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aoawarfare · 9 months

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The Central Asia Revolt of 1916

When you hear the words “1916” and “Revolt”, you most likely think of Easter Rising. However, there is another revolt in a different colonized territory held by a different imperial power, which was also sparked by delaying the indigenous people’s right to political engagement and threatening them with front line service.

The Central Asian Revolt of 1916 is a bit of an odd revolt because it occurred in the summer of 1916, so from a historical perceptive it’s overshadowed by the bigger battles of WWI and then by the Russian Revolution in 1917. Traditionally, it was thought that the Russian Revolution was more important than the one in Central Asia, so why bother? Thankfully, this opinion has changed over the last few years and now we have experts such as Jonathan Smele who go as far as claiming that the 1916 revolt was actually the beginning of the Russian Civil Wars. And since we are interested in the Central Asian component of the Russian Civil Wars, it makes sense to spend time delving deep into the revolt and its aftermath.

While many people may not know about the rebellion, it was an important moment in Central Asian history and Central Asian-Russian relations. It began Jun July 1916 and ended in February 1917, with losses for the Central Asians generally unknown, although I’ve seen 150,000-200,000 dead for the Kyrgyz people and that’s just the Kyrgyz’s that doesn’t include the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and other minorities. Nor does it include the number of people displaced and who died fleeing to China following the Russian reprisals. It is only the first many conflicts that will fundamentally change the region and Kyrgyzstan has pressed for the Russian response to the revolt to be recognized as genocide.

Brief overview of Russia and WWI

Russia entered WWI in 1914 and it’s hard to determine if that was the worst decision Tsar Nicholas’ ever made or maybe only his tenth worst. I won’t go into too much detail into the war itself as that’s beyond the scope of this episode and channel, but I highly recommend the Great War, a YouTube history documentary. They do a fantastic job explaining the complexities, not just of the war itself, but specifically of Russia’s attempts to weather that storm. For the purposes of this episode, all we need to know is that when Russia first mustered soldiers for the war, the indigenous peoples of Central Asia were exempt of military service.

Tsar Nicholas 1

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a white man with short brown hair and a full mustache and beard. He is wearing a dark military tunic with epaullettes and many medals and a sash. His hands are held behind his back.]

There are many reasons as to why that was the case. Russia was a particularist empire which meant that that each social group had specific legal status and obligations to the state. The indigenous peoples were part of the inorodtsy, the “foreigners” of Central Asia who didn’t have certain rights, but also didn’t have certain obligations (such as military serve to the empire). Central Asia was also a recently incorporated region that had not known outright rebellion, but had experienced flashes of conflict between the arriving Russian settlers and the indigenous peoples such as the Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples of the Steppe and the Uzbek and Tajik peoples of the more urban areas as they competed for land, work, and sparse resources. Turkestan was seen primarily as a cotton producer and a place to ship off the poor Russians looking for new opportunities denied them in Russia proper.

The administration was a military apparatus led by a governor-general and held together by two tiers of administrators, the higher tier who were all Russian and the lower tier who were indigenous peoples. Turkestan society was cleaved in two, allowing the indigenous people to pray as they saw fit and continue to use Islamic courts for crimes that weren’t against Russian settlers while creating completely new and guarded spaces for settlers. This combined with Russia’s paranoid fear of Islam and the uneven application of the Duma reforms created great tension within the society.

The administrators feared that allowing indigenous peoples into the ranks of the army would be like smacking the hornet’s nest with a 2 X 4 and stoke insurrection during a world war. They allowed for the formation of a few Turkmen cavalry units, but overall, they didn’t trust the indigenous people to serve in the military’s ranks. It should be noted that some indigenous peoples such as the Jadids, an Islamic modernizing group, and several Kazakh intellectuals wanted to serve in order to gain further rights from Russia after the war. We’ve seen this logic before in Ireland as they wrestled with balancing the desire for further representation and duty to empire.

So, 1914, the indigenous peoples weren’t conscripted into the army, but the region still felt the pinch of war. Before the war, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz people were being bulldozed off their land by Russian settlers and the focus of Russian’s development was on producing more cotton. By 1915, Turkestan produced the most cotton seen in the pre-revolutionary period, but by 1916 the output collapsed.

Kara-Kyrgyz Women from the ethnographical part of Turkestan Album

[Image Description: A sepia tone photo of a Kara-Kyrgyz woman wearing a fur trimmed hat, long, braided black hair, and a round pale face. They are wearing a long shirt and several different necklaces.]

The deportations, higher taxes, industries being commandeered to support the war effort, and ever-increasing demands for grain, overheated the Central Asian economy producing intense inflation in food and fuel prices. This led to increased clashes between the indigenous peoples, for example in February 1916 a group of women enraged by the inflation in food prices and food shortages attacked a Muslim bazaar in the European quarter. Adding to the pressure, and something I haven’t seen a lot of scholarship on yet, but am still looking, is the number of prisoner of wars who came through Turkestan, sometimes being held there is war camps, and sometimes passing through on their way to their final destination. This exasperated the food shortage. Additionally, the war measures combined with the settler’s own search for food drove many Kazakh and Kyrgyz people to starvation. Some historians argue that the Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples believed they would have to fight for their very lives.

Now between 1914 and 1915, the war didn’t go well for Russia at all. By 1916, they had lost most of Poland and large parts of Ukraine, they had a huge refugee problem (a lot of it spurred by of dumb war policies that implemented a scourged earth policy as they retreated forcing people to follow the army or die), several pogroms, and increased discontentment and rumors that the Tsar had mismanaged the war and the Tsarina was either in bed with Rasputin or in league with the Germans. It’s unclear how much of this filtered into Turkestan, but Russia as a whole was hurting.

Russia would see some successes in their new offenses in 1916, but that also meant that Russia needed to fill the ranks with new soldiers. Feeling the pressure of the war, they broke their one rule: don’t conscript inorodtsy. They still don’t trust the indigenous people to actually fight. Instead, the Imperial Decree of July 7th, 1916, conscripted indigenous peoples into labor battalions. This decree was issued to all Muslims in the Russian Empire, but its disastrous implementation in Turkestan sparked the revolt.

The Imperial Conscription Decree

There were a number of problems with how the decree was implemented in Turkestan, but the biggest issues were how the decree was rolled out, the lack of bookkeeping by the Turkestan administration, and the distrust between the Russians administrators/settlers and the Indigenous peoples.

First, how was the decree rolled out? The short answer is not well. The problem was there was a lot of back and forth between the different levels of Russia proper bureaucracy in terms of when the decree was to take place, who did it affect, what regions were affected etc. Then there was a staggered implementation throughout Turkestan with some province administrators caving into local pressure (or buying themselves time to get organized) and pushing back when the decree would take effect and others holding their ground. Once the decree was announced, the Russian administration had to face the overwhelming task of actually conscripting the indigenous peoples which brings us to the second biggest problem: lack of bookkeeping.

Official Residence of the Russian Military Governor in Tashkent

[Image Description: A sepia tone photo of a stone mansion. It is surrounded by stone walls with a metal grate. There are trees surrounding the palace.]

Unlike other conquered, Muslim territories, the Turkestan administration didn’t have a census of indigenous people who lived in the region. So, they didn’t know who to conscript or how many or anything useful. They turned to their indigenous administrators and told them to compile a list of conscripts. This incited corruption as the local administrators conscripted their enemies, rewarded friends, and protected their own families. This led to ramp corruption and the creation of rumors such as the Russians wanted to conscript ALL young Muslims to destroy what remained of their society and take their land or the Russians were lying about it being labor battalions. They were really suicide squads that would be sent to the most dangerous places of the front to kill all the Muslims and make it easier to take their land after the war. The Russian administration did like to nothing to combat these rumors and they only grew as different oblasts implemented the decree differently.

That leads us to the third biggest problem facing the Russian administration, the lack of trust between the government and indigenous people. The indigenous people had spent decades being confined into ever smaller and smaller safe spaces while many, like the Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples were being pushed to the brink of mass starvation and homelessness. As we can see from the rumors, many indigenous people were convinced that the Russians were only waiting for the straw that would break the camel’s back and take all of their land and food from them. The indigenous people first turned their anger on the local administrators, threatening them should they create their lists or implement the decree. The Russians may have been able to utilize the local intellectuals such as the Jadids and the Kazakh intelligentsia, but they distrusted them the most. There was also the implicate understanding, at least on the side of the intellectuals, that if they fought for Russia, then they would earn additional political rights, which was the last thing Russia wanted.

All of these factors combined created an explosive power keg that only needed the tiniest of sparks to explode into a conflagration. That spark occurred in Jizzakh.

Central Asian Revolt of 1916

The revolt engulfed most of Turkestan one way or another, but what does that mean? First, we need to understand the geography of Turkestan, which is modern day Central Asia minus the Bukhara and Khiva emirates. We should picture Turkestan five different oblasts or provinces: the Syr Darya and Semirech’e which contain most of the steppe land, and makes up modern day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Ferghana and Samarkand oblast which consist of the lands that once belonged to the former Kokand Khanate and now make up modern day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan and the Transcaspian region which consisted of land that belongs to modern day Turkmenistan. Hopefully, my listeners who are geography challenged like me, are still with us.

Map of Turkestan

{Image Description: A graphic rendering of the map of Central Asian when it was understand Russian control. The different sections of territory are different pastel colors. The sections not part of the Russian Empire are grey]

Now if we use Easter Rising as a reference point, Easter Rising was a revolt concentrated within a specific city with hopes that the rural areas would rise up in rebellion as well, spreading the British forces thin. Here, in Central Asia, we have the opposite idea. The revolt is concentrated in certain areas such as Jizzakh in modern day Uzbekistan and would have been part of the Samarkand Oblast at the time I believe, most of Semirech’e oblast, and Torghai which is part of the Kazakh steppes, but there wasn’t a centralized location of conflict and there wasn’t a centralized group of ringleaders. There isn’t a Central Asia equivalent to the IRB calling the shots. There are certain leaders who rose up during the revolt, but it was an organic revolt that broke along already existing social ties and tribal affiliations and grew out of decades of tension and sporadic violence.

The first disturbance occurred in Khoqand, which is now in modern day Tajikistan. A large crowd of people gathered outside the offices of the District Commandant, but violence wasn’t the point, even though the police fired into the crowd and there seems to have been a scuffle between the protestors and Russian officials. The first truly violent protest occurred in Jizzakh (in modern day Uzbekistan) on July 12th.

The first violent protest occurred in Jizzakh, in modern Uzbekistan, on July 12th and from there it would spread to Samarkand, Ural’sk, Ferghana, Tashkent, and the Kazakh and Kyrgyz steppes. The rebels targeted not only Russian officials and settlers but their own people who they believed were collaborators, worked in the administration, or obeyed the state. The type of fighting could be divided between those who fought in more urban areas like Tashkent and Samarkand and those who fought in the steppes. Since European settlements and power were more concentrated in the cities, it was harder to organize and resist effectively. But in the Steppes, the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz were able to organize methodically and could rely on the steppe’s vastness to strike quickly and disappear just as quickly while the Russians spread themselves thin trying to find them. The Steppe rebels launched attacks on the core instruments of Russian power. They cut telegraph lines, attacked railways, and launched offensive against Russian garrisons and Russian-dominate towns. This quote from General Sadetskii the commander of the Kazan Military District responsible for sending the initial detachments of Cossacks to the region demonstrates the early success of the Kazakh and Kyrgyz rebels:

“Gathered together in large crowds numbering in the thousands of people, having elected khans for themselves, having earlier secured reserves of food for themselves, having concerned themselves with the organization of the crowd and having armed it, the Kirgiz began a mutinous movement against the Russian People’s right to rule and in general against Russian culture.”

While the rebellion spread throughout Turkestan, this podcast is going to focus on the fighting that occurred first in Jizzakh and then the different conflicts that occurred in the Steppes, but keep in mind that fighting also occurred in the Ferghana, on the Turkestan-China border (and may have been related to the opium trade there) and by several different groupings of Turkmen peoples.

Jizzakh

Jizzakh is where the violence began. It was limited to the volosts (or subdivisions) Za’amin, Boghdan, and Sanzar, and the old town of Jizzakh. The real cause of the violence seems to have been twofold: while other cities and provinces were delaying the implementation of conscription to honor Ramadan, Jizzakh’s administrators refused to do so. Additionally, after drafting a list of draftees, the Jizzakh administration threatened to take land away from anyone who resisted.

It seems that Nazir Khoja Ishan an indigenous merchant, returning from Tashkent (where they had delayed implementing the decree) gathered several hundred people to march on the Russian imperial authorities. Later, Ishan would deny being the leader of revolt during his interrogation. Instead, he stressed that the march was supposed to be “quiet and deliberative.” Instead, at some point during the march, the Russian administrator, Colonel Rukin and 4 members of his staff were killed. The marchers turned to looting and destroying the telegraph lines, bridges, and railways. The railway between Jizzakh and Obruchevo stations were destroyed while the Lomakino train station was burned and sixteen employees were killed. The Russian settlers hid in a local church that was protected by frequent patrols.

The riots continued unabated until the arrival of Russian Lt. Colonel Afanas’ev’s forces on July 17th. With thirty men under his command, he marched into Old Jizzakh to collect the dead. He was joined by General Ivanov on July 18th, who commanded thirteen companies, six cannons 300 Cossacks and an engineer regiment that arrived in an armored train. Their goal was to finalize the pacification of old Jizzakh, before extending military repression to Za’amin, Rabat, the mountain regions, and the volost of Boghdan. By July 21st, the Russians secured the railway stations. In late July/early August, General Aleksey Kuropatkin was removed from the eastern front and sent to Turkestan to put down the Central Asian revolt.

The Russian repression consisted of opening fire at will, burning houses and crops (when they weren’t carrying away the already harvested grain) and confiscating the agricultural tools. The colonial documents mention occasional cases of rape. In total, the initial repression confiscated 2000 desyatinas (which is about 8000 acres according to this conversion site I found) of farmland during harvest session. They would requisition 1000s of acres of land later in the year as continued punishment, exasperating the food and land issues facing the indigenous peoples. The requisition combined with the displacement of indigenous people led to a mass exodus and a famine.

The revolt in Jizzakh was put down on July 26th, lasting barely two weeks. In total, 34 people were arrested, including, Nazir, were sentenced to death by hanging, but only three were carried out. 4 of the prisoners were sent to labor camps, 27 were sentenced to 4 years of prison. On August 20th, General Aleksey Kuropatkin issued the following statement:

“We should hang all of you, but we let you live for you to be a dissuasive example to others. The place where Colonel Rukin was killed will be razed to zero over a distance of 5 versts and this area will become state property. We must not wait to expel the population living on the territory.”

Kazakh and Kyrgyz Steppe (Semirech’e)

The fighting in the Steppe, especially Semirech’e (se mi retch eh) was a fight for the right to exist. The Kazakh and Kyrgyz people had spent decades desperately trying to retain their ever-shrinking land as more and more settlers streamed in and this revolt seems to have been a culmination of all that fear, frustration, and loss. The revolt started with the rebels threatening indigenous officials, even though many of the leaders of the revolt were in fact administrators of the volosts. Additionally, many of these leaders were known as baatyrs, individuals of military prowess proven in daring exploits against enemies. Russian officials arrested these agitators but only angered the indigenous people who began to demand that local officials give them the list of draftees. Communal meetings of indigenous people met and discussed the draft, and they decided to resist.

Syr Darya Oblast. Kyrgyz Migration

[Image Description: A sepia toned photo of a caravan of camels gathered together. There are wood frames for khurts. Men and women are preparing for the day.]

Early August saw the first violent clashes between the rebels and Russian officials. It began in the Lepsinsk district between July 24th and August 1st, when a Russian border patrol detained a fleeing family. On August 3rd, in the eastern part of Vernyi, the assistant head of the district Khlynovskkii and the District Police Captain Kulaev and fifteen soldiers and policemen took several Kazakh dignitaries hostage in an effort to force the volost to produce lists within five hours. The Kazakhs asked Khlynovskii three times to release the arrested and delay the draft. Khlynovskii fired into the air to disperse the crowd but his men thought it was an order to shoot and they killed two Kazakhs. The crowd killed a policeman and then the Cossack cavalry squadron was sent in the area on the same day.

Then on August 6th also in the Vernyi district, a native administrator manipulated the list to including Kazakhs of the rival party. The aggrieved party approached the district police captain Gilev, but he sided with the volost head, believing the indigenous people were plotting to revolt. He used twenty policemen against the rival party in the area of the Samsy station. The native population gathered in a large crowd and forced Gilev and his men to retreat while firing into the crowd, killing twelve Kazakhs. The Kazakhs targeted the telephone poles, plundered the station, and rustled cattle. They then fled into Bishkek district, but not before killing sixteen settlers and taking 35 settlers captive. Their arrival in Bishkek sent panic but they began to organize, one group attacking a post office at Jal-Aryk station.

The rebels went from random, mass groups of people into organized units headed by military commanders drawn from the volost heads. They wore metal badges and the rebels sent messages through lanterns. Some even had banners. On July 31st, only a thousand Steppe rebels reported for duty. By mid-August that would grow to 10,000-20,000 rebels in the Semirech’e oblast.

By August 7th, the Russian administrators were sending panicked reports that all of Semirech’e was in revolt. Similar to the rebels in Jizzakh, the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz targeted the telephone poles and railway stations before unleashing punitive attacks on Russian settlers. Some of the worst violence would be seen in the districts of Bishkek and Karakol where 3000+ Russian settlers were killed.

On August 12, 1500 rebels attacked a Cossack sotnia, and a 350 settler militia in a battle in the environs of Toqmaq. The Russians nearly lost a machine gun and retreated into Toqmaq. On August 13, 5000 rebels besieged the city, which was cut off from Vernyi and Tashkent for two weeks between August 13 and 22. The city was able to rebel against their attacks because the rebels were poorly armed. The Kazakhs also laid sieges to the settlement at Preobrazhenskoe, a safe haven for refugees from 10 to 29 August. On 28 August, a punitive expedition lifted the siege and the rebels retreated. In response to the rebel units, the settlers began to mobilize as well, creating militias to defend themselves.

By early September, the Russians sent 35 infantry companies, 24 Cossack cavalry squadrons, 20 mounted scouts, 16 field guns, and 47 machine guns to Semirech’e to put down the revolt. Some of their methods included driving Kazakhs into ambushes and execute as many as possible. For example, 500 Kyrgyz were killed at one time in a valley near Bishkek. They took land and killed women and children and there were reports of rape. While rape wasn’t an order, the soldiers were commanded to murder and plunder, the Russians determined to crush the revolt brutally both as a deterrent and to indulge in the bad blood between settlers and the indigenous peoples. Rebel leaders were executed on the spot by field courts for state treason and a general, Folbaum, ordered the complete extermination of the entire native male population of the Atekinskaia and Sarybagishebskaia volosts.

Russian Response and the Urkun Exodus

By October, the Russian regained control over Semirech’e with Kuropatkin declaring that wherever the Russian blood had been spilled, the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz were to be expropriated and expelled. According to him the natives had forfeited the right to live together with the Russians because of the uprising and proposed creating an ethnically-cleansed zone for Russian settlement on the best land in the region around Issyq-Kul. About 37,000 Kazakh and Kyrgyz households were affected. 16% of their land was expropriated while the Slavic population grew to 23% of the entire population. 190,000 people were removed from the Pishpek, Przheval’sk, and Dzharkent districts. Przheval’sk was completely cleaned of its Kyrgyz and Dungan population. They and other indigenous peoples were forcibly relocated to the mountainous areas near Naryn where they would be fenced off by mountains and a string of militarized Cossack settlements.

It is estimated that the Russians killed 16,000 Kyrgyz and Kazakh peoples, while about 3000 Russian settlers were killed. A massive famine devastated the indigenous people while hundreds of thousands fled to China and died along the way, in what is now known as the Urkun exodus. Early blizzards, deep ravines and sharp cliffs, lack of grass and heavy livestock losses, coupled with chaos and stampeding of animals and people killed more people than guns and cannons. Still more died in China and at home after the return. Out of the 164,000 refugees who made it to China, about 130,000 were Kyrgyz and 34,000 were Kazakhs. By May 1917, 70,000 Kazaks and Kyrgyz starved to death.

And yet fighting would continue in 1917. Another group of Steppe rebels would reorganize in Torghai region in Kazakh Steppe. By October, a 50,000 strong rebellion besieged the town of Torghai, were defeated, and fought a guerilla war against the Russians forces sent against them. They were still fighting by the February Revolution. There was also a minor rebellion led by the Turkmen in Khiva, led by Junaid khan (later emir of Khiva?) and the Turkmen at Chikishlar on the Caspian Sea where they clashed with Russian fishermen. It can even be argued that some of the fighting merged into the civil war that followed the fall of the Tsar and that the Central Asia Revolt, truly was the beginning of the Russian Civil war.

It is estimated that the Russians killed 88,000 indigenous peoples while 250,000 people fled to China. That’s about 20% of the population. Additionally, 50% of the local population’s horses, 50% of their camels, 39% of their cattle, and 58% of their sheep and goats were killed or confiscated. The bloody suppression of the revolt shocked and revolted people in Russia. Alexander Kerensky, who grew up in Tashkent, criticized the monarch’s response in the Duma. He even went on tour of the region and there was a cry to address indigenous people’s wants and desires within the empire. However, the revolt was quickly overshadowed by the Russian Revolution of 1917 and, the civil wars that followed.

Resources:

Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent 1865-1923 by Jeff Sahadeo

Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid

Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 by Ian W. Campbell Published by Cornell University Press, 2017

Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, Conquest, Coexistence by Shoshana Keller Published by University of Toronto Press, 2019

Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924 by Seymour Becker, Published by RoutledgeCurzon, 2004

The “Russian Civil Wars” 1916-1926 by Jonathan Smele, Published by Oxford University Press, 2017

#central asia #central asian history #Central Asian Revolt 1916 #history blog #queer historian #podcast episode #blog post #queer podcaster #season 2: central asia #world war 1 #WWI #russian empire #russian colonialism #Spotify

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usafphantom2 · 11 months

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USAF will choose the design for NGAD in 2024

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 05/26/23 - 20:30 in Military

The artistic concept of a Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter. (Photo: Mike Tsukamoto / Boeing)

Only one company will be chosen next year as the designer and general developer of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) manned fighter, despite years of prototype work on different projects by several companies, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said on May 22.

Kendall added that there will be a continuous competition to provide NGAD's systems after an overall winner is chosen - but NGAD's original concept of continuous competitions, producing a number of increasingly better platforms, is very expensive, he revealed.

"We're not going to do two NGADs. We will only do one,” Kendall said at a meeting of the Defense Writers Group in Washington, D.C.

Kendall said that the original concept of fast iteration NGADs, with competitions every few years - promoted by former USAF procurement executive Will Roper and intended to provide stable work to contractors to preserve their industrial capacity - was abandoned.

The "NGAD development phase is too expensive" to follow this strategy, he said. Such an approach "will not work, but we will design for modular open systems, in various [onboard] technologies, and this will remain competitive," he added.

The U.S. Air Force released a classified request for NGAD engineering and manufacturing development proposals on May 18, saying that a winner will be selected in 2024, but few new details of the highly confidential program have been released beyond that.

Even the size of the fleet remains publicly uncertain - Kendall said that a “notional” purchase could reach about 200 aircraft, but U.S. Air Force experts said that 250 is the most likely goal, since the minimum number of aircraft needed to cover peacetime obligations along with minimum wartime outbreak capacity.

Regardless, Kendall also said he is less concerned with the structure of the USAF - the number of aircraft and systems it has - than with modernization, which he said had been neglected for a long time. China has aggressively advanced in its capabilities of air superiority and air defense and “we do not respond as quickly as we should,” he said.

An illustration by Northrop Grumman shows a fictitious sixth-generation fighter in action. (Photo: Northrop Grumman)

As a result, Kendall said he is “prepared to take some risk” in the service's strength structure, but not with its modernization. The U.S. Air Force can only afford to field systems “that scare China” and contribute to deterrence, he said.

NGAD is the key to this plan, as reflected in its planned capabilities that the USAF presented in the May 18 announcement, such as improved lethality and abilities to survive, persist, interoperate and adapt in the air domain, all within a context of highly contested operational environments.

Kendall offered other details on May 22, noting his own history with NGAD since his time as undersecretary of defense for procurement, technology and logistics in the Obama administration.

"I started a program called the Aerospace Innovation Initiative, which aimed to reach the set of sixth generation technologies that we would need for the future air domain and build flying prototypes - X planes, if you prefer - to take these technologies forward," he said.

This initiative resulted in a 2015 contract that produced experimental prototypes and verified new technologies. These prototypes formed the basis of NGAD, Kendall said.

Since then, he added, "the engineering and digitization of systems based on models...

Both contractors and government officials work in a common design environment, giving the U.S. Air Force an "intimate" knowledge of what each competitor is doing, Kendall said. The service still has teams working with each company.

The U.S. Air Force will not repeat the "serious error" made with the F-35, Kendall said - to allow a company to have the technical baseline of the aircraft, thus controlling the life cycle of the program and creating "a perpetual monopoly" in support and future modifications and updates.

"Let's not do that," he said. "We will ensure that the government has possession of the intellectual property it needs. We will ensure... that we have modular projects and open systems so that, from now on, we can bring new suppliers."

Whoever is chosen "as a platform integrator... will have a much stricter degree of government control over the future of this program than we had" with the F-35, he said. "We learned this lesson."

Kendall also said that the Rapid Capabilities Office will not be hired to manage the NGAD program, despite its apparent success in the B-21.

Instead, Brig. General Dale White, executive officer of the advanced fighter and aircraft program, and his office will oversee the effort, in addition to his management of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Kendall said NGAD and CCA will be developed "in parallel", but he refused to say when a contract for the CCA program can be granted.

Tags: Military AviationNGADUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air Force

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work around the world of aviation.

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333sth · 3 years

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dove. (frankie morales)

chapter i. previous.

pairing: frankie morales x ofc (’dove’) no use of y/n.

warnings: mention of ptsd/military service, language, violence, brief mention of torture/kidnapping, injury detail, fighting.

summary: frankie was going to propose, until dove found the ring and ghosted. even santi can’t track her down.

rating: mature. wc: 1.6k

Dove was a nickname coined by an old general during her training. He was a traditional man, though not disrespectful. It was a term of endearment that probably softened the influx of powerful women breaching into the male territory. He’d drawled, ‘I ought to call you Dove – I ain’t never seen a girl so swift, yet so fuckin’ lethal.’ She kept the boys in line too, he’d noted. When Benny got too reckless, or Tom’s temper ran away with him, she was the first to snap them out of it. In environments where peace was a very distant concept, she played the peacekeeper.

One time, during a two-month deployment in Nigeria, the group was shoved in the back of an ancient pick-up truck for six hours. Dove was wedged between Will and Frankie, sweltering in the humid air. The stale smell of sweat mixed with blood and diesel was permeating the air, and they were three hours from the nearest checkpoint. To pass the time, she asked them what they’d do if they weren’t special forces.

That was easy for Will – he’d be a teacher of some kind. Benny waffled about sports, making some brash comment about how he’s got to channel all his aggression somewhere. Tom and Santi couldn’t come up with anything that suited them more than the forces, which was not surprising. Frankie would still be a pilot somehow. Dove had never seen him more comfortable than in the pilot’s chair.

Dove dreamed of owning her own bar or café, somewhere relaxed and laid-back. A beach perhaps, somewhere quaint and peaceful, where the air is warm well into the late evening and the waves are gentle, collapsing onto the sand like white noise. She imagined the hum of conversation meeting tinkling music, beach lanterns dotted around the decking to cast an ambient glow beneath the stars. Maybe a chef on weekends could make bar snacks. Tom had snorted at that, throwing a jab about how she can burn the water they use to make their dried food sachets.

The men had recalled this conversation, desperately trying to fathom where Dove might have taken off to. It was met with an aching nostalgia for the type of teammate she was too. That conversation had been a tactic, a peaceful one, to prevent the terrible concoction of adrenaline, exhaustion and heat forming an argument in that truck. She was a natural tactician as well as a good friend.

Frankie had recounted each country they had been stationed and exactly how Dove had felt about them. She had loved Argentina, even when she got shot and Will spent three hours with his finger crammed in the wound to stop the bleeding. But she also liked Jamaica, Brazil and Hawaii. None of their contacts in the forces had any trace of her, not even Santi’s in South America. Her family were none the wiser – they brushed it off, her dad mumbling something about it sounding like her usual antics.

All he had was a scribbled note that read, ‘I need space. I’m safe. I love you.’ It was folded neatly in his wallet, like he was carrying the last piece of her that he had.

Mexico. That was where she was. A small town on the West coast that had enough life to keep her occupied, and the guarantee of anonymity.

If people asked, she was a retired nurse, which wasn’t entirely untrue. She told them she spent a lot of her career in humanitarian aid, to explain the occasional jitters on a rowdy Friday night and the nasty scars. There was a particularly gruesome one leading from the base of her throat up to her bottom lip from a knife fight. She told them it was shrapnel, flung from a collapsing building, and she was lucky it didn’t catch her jugular. The locals had gasped in awe at her heroism. She’d flinched against the memory of how her own knife buried into her attacker’s throat instead.

A few days into her move, Dove had found what could only be considered a derelict shed on the beachfront. It was probably the remains of an old boathouse. With some help from the locals, she had restored the ageing planks of wood. What was spare formed the bar and some rustic furniture. She pieced together a jumble of second-hand bar stools, chairs and lanterns that made for an eclectic combination. It had character and history in its walls, rather than some swanky, expensive build devoid of any personality. It was exactly what she had dreamed of, huddled in hypothermic temperatures or insomniac in her cot at base, sleep beyond her reach.

It didn’t change the fact that every time she entered her bedroom, the old polaroid of Frankie pinned to the wall hits her like a ton of bricks. Frankie knows she took it – it was pinned to the fridge at their home before she left. It’s quintessential Frankie, sat with his arms folded to his chest, biceps straining slightly against an old denim shirt that was getting a little too snug post-retirement. It was at a barbecue, his skin tanned and flushed from a day in the sun drinking, tousled hair peeking out from the sides of a dog-eared cap. Every time Dove glances at it, she wonders if he still has that hat.

‘Of course he has,’ the voice in her head snaps back. Any piece of clothing she’d suggest replacing would be countered with, ‘over my dead body’. The man was sentimental, a little too attached to his home comforts. She’d also bought it him in a seedy gift shop in the middle of nowhere as a joke.

“To add some variety,” she’d said. He would never let it go now.

Once, Veronica had eyed the photograph on her mirror and asked, “Who is he then? An ex?”

Veronica, or Roni for short, had lived in the town her whole life until university. When she graduated and moved home to save money, she needed a job. Dove needed a friend, so she took her on as a bartender. She was young and giddy, but harmless. More importantly, she was too self-absorbed to notice or even care that her thirty-something year old boss had bullet holes in her back.

“Something like that.” Dove had replied, rifling through her sorry excuse for a makeup bag. She’d closed the bar early to have a rare night off in the next town over, which had considerably livelier nightlife.

“You never talk about relationships. Or men.’ Roni observed, peering over Dove’s shoulder to eye another photograph. It was a group picture of the boys, huddled in the same fraying booth in their favourite bar back in Florida. “Looks like you were spoilt for choice.”

Dove scoffed, meeting her friend’s twinkling gaze in the mirror. “Shut your mouth. They were friends from work.”

“Were? Does that mean you can’t set me up now?”

“They’re almost twice your age. You’d tire ‘em out.” Dove set down the lip-gloss she dragged out for special occasions. “Come on, I’m not getting any younger either. It’s already passed my bedtime.”

Thankfully, that was enough to amuse the younger girl into linking her arm and hauling her out the door to the taxi, no more questions asked.

The hollering of spectators and thudding of skin slapping against the mat was reduced to a distant buzzing in Frankie’s ears. It was dimmed by the incessant ramblings of Santiago and Tom, discussing the files Santi had put together on Lorea. He could feel the reawakening of his rusty military senses as he follows the familiar tactics, mentally registering his agreement or noting what he might do differently. He doesn’t vocalise it though, because he hasn’t even agreed yet. Joining the debate would inadvertently signal his agreement. He didn’t want that.

There was a shadow lingering in the space on the bench beside him. It was an empty presence, not Will, who was hooked on the cage of the ring yelling encouragement to his brother. Not Benny, thumping his leather gloves together with his teeth pulled harshly over his mouthguard, judging his competitor with a predatory glint in his eye.

The opponent was a monster, but he lumbered like his limbs were filled with lead. Frankie notes that Benny, nimble and tall, will have a breeze tiring him out. Dove would have joked that it wasn’t worth coming, that they’ll be sat here until their asses are numb watching Benny play cat and mouse. His chest twinges. Sometimes it’s too easy to remember what she’d do, what she’d say. He wished he knew what she’d make of Santiago’s proposition. She always saw through Pope’s glamourisation and Tom’s greed.

What Frankie misses while he observes his pitiful surroundings is Tom and Santi descending into a hushed conversation. Tom nudges Santi, “You got anything on Dove?”

Santi sighs, long and solemn, “Maybe.” As Tom’s face quirks in interest, he holds up his finger, “It’s just a hunch.”

“A hunch is better than what we’ve had in the last year.”

Santi takes a sip of his beer, casting a glance at Fish, whose eyes are trained on the floor and the swirling contents of his cup. He knows him well enough to know his thoughts are the only thing that have his attention.

“I worry about him. We all do.” Tom whispers. “Getting busted just made things worse.”

“Don’t get his hopes up, man. It’s nothing solid. It’ll crush him if I’m wrong.” Tom nods solemnly before Santi continues, “A friend of mine saw an ex-Delta in a bar, a woman. He knew ‘cause of a tattoo she had on the nape of her neck.”

Tom’s eyes widen. In front of them, Benny lands a sickening punch on his opponent’s nose, complimented by an audible crack. He’s barely breaking a sweat, dancing around as the guy heaves and stumbles forward.

Santi’s gaze doesn’t break from the ring. “Mexico. I think she’s in Mexico.”

#Frankie Morales #frankie morales x reader #triple frontier imagine #frankie morales imagine #triple frontier fic #francisco morales #Triple Frontier #frankie catfish morales #Frankie morales fic #Frankie Morales x OFC #Pedro Pascal #pedro pascal fic #pedro pascal fanfiction #benny miller #will miller #Santiago Garcia #santiago pope garcia #ben miller #dove fic

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sokos · 3 years

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Different forms of biphobia according to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission - "Bisexual invisibility"

For reference WMSMW means women who have sex with men and women, and similar for men.

❝ Bisexuals experience high rates of being ignored, discriminated against, demonized, or rendered invisible by both the heterosexual world and the lesbian and gay communities. Often, the entire sexual orientation is branded as invalid, immoral, or irrelevant. Despite years of activism and the largest population within the LGBT community, the needs of bisexuals still go unaddressed and their very existence is still called into question. This erasure has serious consequences on bisexuals’ health, economic well-being, and funding for bi organizations and programs. [...] Despite the overwhelming data that bisexuals exist, other people’s assumptions often render bisexuals invisible. Two women holding hands are read as “lesbian,” two men as “gay,” and a man and a woman as “straight.” In reality, any of these people might be bi―perhaps all of them. The majority of research lumps data on bisexuals under “gay” or “lesbian,” which makes it difficult to draw any conclusions about bisexuals and skews the data about lesbians and gay men. “Thus any particular needs of bisexuals are eclipsed and conflated. Only a handful of studies separate out bisexuals and/or report on their bisexual-specific findings. Fewer compare bisexuals to people who are not bisexual.” [...] Bisexuals find themselves erased in history. Many famous people―such as Marlene Dietrich, June Jordan, Freddie Mercury, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Walt Whitman―have been labeled as lesbian or gay for their same-sex relationships, yet their long-term relationships with different-sex partners are ignored or their importance minimized. This disrespects the truth of their lives for the sake of a binary conception of sexual orientation. It also makes it more difficult for bisexuals just coming out to find role models. This historical erasure also extends to activists. Rather than acknowledging the decades of hard work bisexuals have done in the LGBT movement, many gays and lesbians have accused bisexuals of trying to “ride their coattails.” In fact, bisexuals have often been leaders in the movement. In just one example, it was a bi woman, Brenda Howard, who organized the one-month anniversary rally in honor of the Stonewall uprising. Then a year later, she organized a march and celebration that turned into New York’s annual pride parade and inspired countless other pride celebrations around the world. [...] Often, the word “bisexual” shows up in an organization’s name or mission statement, but the group doesn’t offer programming that addresses the specific needs of bisexuals (see the chapter on organizations and programs serving bisexuals). Even when an organization is inclusive, the press and public officials often fall back on the “safety” of saying just “gay and lesbian.” There is even a growing trend of talking about the “gay, lesbian, and transgender” movement. But words matter. Invisibility matters. Bisexuals find themselves excluded in other ways as well.

Bisexual invisibility is one of many manifestations of biphobia. Others forms of biphobia include:

- Assuming that everyone you meet is either heterosexual or homosexual.

- Supporting and understanding a bisexual identity for young people because you identified “that way” before you came to your “real” lesbian/gay/heterosexual identity.

- Automatically assuming romantic couplings of two women are lesbian, or two men are gay, or a man and a woman are heterosexual.

- Expecting a bisexual to identify as gay or lesbian when coupled with the “same” sex/gender.

- Expecting a bisexual to identify as heterosexual when coupled with the “opposite” sex/gender.

- Believing that bisexual men spread HIV/AIDS to heterosexuals.

- Believing that bisexual women spread HIV/AIDS to lesbians.

Thinking bisexual people haven’t made up their minds.

- Refusing to accept someone’s self-identification as bisexual if the person hasn’t had sex with both men and women.

- Expecting bisexual people to get services, information, and education from heterosexual service agencies for their “heterosexual side” and then go to gay and/or lesbian service agencies for their “homosexual side.”

- Feeling bisexuals just want to have their cake and eat it too.

- Assuming a bisexual person would want to fulfill your sexual fantasies or curiosities.

- Thinking bisexuals only have committed relationships with “opposite” sex/gender partners.

- Being gay or lesbian and asking your bisexual friends about their lovers or whom they are dating only when that person is the “same” sex/gender.

- Assuming that bisexuals, if given the choice, would prefer to be in an “opposite” gender/sex coupling to reap the social benefits of a “heterosexual” pairing.

- Assuming bisexuals would be willing to “pass” as anything other than bisexual.

- Believing bisexuals are confused about their sexuality.

- Feeling that you can’t trust a bisexual because they aren’t really gay or lesbian, or aren’t really heterosexual.

- Refusing to use the word bisexual in the media when reporting on people attracted to more than one gender, instead substituting made-up terms such as “gay-ish.”

- Using the terms phase or stage or confused or fence-sitter or bisexual or AC/DC or switch-hitter as slurs or in an accusatory way.

- Assuming bisexuals are incapable of monogamy.

- Feeling that bisexual people are too outspoken and pushy about their visibility and rights.

- Looking at a bisexual person and automatically thinking of her/his sexuality rather than seeing her/him as a whole, complete person.

- Not confronting a biphobic remark or joke for fear of being identified as bisexual.

- Assuming bisexual means “available.”

- Thinking that bisexual people will have their rights when lesbian and gay people win theirs.

- Expecting bisexual activists and organizers to minimize bisexual issues (such as HIV/AIDS, violence, basic civil rights, military service, same-sex marriage, child custody, adoption, etc.) and to prioritize the visibility of “lesbian and/or gay” issues.

- Avoiding mentioning to friends that you are involved with a bisexual or working with a bisexual group because you are afraid they will think you are a bisexual.

The implications of bi invisibility go far beyond bisexuals wanting to feel welcome at the table. It also has a significant impact on bisexuals’ health. Here are just a few examples from recent largescale studies :

Writing the rest under Read More...

- Bisexual people experience greater health disparities than the broader population, including a greater likelihood of suffering from depression and other mood or anxiety disorders.

- Bisexuals report higher rates of hypertension, poor or fair physical health, smoking, and risky drinking than heterosexuals or lesbians/gays.

- Many, if not most, bisexual people don’t come out to their healthcare providers. This means they are getting incomplete information (for example, about safer sex practices).

- Most HIV and STI prevention programs don’t adequately address the health needs of bisexuals, much less those who have sex with both men and women but do not identify as bisexual.

- Bisexual women in relationships with monosexual partners have an increased rate of domestic violence compared to women in other demographic categories.

In the 1980s and 1990s, bisexuals were vociferously blamed for the spread of HIV (even though the virus is spread by unprotected sex, not a bisexual identity). However, a 1994 study of data from San Francisco is also worth noting: it found that at that time, bisexually identified MSMW (men who have sex with men and women) weren’t a “common vector or ‘bridge’ for spreading HIV from male partners to female partners due to high rates of using barrier protection and extremely low rates of risky behavior.” Yet scapegoating continues. Sometimes it is explicit, as in the misleading hysteria about men on the “down low” infecting unsuspecting female partners, particularly in the African-American community. Other times, the negative message is communicated in subtle ways. For example, in the 2008 San Francisco Department of Public Health HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Annual Report, MSMWs are not mentioned at all, their data most likely absorbed into information about MSMs. The only time the word “bisexual” appears is as an infection source for heterosexual women.

In a 2010 study using Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data from Washington State, Compared to lesbians:

Bisexual women had significantly lower levels of education, were more likely to be living with income below 200% of the federal poverty level, and had more children living in the household.

- Bisexual women were significantly less likely to have health insurance coverage and more likely to experience financial barriers to receiving healthcare services.

- Bisexual women were more likely to be current smokers and acute drinkers.

- Bisexual women showed significantly higher rates of poor general health and frequent mental distress, even after controlling for confounding variables.

Although we have some information about the health of bisexual people and of men and women who have sex with more than one gender, there is still much that we do not know. It is important for researchers to employ methodologies that group bisexuals together, or that group together people who have sex with partners of more than one gender; rather than only the more common practice of grouping gay and bisexual men or lesbian and bisexual women together, never separately examining attributes of and needs of the latter. Why? Because bisexual women’s issues are not always the same as lesbian issues, even for bisexual women who only have sex with partners of the same gender or for "lesbian-identified" women who have sex with men as well as women. Bisexual men’s issues are not always the same as gay male issues, even for bisexual men who only have sex with partners of the same gender or for gay-identified men who have sex with women as well as men. Likewise, heterosexuals’ issues are different from those of bisexuals, even among heterosexually-identified MSMW and WSMW. Why would health issues be different for people who share similar lived experiences but use different sexual orientation labels? Some of the issues would be similar, including some concerns related to sexual health. But because of biphobia and bi-invisibility, which affect bisexuals on an immediate, personal level, bisexuals may have very different health experiences. These differences may result from increased stress and experiences of discrimination in general, and/or more specifically from experiencing biphobia from healthcare providers.

There are health issues that are specific and generalizeable to bisexuals as a group and health issues that are specific and generalizeable to people who have partners of more than one gender as a group. This literature review shines a spotlight on specific challenges related to HIV and STI prevention among bisexuals, WSMW, and MSMW. Unfortunately, existing research on this topic is scarce. Much of it lumps bisexuals into either “lesbian” or “gay male” categories, making it difficult to draw any conclusions about bisexual health. Data on bisexual women’s sexual health is less prevalent than men’s, particularly data on WSMW. Additionally, not all researchers take into consideration whether their study participants identify as bisexual, MSMW, WSMW, or something else. It is important to recognize that many, if not most, bisexual people do not come out to their health care providers or to researchers due to judgments that silence, stereotypes that shame, and assumptions that erase bisexual identity. When a woman is partnered and says she is using birth control, there may be an automatic assumption that she is monogamous and heterosexual. A man in a same-sex relationship is assumed to be gay and therefore not in need of information about sex with women. When a man says he is married or partnered, there are often no subsequent questions asked about other sexual partners. Health care providers need to become aware of how to serve this often-overlooked community and its unique concerns, looking at a patient’s sexual behavior rather than simply a patient’s sexual identity

Little information is available about female sexual health, especially in regards to WSMW. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health 1998 is a perfect illustration. The report featured statistics about both the male and female study participants, all of whom were receiving treatment for HIV. However, the researchers identified all women as simply “women,” with no sexual orientation descriptors. In contrast, the men in the study were categorized as either gay men, bisexual men, or heterosexual men. One study that actually does highlight bisexual women’s health is a 1996 study by Cochran and Mays, which found that bisexual women are more likely than lesbians to use latex or plastic barrier protection for oral sex with women. More recent research [found], like Cochran and Mays, that among WSW and WSMW, having larger numbers of female partners is positively correlated with having vaginal infections, specifically bacterial vaginosis, trichomonas vaginalis, and herpes.

In a study published in 2003, Ciccarone et al. reports that 40 percent of HIV-positive gay and bisexual men have had sex without disclosing their HIV status to their sexual partners, usually within the context of a “casual dating” or a nonexclusive relationship. The study does not distinguish between its gay and bisexual participants, which makes it impossible to extrapolate data specific to the bisexual cohort. Nevertheless, HIV prevention programs working with HIV-positive clients should take relationship context into account when discussing disclosure and behavior. Crepaz and Marks studied safer sex practices and disclosure of status to partners, among HIVpositive men. They found no differences between men who have sex with women (MSW), men who have sex with men (MSM), and MSMW regarding which group was more likely to practice safer sex techniques and/or disclose serostatus to their partners. Unfortunately, their reporting confuses these groups (MSW, MSM, and MSMW) with sexual orientation identities

Case et al. found that bisexual women were twice as likely to have never given birth compared to heterosexual women. However, among women who had given birth, bisexual women were twice as likely as heterosexual women to have done so during their teenage years. Not giving birth may put bisexual women at greater risk for ovarian and endometrial cancers, and teenage pregnancy also has health implications

In 1996 Cochran and Mays published a study that analyzed sexual behavior and HIV risk among young lesbians and bisexual women. Participants were recruited at gay pride events, potentially excluding bisexual women who are in different-sex relationships and who socialize in heterosexual communities. The researchers found that, while the overall majority of women do not use barrier protection during oral sex with women, those participants who do use barriers during oral sex with women are most likely to identify as bisexual. Despite that finding, Cochran and Mays reported that “high-risk sexual experimentation… is most likely to occur among teenagers who do not yet consider themselves to be lesbians.” It is important to note, however, that bisexual identification is not necessarily transitional, simply “experimentation,” or a teenage phase. Researchers should be aware of unintentional implications that bisexually-identified clients are not “yet” gay or lesbian and/or are necessarily engaging in high-risk behavior.

Cheryl Dobinson and colleagues explain that disclosure is important for bisexual clients for many reasons, including: "…the desire to be seen as a whole person, with bisexuality being part of who they are, to increase comfort levels and understanding, so proper diagnoses can be made and relevant information given, so providers can be sensitive and understanding to the issues being faced, for appropriate resources referrals, and generally because it is important for mental health and emotional wellness". Clients who experience homophobia, biphobia, or ignorance when dealing with health care providers may not receive appropriate information about sexual health, with some physicians “equating bisexuality with having multiple partners, not receiving appropriate information about safer sex with male and female partners, voyeurism, inappropriate jokes or comments, bisexuality being seen as the problem, and being told that you’re either gay or straight.” For example, women who identify as lesbian to their health care provider may not be given any information on safer sex techniques with men because it may be assumed that the client’s only sexual activity in the past and in the future is solely with women. This kind of misinformation has especially devastating effects on youth who are just beginning to explore their sexuality. Bisexual youth are becoming sexually active without being provided with the information they need to responsibly and safely engage in sexual activity. ❞

Bisexual people also experience economic discrimination based on their sexuality, lack of institutional support, and other forms of biphobia. You can read more about these stats and surveys by clicking on the link above.

#long post #i didn't copy the whole thing so you can open the link and read it yourself #but i did copy almost everything lol sorry to the people who don't like long texts #bisexuality #biphobia #sokos.txt #lgbt #febfem #radfems do interact #bisexual history #lgbt history

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terrence-silver · 2 years

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Was it a requirement for Twig to join the military in order to one day take over his family business, as a way for Terry to develop a thick skin for business? Could this also have been the same for his father and grandfather?

I always preferred the original fanon idea that Terry's parents simply died in a car accident when he was a teen and left him neck deep in his father's gambling debt and that he joined the military as a last possible resort and something way beyond his control, in a sense --- the lack of authority he'd grow to pathologically despise in later years. That concept tied everything so neatly together and whatever anonymous person who wrote that on the old wiki had a, in my opinion, far better grasp of a plot then show-writers at Netflix do, but I digress.😔

---

There's two possible reasons why Twig joined the military according to the show-centric canon. Here's some opinions I compiled:

Because he didn't fit the classic bill of traditional masculinity (skinny, awkward, flustered, affectionate --- dare I say, queercoded?) and it was an ultimatum for him to toughen up and 'learn to be a real man' as it were. Furthermore, to learn to be a real man worthy and capable of running and inheriting a family conglomerate in case he comes back alive and whole, which leads us to believe his family, or at least his father, as the patriarch, were downright extremists to the maximum. Willing to, yes, you guessed it, apply some extreme measures in an extreme situation. Namely, literally lead to psychologically (and maybe even physically) mangling their son if it meant proving a point and not writing him out of his own inheritance. Terry did become strong in time, though. He did go on to successfully manage and even expand the family business, becoming a Billionaire. But, at what cost? It didn't come for free. Nothing's free.

Second alternative is, and this one isn't mutually exclusive with the one above, that his family has a long and proud history of service in the military. They're patriotic! They're upper class! They're American! They're a product of the times! The Silver men for generations have served in the army, maybe even a few women, as nurses. By the time Vietnam happened, it was simply Twig's turn to do his due diligence and serve as well and not let a long running tradition down by being incapable of doing so when boys with far lesser means and with far lesser backgrounds (like, yes, John Kreese) were out there in green fatigues and excelling at it too. A Silver can't stay behind! It'd be a disgrace! Maybe his grandfather served in WWII? Maybe his Father served in Korea? Maybe they're even majorly decorated and have admirable ranks Terry grew up hearing about? Maybe Terry has an impressive military pedigree in his family and that upped the pressure to live up to that legacy even further?

Would be interesting if Twig was, say, the grandson of some general?

Let us imagine that, shall we? He comes into camp on orientation day and he absolutely wasn't what Captain Turner expected from the illustrious Silver Dynasty and he did wait for this particular soldier most keenly to arrive at base and this is what he gets? Kid's as skinny as a --- yes, Twig. Man, is he disappointed. Is he ever. He imagined some sort of supersoldier and instead he got this wimpy kid. What has the youth of today's generation come to? All they know how to do is smoke the pot, wear multi-colored wooden bead necklaces and sing the Kumbaya! Awful and underwhelming. Would explain his antagonism towards Twig even further. Why Twig appeared to be singled out a bit. Would explain why he was assigned to that Ops task force in the first place, due to his impressive heritage. Why Captain Turner was absolutely willing to derail Twig's morale in particular by telling him he's not going to survive the POW camp and being way too ready to battle Twig to the death over a snake pit if John hadn't intervened. He appeared to be almost a bit pleased that he'd get the chance to get rid of this weak link shaming his own name and his own country. There was already prior investment involved.

#but anyway i am rambling #terry silver #terry silver twig #cobra kai #kk3 #headcanons #captain turner #john kreese #silver family #ideas and musings

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nevermindirah · 4 years

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I've been drafting and redrafting this meta post for weeks now. It's about to be 5781 and my country that was founded on settler colonial genocide and slavery and a deeply flawed but fierce attachment to democracy might go full dictatorship in about 6 weeks and it's time for me to post this thing.

All our immortals are warriors, all have been traumatized by war. But only three of them died their first deaths as soldiers in imperial armies. This fandom has already produced gallons of meta on Nicky dealing with his shit, because Joe would not fuck with an unapologetic Crusader. But there's very rich stuff in Booker and Nile's experiences and the parallels and distinctions between them.

Nile was 11 when her dad was killed in action - that was 2005, meaning she and her dad both died in the same war that George W Bush started in very tenuous response to 9/11. Sure, Nile's dad could have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in a training accident or in an off-the-books mission we won't know about for a hundred more years, but he died in the War on Terror all the same. I had to look it up to be sure because Obama "drew down" the Afghanistan war in his second term, but nope, we're still in this fucking thing that never should've happened in the first place. The US war in Afghanistan just turned 19 years old. A lot of real-life Americans have experiences like the Freemans, parents and children both dying in the same war we shouldn't be in.

I know a lot of people like Nile who join the US military not just because it's the only realistic way for them to pay for college or afford decent healthcare, but also because they have a family history of military service that's a genuine source of pride. Military service has been a way for Americans of color to be accepted by white Americans as "true Americans" - from today's Dreamers who Obama promised would earn protection from deportation by enlisting, to Filipino veterans of WW2 earning US citizenship that Congress then denied them for several decades, to slaves "earning" their freedom through service in the Union Army and in the Continental Army before it. As if freedom is a thing one should have to earn. Lots of Black Americans have the last name Freeman for lots of different escaping-slavery reasons, but it's possible that this specific reason is how Nile got her last name.

Dying in a war you know your country chose to instigate unnecessarily and that maybe you believe it shouldn't be waging is a very particular kind of trauma. It is a much deeper trauma when your military service, and your father's, and maybe generations of your ancestors', is a source of pride and access to resources for you but your sacrifice is nearly meaningless to the white supremacist system that deploys you. That kind of cognitive dissonance encourages a person to ignore their own feelings just so they can function. How do you wake up in the morning, how do you risk your life every day, how do you *kill other people* in a war that shouldn't be happening and that you shouldn't have to serve in just so that your country sees you as human?

We see Nile do her best to be a kind and well-mannered invader. Depending on your experience with US imperialism, Nile giving candy to kids and reminding her squad to be respectful is either heartwarming or very disturbing propaganda. We also see Nile clutching her cross necklace and praying. From the second Christianity arrived on this land it's been a tool of white supremacist assimilation and control, but like military service, it's a fucked-up but genuine source of pride and access to resources for many Americans whose pre-Columbian ancestors were not Christian, and it's a powerful source of comfort and resilience. This Jew who's had a lot of Spanish Inquisition nightmares would like to say for the record that it's not Jesus's fault that his big name fans are such shitty people.

Nile is a good person trying to do her best in a fucked-up world. "Her best" just radically changed. Her access to information on just how fucked up the world is has also just radically changed, because everything's so fucked up a person needs a lot of time to learn about it all and not only does she have centuries but she won't have to spend that time worrying about rent and healthcare and taxes, and because she now has Joe and Nicky and Andy's stories, and because she now has Copley's inside scoop on just what the fuck the CIA has been up to. Like, I want a fic where Copley tells Nile what was really behind the brass's decisions that led to her experiences on the ground in Afghanistan, that led to her father's death, but also I Do Not Want That.

Nile was 19 when Alicia Garza posted on Facebook that Black Lives Matter. She grew up in Chicago well before white people on Twitter were saying maybe police violence against Black people is a problem. She knows this is a deeply fucked up country, and she put on her Marine uniform and deployed with her team of mostly fellow women of color, and maybe she and Dizzy and Jay marched in the streets between deployments, maybe they texted each other when a white manarchist at a protest sneered at one of them for being a Marine. Nile's been busy surviving, and she knows some shit and she's seen some shit but she hasn't had much time to think about what it all means. Now she's got time. And Joe, Nicky, and Andy are willing to listen. (Is Copley willing to listen? I could see that going either way.)

Booker might also be willing to listen. The brilliant idea of cleaning up the rat Frenchman so that Nile can have millennia of emotional support and orgasms sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and holy shit do Booker and Nile have a lot of shared life experience as pawns of imperial wars. Obviously Booker is white and a man and that makes a very big difference. (Though G-d help me, Booker could be Jewish and France was knocking its Jews around like ping-pong balls in the 18th-19th centuries. Jewish Booker wouldn't make him any less white but it does add a shit ton of depth of common experience: military service as a way for your country to see you as a full member of society who matters, because who you are means that's not guaranteed.)

Booker was hanged for desertion from the army Napoleon sent to invade Russia as part of his quest to control all of Europe. We learn in the comics / this YouTube video that Booker was on his way to prison for forgery when he was offered military service instead of jail time. While we don't know how he felt about the choice beyond that he did choose soldier over inmate, it's unlikely he thought invading Russia was a great idea, given he tried to desert because Napoleon like a true imperialist dumbass didn't plan for how he was going to feed his army or keep them from freezing to death in fucking Russian winter.

I find it very interesting that the French Empire was at its largest right before invading Russia and fell apart completely within a few years. My country has been falling the fuck apart for a while now - see aforementioned War on Terror, growing extremes of economic stratification in the richest country in the world, abject refusal to meaningfully deal with climate change that US-based corporations hold the lion's share of blame for - but between Trump's abject refusal to meaningfully deal with the coronavirus and strong likelihood that he'll refuse to leave office even if a certain pathetic moderate I will hold my nose and vote for does manage to earn a majority of votes, ~y~i~k~e~s.

Our only immortals who have never known a world before modernity and nationalism happen to have been born of wars that were the beginning of the end for the imperialist democracies that raised them, and I think in the centuries to come that's going to give them some very interesting shit to talk about.

Nile's a Young Millennial, a digital native born in the United States after the collapse of the USSR left her country as the world's only superpower. She's used to a pace of technological change that human brains are not evolved to handle.

Napoleon trying to make all of Europe into the French Empire was a leading cause of the growth of European nationalism and the establishment of liberal democracies both in Europe and in many places that Europeans had colonized. Booker's first war produced the only geopolitical world order Nile has ever known and I just have so many feelings ok. Nile the art history nerd is probably not aware of this, and why would she be? This humble meta author is, like Nile, a product of US public schools, and all they taught me about world history was Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt/Mesopotamia and then World War 2. Being raised in The World's Only Superpower is WEIRD.

Nile the Young Millennial is used to the devastating volume of bad news the internet makes possible. But she has absolutely no concept of a world where the United States of America is not The World's Only Superpower. In order to get up in the morning and put on her gear and point guns at civilians in Afghanistan, she can only let herself think so much about whether that American exceptionalism thing is a good idea.

She's about to spend many, many years where the only people who she can truly trust are people who are older than not only her country but the IDEA of countries.

She's got time, and she's got a lot of new information at her disposal. But there comes a point where my obsession with her friendship and eventual very hot sex life with Booker just isn't about sex at all. Nile needs someone to talk to about the United States who Gets It. Booker the rat Frenchman coerced into Napoleon's army, and Copley the Black dual citizen of the US and UK who's retired from a CIA career that he half understands as deeply problematic but half still believes in hence his mind-bogglingly stupid partnership with Merrick, are the only people on the planet Nile can talk to honestly about, and really be understood in, all the thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes of her experience as a US Marine.

And one more thing before I go get ready for Rosh Hashanah: Orientalism was a defining element of the Crusades and that legacy is painfully clear in current US-led Western military activity in Afghanistan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, you name it. Turns out memoirs by French veterans of the Napoleonic Wars are full of Orientalist language about Russia as well. I am maybe/definitely writing a fic where Booker spends his exile reading critical race theory and decolonial feminism and trauma studies monographs because he can't be honest with a therapist but maybe he can heal this way and become the team therapist his own damn self. I just really need him to read Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and then go down on Nile, ok?

#nile freeman #tog meta #book of nile #sebastien le livre #the old guard #mine #us imperialism #european imperialism #jewish things #antiblackness #police violence #orientalism

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nadiaportia · 3 years

Text

Cibela de Rubalcaba

The heiress who seeks to become a legend.

Other bios: Ximena | Sayelle | Deirdra | Heloisa

Full name: Cibela María Teresa de Rubalcaba y Saavedra

Meaning of name:

Cibela: derived from Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess

María Teresa: Combination of “María” and “Teresa”, possibly meaning “summer” in Greek.

Family:

Heloisa de Rubalcaba and Ximena Rubalcaba: Cibela’s younger sisters. She has a closer relationship with Heloisa due to her being born when Cibela was 6 years old while she was already 12 by the time Ximena came into the world. Heloisa’s and her own personality constantly clash ever since their youth but still they managed to co-exist in some way or another. Regardless, Cibela considered Ximena with her calm and gentle nature her favourite sister despite there being considerable distance between them and never having properly lived together since Cibela soon began her training abroad.

Marisol de Rubalcaba (deceased): Her mother and the former Marquesa de Rubalcaba. Cibela was the apple of her eye and Marisol was incredibly attached to her daughter and fulfilled every wish she ever voiced. Her death hit Cibela the most out of the three sisters.

Valentín Saavedra (deceased): Cibela’s father and a sea-faring merchant prince from the higher Cartagense bourgeoisie. For the while where it was only the three of them, Valentín was a caring and loving father who regularly took his daughter on his travels and showed her the world.

Aníbal Heßling de Cordovero: Cibela’s husband. The last offspring of an impoverished line of nobles, Aníbal met Cibela when she returned successfully from a military campaign and shortly after the death of her father. He has a lot of affection for her which he is never shy about showing. They are basically polar opposites in terms of personality, him being openly emotional as well as having a pendant for kicking down at those beneath him, while Cibela has a cold exterior but is tough yet fair.

Esmerelda de Rubalcaba: The matriarch in-all-but-name of the Rubalcaba family, Marisol’s older sister and Cibela’s aunt. In contrast to her parents worshipping the ground she walks on, Esme is Cibela’s harshest critic while Cibela looks up to her as matriarch of the family and having made a name for herself after breaking the mold. Not getting the approval, affection and respect she believes should be rightfully hers, Cibela walks the line of being spiteful and needing to be appreciated.

Agustín de Rubalcaba: Esmerelda’s only son and Cibela’s cousin. Despite being very close in age, they have an almost antagonistic relationship with both having little respect for what the other does.

Catalina Saveedra: The aunt of Valentín Saavedra and Cibela’s great aunt. Catalina has great love for her nephew’s eldest daughter and herself being a powerful member of the Calpacian merchant guild, supports Cibela in her military campaigns and her position as Marquesa.

Others: Constanza de Rubalcaba (maternal grand-mother, deceased), Cristobal de Rubalcaba (maternal uncle, deceased), Máximo de Otxoa (maternal grand-father, deceased), Jaime Saavedra (paternal uncle), Genoveva Saavedra (paternal aunt), Dulcinea Saavedra (paternal grand-mother, deceased), Leonardo Buendía (paternal grand-father)

Nicknames: Bela (by family and her husband), Maythé (by her father only)

Favourite meal: Ceviche

Favourite drink: Orange flower tea

Favourite flower: Vanilla orchid

Favourite color: Violet

Birthday: 3rd of August

Age: 49 during the events of the game

Zodiac: Leo

MBTI: ISTJ

Patron Arcana: Strength and the Knight of Pentacles

Upright: Strength can be quiet; often she shines through patience and compassion, not aggression.

Reversed: Strength has lost her careful equilibrium, and with it, control of her inner beasts.

Upright: The Knight of Pentacles is traditional and steadfast, using well-proven methods to achieve success.

Reversed: The Knight of Pentacles has become stuck in his routine, trodding slow with his eyes to the ground.

Gender: Cis Female

Sexuality: The author of this text believes two things: 1. Cibela refuses any label; 2. Cibela is 100% not straight.

Height: 177 cm // 5′8″

Appearance:

Cibela is of athletic build. Her skin is of a slightly dark medium brown with a warm undertone and she has an angular face with slightly visible lines underneath her eyes and on her forehead as well as a beauty mark next to the corner of her left eye. She has three scars: one on her lip, one on her right cheekbone and another one on the left side of her jaw. She has thick eyebrows, eyes a color reminiscent of dark honey, an upturned nose with a low bridge and full lips. Her hair is black with various grey streaks, curly and reaches her shoulders.

She has the tendency to frown as well as wear a rather serious expression on her face, which fits as she is in general a serious person - as is seen fit for a high-ranking member of the military and an heiress of a powerful house.

Visual inspirations:

Gina Torres, especially as Zoe Washburne

Languages spoken: Calpacian, Prakran, Firenti, Karnasso, Galbradan, Hjallen, Nopali, Nevivish, Kerusksch, Venterran, Oriolà, Zadithi and the Common Tongue

Love interests:

Aníbal

In general, like with most of my characters; if they’re compatible sexuality-wise as well as personality-wise, feel free to ship them with your OCs or MCs! Hit me up with a message and we can discuss the details.

Backstory:

As the firstborn and heiress of an influential aristocratic family, Cibela had expectations placed upon her from the moment she could walk. In addition to that, the day she was born, her aunt Esmerelda, back then herself the heiress to her own mother, Marquesa Constanza, renounced her title and passed it onto her younger sister Marisol.

Both Marisol and Valentín saw their daughter as the most precious person in the entire world and someone who would surely become someone important in her adulthood. Her aunt, although not Marquesa anymore but still very much the head of the family, tutored her in the responsibilities of being a leader, and soon recognized the determination and bravery within Cibela. Already idealizing Esmé, back then in her peak as the greatest military officer in the history of Cartagenth, Cibela wanted nothing more than to fill her aunt’s footsteps and become a legend just like her. While having a lot of affection for both of her parents, she didn’t interest herself to lead her father’s merchant fleet or become a courtier in the Zaan’s service like her mother.

As a young woman, she steadily worked her way up the ranks, with her connections being of considerable help, and became an excellent fighter and strategist in no small part because of her perfectionism and desire to always get what she wants, no matter what it takes, which earns the respect of high-ranking officers with strong foothold in the Cartagense War Council. Yet she never managed to fully leave her aunt’s shadow due to being more impulsive and having little to no political savviness - an area where her sister Heloisa excelled. Her shortcomings led to Esmé criticizing her openly which angered Cibela who resented that Heloisa had her aunt’s unconditional approval and affection despite her being the one who would soon carry the family’s and Esmé’s legacy.

The death of her father and proceeding illness of her mother that caused the latter’s departure to their Southern seaside residence, the Summer Palace, hit her hard and out of desperation and loneliness, Cibela entered a relationship with Aníbal. She asked for her mother’s blessing who granted it enthusiastically, being reminded of her own issues with her marriage to a non-aristocrat, while Esmé believed her niece to be settling for a man miles beneath her out of fear of being abandoned. A few days after the grand wedding, Ximena decided to expose the plans made by the War Council, led by their aunt, the Court and the Zaan about the future of Calpacia and brought chaos into the Rubalcaba residence. In order to save face, the Zaan announced the Rubalcabas to be the sole scapegoats and it was only due to Esmé’s immense influence and a very direct threat that kept their titles, lands, fortune, positions and even their heads in place even if beyond the official statements, they effectively became social pariahs too powerful to be removed and useful to be thrown to the angry mob in the streets. Cibela’s view of her gentle and harmless sister was broken and she resented her for lashing out at their family to whom she was supposed to have unconditional allegiance and loyalty and daring to run away to not face the consequences.

With her parents dead, Ximena dead to her and stuck in a marriage with a man who did love her but also desired to improve his social status and now also had to take the fall, Cibela went on to emancipate herself from her aunt in the eyes of the leaders of Grand Army of Calpacia and by the time she was middle-aged had the rank of a general and was well-respected by both the new Zaan and their court. Over the years she continued to lock horns with Heloisa, who became an influential figure on court and didn’t bother to hide her ambitions of wanting to be the Marquesa de Rubalcaba despite being second-in-line of succession. Despite both sisters having in common that regardless of their best efforts they never managed to eclipse their aunt, they continued to stand on opposite sides fighting a “cold war”. Whether Cibela’s own way of gathering her own support loyal to her and only her is more successful in removing herself from her aunt’s manipulative influences than Heloisa’s insistence on “playing the long game” remains to be seen.

#the arcana #the arcana oc #the arcana original character #cibela de rubalcaba #IT'S HER IT'S THE WOMAAAAAAN god i love her so much #while xime is the Main Character and helo is arguably the most fun to write bela... is very fascinating in her complexity to write down #like she's incredibly vulnerable underneath her very hard shell and basically on the far end of the extroverted introverted scale #i just think she’s really fuckin neat #also this wont have a read more bc she has no visual yet but i will defo update it

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dweemeister · 3 years

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Best Live Action Short Film Nominees for the 93rd Academy Awards (2021, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

NOTE: For viewers in the United States (continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawai’i) who would like to watch the Oscar-nominated short film packages, click here. For virtual cinemas, you can purchase the packages individually or all three at once. You can find info about reopened theaters that are playing the packages in that link. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

This blog, since 2013, has been the site of my write-ups to the Oscar-nominated short film packages. No pandemic was going to stop me this year, as I was able to view the short film packages virtually thanks to a local repertory, the Frida Cinema of Santa Ana, California. Without further ado, here are the nominees for the Best Live Action Short Film at this year’s Oscars. Films predominantly not in the English language are listed with their nation of origin.

The Present (2020, Palestine)

Since the 1990s, the Israeli military has set up hundreds of checkpoints within Palestine’s West Bank. These checkpoints have impeded Palestinian movement within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, supposedly to better protect the extraterritorial Israeli settlements there. Directed by Farah Nabulsi, The Present could have easily fell into an agitprop trap – leaning on political outrage rather than the individual emotions that power this film – but it deftly avoids doing so. On the day of his wedding anniversary with his wife, Yusef (Saleh Bakri) decides to go shopping with daughter Yasmine (Maryam Kanj). Yusef and Yasmine travel to and from Bethlehem (which is in Palestine, but is not easily accessible by Palestinians) to purchase a new refrigerator, groceries, and a few goodies for Yasmine. The process of traveling just a few miles from home proves onerous and humiliating.

Nabulsi’s film never feels like a lecture, instead preferring to juxtapose the cruel ironies that these Israeli checkpoints embody. The viewer intuits how militarized and confusing these checkpoints must be to the Palestinians. Israel’s apartheid mindset extends to the West Bank – the checkpoints have a single lane for Israeli drivers and a gated, narrow entryway specifically for the Palestinians. Past the checkpoint during their time shopping, life seems briefly normal. That Nabulsi can navigate the contrasting emotions between these scenes reflects the tautness of this film and its hints of Italian Neorealism. Bakri, as Yusef, is excellent during his tense conversations with the Israeli soldiers, even if some of these moments feel more stilted due to the actors playing the soldiers and the guerrilla filmmaking this piece employs. For Kanj, as Yasmine, one can see her anguish in seeing her father discriminated against on what should have been a special day. For Palestinian children, injustice is a rite of passage.

My rating: 8/10

Feeling Through (2019)

It is a chilly night in New York City at an hour where few are outside by choice. Teenager Tareek (Steven Prescod) is homeless. After saying good night to his friends, he happens upon Artie, a deafblind man (Robert Tarango, who is deafblind himself) holding up a sign requesting anyone to assist him. Curious and half-willing to help, Tareek taps Artie on the arm. Artie pulls out a tattered notepad and marker, asking for help to get to a bus stop. What follows is an uplifting connection between two cast-off souls, sharing each other’s good company and good humor if only for a brief time. Director Doug Roland based Feeling Through on an encounter he had with a deafblind man named Artemio. Roland’s film was accomplished in collaboration with the Hellen Keller Center.

Cynical viewers might view Feeling Through as syrupy, its swirling score too manipulative, the screenplay predictable, the filmmaking pedestrian. To different extents, each of those criticisms are true, but that does not undermine the raw inspiration responsible for this film’s pulse. It boasts solid performances from Prescod and Tarango – the latter a kitchen worker from Long Island and possibly the first deafblind actor in a lead role in film history. Roland’s screenplay beautifully strips away stereotypes of deafblind people. Tarango, as Artie, is neither overly dependent nor secluded from society. He knows that being deafblind sets him apart from those who can see and hear, and embraces the difference – lending a refreshing directness to how he communicates. Despite its lack of filmmaking or acting pedigree compared to its other nominees in this category, Feeling Through enters this Academy Awards season without a single loss in any of the film festivals that it screened in. No wonder: it is a crowd-pleaser in the best sense, without ever glossing over how difficult it is to be deafblind.

My rating: 9/10

Two Distant Strangers (2020)

Production on Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe’s Two Distant Strangers began in the shadow of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Its emotions are raw and there is no doubt behind the importance of the film’s messaging. Carter (rapper Joey Bada$$) has had some first date with Perri (Zaria Simone), and leaves in the morning to get home to his pet dog. Just outside the apartment building door, a police officer named Merk (Andrew Howard) stops Carter, profiles him, and ultimately kills Carter in cold blood. Once Carter dies, the film cuts to Carter and Perri in bed once again. Immediately, the viewer knows this film is a time loop a la Groundhog Day (1993), and, no matter what precautions he takes, Carter just cannot avoid execution from Merk’s hands. Through the film’s structure, Free and Roe capture the sinking, repetitive feeling that black Americans go through when hearing the news of yet another incident of police brutality.

Good intentions and urgency, however, do not necessarily make a worthy film. Some of the editing in Two Distant Strangers’ middle third shows too many images of Carter’s bullet-riddled body. After the first few instances of the time loop, the viewer does not need another glimpse of a lead-shredded corpse, blood splattering across pavement. The filmmaker’s fury towards Carter’s situation – that nothing will change – is already evident in the idea of such killings. Combined with the questionable dialogue in the final time loop and the mediocre acting, this all feels exploitative, an unwitting product of Hollywood’s history of fetishizing black trauma. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), historically, likes to reward films they perceive as demonstratively staged and thematically urgent. Two Distant Strangers meets both these criteria, but this material could have retained its rage without as much sensationalism.

My rating: 6/10

White Eye (2019, Israel)

Like Feeling Through, Tomer Shushan’s White Eye – the winner of the Narrative Short Film award at South by Southwest (SXSW) – was based on an actual encounter in its director’s life. Late at night in the streets of Tel Aviv, Omer (Daniel Gad) has spotted his stolen bicycle locked onto a rack. Omer lost his bike more than a month ago, has not filed a police report, and seeks to reclaim it as soon as possible. The police are of no help, and the people proximate to the intersection where these events take place are unwilling or hesitant to help. The now-owner of the bike is an Eritrean refugee named Yunes (Dawit Tekelaeb), and he insists to his manager (Reut Akkerman) and to Omer that he did not know that the bike was stolen property when he purchased it. And yet Omer’s tenacity and fit of passion spirals the situation beyond his or Yunes’ control.

White Eye is impressively staged, filmed in a single take – no cuts, no edits, all in real-time. To compare this film one last time to Feeling Through, White Eye accomplishes all it needs to say at a short film’s length. Some might claim Saar Mizrahi’s cinematography and 360º smooth-rotating is just another modern filmmaking gimmick; instead, it submerges the viewer into Omer’s mentality as he fights to retrieve his bike. The purposefully subjective framing questions the viewer on what our reactions might be in this situation, how deeply would we allow out outrage – and perhaps our ethnic/racial biases – to guide our actions. Shushan challenges the audience not to adopt Omer’s conclusions and emotions so readily, and he does a masterful job in appealing to and challenging one’s empathy as it becomes clear there will be no storybook ending.

My rating: 8/10

The Letter Room (2020)

By virtue of its central actor, The Letter Room is the most high-profile of this year’s nominees. Elvira Lind’s film is a dark comedy and its approach and tone are difficult to categorize. Richard (a mustached Oscar Isaac, who is Lind’s spouse) is a corrections officer who has requested a departmental transfer. With the transfer, he trades a more hands-on role for an office job. As the prison’s communications director, his responsibilities now entail filing through all of the prisoners’ incoming and outgoing mail – reading through all of the letters, reporting to his superiors for prison rules violations, censoring materials if necessary. At first, this role is as tedious as his previous position. But when Richard begins to read the histories of the prisoners and their loved ones, he becomes emotionally invested in a particular exchange between one death row inmate and his loved one (Alia Shawkat).

The Letter Room, despite a serviceable performance by Isaac as the unusual and stiff lead, has a milquetoast commentary about how the American criminal justice system imprisons more than just the inmates. These themes shambolically merge with Richard’s inherent loneliness, his inability to separate his own feelings from the voyeuristic work that his new position entails. This is a fellow looking for meaningful human connection, finding none, and attempting to understand something he has never found. The Letter Room curiously never questions the tricky ethics of Richard’s decision to intervene with the decisions made by Alia Shawkat’s character, and how the power disparities of his interactions color his life. The film’s conclusion is unearned, placing too neat a bow on a film that cannot balance its incongruous themes.

My rating: 6/10

^ All ratings based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

From previous years: 85th Academy Awards (2013), 87th (2015), 88th (2016), 89th (2017), 90th (2018), 91st (2019), and 92nd (2020).

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loveamongthesailors · 4 years

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Well, Pathologic 2, you’re One years old! It’s as good a moment as any to reflect upon and shatter the time-lines you’ve drawn out for us. OR; Reading His-Story Against the Grain

i saw this post about pathologics incongruous timeline stuff the other day and i ended up Getting Into It.. this piece draws on stuff from patho classic but its focused on patho 2, especially on a comparison ov the Diurnal and Nocturnal “endings,” and contains spoilers for both games, probably, i guess, on varying levels ov abstraction and explicitness. i/m going to attempt to stand on a street corner and point towards Pathologic’s overall construction/presentation ov “time” as the Now-time, Exploded time, Messianic Time.

from dear daniil dankovsky, on Angels; “An angel is a nightmare. Their purpose is to instill primal, oppressive horror. I think if angels existed, they’d resemble a divine pillar of light---from the heavens to the earth. Devoid of anything remotely human.” We commend this Puppet for his drama but would like to take a slightly different approach. Even awful dreams are good dreams, if you’re doing it right.

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.“

on the content ov patho and in a real Life context, im also going to be discussing genocide ov Indigenous people, colonial Violence, police brutality, and anti-Black violence in this piece. i’ll also be contextualizing some views on History through the writing ov Walter Benjamin, a German born Jew living in the early 20th century, and friend ov Bertolt Brecht, who you may be familiar with if yr into patho. In 1940, shortly after writing On the Concept of History (referenced here),while fleeing persecution for neutral grounds, he was trapped in catalonia by a franco government cancellation ov travel vistas and,under threat ov repatriation to nazis by the spanish police, commited suicide on the night ov september 26. His theses were passed on by surviving members ov his group who were granted “safe” passage after his suicide, being later taken under the care ov Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno. His Grave reads -in German and in Catalan, reproduced here in english-

"There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism"

(from section 7 ov On the Concept of History)

i will also be using sections from baedan, which has been dear to me over the years, on Benjamin’s Concepts. some songs will be dispersed throughout (featuring Laurie Anderson, Owen Pallett, and some good ol tmg), with relevant links beneath. you’ve heard that old Brecht aphorism about dark times, singing, whatever? i’m nearly sick to death ov it. these stories, in addition, will be based on a few things i know Myself. follow the threads as you see fit <3

Because History is Stories...That we half-remember... And most of them never even get written down. And so when they say things like "We're gonna do this by the book," You have to ask "What book?," Because it would make a big difference if it was Dostoyevsky or just, You know... Ivanhoe.

xxx

“Read what was never written,” runs a line in Hofmannsthal. The reader one should think of here is the true historian. ~ Walter Benjamin, omitted notes to the theses on history

//// //// //// ////

Isidor Burakh: All I wanted was for you to understand, not to follow any particular fate.

...

Isidor Burakh: The Town needs to move forward, but it doesn’t insist. Facing the Future is the the way of Love. Facing the Past is the way of Love. But the two are incompatible, and it broke my heart. //// //// //// ////

so,,, depending on who you ask within Pathologics narrative, the history ov the Town-on-Gorkhon stretches back to Time Immemorial, constitutes a few hundred years ov settlement, or only goes back about as far as You have been playing the game. You’ll hear conflicting narratives around just about everything in this Town. Simon Kain, hundred something years old, mystic, spiritual founder ov a several hundred year old settlement. an executed general’s vengeful daughter, Artemy and Rubins foggy backstories ov military service, what military?, what war? Who sent in the Military and Inquisition, how can We get at the Powers that Be? looking outside ov the narrative and towards history for these sorts ov questions will give us All and None ov the answers.

The Termitary (internment/interment/intermediate/immediate/intermittent) looms over the Home ov Isidor Burakh, Menkhu and sole Medical Practitioner ov the town(excepting disciples. consider the spread ov knowledge, what different Knowledges are at hand and how they perpetuate...we can see how Isidor himself looms from his grave Quite well!), colleague ov radical intellectuals from the Capital and serving with Simon in tandem with the Mistresses to hold the Town together by force. Everything is Happening at Once.

Look at What/Who is Moving this Story Forward. Different ruling families will give you again, different Numbers, different Stories. One can’t trust the Numbers, we say! and One can hardly trust the Stories either, mind you. This engenders an approach based on following Patterns, exploring Roots, pulling back the curtain to ascertain the shape ov things, reading the lines so to speak. one Bull or Several bulls? silly question. again, we’re trying to looking beyond the Numbers. consider Time as a Multiplicity. consider Rhythmic and Linear time, Time Stratified, Unending Time, Plague Time and Empty Time, Lived Time and Time un-Lived, if one pleases!

XVII

“Historicism rightly culminates in universal history. Materialistic historiography differs from it as to method more clearly than from any other kind. Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogoneous, empty time. Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out of the homogenous course of history—blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework. As a result of this method the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time canceled*; in the lifework, the era; and in the era, the entire course of history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.”

*The Hegelian term aufheben in its threefold meaning: to preserve, to elevate, to cancel.

Everything is happening at once, already, and, for the purposes ov Our story, A plague is on. (why is there a plague on? in this Specific Case, read: Specimen, there is a plague on because infection serves as a very useful allegorical device. haha. see also dominant theories ov infectivity in russian imperial medicine, policy, and social science) Crisis as Inflammation. Violence and Control intensified along multiple vectors. Mobs, Witch Burnings, The Quarantine, districts carved up and kept under surveillance, the Town Police, Arsonists, government or Otherwise, the Military, the Inquisition, Hangings in the square, tallies ov the Dead in the Termitary... Was any ov this new? did it Crystallize from thin air? here’s an aphorism: There’s Nothing New Under the Sun. what can we find beyond the Sun’s reaches? what has the Sun given us, and what has Earth? shall we keep them apart? whose bodies are restricted in their movement over the earth, and how severely are they restricted? who is targeted? who enforces the control? is this what Crisis looks like? when did the Crisis start?

“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger effects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.”

//// //// //// ////

But do not be scared Surely some disaster will descend and equalize us A crisis Will unify the godless and the fearless and the righteous

...

In a certain slant of light the feeling will hit me Like a man against the waves and a violent wind Waking up in a bloody morning With the warmth of his forgiveness around me The shared dream left me shaking The memory is threatening to capsize every ship upon the sea

xxx //// //// //// ////

Pathologic, having mapped out these lines, and being a concatenation ov narrative fiction that could not have existed without the precondition ov colonial expansion and the Extermination and Assimilation ov Indigenous populations and Life ways, can be can be unwound through a conventional historical approach by investigating various moments, epidemics, and movements in The Steppe (and all Land and Living Beings subsumed by Russia’s internal colonization) and looking for similarities, sources, influences, reflections, distortions... You’ll never find quite an exact parallel to the events ov pathologic, and you will find that the Trick that the devisers have given you in fact resides in laying out what can be gleaned from the Tangled view.

“…they make the work a process of learning or experimentation, but also something total every time, where the whole of chance is affirmed in each case, renewable every time,”

— Gilles Deleuze, Difference&Repetition

//// //// //// ////

“For Benjamin, the conclusion of the movement of history through time is not some inevitable utopia—capitalist, communist, or otherwise. Rather than viewing the progression of civilization as an accumulation of gains and reforms toward freedom and justice, history can be seen as the continuous defeat of the exploited by their oppressors; the intensifying alienation of beings and their re-construction into capital. History not only serves to justify today’s rulers, but also to encode our memory with a narrative that reads historical events as a necessary chain of events along the path toward some future revolution or techno-utopia. He describes this as “a view of history that puts its faith in the infinite extent of time and thus concerns itself only with the speed, or lack of it, with which people and epochs advance along the path of progress.”

//// //// //// ////

In your Twelve Days in the town as a Healer, what did you see? piles ov wreckage, debris, bodies stacked under streetlamps flickering in the night? a town spreading across a steppe? a Utopia growing through the Earth? do you think you saved any lives, and was any-body's life yours to save in the first place? a Plague moving through living organisms? a Plague moving through non-living organisms? did you observe any Organisms, living or otherwise, over the course ov the play? do you have Mirrors in your house? have you seen a still, clear, body ov water recently? what are the waterways where you live called, and have they been called anything else in the Past or Present? did you become the Haruspex, and following what paths does becoming-haruspex entail? are you winning, son?

When the hunger turns in on itself, it begins to devour its host Who do you turn to for help? Who do you love the most? When the word comes down the wire that they're looking To make an example of you Skin and bones around a campfire beneath the stars No good end in view I dance with the ones that brought me I dance with the ones that brought me here

xxx

did you observe a Fever? can you feel a Fever? can you Imagine a great crack ov lightning striking across the Steppe, illuminating in raw detail the beauty and horror ov all that you have experienced? how would it smell afterwards? can you smell the Twyre on the air? is Twyre even a real thing? what may influence your imaginary ov its scent? Feel small, dirty hands reaching out for beetles, marbles, raisins, souls within nuts and names without people. Living on pemmican, Living on military rations. razors, fish-hooks, scalpels and syringes passing through the hands ov children as well. noticing the flows present in everything, spots where they are arrested, and the intensities they assume. we could run through the Game and Count up the Number ov Clocks present, and we could also look at how many hours we have Clocked in our Playtime, and the date ov this Play’s Production. did the Kains succeed in their mission to Produce Time? was this the Kain’s mission Alone? how is your mental Clock? We got the Body Count at the end of the day, and commentary too. cant beat that courtesy, *hem hem* but again, looking beyond the Numbers. how many Bulls did you see? when is a question also a trap?

XVIII

“‘In relation to the history of organic life on earth,’ writes a modern biologist, ‘the paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiens constitute something like two seconds at the close of a twenty-four-hour day. On this scale, the history of civilized mankind would fill one-fifth of the last second of the last hour.’ The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.”

what are the Consequences ov inserting Living Beings into a Linear Framework? where did Architecture come from? how was this Story constructed? What do you remember about the Town?

We can take the Diurnal “ending” as a fairly straightforward allegorical Byway for the Forces ov Progress. Boundaries are set, You are not the Town, the Town is your Soul-and-a-half.( wikihow to not be a cartesian dualist, consider also Spinoza if laying bare the path ov immanence was ov interest to you) What lays beneath the Sunlight? what still lays beneath the Earth? What time is it? things are weirdly cozy, in some ways. mimesis, echoes, ghosts. Are their voices still heard? grace tallies up the bodies. are You ready to Leave Artemy here? is this a comfortable future for you to imagine? how are you with uncertainty? Does the costume itch? do you ache at the seams, or are your joints sore from all the strings pulling at them? got arthritis? i’ve used stinging nettle. can a Story devour a human being? why would something with that power stop at One?

What Do You Think Will Happen Now?

One can also make the Choice to step into the Darkness. One with many names has returned to the Earth,(”One” ov many False Deaths and Smart Tricks too. love ya girl <3)... taya as mistress-ov-bulls, grace as mistress-ov-dead, changeling as mistress-ov-absolutley-whatever. Mistresses, Mist, Tresses, Bulls, Brides, Worms, Plague...the Theme/s to note here is/are Multiplicity. Is there a difference between imagining the future and the past? Where are you? Where did You come from? the Nocturnal ending already asks enough questions to make me quite happy. sitting next to the Girls now, looking out at the New Sky. same as the old sky, Full ov Magic. if we take Death ov the Author into account, we could say that the Polyhedron belongs to the Dead in more ways than one. We can see your house from here! i wouldn’t say we’ve even gotten to the Prophet yet. When did our Hero leave us? did We have any use for Heroism? the Steppe is in the Stone Yard now. The World is returning to Life. what does it mean for me?

how many angels can dance on the head ov a pin?

how many worm brides can dance in the cathedral?

....“The way in which the dead are present is as the “caress” of a “breath of… air,” as an “echo,” or as a sister who one no longer recognizes. In other words, the past is present and everywhere, touching us every moment and “in the voices we hear,” but only suggestively, in and in spite of our own inability to recognize it. But the possibility for redemption, the weak messianic power, lies in the chance that we might.

In the intimate, ever-present opportunity he describes there is a tremendous deal at stake. For, he writes in the fourth thesis, the “refined and spiritual things” that live in the class struggle “as confidence, courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude, and have effects that reach far back into the past… constantly call into question every victory, past and present, of the rulers.”

Later, turning to the historians he criticizes as tools of the ruling classes, Benjamin makes it clear in his seventh thesis that their resurrection of the past is an entirely different kind. The nature of the sadness—rooted in an indolence of heart—that Flaubert described feeling in his historical study of Carthage is clearer, Benjamin says, when we remember that the historian’s empathy is always with the victor, and thus with the present rulers. It is the kind of sadness, then, that gathers to the loyal servant or minion in knowing that it is being used for its ruler’s purposes”

“Figured another way, the task of interruption requires us to locate the clocktower that we could fire upon to stop the day. Homogenous time no longer flows through the monolithic machines in the city centers. Now, a range of technological advancements have diffused and integrated the machinery of time into our very thoughts and rhythms. Everywhere we go, we are surrounded by and permeated with devices which serve to manage the regime of time. Where once a singular apparatus mediated our relationship to time, its dictatorship is now imposed by an innumerable array. A desire for interruption must now reckon with the countless apparatuses that segment our memory and integrate our very being into capitalist time. But rather than waste time lashing out against all these clocks one after another, let us cut through to what underlies them.

History’s servants promise us a shining future. Whether by means of technological innovation, hard work and sacrifice, or the Revolution, we are assured of a heaven-on-earth of light and crystal. But all of these glimmering apparatuses can only serve to adorn the monumental pile of wreckage in which we live. All around us, the carnage and corpses of our ancestors form the architecture of our daily existence. Not only the walls and freeways and shopping centers, but the smart phones, pornography, surveillance and entertainment systems—all monuments to the same enemy that has never ceased to be victorious. Capital, Leviathan, civilization, society: so many names for the process which turns life into an assemblage of death, which would integrate us as machines into a grander machinery. Futurity is the logic that drives this regime of subjection and assimilation, but is also the science which desecrates our memory of those who also struggled; the treachery which turns their struggles into so many more ideological cadavers. Where living beings once struggled to be free from futurity’s domination of their lives, we are told that they dutifully sacrificed themselves for society’s future. We too are called upon to procreate and raise up children who might one day live better lives than we. But just as we were born into the halls of the dead, so too would our children be the stillborn janitors of these halls, breathing circuits embedded in a massive cybernetic cadaver. Ghosts call out to us: they ask that we tear apart the sutures of this Frankenstein’s monster which they’ve come to constitute. They call on us to cremate their remains and bury the ashes, to end the reign of the dead over the living.”

//// //// //// ////

"I am not afraid," ze said "Of the non-believer within me Nor delight at the pain of my enemies Nor tears for any friends I have lost" ...

I’ll never have any children I’d bear them and eat them, my children

I’m gonna change my body In the light and the shadow of suspicion I am no longer afraid The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us My salvation is found in discipline, in discipline

xxxx

//// //// //// ////

“It is apparent from the foregoing that all accumulation is cruel; all renunciation of the present for the sake of the future is cruel.”

— Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume III

//// //// //// ////

“The Haruspex is blood and organs... ...The Haruspex’s overarching idea is the interconnectedness of everything and restoring the connections... ...The Haruspex hears (rhythms)... ...The Haruspex: water + forward vector. „ — [from the game’s design documents]

“ The Haruspex, a butcher, a killer, one could even say a murderous psychopath, gets the warmest character arc. It’s about love. „ — [from the game’s design documents]

//// //// //// ////

Infinity Mirrored Room—All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins -

Yayoi Kusama, 2016

//// //// //// ////

A long “personal” anecdote: there’s music on the air and i hear a familiar buzzing. it isn’t twyre growing, nor it is the hum ov flies. we Keep bees here, to get honey. I should try to remember to bring some to my wife tomorrow, though making the journey on its own is a bit daunting these days. 1 hive, 2 hives, the bees build and swarm and our Keeper rearranges the frames, adds in new boxes, tries to give them enough space that they'll stay within our domain. I think about the complex roles being fulfilled within the hive, and how any egg can grow into a so called “Queen” if need be. These Hives haven’t always held the same populations, sometimes a swarm will depart and won’t be Recovered. Look around the neighborhood, find the buzzing tree, you may be able to get them back yet but... have you tried getting a swarm ov bees into a box before? good luck finding the queen! (hoping i don’t have to do this but a bit excited by the prospect at the same time.)

Our honey bees didn't originate from this region, i see them in the “yard” alongside native bees (one tries to plant for Everybody) but obviously, Our Hives are here so i’ll always see more ov the honeybees as long as they’re occupying them. Native bees to our Bioregion are leading very different lifestyles. Different threats, dynamics, and places in the ecosystem as well. Bumblebees are the most Beloved. Native Bees here- vital pollinators, ground and stem burrowers, more solitary souls than most, but are any ov us really alone? what are their favorite flowers?

I think about Bees a lot now. I’m standing here thinking about Bees, and where I’m standing is in between the entrance ov the Hive and their favorite Ceanothus (see also soap brush, red root, buckbrush, see medicinal uses...). Very precious grounds to these Bees, not somewhere where I’m welcome. I Haven’t always known as much about bees. I get stung right inbetween my pinky and index fingers, on the palm ov my hand. yeowch! Bad luck, but i could still use a shovel the next day. This was an anecdote about Paying Attention to Your Surroundings.

The Ceanothus isn’t flowering anymore, and hasn't been for a few “weeks” (i think?) The Bees have other concerns now. In fact, it was heavily damaged in a snow storm a couple years back, and half ov its branches collapsed under the weight ov the ice. Its a bit ov a twisted thing now, what remains still flowers but what remains is not so much. At some point in the future upon yr reading ov this, it will have been cut down and possibly dug out ov the earth. I wouldn't be surprised if a few more, smaller, iterations made their way to this space in remembrance/ tribute. The branches lost in it’s first wounding are still stacked up nearby, all sorts ov creatures love that stuff. Dead trees in the back that Birds still frequent stay for the birds. We never get that many plums because we’re not smart or quick enough, or as willing to take one great bite ov a fruit and let the rest fall to the soil. I didn’t really get stung by a Bee in a situation exactly like what i described up there, it’s drawing on a few different times that sort ov thing happened. I hope you’ll forgive me for my obscurantist tendencies.

Looking past the Hives and onto the Streets, I am a White Settler(family fled the reach ov the Soviet Union to integrate into America, family fled family to a different part ov land under the Reaches ov said “America”,cave fled family but stuck with the Land, recurring patterns, what would my views be if i had grown up in Czechoslovakia? geography, chronology, trick questions) living in a segment ov Town that, until 1968, was a legally a Sundown Town, see Racial Restrictive Covenants. I still don’t see than many Black ppl around my neighborhood. I do see grocery store parking lots swarming with cop cars, more cops than i can Count, at least two k9 units, all to pursue One Black Body through the rainy night, My own Body lets me move through the world without these Forces being brought upon me in this intensity, lets me Watch.

Certain alignments ov directions ov Struggle have brought me into the position ov the Other at the end ov the cudgel, a body in a crowd under the looming eye and long barrel ov the sniper, the surveillance camera. Visibility is a Trap. Any ability i have to Get Off The Hook is based not on Luck or Fate, but due to the way the color ov my skin is reflected in the eyes ov Those in Power. what can i do from inside This Skin, and what can i do with the veil ov a mask obliterating my “selfhood”? How are we to heal? If you didnt read this into my Musical choices already- im a bit ov a flaming/smoldering queer. sitting in the planned parenthood lobby, one among many, gripped by recollections ov the devastating history ov HIV/AIDS and a cluster ov other Crises, memories ov beloved souls lost to policies and hegemony ov extermination and neglect. blood in vials, piss in jars. how does the time spent waiting for results feel?(how long? weeks months?)

I have more free condoms on hand than i’ll ever get through. A veritable theoretical eternity ov Safer Sex. There are Reasons why Queer Institutions give access to free condoms. But i’ve gotten them from some delightful Quakers as well. on another squeamish, libidinal subject, administering self injections isnt so daunting when you’ve seen it done a Million times before. It’s like watching somebody sneeze, or pinching yourself. HRT as potions, mechanical intrusion to will a slow transformation. getting into the fat is easy, some other avenues less so. “This requires the Gentle Hand of a Surgeon, step aside!” i know a lot about what Doctors Don’t Know. (veins and arteries as streets- easy. nerves as streets - you hear this a bit less. streets as eyes, the opening ov your mouth with a railroad track running down it, eyes as streets, whose streets? fuck streets! tear up the concrete)

The aforementioned streets are closed to Traffic due to the Quarantine, and i hear folks and families from the neighborhood walking/hoverboarding/skateboarding/biking down the street,(mostly the new work from home yuppie class and their spawn respectively, but there's some real ones around here too. all ages. have yet to live anywhere that people don't ask me for cigarettes) chattering away, masks or no masks. If i take a long walk down past the cemetery, I’ll find myself passing by a Native American Youth Home, created to provide support for a population that is currently disproportionately represented in this Town’s already Massive Homeless population. (their covid19 resources and donation info) Even with the Plague on, New Condos are built and Old Condos stay empty. Who do the bones in the soil beneath my feet belong to? When did all ov this Start, and how Long will it go on? why does the Map look the way it does? I would rather listen carefully than dig. This Story is not the only Story, nor should any be.

do i remember how the damp asphalt smells Here after Lightning Strikes? do i remember the feeling ov my body thrown to the concrete and the chaos and disorientation ov Crowds mobbing over me, slick with rain and sweat? who saw, and how many hands reached out to lift me up, who saved who? is that my blood trickling down the sidewalk? Flashbangs and Flashes ov Lightning, take yr pick. you can get similar experiential learning in the moshpit. this is an anecdote about Paying Attention to Your Surroundings.

i’ll try to bring us nearer to the point with baedan’s conclusion, a reflection on the First thesis from On the Concept of History. I will leave it up to You to investigate the original text if you are so Inclined.

//// //// //// ////

“For every pretty theory that presents itself, study it only in the way that a cat studies its prey: for the enjoyment of the hunt, to be sure, but also so as to seize upon whatever unique revolutionary chance may appear as in a flash of lightning. So that when that narrow gate opens, you pounce without a moment’s hesitation. In the meantime, by all means, enjoy the diversion of the theory’s lines and moves, but if you are to avoid becoming its tool you must ever have in mind to shatter the system of mirrors and confront the dwarf that has been pulling the strings all along. Faced with this ugly little creature behind all the lines of play you’ve enjoyed and suffered, able at last to read the lines of its face and the dark of its eyes, as time stands still and the entirety of the past falls to you, you will have to make a deeply ethical decision that nothing in all the games before could prepare you for. The only decision that truly matters.”

//// //// //// ////

Artemy Burakh: Any Choice is Right as long as it’s Willed.

//// //// /// ////

Hansel and Gretel are alive and well And they're living in Berlin She is a cocktail waitress He had a part in a Fassbinder film And they sit around at night now Drinking schnapps and gin And she says: Hansel, you're really bringing me down And he says: Gretel, you can really be a bitch He says: I've wasted my life on our stupid legend When my one and only love Was the wicked witch

She said: what is history? And he said: history is an angel being blown backwards into the future He said: history is a pile of debris And the angel wants to go back and fix things To repair the things that have been broken But there is a storm blowing from paradise And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future And this storm, this storm is called progress

xxx

TLDR; pathologics shitty timeline is cool because it fosters a metagame where the imperative is to make history explode in real life.

specific thanx to: every1 included above, my local subversive lit dealers, Whoever gave the talk last ABF about Queer Wanderings in the anti-nazi Underworld, have not stopped carrying those stories with me since. thanks to the Dear Listener, thanks 2 my wife for pragmatic and personal encouragements <3

a personal acknowledgement to the lives and legacies ov the dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) people, past and present, First People ov the Land i currently Occupy, alongside the entire City ov so-called “Seattle.”

#pathologic #pathologic 2 #pathologic 2 spoilers #long post /#patho tag

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your-turn-to-role · 4 years

Text

new opinions of the cerberus assembly (etgw spoilers!!)

somewhat inspired by the conversations the other day, bc it’s reminded me i have a lot to say about these motherfuckers

let’s start with the obvious:

Master Trent Ikithon, Archmage of Civil Influence (Chaotic Evil Human)

Book Text: [Trent is respected as the acclaimed Propagandist of the empire and the third oldest member of the assembly. Once an instructor at the Soltryce Academy, he only returns every few years to collect young students for his experiments in the mental conditioning that he calls “awakening.” Many of these students go mad and are locked away, but those who endure become zealots for the assembly and join the Volstrucker, an elite group of arcane thugs commonly known as Scourgers, who perform the assembly’s dirtiest work under Trent’s direction.]

Most of this we knew. I hate this guy. Though, as a point of interest - Caleb’s for sure not the first person this has happened to. They account for a certain number of aspiring Volstrucker never completing the program, Caleb was just another statistic. Which means somewhere in Vergessen is a lot of other people with the same backstory who never managed to escape. That’s, something worth looking into, maybe.

Martinet Ludinus Da’leth, Archmage of Domestic Protections (Lawful Evil Elf)

[Ludinus is the oldest and only original member of the assembly, as well as the master of warfare and conflict. Charged with overhauling the military structure of the Dwendalian Empire, Ludinus directed the construction of the garrisons on the Xhorhasian border and often oversees their maintenance. He was one of the mages who survived the destruction of Molaesmyr and fled to Bysaes Tyl, but he saw the opportunity to achieve greatness within the empire and left his culture behind to continue his arcane pursuits. Wise, if emotionless, he bears a deep hatred for the Kryn Dynasty and spares no effort gathering information on their weaknesses and secrets. Ludinus spends most of his time developing arcane weapons of war and shoring up the military might of the empire, while subtly challenging the leadership of Crown Marshal Damurag.]

This guy’s old. That's the scariest thing about him really. Like, this guy's been in the empire since it was half its current size. This guy saw the destruction of Molaesmyr, and knew many of its residents. But he also rejected that society, purely for his own ends. He's at least 400 years old, more likely at least 500, and for the past 3-4 centuries has been focusing entirely on magic and warfare. That's a long time to hone those skills. Ludinus may say it's hard to compare power in the Assembly, but if I had to pick one of them for an end game boss, it would be him, no question. Trent's more of a wild card, sure, but he's only like 60, 70 years old. He's a baby compared to Da'leth. Keep an eye on this dude, and under no circumstances trust him.

Lady Vess de Rogna, Archmage of Antiquity (Neutral Evil Half-Elf)

[A public recluse for most of her life, Vess is both a brilliant mage and dedicated historian. She assumed this post after replacing her criminal predecessor, Lady Delilah Briarwood. As an instructor at the Soltryce Academy for over two decades, Vess has studied and unraveled a number of historical mysteries and pre-Calamity riddles — and hoarded some of the spoils for herself. Always eager to pursue forgotten lore and artifacts of eons past, Vess has been known to quietly vanish to Xhorhas for weeks at a time, returning with fewer guards and more uncovered secrets.]

Canon confirmation that this is who took over from Delilah Briarwood, and from what we’ve seen, they’re rather similar people. They're both scientists and historians, ruthlessly efficient, far more concerned with what they can learn and what they can do than what's good or safe for those around them. Liable to be found breaking the law in the name of science and progress. At least Vess has lasted longer than her predecessor.

Headmaster Oremid Hass, Archmage of Cultivation (Lawful Neutral Earth Genasi)

[The current headmaster of the Hall of Erudition in Zadash, Oremid is tasked with watching and grooming the next generation of mages and arcane specialists outside Rexxentrum. While he himself is a gentle soul who adores animals, he puts on the façade of a strict man with no sense of humor, which is further enhanced by the elemental influence of his earth genasi blood. He teaches students that failure is not an option, and that emotion is a barrier to one’s true ability. Equally feared, respected, and privately loathed by the students (and some instructors), Oremid personally dismisses those who break under his school’s curriculum and heaps joyous praise on those who endure their training.]

So, I've had teachers like this. And they stick in your mind, because, even a decade later, I still have a hard time getting over their instilled fear of failure. I can believe that, in general terms, Oremid's not a terrible person. I think he looks the other way on a lot of things, which precludes him from ever qualifying as good in my books, but he hasn't committed any major acts of torture or murder himself. Still though. You don't teach like that if you view your students as people. You teach like that if you view your students as potential assets. So like.... not as bad as some of his colleagues. Potentially someone they could work with if they had to. But still probably someone to stay away from.

Headmaster Zivan Margolin, Archmage of Conscription (Lawful Neutral Human)

[Zivan Margolin inherited the position of headmaster from his father, the late Jorma Margolin. Zivan has been the headmaster of the Soltryce Academy in Rexxentrum for nearly twenty years. Calm, patient, and quietly imposing, Zivan walks the halls of the Academy with a keen eye for talent. He is in charge of the curriculum and also watches for any latent powers that may be worth grooming as future allies of the assembly, dangers to be monitored, or prospective minds for Ikithon to conscribe into the Volstrucker. Zivan has rarely had the opportunity to demonstrate his full power, for he is typically busied with keeping the peace between the feuding members of the assembly. Those who have witnessed his true might, however, now know that his words are backed by some of the most powerful magics within the Cerberus Assembly.]

I think @lostsometime said it best, having the archmage of conscription be in charge of your elite magic school really sums up everything wrong with the empire. Like, if that's out in the open, your problems are unfixable. Get a new government. Jeez.

Master Doolan Tversky, Archmage of Dysology (Chaotic Neutral Gnome)

[The second-oldest member of the assembly, Doolan is in charge of the study and understanding of abnormal creatures and deviants of arcane creation that might threaten the empire’s way of life. She is an absentminded yet brilliant gnome who is obsessed with all beasts, aberrations, and creatures of legend. Doolan imports creatures from around the world to study, disassemble, and use in her attempts to revolutionize magical practices. She resents the Library of the Cobalt Soul, as her reputation has caused them to bar her from their facilities. She wishes to catalog the unstudied horrors of Xhorhas and has covertly obtained the services of the Myriad to retrieve new specimens.]

Now, Doolan is fascinating to me, not because I think she's a good person, but because she's just so delightfully weird. She's probably done some evil as fuck shit but she's also a gremlin of a gnome who loves weird fucked up arcane experiments and magical meteors that created eldritch ducks and all sorts of bizarre things like that. I'd love to see more of her, because there's always room in fantasy stories for more weird morally ambiguous old ladies who are banned from libraries on the grounds of "is about as likely to eat the books as she is to read them" and "last time we let her in here she somehow combined five forbidden rituals and created a new species of demon that haunts the halls of the rexxentrum archive spreading toxic slime everywhere and we can't figure out what it wants or how to make it go away".

Lord Athesias Uludan, Archmage of Diplomatic Union (Neutral Good Human)

[Athesias’s charm and bombastic personality serve him well as a diplomat. His duty is to foster a positive relationship with people of power both within and beyond the borders of the empire. He was originally one of the most effective instructors at the Soltryce Academy, but his penchant for spectacle and his rampant narcissism made him a difficult ally to trust with state secrets. When the office of Diplomatic Union opened, he was quickly and quietly reassigned. Athesias finds great pleasure in ruining or usurping the plans of his counterpart in the Crown’s employ, Emissary Lord Zeddan Graf.]

We’ve talked a bit about Uludan already - the Gilderoy Lockhart of the group for sure. Though I’m sure he has layers to him, so I’d be interested to find out what exactly they are.

And, saving the most interesting for last,

Baroness Jenna Iresor, Archmage of Industry (True Neutral Doppelganger)

[One of the younger members of the assembly, Jenna is known for her business acumen and her extravagant lifestyle. By hiding her nature as a doppelganger and using memory-altering magics at a young age to fabricate a false past, Jenna constructed her human persona from the ground up, leveraging her powers of deception to essentially write herself into history as a Clovis Concord expatriate. She helps oversee central guild business in Rexxentrum under Guildmaster Kai Arness, and helps Exchequer Aethia Drooze organize the collection of tithes through starostas across the empire.]

I am, insanely curious about how a doppelganger ended up in the Cerberus Assembly. She’s definitely ambitious for sure, doppelgangers already have a fair bit of innate magic - they’re natural shapeshifters and have a fair amount of psychic powers (like reading minds of anyone who happens to be near them), but to get here she had to be extremely committed. Which means she probably has plans for this position, or had plans that she’s already put into motion. Very interested what those are, especially for the archmage of industry.

#cr2 #cr spoilers #explorer's guide to wildemount #cerberus assembly #trent ikithon #ludinus da'leth #vess derogna #oremid hass #jenna iresor #athesias uludan #doolan tversky #zivan margolin #cr thoughts #text #meta

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hedwigstalons · 4 years

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High Expectations - ch2

Ok, I’m already regretting setting myself the art challenge. It’s hard. Huge kudos to all you artists out there. Still, the clue for me should have been in the word ‘challenge’. No, I don’t know why Alan’s hand is a different colour to the rest of him and shading features is pretty much impossible. Maybe by the end of the fic I’ll have got the hang of it. I might have to pick and easier idea for the next chapter

Huge thanks to @willow-salix for all the read throughs and pointers.

Earlier parts: One

Chapter Two

The early light of dawn was just visible around the curtain edges in the lounge. The reflected light off the large screen projection illuminated the figures staring avidly at the screen with a soft blue glow. The occasion had been deemed worthy of setting up the large cinematic screen meaning the whole glittering spectacle filled nearly a whole wall of the generously proportioned room.

Jeff sat back in an aged leather armchair shipped specially from Kansas. The form of it had moulded to his body by the passage of many years although he rarely had time to relax in it now. Across the room Virgil and John, both on vacation from university, book-ended the sofa; a sleek designer affair that manged to combine both style and comfort. Both looked sleepy and a little unfocussed. Virgil had never been a fan of early mornings and it was entirely possible that John hadn’t actually made it to bed yet if he had spent the night engrossed in the stars. His youngest son, still a child and growing into his talents, sat on the floor leaning back against the sofa rather than sitting on the chair itself. In Alan’s hands was a cup of popcorn chosen especially for the cinematic treat. He sat there in rapt awe, barely blinking as he popped piece after piece of white fluff into his mouth. Jeff nursed his own mug of inky black coffee. The aroma of the beans filling the space around him with a rich warmth.

At last the moment they had been waiting for arrived. Team USA marched into shot; processing around a stadium half a world and many time zones away. Ranks of the chosen few strode across the screen in all their athletic glory. The athletes were bedecked in pristine white trousers and shirts topped with navy blue blazers. Red trim to the lapels completed the patriotic ensemble. The young men and women chosen to represent their country trailed behind the flag bearer, their lines arranged with military precision. Jeff rather thought the effect was spoiled by the individuals walking out of step with each other and waving to the crowd in the surrounding stadium. It jarred with his Air Force history which much preferred the uniformity of troops marching smartly in time.

A squeal broke through his internal criticism of the scene.

“There he is! There he is!”

Alan’s voice, still high pitched in its youth, filled the space with an exuberant joy. The cup of popcorn was tilting dangerously towards the floor as the youngest of five spotted his next in line.

The fourth Tracy son crossed the screen and disappeared out of sight in a matter of seconds and Jeff was forced to pause, rewind and replay the footage several times before Alan had got his fill of the sight.

Gordon looked happy. Happier than he had done for weeks. Happy didn’t do justice to the beaming, grinning individual with sandy blonde hair slightly tinted by chlorine who strode between his fellow countrymen and women. He seemed to bounce along, riding the waves of the atmosphere that swirled around the stadium.

Jeff had seen little of his second youngest son lately despite technically living in the same house. Both had demanding schedules; one filled with work and business meetings, the other filled with school and pool training. The moment school had finished Gordon had been whisked away to the pre-games training camp, missing both his high school graduation ceremony and the senior prom. The young man on the screen was almost a stranger and definitely an enigma to him.

Jeff’s eldest three sons were of a mind-set he could understand. They were studious, clever, indeed highly gifted in their chosen fields. He had been immensely proud when Scott had been accepted to Yale and then followed him down his own career path into the Air Force. The young man was making quite a name for himself in the service if the regular updates sent through by old colleagues were to be believed; he had already been promoted to First Lieutenant and it looked like he would soon be a Captain. Virgil excelled in engineering but also retained a quiet compassion that allowed him to see the world as more than just a set of variables and constants to be manipulated. John had followed him to the stars and Jeff had no doubt that his quietest son could follow him out of Earth’s atmosphere and beyond just a theoretical study of space travel if he so desired.

Gordon was evidently gifted too but in a direction he couldn’t quite comprehend. Physical ability was a facet he appreciated and even John had submitted to his requirement for regular structured exercise. But a strong body needed to be a vessel for a keen mind and Gordon just hadn’t shown any particular leanings towards an academic field.

He was as proud as any father could be that a son of his had reached the Olympics and at such a young age but he still worried for his son’s future prospects.

A sigh from the floor broke through his contemplations.

“I wish we could have been there for the opening ceremony.”

“Now Alan, we’ve been through this. Gordon’s heats don’t start for another week. I’ve got us tickets to his events and we will be there to see him compete in person but I just cannot spare the time to take you out there for the whole duration of the Games.”

“But Virgil could have taken me. Or John.” The voice was a petulant whine now.

“Virgil and John might be on summer break but they both still have work to do. The last thing either of them need is to be responsible for you at the biggest international sporting event in the world. Watching sport has never been your thing before. It’s normally hard enough to prise you away from those video games you play.”

Both Virgil and John looked infinitely relieved that neither of them was expected to be responsible for an excitable young teenager in a foreign country. It was bad enough taking him bowling or to the cinema. Alan seemed to be well and truly gripped by Olympic fever, hence them all watching the live coverage of the opening ceremony at some hideous time of the morning rather than watching a recording at a more socially acceptable hour. It seemed to mean so much to their youngest brother to get the chance to watch out for Gordon live that they hadn’t had the heart to refuse. It was just as well Gordon had had his few seconds of glory on screen otherwise Alan would have been beyond devastated not to have seen him.

“But it’s the Olympics. And it’s Gordon.” As if this explained everything.

“And you will get to see Gordon compete in every race he is in when we fly out next week. Even Scott has managed to arrange some leave so he can join us. Gordon will be well supported.”

Alan huffed slightly in response but went back to staring at the screen, the popcorn once again being shovelled in as figures from all nations strode across in a seemingly never ending stream of competitors.

Once it became clear that Team USA would not be making another appearance Virgil and John sloped off. Virgil to reclaim his bed, John to find his for the first time that sleep cycle having reverted to a near nocturnal pattern without classes to drag him away from his beloved stars. Both had willingly joined the spectators in the lounge but the time difference left a lot to be desired and both were exhausted after a long and difficult semester. Jeff followed after but for him the destination was to work rather than bed. Alan was soon left to watch the conclusion of the carefully choreographed spectacle alone.

xoxoxox

Virgil padded towards the kitchen, he socks making no sound on the hardwood floor. He could almost forget that there was anyone else in the apartment. He had barely seen his brothers all day and Jeff was still at the office. John had spent much of the day sleeping after grumbling that the city skies really hadn’t been worth staying up for. He assumed Alan was engrossing in another gaming session. Part of him wondered if he ought to have a word with their dad; his youngest brother seemed to spend an unhealthy amount of time hooked up to a console.

He paused at Alan’s door, taking a moment to take in the view through the crack. Rather than being strapped into a VR headset as expected, Alan was instead sprawled on his bed. A screen was propped up on his knees. The murmured one sided conversation suggested a video call rather than another game. He wasn’t normally one to eavesdrop but curiosity overcame Virgil as he wondered who on earth Alan could be talking to. He didn’t talk about any particular school friends and beyond Grandma they had no family to speak of. He stayed to one side of the doorway out of sight and listened. If he stood absolutely still he could just about pick up the other voice on the line.

“The stadium looked huge. What was it like? Did you get some photos for me?”

“Yeah, it’s massive. Kinda makes be glad I’m not in the track and field events. No photos though, we couldn’t take cameras in to the opening ceremony. We didn’t even get to see the show afterwards, just lots of waiting around to go in then straight back to the Village after. You probably saw more than I did.”

Gordon then. He figured it must already be the next morning for their absent athlete.

“Aww. We saw you, y’know. Who was the cute blonde you were next to?”

Virgil smirked. For all he might bounce like an excited puppy Alan was evidently growing up and the hormones were kicking up.

“Which one? Amber the high jumper or Brad the hockey player?”

“Amber, I’ll leave Brad to you. Think you can introduce me when we’re over there?”

“No chance. Firstly, she already has a long term boyfriend. And secondly, you’re about five years too young for that sort of stuff.”

“Hey, I’m not that young. Not that you’d think it the way things go round here. There’s something going on and Dad won’t tell me about it. Since John and Virgil got back Dad keeps having meetings with them in the study.”

“Rather them than me. You know as well as I do the study only means bad news.”

“I don’t think so. And since when has John ever been chewed out over anything. It’s not like he ever missed curfew or turned in a bad report card. I don’t know what’s going on but this place is full of secrets. They all just treat me as a kid though, like I wouldn’t understand.”

“Try not to worry about it Al. Why don’t you get John to help you finish that sim you were coding?”

“Maybe. He just seems so busy though.”

“Look, I’ve got to go, I’ve got training soon. I’ll try and call same time tomorrow if that works for you.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t forget to eat your vegetables and clean your teeth.”

“Yes Mom. Now don’t you need to go put some water wings on.”

“Cheeky brat. Speak to you tomorrow. Bye.”

“Bye Gordo.”

Virgil watched as the screen was put to one side, the smile sliding off of Alan’s face, before continued his journey to the kitchen to grab a drink. That brief conversation with Gordon was more words than he had heard out of his youngest sibling in one go since he had arrived back home. He had put it down to sullen teenage moods but evidently Alan could be quite chatty when he wanted to.

Alan was clearly missing Gordon. The youngest two had always been close. Despite Gordon technically being closer in age to John than Alan the sibling friendship pairings hadn’t worked out that way. Virgil realised how little he knew about the youngest pair beyond Gordon’s swimming. Since when had Alan been able to code simulations? And what sort of simulations?

He shrugged it off as a conundrum for another day. They would be flying out to the Olympics in just a few days and he wanted to get a project plan sent off to his supervisor before that happened. The meetings with Jeff, which Alan had evidently picked up on, had changed the direction of his post-grad project and he wanted to get the revisions in before travelling. Bonding time could happen once the work was completed.

#thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #high expectations #my art #Olympics #Gordon Tracy #Jeff Tracy

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bravadoseries · 4 years

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Not really stars and stripes related but who would you fancast for the Avengers?

oooh this was fun! thank you! sorry my reasons r so nerdy lmfao . the american studies major really jumped out

tony: michael b jordan; i think if tony had been Black it would’ve been more interesting for two reasons which is 1) would have granted representation to Black engineers thru tony and howard bc Black people’s inventions were often overlooked or straight up Stolen for much of american history and 2) i think it magnifies a lot of the tension tony eventually has with the us government because of how direct the impact of state violence has been on Black communities

steve: jin ha; the idea of Asian captain america fascinates me because the us government used military service as a trade-off for citizenship for a lot of ethnic minorities, and a propagandized Asian man attempting to appeal to other Asian Americans/minority Americans before realizing how fucked up the whole thing is and going into the fight himself adds depth beyond U.S. good guys Germany bad guys. like germany was the bad guys obviously but on the u.s. side i think it was a lot more complex

thor: to be honest i like hemsworth but i think jason mamoa would also really slap? especially if taika had directed all the thor movies because ragnarok was so distinctly indigenous and if thor had been played by an indigenous actor i think it would have been even more impactful

natasha: devon aoki . thanks so much . i like devon for 2 reasons 1) reparations against scarlett johannson and 2) devon isn’t chinese but exploring the interactions between the ussr and various asian countries would b so cool .... the idea of the second world .... i think that would hit

clint: joel mchale ?? maybe then he would have had some personality. god bless also fuck jeremy renner on a really real level

bruce: oscar isaac; i think he has the same sort of charm that makes ruffalo’s portrayal not boring the way edward norton’s was boring. obviously i like ruffalo for bruce lmao but i think oscar isaac has the ability to do well both as bruce and the hulk ??? also generally yeah . i get hot professor vibes and i’m not afraid to admit it.

bucky: rami malek; i just think he has the cheekbones for it

peter parker: keiynan lonsdale; i actually read a long hc a while ago about how peter parker’s story could have easily been not so boring and also much more relevant if the origins had been as a result of uncle ben being wrongfully killed by the nypd; it would emphasize the importance in peter’s eyes of justice being delivered outside of the police and why justice and policing are not the same thing

wanda: alba flores; alba’s actually romani so then the casting would be more ethnically correct; she isn’t jewish and the maximoffs are supposed to be mixed romani/jewish so that is also important to mention, but i could not find any faceclaims

pietro: kendji girac, for the same reason lol. UPDATE: okay so @daaeleira reminded me that the maximoffs are romani and jewish which reminded me of a conversation we had a few years ago; aaron taylor johnson is jewish and i know this is not how twins work but if he was pietro he also is at least representing that part of their background; it’s not ideal but it’s more accurate

carol danvers: kelly marie tran; i think a vietnamese carol danvers would have made the refugee plotline a lot more poignant and powerful, esp. if she had started off as a more conservative character like many vietnamese refugees were before realizing that she should show solidarity w the skrulls

i think sam, t’challa, fury, and valkyrie were all well casted i am not gonna lie, and i also don’t feel comfortable recasting minorities. but i did other side characters/love interests bc im answering this instead of writing an essay lol

sharon carter: i love emily but if peggy is jameela jamil i think sharon should be naomi scott

peggy carter: jameela jamil

jane foster: tia carrere; ok i also think if jane was pacifika it would have been excellent bc of how deep the connection is between indigenous pacifika people and astronomy

pepper potts: melissa fumero. she has the energies

coulson: aubrey plaza i just also think she has the energies

loki: BEN BARNES ??

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multiverseforger · 3 years

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U.S. Agent

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For United States agents, see Federal law enforcement in the United States.

U.S. Agent (John Walker) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, usually those starring Captain America and the Avengers. He first appeared in Captain America #323 (November 1986) as Super-Patriot.[1] He was later redesigned as an incarnation of Captain America and, a few years later, as U.S. Agent.

U.S. Agent

U.S. Agent.

Art by Leinil Francis Yu.

Publication informationPublisherMarvel ComicsFirst appearanceAs Super-Patriot:

Captain America #323 (November 1986)

As Captain America:

Captain America #333 (September 1987)

As U.S. Agent:

Captain America #354 (June 1989)Created byMark Gruenwald

Paul NearyIn-story informationAlter egoJohn F. WalkerSpeciesHuman (empowered)Team affiliationsMighty Avengers

Omega Flight

New Invaders

S.T.A.R.S.

The Jury

Force Works

Secret Defenders

West Coast Avengers

Dark Avengers

Commission on Superhuman Activities

Bold Urban Commandos

Astonishing AvengersPartnershipsBattlestarNotable aliasesJack Daniels, Super-Patriot, Captain AmericaAbilitiesExceptional hand-to-hand combatant

Highly trained acrobat and gymnast

Superhuman strength, agility, reflexes/reactions and endurance

Peak-level speed, dexterity, coordination and balance

Use of nearly indestructible shield and firearms

Wyatt Russell portrays John Walker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe streaming television series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021).

Publication history

Fictional character biographyEdit

OriginEdit

Learn more

This section needs additional citations for verification.

John Walker was born in the fictional town of Custer's Grove, Georgia. He grew up idolizing his older brother, Mike, a helicopter pilot who died in the Vietnam War in 1974. John wanted to live up to Mike's memory, who was idolized by their parents, and so he later enlisted in the military. John served at Fort Bragg, although it was never specifically stated which unit he was attached to.[5] Unfortunately for John, he served during peacetime and so never became the hero that he perceived Mike to have been.

After John received an honorable discharge from the United States Army, he was told by a friend about the Power Broker, a mysterious individual who gave people superhuman abilities.[volume & issue needed] Walker and his friend received treatments that granted superhuman abilities.[6]

Super-PatriotEdit

John Walker as Super-Patriot. Cover of Captain America #327 (March 1987). Art by Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod.

Walker, now in debt to the Power Broker, intends to join the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation but meets Ethan Thurm who becomes his manager and persuades Walker to become a hero instead. Thurm secures financial backing, helps Walker design a costume, and sets out a strategy that allows him to debut as the corporate-sponsored Super-Patriot who then travels the country promoting his image to the nation through patriotic rallies and community service.[6]

At a rally in Central Park, he holds a secretly rehearsed performance in which he publicly criticizes Captain America and is subsequently attacked by three extremist supporters called the Bold Urban Commandos or "Buckies". Walker defeats the Buckies in the staged fight as a demonstration of his combat prowess and patriotism. Steve Rogers confronts Walker privately afterwards and demands that he stop using the Buckies, since people attending the rally could have been hurt in a panic resulting from the staged attack. Walker refuses, arguing that his actions are justified by his quest to replace the outdated Captain America as the nation's symbol.[7]

When Captain America repeatedly refuses his challenges to a fight, Super-Patriot attacks Captain America. Although Captain America proves to be a more skilled fighter and lands blow after blow, the trash-talking Walker manages to absorb the attacks. With neither man falling after a lengthy brawl, Super-Patriot flings a number of throwing stars at Captain America who is too tired to dodge. One hits in the chest, embedding into Captain America's uniform but doing little to no actual physical damage. With the successful strike, the gleeful Super-Patriot claims victory and promptly departs. The weary and dejected Captain America tries to tell himself that the fight was a draw, as neither man actually went down but is nonetheless left questioning his own fighting abilities while acknowledging Super-Patriot's superior strength and stamina.[8]

Walker catches the eye of the nation though when he tackles the terrorist Warhead who threatens to detonate a nuclear weapon in Washington, D.C. atop the Washington Monument. Walker scales the monument, disarming Warhead with a throwing star, before sending Warhead plummeting to the ground below. Warhead – preferring to go out 'like a man' – kills himself before hitting the ground by detonating a hand grenade.[9]

This high-profile act makes him an instant celebrity, appearing in The Washington Post and on national television where he claims himself to be "America's future", which in turn brings him to the attention of Valerie Cooper's role as a Presidential advisor.[6]

Captain AmericaEdit

Soon after, Steve Rogers abandons Captain America's costume and identity when ordered to report directly to the Commission on Superhuman Activities, feeling that Captain America had grown beyond the name's original role as a symbol of America during the war and not wanting to be tied down to a political agenda.[9] The Commission debate who should be the new Captain America, with Nick Fury and Sam Wilson both being considered as candidates, although it was considered that the former was too old and would not want to give up the autonomy enjoyed as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, where as in the case of the latter they did not believe that the United States was ready for a black equivalent.[10]

Dr. Valerie Cooper, a member of the Commission, suggests that Walker should be made the new Captain America as a U.S. government operative. Though repulsed by the notion of giving up being Super-Patriot and taking on the Captain America identity he has criticized so much, Walker ultimately answers, "Ma'am, if Uncle Sam wanted me to be Mickey Mouse, I'd do it." As Captain America, he is forced to abandon Thrum as his manager, and can only retain Lemar Hoskins, one of the Buckies, since the other two fail to pass background checks.[6]

Walker is partnered with Hoskins as the new Bucky but Hoskins later changes the codename to "Battlestar" due to the negative racial name connotations for a black man. The two follow Adrian Sammish's orders. Walker is trained by the Freedom Force, the Guardsmen, and the Taskmaster—Taskmaster's training focusing on teaching him how to use Captain America's shield—and goes on his first mission against the Watchdogs militia group.[11]

Another of Walker's early acts as Captain America was a mission to "aid stability and democracy in South America" by teaming up with the Tarantula in order to hunt escaped political dissidents from his home country on behalf of its oppressive regime in order to silence them. Despite believing in the fight against Communism and in the principle of helping America's "Democratic allies in Latin America", Walker becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the methods used by Tarantula after he interrogates and threatens occupants of an immigration detention center for information on his targets. The two battle and wound Spider-Man, however Walker – increasingly conflicted by the fact that both the immigrants who Tarantula interrogated and Spider-Man looked upon him and the uniform he wore with fear, seeing him as an enemy – decides to walk away, convincing himself that this course of action was not something that Captain America would support. Spider-Man ultimately defeats Tarantula and Walker later learns that the individual who gave him his orders to help Tarantula was a rogue agent who did so without legal authority, beating him and telling him that the uniform he wears is supposed to inspire, not terrify.[12]

Although Walker finds himself trying to emulate Rogers's ethics, Walker is more brutal than his predecessor due to his reactionary points of view. His superhuman strength and lack of emotional control lead him to inadvertently beat Professor Power to death.[13] as well as badly injure 'The Resistants' mutant group.[14]

Left-Winger and Right-Winger, the two rejected Buckies, crash the press conference arranged by Cooper to reveal the "new" Captain America and Battlestar, and announce Walker's name and birthplace on national TV.[15] His parents are subsequently killed by the Watchdogs; this incident drives Walker closer to a mental breakdown, particularly when the Commission orders him not to step out of line in the future, resulting in him missing his parents' funeral due to his responsibilities. In a state of rage, he kills many of the Watchdogs,[16] and beats Left-Winger and Right-Winger to a pulp, leaving the two to die in an explosion,[17] and are left terribly burned and in critical condition.[volume & issue needed] Walker is then captured by Flag-Smasher, but rescued by Rogers, Battlestar, and D-Man.[18]

The Red Skull, now in a clone body of Steve Rogers, lures Walker to Washington, D.C. The Red Skull attacks Walker with a horde of Walker's enemies, but Walker kills or critically injures the enemies all in a single brawl. The Red Skull arranges for Walker to confront Rogers—now using "the Captain" identity and costume—but Rogers defeats him and confronts the Red Skull. Walker wakes up and throws his shield at the Red Skull, causing the latter to be exposed to his own "dust of death" which resulted in the supervillain's reddish skull appearance, but the Red Skull escapes. Rogers and Walker give a report to the Commission, which returns the Captain America uniform to Rogers. Rogers declines the offer, but Walker persuades Rogers to reconsider and accept it. At a press conference announcing the original Captain America's return, General Haywerth fakes Walker's assassination by a Watchdog in order to set up Walker in a new identity.[19]

To address Walker's psychosis, he is hypnotized into believing his parents are still alive, and he would not recover his full memory for many years. He is also given a new cover identity of 'Jack Daniels' as well as speech therapy and work to erase old mannerisms in order to help hide the fact that he was the man the public had recently seen "assassinated".[20]

U.S. Agent/West Coast AvengersEdit

Walker soon resurfaced as an adventurer known as the U.S. Agent, wearing a variation of the Captain costume and using the vibranium disc as a shield. Walker continued to work for the Commission. He was first seen as the U.S. Agent, battling an Iron Monger as a test for the Commission.[20] He was placed as a watchdog of West Coast Avengers and the Vision by the Commission, as a condition to possibly get their government clearance reinstated.[21] Some time later, he rescued Battlestar from the Power Broker, and reconciled with the former; Walker learned that his memories had been altered and that his parents were dead.[22]

The manner of his appointment to the West Coast Avengers team, and his own abrasive attitude, saw U.S. Agent frequently come into conflict with his colleagues, in particular the headstrong Hawkeye (Clint Barton), which culminated in a battle between the two that saw both suspended.[23] He later almost killed Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) – an ex-employee of U.S. Agent's former employers – hesitating over delivering the fatal blow before collapsing in grief – his guilt over his long history of violence catching up with him.[24]

While under the employ of the Commission for Superhuman Activities, U.S. Agent was charged with the responsibility of taking down the Punisher (Frank Castle). U.S. Agent locates the Punisher and after some hand-to-hand combat, the Punisher discloses in attempting to take down the Maggia; he agrees to help the Punisher, vowing to take the Punisher into custody once they had done so. U.S. Agent takes down the superpowered mercenary Paladin who had been employed to kill the Punisher by the Maggia, breaking both legs with his shield. Ultimately, the Punisher upon completing the mission escapes U.S. Agent by dressing a deceased henchman in his uniform and leaving him in a burning building, convincing U.S. Agent that the Punisher had perished in the fire. U.S. Agent is berated by his employers who inform him that his job is to act, not think and declaring that it is no wonder that he failed as Captain America. U.S. Agent walks away halfway through his dressing-down.[25]

U.S. Agent was once more forced to choose between following the rules and laws of the nation he had dedicated himself to serving, or ignoring said rules in favor of doing what he personally believed to be right, when he investigated a series of gruesome murders of illegal immigrants on the Mexico/U.S border who he later discovered were being committed by a corrupt law enforcement official.[26]

U.S. Agent investigates the killer "the Scourge of the Underworld" and discovers that Scourge is not an individual at all, but is in fact essentially a franchise of killers trained towards the singular purpose of wiping out the menace posed by the world's various super-villains.[27] U.S. Agent attempts to infiltrate the organization but is captured, tortured and interrogated until he is released by a masked operative who reveals himself to be none other than Mike Walker – U.S. Agent's older brother who he had long thought to have died in the Vietnam War. Mike tries to convince U.S. Agent to join the Scourge program before letting him go in order to think it over.[28]

It is later revealed that "Mike" is not U.S. Agent's brother at all but rather a cleverly designed deception intended to lure U.S. Agent into joining the Scourge program himself. U.S. Agent decides against joining the program at which point 'Mike' – better known as 'Bloodstain' – attempts to wipe him out unsuccessfully.[29]

Through interrogating members of the Scourge organization, Agent traces its mysterious benefactor back to a high-class estate, at which point he is revealed to be none other than Thomas Holloway – the man previously known as the World War II era hero "The Avenging Angel" – who reveals how he had set up the Scourge organization using his immense wealth after witnessing an innocent bystander killed by a criminal's bullet meant for him. Unable to continue his costumed career because of the guilt he instead decided to set up the organization to atone for his failings as a crime fighter and battle those criminals who would undermine America's moral character.[volume & issue needed]

U.S. Agent and Bloodstain battle one last time, and Bloodstain is eventually dispatched by his own bullets as they deflect off U.S. Agent's shield. Thomas Holloway is subsequently arrested for his crimes and the Scourge program seemingly closed down. Later, U.S. Agent muses that just like Holloway he had done things as a hero that he feels he needs to make amends for, but promises that unlike Holloway he will find the true path to salvation.[30]

U.S. Agent fought alongside the Avengers in several battles. After the Avengers moved to a United Nations based charter, he received only one vote (though not from himself) in the ensuing vote and consequently lost his place on the team.[31] Even with his personality conflicts and reckless behavior, he soon proved himself worthy of being an Avenger and was able to rejoin.[32]

During his time with the West Coast Avengers, U.S.Agent participated in the 'Infinity War' in which he was part of the team that remained on Earth to protect it against Magnus waves of superhuman dopplegangers,[33] the 'Infinity Crusade', during which he was recruited by the Goddess along with other heroes who were susceptible, as they are either especially religious, mystically inclined, or have had a near-death experience,[34] and Operation Galactic Storm in which he was responsible for guarding the Kree prisoners Captain Atlas and Dr. Minerva,[35] and battled a Kree Sentry.[36]

U.S. Agent also helped the team battle the likes of the Lethal Legion,[37] Dr Demonicus and his Pacific Overlords,[38] Ultron and his robotic 'bride' War Toy,[39] the 'Night Shift',[40] the 'Bogatyri' – a group of Russian extremists intent upon ushering in a new Cold War,[41] 'Death Web' – a team of spider-themed villains,[42] and Immortus.[43]

U.S. Agent, along with fellow "replacement" heroes Thunderstrike and War Machine, was manipulated into battling the heroes who had inspired them – Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man – by the time travelling villainess "Terminatrix", before putting their differences aside to team up against their common foe.[44]

U.S. Agent along with the rest of the West Coast Avengers, the Avengers and the X-Men, participated in the 'Bloodties' crossover,[45] during which Professor X attempted to negotiate a peace to end the civil war on the island of Genosha.[volume & issue needed] U.S. Agent was charged with the responsibility of acting as bodyguard for Professor X.[46]

Captain America sarcastically cited U.S. Agent's use of his "famous powers of composure and diplomacy" as one example of the recent failings of the West Coast Avengers when he indicated his intention to shut the team down. This provoked U.S. Agent's fury who raised his hand to strike Captain America; Iron Man stopped him and uttered, "Not now. Not ever".[47]

During this time, U.S. Agent was featured in a Marvel UK comic called Super Soldiers, initially battling, then teaming up with American and British soldiers empowered by a variation of the drugs that created Nuke.[48]

Force WorksEdit

When the West Coast Avengers dissolved, he dumped his U.S. Agent costume and shield into the Hudson River.[49] Soon after, most of the then-current members of the West Coast Avengers were asked by Tony Stark to found Force Works. Initially U.S. Agent was reluctant, however Scarlet Witch later persuaded him to join, stating that she needed U.S. Agent to be the team's "backbone" and intended to run the team on tight military lines and the values of strength and dedication that Agent had shown her during their time together on the West Coast Avengers. U.S. Agent ultimately joined the new team, wearing a new costume and using an energy-based shield provided to him by Stark.[50] Stark describes U.S. Agent as a "loose cannon", suggesting that he could have an identity problem, expressing the desire to develop a new look for him "to get U.S. Agent out of Captain America's red, white and blue shadow".[51]

U.S. Agent travels to an isolated region of Tennessee in order to locate Hawkeye who had disappeared after the death of Mockingbird. Angry at the fact that Hawkeye had abandoned his teammates when they had desperately needed his support to avoid the dissolution of the West Coast Avengers, U.S. Agent finds him and they initially fight before eventually reconciling, at which point U.S. Agent informs Hawkeye of all the recent changes – including the formation of Force Works and the death of Wonder Man (Simon Williams).[volume & issue needed]

Hawkeye vents that he has been through a lot with the loss of his wife, and that he mistrusts Tony Stark, prompting a rare showing of emotion from U.S. Agent who confesses that the death of his own parents haunts every waking moment of his life and that he more than anyone knows what it is like to live life on the outside looking in – never quite good enough for anyone – but at least he is not running and hiding from it![volume & issue needed]

The two agree to put their spat aside and sleep, with U.S. Agent telling Hawkeye that he will be taking him back in the morning regardless of any objections, however when U.S. Agent wakes Hawkeye is gone – although he leaves him a note thanking him for helping him get some things off his chest, and letting him know that he is not all bad after all.[52]

In the spirit of forgiveness, U.S. Agent later formulates a plan to reconcile Hawkeye with the rest of his former teammates – especially Stark – by inviting him as a secret guest to the Force Works Christmas party. While Hawkeye waits alone he monitors U.S. Agent and the rest of the Force Works team via video feed as they listen to Stark issue a sincere apology for his behavior in recent times – from walking out on the West Coast Avengers team, to faking his own death and not trusting them with the truth.[volume & issue needed]

Unfortunately Hawkeye only catches the part of the speech where Stark talks about Hawkeye's "loud mouthed opinions", switching the feed off before he hears Stark refer to Hawkeye as the backbone of the West Coast Avengers team, a friend, and how he misses his presence more than anything, and when U.S. Agent learns that Hawkeye has left in a temper, he wonders what on Earth could have gone wrong...[53]

U.S. Agent remained a member throughout the team's tenure, fighting threats such as the Kree,[50] alien parasites The Scatter,[54] Slorenian supernatural threat Ember, Slorenia's armored protectors Black Brigade,[55] The Mandarin,[56] fighting alongside Australian super hero Dreamguard (Willie Walkaway) against the dream-manipulating Orphan,[57] Slorenia's undead shock troops The Targoth and Volkhvy the Eternal One,[58] teaming up with the Avengers against the Kree commandos Excel,[59] intergalactic mercenary The Broker,[60] battling Force Works' own rogue security system VIRGIL,[61] an alternate reality version of deceased former Force Works member Wonder Man (Simon Williams),[62] and the Serpent Society.[63]

Heroes ReturnEdit

U.S. Agent was briefly referred to as the Liegeman as it was the codename for him in the Morgan le Fay verse.[64]

U.S. Agent briefly appears in Captain America (Vol 3) during the 'American Nightmare' story arc attempting to steal an experimental jet plane. Captain America stops him, and U.S. Agent is later seen in stasis along with others affected by the villain Nightmare.[65]

He eventually became the field leader of the Jury, a group of armored corporate vigilantes, owned by Edwin Cord, owner of Cordco. U.S. Agent again wearing his original U.S. Agent uniform and now using an eagle-shaped shield that could be directed in midair via remote control. The Jury's job was to take down the Thunderbolts, but they were defeated by the Thunderbolts and their new leader Hawkeye, a former Avenger teammate of Walker's.[66] The Jury attempted to apprehend the Thunderbolts a second time, but instead the two groups joined forces together against Brute Force and the Secret Empire's soldiers.[67]

U.S. Agent was severely beaten to near death by Protocide. Due to emergency medical procedures performed on him, he was outfitted, by S.H.I.E.L.D., with an enhancing exo-skeleton.[68]

S.T.A.R.SEdit

Following his recovery, he soon adopted a new costume and rejoined the Commission on Superhuman Activities, with the position at the head of the federal government's U.S. Marshal division, called S.T.A.R.S., the Superhuman Tactical Activities Response Squad. The group battled alien invaders and superhuman threats and was responsible for their imprisonment.[69] In this role, he was placed in charge of coordinating Earth's heroes during the 'Maximum Security' crisis when Earth became a prison planet, claiming that he was needed to prevent the other heroes getting 'sidetracked' by their concern for the prisoners to ensure that their focus remained on what was best for Earth.[70]

U.S. Agent continued to work for S.T.A.R.S as America's super human 'top cop' under the observation of Valerie Cooper. In this role his former love, and current agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, Kali Vries—who he had endured Army boot-camp with many years previously, and who had bested him in almost all physical tests—was thrust upon him as second in command. U.S. Agent was uncomfortable with Vries' appointment as she had previously jilted him, although she was still affectionate towards him. Other S.T.A.R.S agents warned Agent that Vries was playing him. Vries is later revealed to be in the employ of ambitious Senator Warkovsky and on his order places a parasite capable of allowing mind control on U.S. Agent's neck.[69]

In their second mission together U.S. Agent and Vries teamed up to tackle a radical faction of Atlantians working with the super-villain Poundcakes (Marian Pouncey). It transpired that Pouncey was attempting to trade more of the alien parasites capable of mind control with the Atlantians. The Sub-Mariner (Namor) disrupts the battle and discovers the parasite placed on U.S. Agent's neck by Vries. Vries later attends Agent's room and attempts to seduce him, placing another parasite on him. U.S. Agent—apparently no longer in control of his own will, and despite being informed that a S.H.I.E.L.D envoy had been dispatched—then takes the duffle bag full of parasites seized by S.T.A.R.S in order to take them to his manipulator who transpires to be none other than the Power Broker (Curtis Jackson)—the man originally responsible for granting John Walker his super-human powers, whose plan is to infect the International assemblage of Heads of State with the mind-controlling parasites.[71]

At this point Captain America (Steve Rogers), who had been revealed to be the S.H.I.E.L.D envoy responsible for collecting the parasites, along with Kali Vries, burst into the meeting between U.S. Agent and the Power Broker. Power Broker places a parasite on the neck of Senator Warkovsky intent upon influencing his address to the International assemblage of Heads of State, but is interrupted by U.S. Agent who is subsequently assaulted by Captain America intent upon stopping him. The two battle with neither of them able to gain the upper hand. Meanwhile, Vries is captured by the Power Broker who reveals that he had been attacked and left for dead by aliens during the 'Maximum Security' crisis at which point, barely alive, he had become the host for an alien which produced the mind-controlling parasites, subsequently attempting to expand its control by infecting influential individuals. Power Broker then infects Vries with a parasite. Eventually Agent manages to escape Captain Americas attentions long enough to reveal the presence of the parasite on Senator Warkovsky's neck and removes it with his energy baton. Together Cap and Agent fight off the crowd of V.I.P's (also apparently under the control of the Power Broker), escaping and then teaming up to restrain both Power Broker and Vries and removing the parasites from each of them. Dum Dum Dugan then appears on the scene to inform U.S. Agent that Vries, far from being a traitor, was actually a deep cover agent acting on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D with the intention of gaining Senator Warkovsky's confidence and discovering who was using the parasites and attempting to take the mother-parasite into custody for study and as evidence. Agent destroys the specimen and then speculates that he didn't believe it to be alien at all but rather a product of a government genetics lab that went wrong. Dugan is suspicious by his silence and shocked when Captain America indicates that he believes U.S. Agent's accusation. U.S. Agent is later seen deep in thought, looking at a photo of himself and Vries during better times and reading a letter of apology from her for her deceptions. He later burns the photo before running out of his room after being informed that there is an assignment for him, declaring "I love this job!"[5]

U.S. Agent is later summoned along with fellow Avengers Captain America, Thor, Jack of Hearts, Beast, Iron Man, and She-Hulk to unite against a common threat. That threat? Litigation![volume & issue needed]

Accountants Janice Imperato and Max Catan (executives from the Maria Stark foundation who help fund the Avengers) intend to hold a meeting in order to maintain the Avengers tax exempt status, audit the team's finances, and review a recent case – a battle against the "Elements of Doom" which resulted in the expensive loss of an Avengers Quinjet, and widespread property damage.[volume & issue needed]

U.S. Agent – stubborn as ever – claims a complete lack of knowledge of the incident as he "is a very busy man". When asked to justify his actions, U.S. Agent refuses to do so, with his response being "Forget it. Theyre alive right? They should be grateful!" and accused his interrogators of just wanting to drag heroes down.[volume & issue needed]

U.S. Agent leaves his interviewers with one piece of advice: "I go out there to save lives. You just pay the bills. Just be good little bean counters – and pay em!"[72]

InvadersEdit

Clockwise from top left: Human Torch (Jim Hammond), Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Union Jack (Joseph Chapman), U.S. Agent, and Blazing Skull on the cover to New Invaders #1, with art by Scott Kolins.

Walker eventually became a member of the New Invaders,[73] wearing a Captain America-like costume,[73] serving alongside the likes of the original Human Torch, Union Jack (Joseph Chapman), and the Blazing Skull until the team disbanded.[74]

U.S. Agent's first task was to negotiate the release of the Blazing Skull from captivity at the hands of middle Eastern terrorists. It is revealed that U.S. Agent can speak fluent Arabic, but he is forced to exterminate the terrorists when they renege on the agreed deal.[75]

The New Invaders then team up with Namor and his Atlantean forces in order to overthrow the government of Mazikandar – an alliance Namor agrees to because Mazikandar has been choking the seas with pollution by sinking oil tankers in an effort to control supply to the USA.[76]

The New Invaders alongside the forces of Atlantis assault Mazikandar's government forces, scattering them and moving on to the capitol building in order to capture its head of state. Suddenly however they find themselves opposed by none other than the Avengers. U.S. Agent is confronted by Captain America, who calls him a disgrace to the uniform, instructing to take it off before he tears it off, but Walker replies that his country gave him that uniform because Rogers was not willing to do what they needed him to. Walker calls Rogers a traitor, and states that his country has given him the authority of the real Captain America, and that Rogers never understood duty to country and doing what is required to keep its shores safe. Rogers retorts that Captain America represents an ideal for all people, of all countries.[volume & issue needed]

Ultimately U.S. Agent is defeated by Rogers. Mazikandar's dictator is presented to his hand picked successor, who promptly executes his predecessor on the steps of the capitol building to the surprise of both the Invaders and Avengers alike.[77]

The murder of a man without trial causes a further schism with the Avengers, who blame the New Invaders for declaring open war on Mazikhandar. Namor responds that Mazikhandar had declared war on his nation when they decided to pollute the oceans.[volume & issue needed]

U.S. Agent – captive for the time being – receives word from the Thin Man requesting a distraction, which Walker provides by breaking his bonds and aggressively approaching Captain America, growling that the New Invaders operation is sanctioned by the U.S., Britain, and Atlantis, and that the Avengers have no grounds to interfere. Hawkeye tries to cool the situation as only the hot-headed archer could by shooting U.S. Agent in the backside, prompting the now furious Walker to turn his attention from Captain America to Hawkeye.[volume & issue needed]

With the two teams battling once more, Thin Man retreats to the inside of the Capitol building where he berates the new political leader for killing his predecessor and explaining that the previous leader had actually been a simulacrum – an imposter placed into that position when US Secretary of Defence Dell Rusk (secretly the Red Skull) had the real leader assassinated – and the New Invaders only agreed to help because they needed the synthetic alive.[volume & issue needed]

The fighting ends when Namor announces that he has formed an alliance with Mazikhandar, and that it is now a protectorate of Atlantis thus giving the Avengers no need, and no power to remain.[78]

Thin Man later informs the team that they have been formed to tackle a new threat – the "Axis Mundi" – a creation of the Red Skull and something born out of the ashes of Hitler's Third Reich, who have an army of assassins armed with sub-dimensional technology that gives them the ability to move instantly to wherever they wish without fear of barriers or borders and a plan to replace world leaders with synthezoids.[volume & issue needed]

The U.S government, needing to counter the threat first created an elite strike force – the New Invaders – then equipped them with a battleship named The Infiltrator, capable of travelling the world unseen and armed with tactical missiles with the ability to drop entire cities into sub dimensional space.[79]

Walker insisted on being called Captain America.[80] Captain America (Steve Rogers), while attempting to close down the New Invaders, threatened Walker with legal action over his use of the uniform, stating that he owned the copyright to it. Walker informed Rogers that he had only taken the role in the first place because Rogers had refused the Thin Man's invitation to lead the team and that they had to show their enemies "that Captain America is not afraid to fight!"[81]

While Walker initially proved to be unpopular with many of his new allies, he later gained their respect, in particular winning over Namor who had been a close ally of Steve Rogers. Walker saved Namor from a brainwashed and murderous Wolverine, who had been resurrected by The Hand during the "Enemy of the State" storyline. The badly injured Namor later offered Walker his personal thanks.[82]

Civil WarEdit

In the special one-shot Civil War: Choosing Sides, Tony Stark (at this point U.S Secretary of Defense) orders U.S Agent north to Canada – vulnerable due to the death of Alpha Flight, in order to act as U.S liaison to the newly formed Omega Flight team, with an objective to stop super-powered criminals attempting to flee America's Superhuman Registration Act.[volume & issue needed]

U.S. Agent reacts as expected – furiously – stating he "serves Uncle Sam, not Major Maple Leaf", and there is no way he is going to "freakin' Canada". Stark makes the case that Canada supplies the U.S with 20% of its oil, and their security is a top priority for S.H.I.E.L.D., but U.S. Agent is unimpressed and even the threat of arrest is not enough to persuade him as he storms out.[volume & issue needed]

Later U.S. Agent overcomes an attack by a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents mind-controlled by the super villain Purple Man, but is overcome by the Purple Man himself who orders him to fall from great height after stealing his shield – something he only survives because of his advanced biology.[volume & issue needed]

Eager for revenge, U.S. Agent's defeat gives Stark the leverage to finally persuade him to join Omega Flight when he reveals that the Purple Man has fled north himself.[83]

Omega FlightEdit

As an employee of Omega Flight, U.S. Agent is given the responsibility of training Weapon Omega (Michael Pointer).[volume & issue needed]

During a mission to take down un-registered super-criminal Tentakill, Weapon Omega passes out mid-combat for unknown reasons forcing U.S. Agent to detain the criminal single handed. Weapon Omega's unusual behaviour rouses U.S. Agent's suspicions, who is later seen to be communicating covertly with an unknown source.[volume & issue needed]

It later transpires that Weapon Omega is being manipulated by Omega Flight's handler Agent Brown as well as his psychologist Dr. Benning, but worse than that unregistered super-criminals are being detained, with no record being made of their detention, and their powers are being used to fuel Weapon Omega's energy absorbing power, resulting in the deaths of several of the inmates who are completely drained of life.[volume & issue needed]

It is later revealed that U.S. Agent is acting on behalf of Iron Man who is monitoring Weapon Omega's progress and requires U.S. Agent to obtain the data analysis of Omega's powers as well as the details of his private consultations with Omega Flight's psychologists.[volume & issue needed]

Before his departure Stark, due to his lack of knowledge that the super-villain Rap-tor had been recently detained—despite having access to all prisoner manifests—unknowingly confirms Agent's suspicions that super-villains detained by Omega Flight are not being officially recorded and that the villains are subsequently disappearing without explanation.[volume & issue needed]

U.S. Agent's suspicions grow when Weapon Omega is not seen for weeks at a time. He is repeatedly told by Agent Brown that Omega is simply unwell and resting. Arachne (Julia Carpenter), acting with U.S. Agent in order to uncover the conspiracy, spies and informs him that Weapon Omega isn't resting and for some reason he is being constantly observed.[volume & issue needed]

During their next training session U.S. Agent is easily besting Weapon Omega in combat when Omega's handlers increase the flow of power from the super-powered detainees. This results in Omega losing control as he manifests the various powers of numerous inmates, breaking U.S. Agent's ankle before manifesting the reptilian powers of Rap-tor, beating and lacerating U.S. Agent almost to death—an assault only stopped by the interference of Sasquatch (Walter Langkowski). U.S. Agent tries to warn Weapon Omega—who is shocked at his loss of control—that power is being fed into him via his suit, but is sedated before he is able to do so.[volume & issue needed]

Weapon Omega eventually realizes that he is being manipulated and that his handlers intend to continue to use him even against his will, however this is stopped by the U.S. Agent having discharged himself from the infirmary despite his severe injuries. Dr. Benning boasts that as a fail-safe had been activated, all evidence of her manipulation of Weapon Omega had been destroyed. It is at this point that Omega reveals that one of the individuals whose powers he had absorbed had been a technopath, and that he had accessed all of Benning's confidential records and sent them to Tony Stark. Weapon Omega then exposes Benning to a glimpse of the hundreds of personalities within his being, leaving her in a vegetative state. He then vows to become a hero rather than a weapon and is last seen assisting the people of Alaska—the location where his powers had first manifested, resulting in the deaths of the original Alpha Flight team.[84]

Mighty AvengersEdit

During the "Dark Reign" storyline, U.S. Agent is removed from Omega Flight by Loki (disguised as the Scarlet Witch) to aid Hank Pym in defeating the reality-altering Chthon. Initially the pro-registration U.S. Agent finds himself in combat with the anti-registration Hulk and Hercules, but they later endeavor to team up against their common foe. Chthon's power is tied to Wundagore Mountain and U.S. Agent plays a part in separating him from that source by planting explosives in order to destroy it. The team ultimately defeat Chthon, and U.S. Agent quits the Omega Flight team – with their blessing – stating it was an honor to serve with them, but 'once an Avenger, always an Avenger'.[85]

Following their victory, U.S. Agent joins the Mighty Avengers.[86] The team is sent on various missions[86] including saving the Infinite Avengers Mansion from becoming untethered from reality.[87] On a mission to China investigating the Unspoken (a former king of the Inhumans), U.S. Agent is devolved by Xenogen gas which turns him into an Alpha Primitive. He attacks Captain America (James "Bucky" Barnes) while in this condition. Quicksilver convinces him to attack the Unspoken by saying "The Commies will win!"[88] Pym later creates a new shield for U.S. Agent after his previous shield was destroyed by the Collective Man.[89]

U.S. Agent was one of the Avengers who joined Hercules in his Assault on New Olympus. He said he believes that the Gods are just people with super powers and battled against Eris, Goddess of discord.[90]

Following a conflict involving a Cosmic Cube-empowered Absorbing Man and the Dark Avengers, U.S. Agent is stripped of his rank by Norman Osborn.[91]

ThunderboltsEdit

U.S. Agent and several members of the now disbanded Mighty Avengers are called upon by Amadeus Cho during the events of Siege. Their mission is to stop Norman Osborn's Thunderbolts from stealing Odin's spear from the Asgardian armory. After engaging the Thunderbolts in battle, Nuke uses the spear to sever U.S. Agent's left arm and leg.[92]

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In 2020, The Deutschland Series is As Relevant As Ever

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The final season of the Deutschland spy series begins with an ending. In the opening episode of Deutschland 89, the Berlin Wall falls, giving East German citizens free movement to West Germany and beyond for the first time in decades. What follows in the eight-episode final season is a social study in how different people react when their reality is suddenly and fundamentally altered. In the year 2020, as the world continues to reel from the seismic changes COVID-19 has wrought, it’s an unexpectedly relatable experience.

“Deutschland 89 is really about how people have to reinvent themselves during a crisis,” says Deutschland series co-creator Joerg Winger. “So I think, in that way, it does reflect today, but that was not intentional.”

From the beginning, the Deutschland series—which launched in 2015 with Deutschland 83, continued in 2018 with Deutschland 86, and just concluded with Deutschland 89—has used history as a metaphor for contemporary politics. Because of this and because, as Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” it has never been hard to find topical parallels in the Deutschland story, especially when the world skews unfortunately closer to the historic tensions depicted.

“I still remember when Joerg and I first started working on Deutschland 83, thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll have to remind people of the Cold War. Maybe they won’t remember any of this,’” says co-creator Anna Winger (who also co-created Netflix’s 2020 German-American drama Unorthodox). “And then the tension with Russia began again, and there was this sort of egocentric writer moment where you’re like, ‘Did I write it and make it happen? Why is this happening again?’ … Certainly, we couldn’t have predicted tension with Russia coming back, but I think that the polarization definitely, the idea that you’re on one side or you’re on the other side, and that there is this kind of way in which the world has become divided, we were definitely exploring that.”

Deutschland 83 follows East German kid Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) as he is forced by his HVA agent aunt Lenora (Maria Schrader) and his estranged father Walter (Sylvester Groth) to become a spy in West Germany. Using the real-life Able Archer incident (which some historians believe is the closest we’ve come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis) as setting, the first season is a fast-paced yet complex cautionary tale of what can happen when we lose track of the bigger picture in favor of political allegiances.

On a more character-driven level, Deutschland 83 is the story of a young man caught between a desperation to stay alive so he can return home to his ill mother and pregnant girlfriend and a desire to keep the world from erupting into nuclear disaster. Because of this, much of the success of that first season and moving forward relied on the casting of the overwhelmed yet capable Martin. When Nay read the script for the Deutschland 83 pilot, he knew he wanted the part.

“I think that the first episode of the whole series is a masterpiece in throwing you directly into something,” says Nay. “I think, dramaturgy-wise, it’s really brilliant. For me, as a reader, I was so addicted. I immediately wanted to know where it went and I so deeply wanted to play that part of Martin.”

Later, Nay would find out that Anna Winger had his picture on the wall during the writing process, imagining him as Martin, but Nay didn’t know that when he went for the part.

“I hadn’t played something of that genre, or anything comparable to that before,” says Nay. “So I don’t really know where she had the impression from that this could be a part for me, actually. The things I shot before were more like society drama, feature films. It was really, really, really different.”

Joerg Winger says that Nay was always their first choice.

“There was a discussion we had at a later point with the directors in 83, who were thinking, maybe we need someone who’s more of a conventional hero, like a young James Bond kind of actor,” says Joerg Winger. “But I think, for us, it was really important that he has something vulnerable since one of the tweaks of the spy genre in Deutschland 83 is that it’s a spy show combined with a coming-of-age drama, and Jonas has the vulnerability and almost the boyishness and innocence. He’s a very good, solid person. And that translates also, I think, into his performance.”

The initial idea for the series came from Joerg Winger’s own military service experience during the 80s as a conscripted Bundeswehr soldier in West Germany, intercepting messages from Russian troops in the German Democratic Republic. But, for many people watching the series who were born after 89, a divided Germany may be hard to imagine.

“With young people, it’s almost like what you learn in school ends with World War II, and then you never really got to the Cold War,” says Anna Winger. “So, for a lot of young people, at least in Germany, they would say to us, ‘This is like science fiction.’ It’s like, ‘Imagine a world, and there’s a wall that goes down the middle of Berlin, and West Berlin is cut off from supplies, and you can’t get across it.’ And you know, if you were to describe all that to anyone who was born in Berlin since 1989, it would sound absurd. It’s like, ‘And the dinosaurs roamed the earth.’ It’s very crazy to them. So, in a funny way, I’ve always thought the show is a little bit like the past as science fiction.”

Nay, who was born in 1990, days before the reunification of Germany, is one of those people.

“I think there’s actually a lot that changed my awareness of close German history, in particular the 80s, of course,” says Nay. “I remember that when I read the first series, the first question that came to my mind was: ‘Were we really so close to a nuclear war? Would anybody have told me if it was so close? Isn’t that crazy that nobody told me before? Is it real or is it just made up, to increase attention?’ I was like, ��OK, it seems a little odd to me that we were close before to a nuclear war and I never heard that before.’ I’m really curious now what is going on behind closed walls, what I don’t know about nowadays.”

While all three seasons of the Deutschland series explores many of the same themes, the three-year time jump built into the fabric of the show means each season gets a soft narrative reset for its characters and setting. When asked about the choice to have three-year time jumps, Joerg Winger said it was somewhat incidental. Because of Able Archer and some of the Neue Deutsche Welle music circa 1983, the Wingers knew they wanted to start their story in 1983. They also knew that they wanted to do a trilogy and that it should end in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because of this, of the three settings, 1986 is the most random.

“I think it’s a little bit like the Buddhist wisdom: wherever you dig, if you dig for long enough, you’ll find something,” says Joerg Winger of the 1986 setting. “We were a little bit nervous about the 86 question. When we started 86, we were like, ‘OK, so what are we going to find in ’86?’ But then there’s just so much.”

When we catch back up with Martin in Deutschland 86, he has been exiled from East Germany for three years, living in Angola where he teaches English at an orphanage. While the other two seasons in the story keep their focus relatively tight on East and West Germany, Deutschland 86 expands its Cold War scope to visit places like Libya and Paris, where geopolitical tensions are manifesting in different ways but are still part of the same global story.

“We started writing 86 the day after the Trump election,” says Anna Winger, “and I remember feeling really focused on looking at capitalism, because the story of 86 is kind of about the capitalist core of the engine that kept the communist regime going. And you see all these guys who are holding on to what they’ve managed to build at all costs, even though it’s all really coming apart.”

The Deutschland storyline comes to fruition in Deutschland 89. Three years following the events of Deutschland 86, the East German government is in even more dire straits. They are out of money, and the people are protesting. The final season is set against the backdrop of the collapse of the East German government.

“People didn’t know what was going to happen for a few months, and that is a very unusual situation,” says Anna Winger of the time period. “And also, for all these spies, they were really good spies, and suddenly, they had no country, the goals were completely unclear, and they were in the same place. The crazy thing about people in Berlin who live on the East side is they haven’t gone anywhere, but everything else has changed. It’s as if their country completely changed, and they’re still living on the same piece of earth, and that’s wild.”

The Deutschland series may explore East German life in the 1980s at different stages of Communist collapse, but the parallels to the experience of living in today’s crumbling capitalism are striking.

“I think as we came towards the end of the arc of the trilogy, certainly we got deeper and deeper into exploring late-stage capitalism and how that’s the patriarchy holding onto power in any sort of regime,” says Anna Winger. “We’re writing a show about late-stage communism or socialism, but it still has a lot of parallels to late-stage capitalism.”

In the midst of it all, is Martin Rauch, an audience surrogate for an everyday person just trying to live a good life with the people he loves amidst political and social turmoil. By Deutschland 89, Martin is understandably much more jaded than his 83-era self, but he has also somehow held onto his humanity.

“What Anna and Joerg always told me was that when they created Martin and how they wanted him to succeed, he should always have this moral compass that he’s following,” says Nay. “In a big contrast to all the people around him, like [his aunt] Lenora or [his father] Schweppenstette, that they are following rules given from somebody else or they’re following their idealism, their socialist idea. Martin had the chance of getting a pretty uncolored picture of East and West, of both the states and both the sides. He had to find his own [way].”

Martin’s ability to hold onto his humanity, to maintain some kind of admirable moral compass despite all of the things he has been through, is where much of the optimism in the Deutschland series ultimately lies.

“I always saw it like Martin being in the middle and people from left and right trying to pull him in directions and he’s always trying to see or weigh out which is best for him and also for people around him,” says Nay. “He’s like, yeah, it’s a hero thing I guess. I don’t know. Yeah, Joerg and Anna wanted Martin to keep that. So it was kind of a challenge to, of course, let Martin grow up and let him harden and let him be very, very suspicious, more and more, not trusting anybody because what he learns is that, if he trusts somebody, he’s going to be betrayed so he has to keep it in himself. That is the development that he goes through through all the seasons. Then, given this little lovable touch of hero-ness and moral compass, not losing that. It was kind of a balance act I would say. I gave my very best.”

Ultimately, the Deutschland series ends as it told its story: thoughtfully, and with a fundamental empathy that doesn’t guarantee a happy ending but rather something better. The possibility of holding onto one’s humanity through pain and suffering and amongst forces so much larger than any one person. In 2020, that may be the flavor of happy ending we need most of all.

“In 89, the shit’s hit the fan, and it’s really over, and people are scrambling to redefine themselves,” says Anna Winger. “But I suppose, if there’s a message to the whole thing, it’s that there are possibilities in chaos. And this is truly something I think we can learn from Germany: is that maybe there’s the possibility of reinvention that is positive, that there’s hope in reinvention, and that maybe when things come apart, there’s a chance for something good to come out of it.”

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The entirety of the Deutschland series is now available to watch on Hulu.

The post In 2020, The Deutschland Series is As Relevant As Ever appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Marathon #1: The Western Finale and Awards

My train to the Old West has returned to its station and therefore it is time to consider all the films screened in Gibelwho Production’s Western Marathon. Taking guidance from Filmspotting’s inaugural marathon, I watched 8 films in the Western genre, with production dates spanning 30 years, each with a unique representation of frontier life, good and evil, stunning landscapes, and the men and women who inhabit the Western tales. Each film has its own recap and review on this site, but when placed in contrast to each other, the narrative of a shifting genre emerges, reflecting the changes in society that are then mirrored in the depictions of the Old West. Here are the list of the films:

High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)

The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)

My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)

A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964)

Winchester ‘73 (Anthony Mann, 1950)

The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

As noted in my introduction post, the Western genre was not my favorite of the Hollywood Studio System - I’ve never fully connected to this classic American genre, so I was a bit apprehensive about starting this journey, but still determined to keep an open mind for the variety of films included in the scope. The Marathon certainly expanded my horizons - I had only seen two of the eight films (Stagecoach and High Noon) in film school, so most of the material was seen with fresh eyes. I knew the basics of the genre, but was ready to explore the themes in a deeper way with some classic examples from the genre’s biggest stars and directors.

One prominent troupe of the Western genre is the lone man standing up to forces bigger than himself, which held true for most of the films in this Marathon. High Noon leans into this idea in the extreme - where no one in the town will lift a hand to help Gary Cooper defend against the criminals returning to seek revenge. John Wayne - the signature figure of the entire Western genre - took offense to this portrayal of a weak and friendless sheriff and so teamed up with Howard Hawks to film Rio Bravo, crafting a movie about a sheriff devoted to his public office and surrounded by capable compatriots. Clint Eastwood, the man who took the mantle of the Western lone man icon from John Wayne in his Dollars trilogy, starting with A Fistful of Dollars, has neither integrity nor a sense of duty - but is simply out to make as much money as he can selling his services.

Despite their lone man status, the protagonists of the Western are always surrounded by men and women that round out the film’s supporting cast. The portrayal of women in particular was uneven throughout the eight films; most of the actresses infused their characters with a spirit necessary in order to live in the frontier towns, but the actresses were also dealing with scripts that were not always sophisticated or enlightened. A woman's place in society often was divided into parlor women, such as Chihuahua in My Darling Clementine or Dallas in Stagecoach, or sophisticated women from the East blessing their presence in the wild West, such as Clementine or Lucy from the same films. Helen Ramirez, the business woman and former lover of the town’s sheriff in High Noon, and the matriarch of the Baxter family from A Fistful of Dollars are perhaps the only women in the Marathon’s films that truly have agency over their lives, but even they are punished for that distinction, with Helen leaving town after selling her business and Mrs. Baxter losing her life during the Rojo’s attack. And within The Wild Bunch - there are literally no women of consequence who are even featured in the film. Depending on the decade of the film’s creation and the effort put in by the screenplay, there is a mixed bag when it comes to women’s representation in the Western genre.

The theme that does have consistency across all the films is the treatment of Native Americans - and when viewed through a modern lens, it is extremely lacking in equitable representation. Across all of these films, when Indians are presented on screen - they are always the enemy, their motivations or points of view are never considered or explored, and they are always presented as an Other. In Stagecoach and Winchester ‘73, roving bands of Native Americans are presented as the main threats to the white characters - and in the latter film, typical Hollywood institutional racism is on display as white man Rock Hudson is cast as an indigenous person. The Searchers is the most flagrant, also casting a white man as the tribal chief Scar, and its script is based on an assumed racist conception that a white woman is tainted (and even decayed to the point of hysterical mental illness) once exposed to a native tribe. Mexican and Mexican Americans are given slightly better treatment, oftentimes portrayed as allies, whether as saloon and hotel owners or even as part of the posse. In The Wild Bunch, the gang of rogues consider Angel a part of the team and even attempt an ultimately unsuccessful rescue from the Mexican military. People of color are not, however, the center of the tale, but always as side characters in service of the white protagonists.

Two sub-themes also cropped up in several of the films, the first of which deals with a prominent event in American history. Although these films were released within a 30-year period between 1939 and 1969 - their settings ranged from the 1860s to the 1880s (with The Wild Bunch as the odd film out, set in 1913); this put their narratives within a few decades of the Civil War, and while none of the films deal with this as a prominent plot point, the national war is part of the characters history and therefore affects the men’s interactions in the Wild West - where any man could have fought on either side of the war. In Winchester ‘73, Lin and his friend High-Spade join the US Cavalry in a fight against the Indians and as they part ways - the duo admit to the US Sergeant that they fought against each other during the Battle of Bull Run. The men shake hands and part as chums, apparently having moved past what they consider a brother vs brother fight. More contentious is the handling of the war in Stagecoach, where the traveling band bicker about the North vs South struggle - some refer to the South as the “Southern Confederacy” and others clap back that it was a “rebellion.” In keeping with the underlying point of view of white men prominent in the genre, neither of these scripts describe the war’s central fight as around America’s original sin of slavery.

Another sub-theme deals with the very real struggle of alcoholism amongst the backdrop of the frontier, where saloons are primary social settings and the alcohol flows freely. In Stagecoach, Doc Boone’s large consumption of alcohol is treated as a humorous character quirk during the first half, but when Lucy’s pregnancy demands a premature delivery, his constant inebriation becomes a serious threat to her and the baby’s life. In My Darling Clementine, Doc Holliday’s battle with tuberculosis is made worse by drinking alcohol, definitely whiskey and even the champagne that he orders as an alternative, yet he continues to drink throughout the film. Dean Martin’s stellar performance in Rio Bravo took on a newly sober man’s temptation of falling back into the bottle, bravely showing the devastating effects of battling the disease, but also how a community of support is immensely helpful for pushing through.

Spanning 30 years, the films included in this Marathon chart the shifting narratives within the Western, with the first few decades adhering to the original genre tropes, and the films in the last decade beginning to subvert those conventions as the societal conditions had shifted as well. The films from the early decades - Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Winchester ‘73 (1950), High Noon (1952), The Searchers (1956), and Rio Bravo (1960) - for the most part adhere to the genre conventions established by the Hollywood Studio System, including the frontier setting, a lone man sheriff fighting against monumental forces, a white-centric perspective of civilization creeping into the wilderness, and a black and white moral code featuring clear cut villains. But as the years progressed into the 1960s and global culture changed, so too did the Western genre, with A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Wild Bunch (1969) demonstrating those changes in this Marathon. Featuring protagonists with a blurred moral code that didn’t fall neatly into the traditional ideal sheriff hero, as well as much more overt and excessive displays of violence, these films pushed the boundaries of Western narratives and forged new visual iconography, such as Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name’s hat and poncho from the Dollars trilogy. Looking beyond the scope of this Marathon, the shifting conventions have only become more prominent as the years followed the 1960s, with Westerns increasingly focused on previously marginalized voices of women and persons of color, more fully exploring the grey morality of life on the frontier, and pushing the sequences of violence to even more extremes.

And now - time for the Awards! The following categories were considered across the eight films screened:

Actor

Actress

Supporting

Screenplay

Song/Score

Direction

Best Picture

Actor:

Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name in A Fistful of Dollars

Departing from the early Western genre conventions, Eastwood plays The Man With No Name as an anti-hero, an intelligent stranger that devilishly plays the two rival gangs against each other, but also reunites a family and saves his only friend in the town. As the role that provided his breakout stardom, Eastwood is the epitome of cool - calm, confident, devious, and the fastest draw in town. The shoddy ADR slightly detracts from his performance, but otherwise, it is clear why he stole the mantle from John Wayne as the Western star for the more modern age.

Honorable Mentions:

John Wayne as Ringo Kid in Stagecoach - Wayne in his breakout role is fresh-faced, earnest, and innocently in love with Dallas, the prostitute with a heart of gold. John Ford had to fight for Wayne to be cast in this film, and his determination was rewarded by Wayne’s standout performance amongst a strong ensemble cast. He infuses Ringo Kid with a breezy and bemused attitude, floating above all the petty grievances within the stagecoach’s occupants, and instead forges a genuine connection with Dallas.

Gary Cooper as Will Kane in High Noon - Cooper is a man driven by the undeniable fact that his old enemy will not rest until he seeks revenge and his slow realization that he will face the fight alone - without help from the town nor his wife. His performance is a compelling portrait of restrained fear and solid determination, all playing out on Cooper’s stolid face.

Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine - Fonda brings sophistication to his performance, balancing a desire for revenge, nervous flirtation with Clementine, and believable sheriff skills. He also leans in to the emotion of the cattleman turned sheriff living on the frontier - subtle and heartfelt when speaking at his brother’s grave.

Actress:

Katy Jurado as Helen Ramirez in High Noon

With a fierce and stellar portrayal of a powerful woman of color in a frontier town, Jurado defies the usual boundaries of both her character’s Western world and also the Hollywood Studio System in which she filmed the movie in 1952. Not only providing a contrast to Grace Kelly’s subdued sheriff’s wife, she holds her own against her white deputy boyfriend, her white business partner where she is a silent investor, and also to her old lover - the white sheriff who is standing alone to defend his town and his life. The screenplay gives Jurado the space to create a character that has depth and her performance matches that opportunity - she is electrifying and an inspiring visage of an independent woman of color onscreen - a rare sight for a Classical Hollywood film.

Honorable Mentions:

Angie Dickinson as Feathers in Rio Bravo - Given the difficult job to inexplicably and quickly fall in love with an aging and stilted John Wayne and also to make unreasonable decisions like staying in town despite the danger to him and any of his associates, Dickinson delivers a remarkable performance. Despite a fleshed out character, Dickinson as Feathers is subtle, cool, calm, feisty, and strong. She refuses to be taken by stereotype, visibly delights in the sheriff’s uncomfortable reactions to her flirtations, and commands every scene with Wayne.

Shelley Winters as Lola Manners in Winchester ‘73 - In a film that doesn’t focus on a set of main characters, but follows the journey of a rifle through the West, Winters does get a majority of screen time; unfortunately, she spends most of that time being passed around between inadequate men. She makes up for that by maintaining a certain level of sass, delivered as snappy comments, but she also finds space for emotional and subtle moments with James Stewart.

Supporting Actor/Actress:

Dean Martin as Dude in Rio Bravo

Playing against his star persona (a charming and suave crooner from the Rat Pack), Martin is almost unrecognizable as a man going through alcohol withdrawal, attempting to stay sober and also prove his worth to the sheriff, his posse, and himself. Martin is so vulnerable here, especially the scenes where he is struggling with drinking, but he is believable as a gun-slinger and also shows off his incredibly beautiful and smooth vocals.

Honorable Mentions:

Victor Mature as Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine - Almost claiming the top spot here, Mature delivers a masterful performance, capturing the drama of a man filled with regret and bitterness. His face has a modern quality to it that stands out in the Western setting, but he employs it well, radiating so much emotional heft with just his eyes alone.

Thomas Mitchell as Doc Boone in Stagecoach - The Doctor starts out as the comedian of the stagecoach’s ensemble, constantly finding ways to drink the whiskey salesman's wares, and playing a drunk quite convincingly (oftentimes hard to do onscreen). Halfway through the film, however, Mitchell must turn his performance towards drama and emotion, sobering up to deliver a baby. He plays all shades of this character so well and won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for his efforts.

Screenplay:

Dudley Nichols for Stagecoach

From top to bottom, the screenplay for Stagecoach is a master class in plotting, dialogue, and assembling a compelling ensemble cast. The opening scenes provide a clinic in setting up all the individual stories for the characters who join the stagecoach, which feeds into their conflicts, as well as the danger looming over their journey. Ensemble pieces can be tricky to write, but Nichols infuses just the right balance between all characters, giving them each individual moments to shine, as well as natural conflicts that elicit revealing conversations within the coach and at their various stops. Despite its age, the script is teeming with life, is incredibly funny (clearly aided by some stellar performances), and even makes interesting choices around the action scenes - building up the tension to the final shootout, but not showing it onscreen. This is a fantastic screenplay that laid the foundation for a classic movie.

Honorable Mentions:

Carl Foreman for High Noon: This film is known for its commitment to time, setting a deadline for the villains arrival and constantly reminding the viewer of the impending crisis. This creates a slow burn towards the action, but the film doesn’t rush towards the climax; rather, it focuses on moments between characters and specifically explores their various motivations. The church scene is perfected down to the details, showing how men’s minds can be swayed by emotional speeches (one delivered by Thomas Mitchell, with another fantastic performance). The script is like an onion, with each layer moving the plot forward and revealing more of the character’s emotional journey.

Various Credits for A Fistful of Dollars - While the dialogue for this film does not particularly stand out, it is an honorable mention due to the structure and ingenuity of the plotting. The Man With No Name is incredibly intelligent and this is demonstrated by all the machinations of his playing the two gangs against each other. A story based on the Japanese film Yojimbo, this film has 5 writers credited on IMDB for the story and screenplay, but does not feel disjointed at all; rather, one is taken in by the clever tricks the gun-slinger does to outwit and take down the Rojos and the Baxters.

Song/Score:

Ennio Morricone for A Fistful of Dollars

This category has a clear winner with Morricone’s score - it is creative, daring (flutes in a Western?!), and incredibly engaging, uniting sound with image effectively. Working on a tight budget, Morricone’s restrictions generated a burst of creativity, crafting a tapestry of sounds that came to define the Dollars trilogy and heralded a new blueprint for the sounds of modern Western movies.

Honorable Mentions:

Max Steiner for The Searchers - I have known the main title music since before this Marathon, as it is included on the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra’s compilation of film scores, an album often in my rotation. Steiner’s music alternates between bold statements and lingering wanderlust, crafting a variety of shapes to match the various landscapes that Ethan and Martin travel through during their years of searching.

Jerry Fielding for The Wild Bunch - As the most recent film produced in the Marathon, the soundtrack feels the most modern of the selections. Fielding crafted a body of music that varies from faux patriotic snare drums in the opening sequence, to soft and romantic sides for the team’s down beat moments, to a high adventure score for the train robbery.

Direction:

Sergio Leone for A Fistful of Dollars

While it almost seems sacrosanct to not give John Ford the award, as he is basically the father of the Western, Leone's stretching of the genre in new directions in the spaghetti Western style is too good not to recognize. Leone’s shot composition (utilizing rules of thirds, depth of field and multiple planes, using buildings as framing devices, etc) is a more sophisticated filmmaking than the straightforward shots in the classic Westerns of this Marathon. Not to mention, his direction of the actors is stellar, especially working with Eastwood to define a new visage for the Western anti-hero. For all his fantastic work, the film is not flawless; the ADR sound and some confusing day/night scenes show cracks in the armor, but don’t take away from this masterpiece of vision and storytelling.

Honorable Mention:

John Ford for The Searchers - Despite my loathing for the blatant racism of the screenplay and stilted acting of John Wayne - the distinguished direction of Ford must be acknowledged; there is a reason why this film is considered a classic. The contrast between indoor and outdoor spaces to reflect civilization vs the wilderness and the types of people that inhabit each is conveyed simply through blocking and framing. Additionally, the Monument Valley that Ford was famous for shooting was never captured so beautifully in all of its various seasons. The film must be admired for Ford’s talent, despite its other challenging facets.

Best Picture:

Stagecoach

Despite the age of this film, it feels incredibly fresh and yet timeless. I’ve already touched on the excellent (and funny!) screenplay, Wayne’s star-making turn as Ringo Kid, and the wonderful ensemble cast (especially Thomas Mitchell as Doc Boone and also Andy Devine as Buck the stagecoach driver), but Ford’s direction must be credited as well; he skillfully navigates the cramped space of the stagecoach, reveals character work through blocking in the interior spaces, and films the Monument Valley for the first time in his career. And the film’s climactic action sequence is breathtaking and full of fantastic stunt work! Of course, the portrayal of Native Americans as a looming threat is problematic and is representative of the society and time period in which the film was made, but otherwise Stagecoach deserves its reputation as a classic Western and was the best of the films screened in this Marathon.

Honorable Mentions:

A Fistful of Dollars - After screening many classic Westerns in this Marathon, Leone’s film felt like a leap forward in terms of story, tone, and visual style. I’ve already praised Eastwood’s performance, the screenplay, Leone’s direction, and the incredible score by Morricone for these awards - and the final shootout is a good encapsulation of all these elements coming together. Visually stunning, with a subtle selection of background music from Morricone, featuring a grizzled Eastwood, and a surprise twist in the plot - it was making a statement that a new type of Western had arrived on the scene.

High Noon - This is such a meticulous film, revealing new layers with each scene, keeping viewers aware of the time structure, and carefully detailing the motivations of each character and archetype. As the antithetical film to Rio Bravo, the more emotional and lighthearted movie, High Noon is entirely serious, a tone driven by Gary Cooper’s performance of the slow realization of his fate - that he will be fighting alone for a town that he had defended his entire career. The film is essentially a series of character moments with a slow burn towards the final action scene that is both thrilling and realistic - a well put together Western film.

This Marathon was clearly a small slice of selections within an incredibly vast canon of films from a genre that is foundational to film history. Along the way, I have noted films that are related to the movies within the Marathon and hope to follow up on screening them in the future, to keep my education in this genre continuing. Homework from A Fistful of Dollars are to finish the Dollars trilogy - For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), watch Leone’s ultimate masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and also to view Eastwood’s directorial take on the Western with Unforgiven (1992). Films in the same orbit as My Darling Clementine that deal with Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the famous shootout include Tombstone (1993), Wyatt Earp (1994), and Gunfight at the Ok Corral (1957). AFI’s Top 10 Westerns include several that were not in this Marathon, including Shane (1953), Red River (1948), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and Cat Ballou (1965). And finally, some Western films took their plots from Japanese films, so watching the source material such as Yojimbo (1961) or Seven Samurai (1954), which served as the basis for The Magnificent Seven (1960). Even these selections are just scratching the surface of this expansive genre.

So, after consideration of all the films screened in this Marathon, a deeper dive into the themes and manifestations of the Western genre - did my less than enthusiastic opinion change? While my appreciation for the breadth and depth of the genre’s films grew, this experience also helped further clarify my underwhelming feeling about the genre. As the setting is deeply rooted in the American West and the expansion of eastern “civilized” culture into the natural wilderness, this genre’s underlying theme has racist roots at its core - the thought that Native Americans and Mexicans must be cast aside for the white man (yes, man - as women are often placed in stereotyped roles as well) to become dominant. The different variations on this theme can be made into entertaining cinema, but I can’t help but feel uncomfortable with the underlying narrative of the entire genre. This Marathon only covered a 30 year timespan, from Classical Hollywood to just the beginning of the New Hollywood era, and as the years continued to progress and society developed more acceptance of telling stories with an expanded POV, different variations on the Westerns have been produced; in addition to the films I have noted above, I would like to dive into the more modern and revisionist Westerns, ones such as The Ballad of Little Jo (1993) and Woman Walks Ahead (2017) that tell the tales of the Old West from the women and native perspective.

Despite my trepidation of this Marathon’s topic, I did enjoy diving deeper into the genre and learning more about the Western’s shifting conventions. The next Marathon topic that Filmspotting took on has me a bit more anxious - as it is diving into the Horror genre. I typically avoid scary movies, so I will need to gather all my emotional fortitude to take on this next Marathon. We are transitioning from the gunfight in the center of town to the stalking of innocent victims at night. For now, adios amigos!

#High Noon #The Searchers #stagecoach #my darling clementine #rio bravo #a fistful of dollars #winchester 73 #the wild bunch #john ford #john wayne

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