke never “grew” on Sarada. I think that’s unfair as fuck to do to him, they already robbed him of everything else and even prior to death he can’t just simply be a fucking father.

How goddamn sad is that?

I gritted my teeth at Sasukes end in Naruto 699 but hearing the news about the current predictions / fate of his character has left me with unresolved despise for this series all over again.

It’s not enough that they keep taking everything from him, now he gets to die the same way he feels: empty..

First they killed his dream, then they killed his spirit and now they are killing his character.

#naruto #sasuke #sasuke uchiha #anti boruto

[levaer]

THE BIG BLEACH HC MEME centering around politics, repost & fill out! For anyone who wanted to explore those aspects more, considering it played a big role in the story. Some things may be unknown to your Muse, just think in WHAT IF then & well, have fun and take your time!

BASICS

Name:   Askin Nakk Le Vaar    / / /    Age:   1000+    / / /    Gender:   Cis male Race:   Shinigami / Quincy / Hollow / Fullbringer / Visored / Human / Other Currently lives:   Soul Society / Hueco Mundo / Silbern / Living World / Hell  Exact Location:   Half of his life is set in the Wandenreich. Post-war, his location varies. Group(s): Quincy / Sternritter / Schutzstaffel

QUESTIONS

- Would your muse consider themselves more: GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL ? - Would your muse consider their group more: GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL ? - How does your muse think others see them: GOOD / EVIL / NEUTRAL ? - How does your muse think others see their race: GOOD / EVIL / NEUTRAL ? - How does your muse think others see their group: GOOD / EVIL / NEUTRAL ?

- Is your muse considered a threat: YES / NO ?  From whom?:  No, because I hc that the Shinigami aren’t actually aware Askin survived; if they knew, however, there’s the possibility he’d be deemed a threat.  - Is your muse powerful: YES / NO ?  Could they be considered OP:  YES / NO ? - Did your muse commit any crimes: YES / NO ? - Does your muse think they are doing mostly the right thing: YES / NO ? - Would society think the same: YES / NO / MIXED OPINIONS ?

- Does your muse think they are treated unfairly: YES / NO ? - Does your muse feel understood from others: YES / NO ? - Is it important for them what others think of them as a person: YES / NO ? - Would they welcome death:  YES / NO ? - Will they ever find peace:  YES / NO ?

01.0.  Do they fully stand behind the group they are part of? YES / NO. Why is that? Explain: Askin likes to think he’s rootless, and that’s true for the most part, but he’s still a human being. He was rootless enough to drop everything he knew, his entire world, and embark on a journey with a blurry destination - but not enough not to feel a little bit of sense of belonging to the Wandenreich, which he has been serving for over a thousand years, and for the Quincy as a whole. They’re not all good or bad, they’re people; he’s not all good or bad, either. But they’re his people, a part of his, even if not aloud, acknowledges this.

02.0.  Do they like as things are in Soul Society? YES / NO / INDIFFERENT. 02.1.  Is there anything they would change? Explain here: Askin is not one to judge. He would not condemn the many for the sins of the few, but ... he would not forgive the few for the sins of the many, either. He’s not too informed about the specific dynamics of Soul Society, though he’s familiar with the violent foundation of it since he fought against the first generation of the Gotei, during the First Quincy War. Let’s say, he would not change anything in particular, but he would not mind if all got wiped away, either. 

03.0. Would they ever actively try to bring change (in general)? YES / NO. 03.1. Is your muse more: passive / active ?  Introverted / Extroverted ? 03.2. Does your muse care more about: others / themselves ?  / /  all of Askin’s life has been projected on someone else’s dream. Ultimately, he looks after himself, but he led a strongly collective life for so long, it kinda shaped him. 03.3. Do they trouble their mind over a lot of problems, others? YES / NO. 03.4. Do they mostly involve: the world / everyone / themselves / comrades / friends / family / elderly / kids / teenagers / home / workplace / strangers / souls / humans / quincy / shinigami / nobles / fullbringer / visored / hollows / espada / arrancar / (former) boss(es) / pets / animals / zanpakuto spirit / enemies / partner / lovers / soul king / god / other…(add more) 03.5. Name (up to) three which are the most on their mind (optional, adding names): Askin has a tendency not to hold onto anything. His own thoughts feel light as clouds to him as they cross his minds, and he’s definitely not the type to obsess over something or someone. After the war, Urahara Kisuke has been on his mind for a while; mostly, he wondered whether he had succeeded in taking him down. Grimmjow too; I think, especially for a Quincy, the feeling of a Hollow’s claws is not something easily forgotten.  

04.0. Do they think frequently about politics? YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Why is that? Explain: More frequently than he would like to, actually. His social background demanded of him at least some basic knowledge of the feudal system, administration and interrelations with other Quincy families and with the central power of the Carolingian empire. That said, Askin never let himself got too involved, but growing up witnessing his lord father administering justice, taxes, law-making etc. kind of left an imprinting. He spent a thousand years serving as a soldier in an army where all the power was intensely centralized, so he did not have much to do with politics - that’s how the Wandenreich was, as Yhwach really wasn’t a politician, anyway. Post-war though, if he contributes to the reformation of a Quincy nation, he will have to get involved whether he likes it or not.

05.0. How do they feel in their current location: POSITIVE / NEGATIVE / NEUTRAL ? 05.1. Why is that?:  Silbern gives him vertigo. He preferred the instability of the Lichtreich more, but still, he’s not one to complain. The world of the living is as colorful as he remembers, always shapeshifting, and it’s really nice to see the light blue sky again after being hidden in the shadows for so long.

06.0. Does your muse have any goal: YES / NO ?  BIG / SMALL ? - 06.1. Does it involve anything world-changing: YES / NO ? - 06.2. If goal or not, any future plans? Share here:  You know how Askin is, he goes where the wind takes him. He only ever committed once in his life and it wasn’t even to a dream of his own, it was Yhwach’s design, so it would be really unkind to ask him to think about the future haha. In my rebuild verse, any plans for his immediate future involve making himself useful to the new Quincy state. Best way to keep himself occupied.

07.0. Does your muse know about the Original Sin of Soul Society*: YES / NO ? * curious? Read about it here. 07.1. If they knew, would it change their views on Soul Society: YES / NO ? 07.2. More: POSITIVE / NEGATIVE / NEUTRAL ?  / /    I’m not sure Askin would care to the point of completely changing his opinion on Soul Society, since it’s already a pretty negative one. It would feel somewhat eerie to him, thinking that the victim of the original sin was Yhwach’s literal father, though.

08.0. Who is the worst person in their eyes?:  Mayuri Kurotsuchi. 08.1. What should happen to them?  Execution (quick / slow death) / Imprisonment / Stripped of their powers / Torture / Repay for their sins / Pay a Fine / Social Work / lose their loved ones / Exile / other… (add more). 08.2. Explanation: he’d kill Mayuri off quickly, as one gets rid of a thorn. It wouldn’t be a painless death, but it wouldn’t take too long; Askin is not a sadist by nature, and he would just want to make sure the bastard doesn’t take one more breath in the world.

09.0. Thoughts on: Quincy Massacre if they knew: POSITIVE / NEGATIVE / NEUTRAL ? 09.1. Would they be alright with such thing happening again: YES / NO / INDIFFERENT ? 09.2. Would they try to prevent it: YES / NO / DEPENDS ? 09.3. Explanation:  I said this already, the Quincy genocide is a generational trauma for the Quincy, even those too young to be born at the time. Askin is unmoved by most things, but he witnessed with his own eyes those of his kind that were captured and killed and experimented on.  It’s something you just don’t forget, and Askin doesn’t forget easily anyway. If such a thing were to happen again, and lbr there’s a possibility since the numbers of the Quincy are always carefully monitored, Askin would fight, despite his general dislike for overall idea.

10.0. Would they ever switch sides: YES / NO ?  10.1. If yes, What could bring them to do so?:    - 10.2. Would they create a new one: YES / NO ?  or join a current one? If so, which:  Until his defeat, Askin’s allegiance is to Yhwach and betraying him / switching sides like some Sternritters did is off the table. After the war, however, he’s free of bonds, so if someone were to try and gain his loyalty, he’d consider it. He doesn’t fuck with Soul Society, though.

11.0. Does your muse follow a certain moral code*?:  YES / NO / GRAY AREA ? * (ethics) A written, formal, and consistent set of rules prescribing righteous behavior, accepted by a person or by a group of people. 11.1. What does it involve?: it’s more of what’s in his character than a real set-up code, he’s not so chivalrous. He lives by the principle of letting people live their lives without prying and being chill, mostly.  11.2. What does it NOT involve?: Askin is not a sadist, although he can be a real bastard if he commits to it. He has no problem killing, no matter how gruesomely, but he’s not entirely comfortable with harming children. He’s also not a creep lol, he wouldn’t give someone unwanted attention. 

YOUR MUSE’S VIEWS / OPINIONS ON THESE GROUPS ?

Central 46:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because: the core of Soul Society executive functions, and by extension, the most fucked up.

Four Great Noble Clans:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because: he’s not knowledgeable enough about the specifics of Soul Society politics to have an opinion on its nobility. Askin is nobility too, after all. 

Royal Guards / Gotei 13:   positive / negative / neutral .   ━   because: they’re the ones primarily responsible for the genocide, the ones Askin fought against during the first and the second war, the ones who reinforce the violent supremacy of Shinigami and who openly oppose his people. 

Fullbringer:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  doesn’t really know them, doesn’t care. A human with hollow-based abilities is somewhat of an abomination in the eyes of a Quincy, I believe, but Askin is an open-minded person.

Visored:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  Shinigami AND Hollows? Ew.

Espada:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  his only experience with an Espada in canon was Grimmjow, and it’s a tricky subject. He’s never come in contact with Aizen’s whole elite, so not much of an opinion could be formed.

Quincy:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  he’s a Quincy. It doesn’t matter how disconnected Askin might feel from his people, he devoted his entire life to the Quincy as a group, though indirectly. Askin has a cynical and disenchanted look on the world, he doesn’t buy into the romanticized concept of ‘Quincy pride’, but at the end of the day, he remains a Quincy. The millenary story of his people, their culture and powers are integral to Askin’s upbringing. He thinks he’s rootless, but he’ll never be able to uproot the Quincy in him.

YOUR MUSE’S VIEWS / OPINIONS ON THESE (IMPORTANT) PEOPLE ?

Aizen:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  he knows Aizen by reputation alone, as one of the Five Special War Powers; he’s been told the guy is a real asshole, but Askin doesn’t judge. 

Yhwach:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  Yhwach is awe-inspiring. The sense of wonder he got Askin to feel, unmoved by the passing of centuries, is the closest thing to feeling really alive he ever experienced in his life. It’s not that Askin is loyal to Yhwach himself; he’s loyal to that deep-seated feeling of wonder, the thrill of diving into the sea without knowing what’s awaiting under the surface.

Mayuri:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  his gratuitous cruelty and the horrible things he did to Quincies viscerally nauseate Askin. And you know it takes a lot to upset him.

Kurosaki:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  he’s just a boy. Why is everyone obsessed with this boy? 

Soul King:   positive / negative / neutral.   ━   because:  Askin is, and always has been, quite divorced from religion. He knows the guy is literally God. He knows Pernida and Gerard are directly linked to him, parts of him, and that Yhwach is his son but ... that’s about it. 

EXTRA(optional): add more characters which hold some meaning to your muse.

Grimmjow:   This is largely self-indulgent, but being (almost) killed by Grimmjow was like catching an disease you have been vaccinated against. The illness is meeker, sort of slowed down, but you feel the clash with the vaccine within your veins, you feel it distinctively. For one who lives between life and death, the experience Grimmjow gave him, that of a frozen instant in which he’s both alive and dead, is something Askin will never forget. He will never forget the feeling. 

CONGRATS, you managed till to the end, now tag your fellow bleach partners!

TAGGED BY: myself, @senboago​ and @tatarfora​ TAGGING: steal it.

#ch study. #this DRAINED me

[itsclydebitches]

Is there a reason why the writers refuse to give RWBY and co flaws, or rather, have the show acknowledge said flaws? They have no problem demonizing any other character, yet for them, the show bends over backwards to make them always right.

I obviously can’t speak to the writers’ thought process (outside of what they might say in interviews, anyway), but I suspect it’s a matter of them thinking they are giving the group flaws and tackling them appropriately, rather than deliberately avoiding them. 

First, that’s just common sense. A staple of writing. “Give your characters flaws” is Fiction 101 and I don’t think any writer - unless they have a specific reason for doing so, like creating a parody - is going to go, “My characters are 100% perfect and they have nothing to improve upon!” because even the newest writer recognizes that this isn’t something to strive for. So I find it unlikely that RT would be doing this consciously. 

Second, we’ve seen in the fandom that a large number of viewers DO think the cast is compellingly flawed and that this is acknowledged by the text. One of the more recent examples I’ve come across is last volume when, while commenting on Ruby, a number of people pointed to her conversation with Qrow as evidence of her complex characterization. “But Ruby acknowledged that she doesn’t know what she’s doing!” At that point, it becomes a matter of explaining that having a character say a token line about being unsure doesn’t compare to actually seeing that flaw develop and influence the plot on screen - and we know it is a token line because Ruby’s hesitance only comes up when it doesn’t harm her. Ruby will be conflicted while sitting safe with Qrow, but knows precisely what she wants when confronting Ironwood. Then, crucially, the show never draws a connection between that admission and her action, telling us (and eventually her) that she should return to questioning her decisions because she just chose wrong (or at least acknowledging that there’s no “right” answer here). In a similar vein, the show has Ren outright say, “We were wrong” and then that’s dropped the second he encounters the Ace Ops. A lot of viewers seem to miss that there’s a difference between having characters announce that they have flaws and actually watching those flaws impact the story and their development. If so many miss that difference in watching RWBY, I wouldn’t be surprised if RT missed it in writing RWBY. “What do you mean the cast isn’t flawed? Ren gave a whole speech about it!” Yeah, and then you had the other characters say how ridiculous that perspective is and he teams up with them again to rescue Oscar, implying that this conflict is over. The takeaway is that the cast is NOT flawed, only Ren is for thinking that. 

Third, the cast obviously is flawed - very much so - but the writers don’t seem to recognize which characteristics are the flaws. Ruby’s current flaw is that her idealism is getting in the way of any practical approach to making change, as well as her unwillingness to compromise, prioritizing hard stances that axe allies the moment they - to her mind - put a toe out of line. These two flaws are intimately tied up with one another, requiring that Ruby understand one in order to improve on the other and, as a result, setting up a fantastic character arc. So what flaw do the writers acknowledge? She has trouble with hand-to-hand. Seriously, that’s the last ACKNOWLEDGED flaw that Ruby got, overlooking Yang’s generalized “Things are bad” accusation that, like Ren’s speech, has yet to go anywhere. So not only are the real flaws considered “solved” via characters verbally acknowledging them, but other flaws are ignored in favor of making up something that is easily solved: one training montage and headbutt later, Ruby gets to move on. 

Combine these two things and my guess is that RT thinks they’re doing a great job. Look, Ruby had a flaw that she had to work to improve upon. Same with Yang’s PTSD. Same with Weiss’ racism, etc. It sounds great on paper, until you look at the story itself and see how quickly these life-long problems were “solved” (Weiss and Yang), or that this flaw seemed to come out of nowhere (Ruby), and that in order to spend time on this we’re ignoring other, more compelling flaws imbedded within the text (her overconfidence). It’s a complicated situation where we’re forced to go, “Yeah. You technically wrote a flaw and technically spent some time on it, but--” except RT doesn’t seem interested in listening to the “but.” Or they’re listening but don’t yet possess the skill needed to implement the improvements they’re aiming for. Again, I can’t speak to their thought process. But RWBY as a whole is filled with “Technically”s that, on a surface level, make it appear better than it is. RT seems to hear something like, “Give Oscar something to do already” and they technically do that by giving him this plan with Hazel. So that’s good, right? Except it ignores everything surrounding that change, like how we needed to drop his merge conflict to make room for the new one, we skipped over his reconciliation with Ozpin, it makes no sense for Hazel’s characterization, it’s unlikely to have an impact on the story moving forward because RT doesn’t plan ahead, etc. Writing is so interconnected that you can’t just Do The Thing without changing everything else around it. Writing is like a puzzle and instead of re-thinking the whole picture, RT just keeps shoving in the latest piece labeled “a flaw,” ignoring how it doesn’t fit the one next to it and is unlikely to fit the pieces they’ll put in later either. But they put the piece down! So to them it probably looks like they’ve succeeded, while paying attention to just this one piece, whereas those of us who are looking at the picture as a whole are going, “This is a mess. The picture doesn’t make sense.” 

It takes a long, long, long, loooooong time to recognize when you’re failing at something in writing. 95% of the time we think we’ve Done the Thing satisfactorily - I wrote a thesis, an emotional scene, a character arc, a flaw, good evidence, etc. - and it’s only when someone else (teacher, editor, viewer) points out the mistakes and WHY they’re mistakes that we’re able to start seeing where we went wrong. That we went wrong at all. But even then, it’s pretty much our default state to assume we’ve achieved our goal after attempting it. That’s why you need to edit, revise, read, and practice all the other skills that help you learn what mistakes exist and how to spot them in your own work. So my guess - and it would be just a guess - is that RT is in that phase where they’re really proud of what they’ve accomplished and think that’s that. They’ve achieved their goal... and either haven’t had someone point out these problems, or aren’t willing/able to fix them yet. 

#rwby #rwby volume 8 #rwby spoilers #mymetas #Anonymous

[owlways-and-forever]

A/N: This is a relatively short chapter, but it felt like a good place to break things up, so here it is. There's a brief description of trauma, but that's about it. I hope you guys are all ready to meet a new character! Enjoy!

Summary: After tragedy tears his life apart, Killian Jones is determined to exact revenge on the ones who wronged him. But his path to revenge turns out to be a winding one, filled with surprising characters that may even change his life again. American Assassin inspired AU.

Tagging: @killian-whump​, @hollyethecurious​

Word Count: 1010 (3791)

Links: ao3, ff.net, (tumblr) Prologue, Ch 1

Chapter 2: Chosen

Killian sat at the cold metal table, resisting the urge to drum his fingers against the top in his impatience. He had been interrogated four times already, and he knew they were trying to decide whether he was terrorist or completely insane, or perhaps both, but Killian was neither. Every move he had made had been coolly calculated and he would have succeeded if they hadn't derailed his plans entirely and he was positively seething like a cauldron ready to bubble over.

The door to the "interview room", as they liked to call it, opened, and a new woman walked through, her heels clacking against the floor as she flicked through the manila file in her well-manicured hands. After a moment in which she paid Killian no attention and he waited silently, the woman dropped the closed file on the table and smoothed her tight-fitting dress before sitting down across from him.

"Do you have any idea how long you've been here?" she asked after considering him for another moment.

"One hundred forty-one hours, if I had to guess," Killian answered, cracking the knuckles in his fingers.

"Forty-two, actually," the woman corrected, but a raised eyebrow indicated that she was more than a little impressed. She paused as if waiting for him to offer an explanation, but he did nothing of the sort, instead continuing to stare at her defiantly. "My name," she continued, "is Regina Mills, I am the Deputy Director for Operations, which means that –"

"You're in charge of all the spies," Killian finished, and he thought he might have seen the corners of her mouth twitch upward.

"We don't have spies, Mr. Jones, this isn't the Cold War," she sneered, and Killian rolled his eyes.

"Right, agents, operatives, whatever it is you call them now."

"My job is to manage the collection and analysis of intelligence," Ms. Mills continued, undeterred.

"Must not be doing a very good job if you needed to follow my lead into Donetsk," Killian spat, clenching his fists.

"Or, we managed to do a great job, since we were able to locate a nobody in Seattle and track him all the way to a warehouse in Ukraine," she countered.

"I did all the work for you," Killian challenged, bristling for a fight.

"Mr. Jones, I know the world sucks, and your parents were murdered when you were eight, and your brother was killed in action, and your fiancée was shot in the head by terrorists, so you think that god hates you and all you have to live for is revenge. I get it."

"No, you don't," Killian mumbled, anger boiling inside of him and he felt his temperature rising.

"Trust me, I do, but that doesn't mean you get to go around –"

"YOU HAVE NO IDEA!" Killian screamed, his arms straining against his handcuffs, muscles bulging under his t-shirt. "SHE WAS EVERYTHING TO ME, EVERYTHING! I HAD NOTHING EXCEPT HER AND THAT MONSTER…"

"I DO KNOW!" Ms. Mills yelled back, standing and slamming her hands down on the metal table. "My husband was tortured, in front of me, and my uterus was removed with my baby inside while I watched, and nothing, nothing, will every compare to that, so don't you talk about loss to me," she hissed, her black eyes narrowing, and for the first time, Killian genuinely felt intimidated by the woman in front of him, with power and barely-controlled rage radiating from her.

"I'm –"

"I went on my own revenge warpath, and listen to me when I tell you that it is a mistake," she continued. "What was your plan? After you killed the man who murdered Milah, what were you going to do next?"

Killian said nothing, because he didn't have an answer. He had never really considered that far, and if he was honest with himself it was because he never expected to get that far before he died.

"Oh I see, you're the die trying kind?" she smirked, cold and cruel. "You always expected to be killed trying to achieve your goal, so there was no plan for what happens next. Genius, really, you are. But hey, at least you knew your stupid ass was probably going to be killed."

Killian looked down at his hands, cuffed in his lap, knuckles bruised, and was surprised to find that he felt shame prickling in his gut.

"I think you might be a good fit for one of our operations," Ms. Mills stated, after taking a deep breath.

"No," Killian huffed, not wanting to hear her sales pitch about becoming a better man or patriotic duty or whatever she was planning to say.

"It's black ops, codenamed Paladin, and the purpose of it is to identify and neutralize active terrorists who pose a threat to national security," she continued as though she hadn't heard him.

"No," he repeated more firmly, his eyes firmly focused on his hands.

"Mr. Jones, it is high time you got over yourself, and started channeling your rage, hatred, and survivor's guilt into something that is useful for the rest of society," Ms. Mills stated, her hand on her hip as she tossed a stack of papers from inside his file down in front of him. "Either you get on board or you spend the next fifty years in solitary confinement, I don't really care which."

She turned and swept out of the room, her heels clicking on the floor again, and when the door closed behind her, Killian reached out an gently ran his fingertips over the ink, feeling the slight bumps of the letters. It wasn't really a difficult choice, he knew the answer was obvious, but it was taking a lot from him to pick up the pen and sign the papers in front of him. He allowed himself a minute before he told himself to knuckle down and pull himself together, and then Killian Jones picked up the pen in front of him and signed his name across the blank line at the bottom of the agreement.

#cs ff #cs fic #cs au #captain swan #etml

[moved-strabius-strawberry]

Who are the Top 10 worst villains you've ever seen in media?

Top 10 Worst villains I have ever seen? Hmm... I can certainly think of villain cliches that bother me. I guess I can narrow my dislike of those cliches down to certain villains. I won't do a Top 10, though, just 5. Also I won't list it from least-worst to most-worst, these don’t have an order because they all equally bug me.

1) Bellwether from Zootopia. The twist villain cliche started to bother me by this point with Zootopia. She wasn’t bad in the beginning, so we can feel neutral or even like her character at first, but towards the end we're expected by the film to no longer like her and be glad for her comeuppance. I wanted to put Hans from Frozen here because he was the first of the twist Disney villains, but then I remembered my jaw dropping when I first saw it happened in theatres, so it was kind of effective in what it did, thus I can't entirely fault it for succeeding. I also wanted to put Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco, because he was so obvious to me that I found it incredibly disappointing, but then again he killed a man, so I guess that's decent villainy, still it sucks that he has to be bad because his character seems fun. So that's why I listed Bellwether, since she is the most forgettable of the three. Also, while typing this, I asked my mom who likes Zootopia a lot if she remembered Bellwether's character, and she asked "who?"

2) The short corporate business man from The Lorax. I forgot his name, I'm looking it up right now... Ah, it's the mayor of Thneedville, O'Hare. Yeah, this evil corporate business man cliche is amazingly annoying to me. It just seems really cynical and lazy, especially since the animation studio who made this movie, Illumination Entertainment, basically is this villain. If I go into any more detail of my thoughts on this company, I'd be detouring from the topic in hand. Okay, so O'Hare, what do we know about him? He is short. He is greedy. He likes money because he is greedy. He hates trees because they make air for free, because he wants to charge people money for air, because he is greedy. I have so many gripes with this movie as a whole, but all I will say is O'Hare is every single evil corporate business man character ever made wrapped up into one. I hate every single one of them... Except Christopher Walken in Country Bears. That was.... Interesting.

3) Snoke from Star Wars: the Force Awakens. So in January, I finally saw all three original Star Wars films, and they were all good. Then I saw the Force Awakens for the first time, and it was a lot like A New Hope. There were tons of similarities, and at times they felt like a bit of an improvement, except for Snoke. Snoke is the Emperor Palpatine of these new Star Wars films, and he doesn't strike me as an interesting character. I'm willing to forgive Kylo Ren for being very much the Vader of these new films, but Snoke? Palpatine was already a weak villain to me, I didn't care for him at all, Vader was already a great villain, but then Palpatine showed up and was like "this guy is merely my puppet, I am the true villain", and I was none impressed because Vader was already really cool to me, there didn't need to be a "greater villain", cuz Vader was already a great villian. I don't care if it's accurate to the books. Lets pretend there were no prequels and the original films were their own trilogy: if something doesn't work in an adaption, you remove it. Palpatine, in my opinion, was not a necessary character, which makes Snoke an even more unnecessary character. I haven't seen The Last Jedi yet, but whatever they end up using his character for will most likely not change my mind about him. I probably could have put Palpatine here, but I'll still put him on reserve until I actually do see the prequels (which I'm looking forward to snortsnort). Also, what is up with this guy's name? Snoke. It doesn't look or sound threatening in the slightest, it sounds like the name of a Care Bears villain. Look out, Grumpy Bear, here comes Snoke!

4) Venom/MaloMyotismon from Digimon Adventure 01 & 02. Myotismon was a decent villain at first, he was definitely an improvement compared to the first villain Devimon, who was pretty generic run-of-the-mill bad guy. He might have even been better than the villains that show up towards the end of 01, more specifically Piedmon/Apocalyptomon. The inclusion of VenomMyotismon, though, was pretty unnecessary. It's like "YOU HAVEN’T DEFEATED ME YET, THIS ISN’T EVEN MY FINAL FORM" and it literally wasn't because then 02 happened with one of the worst Digimon villains: MaloMyotismon. There really isn't anything to add or say about him, he is exactly the cliche I just described, and it's pretty shit. He also doubles as a "twist villain", and it adds nothing new, it's just unexpectedly bad.

5) Lysandre from Pokemon X/Y, as well as Lusamine from Pokemon Sun/Moon. Lysandre was okay at first, kind of intimidating but I didn't suspect him as the Team Flare boss just yet. Then when I found out that he was the boss, I was like "okay, let's see where this goes", and it was all downhill from there. He does that "final form" cliche by you defeating him in battle, and then almost immediately he returns into the room with stupid glasses and robot arms and a slightly stronger team, and its like "wtf is happening?" And my team was so OP that I defeated him almost instantly, and he threw his glasses down like a child upset from losing a game. Overall, his character became very non-threatening towards the end. Then there is Lusamine. Like Lysandre, she was alright at first, but it only got worse. By the time you have your final face off with her, she fuses with the Ultra Beast and has a literal "final form". She started acting like a crazy person and it was the dumbest thing ever, I was laughing so hard. But uh, yeah, these were some pretty awful Pokemon Bosses. Oh, and Lusamine also falls under another cliche I can't stand, the "I'm crazy for no reason now" villains. They laugh whole-heartedly at their own wickedness even though they were nothing like this in the beginning... cuz they're crazy now. They start acting erratic and irrational even though they weren't like this at all in the beginning... cuz they're crazy now. The only time this kind of writing should ever be utilized is if the writer actually wants to have some kind of commentary on psychosis, which is a sad disorder, and thus should not be villainized and needs to be completely rewritten to fit the tone better. This kind of villain would need to be rewritten either way because it's terrible.

And those are all the characters that I personally think are bad villains. Again, it all stems from the villain cliches that I don't like: the twist villain, the evil corporate businessman, the "master of the puppet" villain, the "not even my final form" villain, and the "I'm crazy for no reason now" villain. There are definitely times where these cliches won't bother me too much, as I implied with Walken in Country Bears, and Hans and Ernesto, but for the most part I really don’t like these ones in particular: the generics. They are written to be a certain way without being much different from other villain characters that are like them, and are thus boring, which I see as a waste of my time as the consumer. Do I want to eat a box of generic unsalted crackers? No, I'm gonna eat Ritz crackers because they actually taste good!Be creative with your villains, think about their goals and quirks, ways to make them fun while still being despicable, or make them downright terrifying. Why are they terrifying? What do they say and do? How do they behave in certain situations? Think about how their presence on screen or in a chapter will be enough to send shivers down the viewer's spine. If you want to make an interesting villain, then think about why you enjoy certain villains. Take notes for yourself. What do you enjoy about them, or why do they intrigue you? Don't make a character that behaves exactly like them, just keep them in mind as inspiration.

Oh, by the way, thank you for asking me this! I never thought anyone would be interested in hearing my thoughts on subjects like this, so I really appreciate this. :D

[regatillo]

Session #1

There’s a lot of uncertainty about life outside of classes — whether it’s finding co-op, or standing out amongst the numerous other graduates joining the work force. Fortunately, GBC has been supportive in providing us with the information we need, whether it’s through our Work Experience Preparation course, or through seminars, such as the one we had last week. Asta, Jordan, and Natasha took the time to share tips that would help us get ready for the next steps. 

“IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME..”

The professional world is continually changing, and the only way to keep up with it is for us to stay updated with the new trends. As Asta shared, it is necessary to build up on skills we already have. And with the vast amount of resources we have at our fingertips, it’s not at all difficult. Youtube isn’t only an excellent time waster and distraction, but can also be a treasure trove for tutorials on how to learn new programs. LinkedIn’s extensive list of learning courses is also a good resource, on top of the numerous online websites available for us now. (Which is very timely, given the mostly-online nature of things now…)

YES MAN

Asta also brought up how saying yes to tasks you may not be familiar with shows an eagerness to learn, and opens up the opportunity to acquire new skills. It also shows adaptability — that I can roll with whatever responsibility they give me, and I will be sure to do it well.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK(ING)

I’ve lost track how many times I’ve heard how important networking was for finding future opportunities. Admittedly, this is a foreign concept for me, since job hunting back in my country is an entirely different ordeal, and it still seems so daunting. It’s a long term thing — you never really stop networking, and you develop and maintain these relationships over time. Natasha’s anecdote of how it helped her find an extra work on the side also showed how while it might not be profitable at the moment, you will eventually reap the benefits.

CERTIFIED

Jordan shared how his preparation led him to taking certifications, and suggested we do the same. Personally, I think that aside from having an additional line on our resumes, it also shows the initiative to continue learning and building up skills that would help make us an asset to the company we would want to work for. 

But what resonated with me the most was this insight from Natasha: how all your experiences, despite how different your current situation is from where you want to go, these all can contribute to your learnings to prepare you for the kind of future you want. That rings very true for me —I graduated from a marketing course but focused on advertising and art direction, thinking it was the direction I wanted after college, only to find myself helping out in the family business as a jack-of-all-trades. I absolutely do not regret every bit of experience and knowledge I earned because they have proven to be useful in various situations. 

Overall, a lot of this has taught me how proactiveness is important. Nothing will come out of just sending in my resume and hoping for the best — the whole process requires a lot of effort on my part if I ever want to achieve my goals. And being able to see people who have gone through the same things I have and succeeded, is such an inspiration.

[zephyrthejester]

Reflecting on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Please click “Keep Reading” to view my concluding thoughts on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Unfiltered spoilers inside.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is, simply put, a narrative masterpiece. One of those once-in-a-decade stories. But before I sing its praises, I feel I'd best get my complaints out of the way first thing. They're all laughably petty, as far as complaints go, and I'd hate to leave this reflection off on a sour note.

1: For how important he was, I felt Alphonse's role was too small. He had a very interesting mini-arc about his identity early on, but after that, he was very passive. He took the support role in both dialogue and combat. Though, he did have what is probably the show's single biggest "fuck yeah!" moment all to himself when he turned the tables on Pride and Kimblee. I dunno, maybe I was just hoping for FMA:B to be "The Edward and Alphonse show ft. a ton of cool characters." But it was actually "The Edward show ft. Hohenheim, Alphonse, and a ton of cool characters."

2: Let's be real. Trying to dethrone God and take their place is just about as cliche an anime/JRPG plot you can get. It was a bit underwhelming, but this complaint is completely dwarfed by the fact that the whole narrative I'm about to exclaim love for is written closely around it, and the fact that the villain actually succeeded (briefly).

3: I wish that one of the show's biggest twists, the Country-Wide Transmutation Circle, wasn't revealed so early. Though the plot certainly had some out-of-nowhere reveals (that always made logical sense when they happened), most were foreshadowed or hinted at. But around episode 20, Dr. Marcoh dropped a guess about the plan to sacrifice Amestris, just... out of nowhere. Looking back, I can't help but think it would have been so much better if we first saw the Xerxes flashback story, then learned about Father's plan for Amestris. It would have been a gut-punch double threat. But by the time we did see the Xerxes story, we were well familiar with the concept. We could have been surprised at the same time as "young" Hohenheim. We could have felt that "oh shit!" feeling when we learned it was about to be repeated on a larger scale. But we didn't.

4: Lack of side character screentime. This may actually be a compliment in disguise, because I'm complaining that the characters I really loved weren't around enough! Danny Brosh, Maria Ross, Barry, Alex Armstrong, Sheska, Jean Havoc, Izumi and Sig Curtis, Ling Yao (who disappeared for a chunk of the show, and then when his body was on-screen, half the time he wasn't actually there, if you get what I'm saying)... I guess too much screentime for some of them would have made them grating or tiresome. But as trickle-fed novelties, I ended up loving the characters and just wanting more. More of everything!

5: It's understandable why this happened, as the second half of the show is incredibly grim and serious, but I found myself sorely missing the humor found in the earlier episodes. There was a new joke every minute, once. By the end of the show we were lucky to get one joke in an entire episode. Again, completely understandable, maybe even necessary. But I still missed the humor... because pretty much every joke landed for me.

Um. That's it. That's all the complaining I have in me. Literally every negative thing I feel about this legendary show. Let's get to the good stuff, shall we?

This story. This story is just... it's just mind boggling. It had the illusion that every little detail was planned out from the start. It juggled over 30 important characters and plenty more in lesser roles with breakneck pacing that never felt too rushed (outside the first three episodes). And let me tell you, I am just sitting in stunned awe as I think back about every single nuance. Every major character was admittedly fairly simple, but it is perhaps this very simplicity that makes them so understandable, likable, and sympathetic. Nearly everyone had only one character trait and a very clearly defined goal from the outset of their introduction... The beauty was seeing these various traits bounce off each other and seeing how the characters got to their goal.

This was not a story where characters changed and grew. I think this story was about how the characters fought hard not to be changed. Ed and Al were tempted to drop their morals, and they didn't. Hohenheim was tempted to hate himself, and he didn't. Winry was tempted to take a life, and she didn't. Mustang and Scar were changed-- into monsters-- and were pulled back from the abyss by their friends. It... genuinely feels like everyone was mostly the same person at the start and end of the story. And somehow, it actually all works. Though, saying this sounds a bit silly because Truth scolded Father for not changing... Oh well.

Moving from the macro to the micro, let's talk about the tiny little details. There were so many elements introduced that seemed innocuous and unimportant, but were actually extremely important. Edward's short height, the butt of many early jokes, was because his body was sustaining Alphonse's. The motion of clapping hands to form a Circle out of your body, a "gift" from God, looked like praying. Havoc's family business ending up being a munitions store. The creepy tubes beneath Central, which I didn't even think to question, ended up being the pumps that fuel the Mannequin Army. As I said, it feels like every single remote detail of this grand story was planned from the very beginning. From the small to the large, it all feels so complete. There's not a single part of me wishing something was more fleshed out (aside from wanting more screentime for my favorite characters, of course).

Indeed, I'll be fondly remembering and respecting this show's narrative and characters for a long, long time to come. It started strong, stayed strong, and though it may have slowed its pace at the start of the Briggs arc, it never faltered in its step. Best of all, it even delivered a very satisfying ending. So satisfying. So happy and perfect and sweet it almost made me diabetic.

Let's wrap things up with what's left, shall we? Thinking hard, I can't exactly recall most of the background music in the show. There were one or two standouts, but... Well, I guess none of the songs were jarring or displeasing, but all the same I can't exactly praise them. They were... serviceable. Yeah. Though, I do really like most of the OP and ED songs! They all grew on me more and more, and a few I still can't get out of my head.

Then there's the animation! My goodness, the animation! For an anime of this length, I was blown away by the effort put in to make all the important fight scenes look damn good. And damn, did they look good. This show had some stellar fight choreography, even with the more fantastical magic powers, and I won't lie when I say I immediately went back to re-watch a few fights the moment I had finished a liveblog session.

Well then. That's everything, I think.

I guess there's only one more thing I have to say.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has succeeded Gurren Lagann as my favorite anime of all time.

In the hopefully long-running lifespan of my blog, I expect that no show will ever top the final score I've allotted FMA:B. By averaging all scores, I calculate the final score of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood to be a stunning 9.3/10!

Experiencing this show was an absolute pleasure. But even better was taking this journey with you guys.

Thanks for reading.

#Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Liveblog #Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood #Fullmetal Alchemist #Liveblogging #Liveblog