The Administration. I have some things to say about this monstrosity.
DR spoilers under the cut:
LOL that Zane was the one who was the most knowledgeable about the Administration and proceeded to inform the audience about this new entity. Did not see that coming.
First clue something was off - when the portal that Lloyd and Arin jumped through disappeared, it turned into bubbles.
Then we get a first glimpse of this bureaucratic hell in the cubical maze. The multi-generation line for a permit made my blood pressure spike. Too close. 😭 You don’t know bureaucratic hell until you’ve tried getting permits for a project that turns into a multi month long process, massive fees and tons of back and forth and revisions and (pulls out hair) could have been handled internally between departments. (I’m looking at you City of LA). Not to mention driving into downtown LA is an equally soul crushing experience. But I digress. . .
Lloyd and Arin get their mini Matrix adventure “following the white rabbit” (except it is following the white ninja - haha get it?) which leads them to Zane (and be honest, we all thought it was going to be Jay).
Zane then gives us the low down on the Administration. Extreme power paired with gross incompetence. Managers sound like department heads, and the top dog is the Administrator (who we have yet to meet). And it used to be in the realm of madness before the merge. Interesting.
They somehow knew he was attempting to open a monastery portal (did it connect to the Administration?), teleported directly into the monastery and took Zane. Wow, they have powerful tech and surveillance.
The three ninja figure out that the Administration has immense power, yet all of their paperwork is pointless busywork and doesn’t really do anything. Ooofff if that’s not a dig on modern government and large corporations.
“It is impossible to tell the difference between mass incompetence and intentional malice.”
I predict that will be the theme of the Administration: it will be impossible to tell if they’re that stupid or that evil. Unfortunately, that’s how most governments and large corporations are. And they will have an important role in season two. Why go through all the effort to introduce this new land merged with a Ninjago if it doesn’t show up again? Will the top leader, the Administrator, be linked to Raz’s master?
Then we finally see Jay and it looks like he has figured out how to climb the ladder of the Administration’s strict hierarchy. Good for him. Get that executive suite! Get close to the Administrator so when your memories come back you can help your ninja team.
I am excited to see more of the Administration and Jay’s shenanigans next season. I hope he is a total dick to the cubical wagies.
What are your thoughts on the Administration? 
I’m looking forward to seeing how many references to The Office, Office Space, Dilbert, etc. Welcome to government work and corporate life. 😂😭
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Help Please
It's been a looong time. Life keeps getting in the way.
Anyways, I like to write and 2 years ago I wrote a story called Chosen One from a writing prompt.
I posted it on here and then promptly forgot about it. Fortunately I also had it saved among all my other writing stuff and recently rediscovered it.
I was pleasantly surprised and shared it with my spawn (all young adults) and was then asked if I ripped the story from tumblr coz they were certain they'd seen it in a some kind of video about tumblr stuff...
So, I've proved to them that it is actually my creation and re-discovered tumblr.
Now I would love it if you could all help me find which video they saw it on coz, well, I'm curious.
It might have been one of PM Seymour's vids, but my spawn, well, they watch a lot of stuff from a lot of different people, so it might not have been...
And tho I am recovering from surgery and can't do much, I don't know that I have the mental capacity to trawl through that many hours of videos in the hopes of finding it...
So if anyone can help me find the location of this video that has a reading of Chosen One in it I would be extremely grateful.
Thanks so very much.
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I have to talk about Chester Arthur. His story makes me go crazy. A mediocre president from the 1880s who's completely forgotten today has one of the best redemption stories I've ever heard and I need to make people understand just how cool his story is.
So, like, he starts out as this idealist, okay? He's the son of an abolitionist minister and becomes famous as a New York lawyer who defends the North's version of Rosa Parks whose story desegregates New York City's trolley system.
Then he starts getting pulled into politics and becomes one of the grimiest pieces of the political machine. He wants money, power, prestige, and he gets it. He becomes the right-hand man of Roscoe Conkling, the most feared political boss in the nation, a guy who will throw his weight around and do the most ruthless things imaginable to keep his friends in power and destroy his enemies.
Because Arthur's this guy's top lackey, he gets to be Controller of the Port of New York--the best-paying political appointment in the country, because that port brings in, like, 70% of the federal government's funds in tariffs. He gets a huge salary plus a percentage of all the fines they levy on lawbreakers, and because he's not afraid to make up infractions to fine people over, he is absolutely raking in the dough. Making the rough equivalent of $1.3 million a year--absolutely insane amounts of money for a government position. He's spending ridiculous sums on clothes, buying huge amounts of alcohol and cigars to share with people as part of his job recruiting supporters to the party, going out nearly every night to wine and dine people as part of his work in the political machine. He's living the high life. Even when President Hayes pulls him from his position on suspicions of fraud, he's still living a great life of wealth, power, and prestige.
Then in 1880, his beloved wife dies. While he's out of town working for a political campaign. And he can't get back in time to say goodbye before she dies. Because he's a guy who has big emotions, it absolutely tears him up inside, especially because Nell resented how much his political work kept him away from home. He has huge regrets, but he just moves in with Roscoe Conkling and keeps working for the political machine.
And then he gets a chance to be vice president. The Republican Party has nominated James Garfield, a dark horse candidate who wants to reform the spoils system that has given Conking his power and gave Arthur his position as Port Controller. Conkling is pissed, and he controls New York, and since the party's not going to win the election without New York, they think that appointing Conkling's top lackey as vice-president will pacify him.
They're wrong--Conkling orders Arthur to refuse--but Arthur thinks this sounds like a great opportunity. The only political position he's ever held is Port Controller--a job he wasn't elected to and that he was pulled from in disgrace. Vice President is way more than he could ever have hoped for. It's a position with a lot of political pull and zero actual responsibilities. He'll get to spend four years living in up in Washington high society. It's the perfect job! Of course he accepts, and Conkling comes around when he figures out that he can use this to his advantage.
When Garfield becomes president, Arthur does everything he can to undermine him. He uses every dirty political trick he can think of to block everything that Garfield wants to do. He refuses to let the Senate elect a president pro tempore so he can stay there and influence every bill that comes through. He all but openly boasts of buying votes in the election. He's so much Conkling's lackey that he may as well be the henchman of a cartoon supervillain. On Conkling's orders, he drags one of Garfield's Cabinet members out of bed in the middle of the night--while the guy is ill--to drag him to Conkling's house so he can be forced to resign. He's just absolutely a thorn in the president's side, a henchman doing everything he can to maintain the corrupt spoils system.
Then in July 1881, when Arthur's in New York helping Conkling's campaign, the president gets shot. By a guy who shouts, "Now Arthur will be president!" just after he fires the gun. Arthur has just spent the past four months fighting the president tooth and nail. Everyone thinks he's behind the assassination. There are lynch mobs looking to take out him and Conkling. The papers are tearing him apart.
Arthur is absolutely distraught. He rushes to Washington to speak with the president and assure him of his innocence, but the doctors won't let him in the room. He gets choked up when talking to the First Lady. Reporters find him weeping in his house in Washington. Once again, death has torn his world apart and he's not getting a chance to make amends.
Arthur goes to New York while the president is getting medical treatment, and he refuses to come to Washington and take charge because he doesn't dare to give the impression that he's looking to take over. No one wants Arthur to be president and he doesn't want to be president, and the possibility that this corrupt political lackey is about to ascend to the highest office in the land is absolutely terrifying to everyone.
Then in August, when it's becoming clear that the president is unlikely to recover, he gets a letter. From a 31-year-old invalid from New York named Julia Sand. A woman from a very politically-minded family who has been following Arthur's career for years. And she writes him this astounding letter that takes him to task for his corrupt, conniving ways, and the obsession with worldly power and prestige that has brought him wealth and fame at the cost of his own soul--and she tells him that he can do better. In the midst of a nationwide press that's tearing him apart, this one woman writes to tell him that she believes he has the capacity to be a good president and a good man if he changes his ways.
And then he does. After Garfield dies, people come to Arthur's house and find servants who tell them that Arthur is in his room weeping like a child (I told you he had big emotions), but he takes the oath of office and ascends to the presidency. And he becomes a completely different man. His first speech as president mentions that one of his top priorities is reforming the spoils system so that people will be appointed based on merit rather than getting appointed as political favors with each change in the administration. Even though this system made him president. When Conkling comes to Arthur's office telling him to appoint his people to important government positions, Arthur calls his demands outrageous, throws him out, and keeps Garfield's appointees in the positions. "He's not Chet Arthur anymore," one of his former political friends laments. "He's the president."
He loses all his former political friends. He's never trusted by the other side. Yet he sticks to his guns and continues to support spoils system reform. He prosecutes a postal service corruption case that everyone thought he would drop. He's the one who signs into law the first civil service reform bill, even though presidents have been trying to do this for more than ten years, and he's the person who's gained all his power through the spoils system. He immediately takes action to enforce this bill when he could have just dropped it. He becomes a champion of this issue even though it's the last thing anyone would have expected of him.
He oversees naval reform. He oversees a renovation of the White House. He still prefers the social duties of the presidency, but he's respectable in a way that no one expected. Possibly because Julia Sand keeps sending him letters of encouragement and advice over the next two years. But also because he's dying.
Not long after ascending to the presidency, he learns he's suffering from a terminal kidney disease. And he tells no one. He keeps going about his daily life, fulfilling his duties as president, and keeps his health problems hidden. Once again, death is upending his life, and this time it's his own death. He's lived a life he's ashamed of, and he doesn't have much time left to change. He enters the presidency as an example of the absolute worst of the political system, and leaves it as a respectable man.
He makes a token effort to seek re-election, but because of his health problems, he doesn't mind at all when someone else gets the nomination. He dies a couple of years after leaving office. The day before his death, he orders most of his papers burned, because he's ashamed of his old life--but among the things that are saved are the letters from Julia Sand, the woman who encouraged him to change his ways.
This is an astounding story full of so many twists and turns and dramatic moments. A man who falls from idealism into the worst kind of corruption and then claws his way back up to decency because of a series of devastating personal losses and unexpected opportunities to do more than he could have ever hoped to do. I just go crazy thinking about it and I need you all to understand just how amazing this story is.
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anyway, Elden Ring is about love and hope
Marika burns everything she has build out of sorrow
Ranni banishes the Outer Gods and also fucks off the Lands, giving agency back to the normal beings of the Lands
Fortissax endlessly fights Death for his friend/lover
Melina burns herself and Erdtree in hopes of a better world in the hands of the Tarnished
Blaidd fights against the very reason he was created out of love for his sister
Ranni and Rykard always keep an eye on their mother, protecting her
Radahn evokes so much love from his troops that they organise a whole festival to give him a honorable death even in his madness
Radahn learns an entire new school of magic in order to still ride his favourite horse
Boc's love for his mother, his mother's love for him
How all but two endings are build on the hope that this new era (whatever it might be) will be good
Miquella attempting to create an whole new world-tree to host the forsaken and the damned
Miquella turning on the faith he was raised and even believed in to an extent, when it was unable to cure his sister's curse
The Cleanrot's loyalty to Malenia and their endurance of the Rot, only to stay in her service
Malenia marching through the entire continent in search of her brother
Finlay traveling all the way back on her own, carrying the incapacitated demigod on her back
Tanith's love for Rya
Dialos' entire questline
Edgar being driven mad after his daughter dies
Vyke embracing, to a point, the Frenzied Flame in order to save his finger maiden
or you know, that's just how I see it
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i don’t know if i know how to word this properly but basically i just really like that buck’s realization shows older people who might be questioning their sexuality that it’s okay to not know in your thirties or older, but i also really like that it shows younger people that you don’t have to know right here and now and there’s no age you have to know by. i like how it emphasises the fluidity of sexuality in the form of a macho firefighter who hasn’t considered men in any conscious (or even subconscious) light, and i think that’s a very important point to put across
there’s something to be said about finding out that you’re queer in your thirties and i love that 911 is showing us that through buck, and showing us that maybe you might always know through hen, and showing us that maybe you’ve repressed it for a good chunk of your life through michael but there’s also something to be said for the younger viewers who are struggling to label themselves - to know that it’s okay to not know just yet and still be valid, and be a member of the queer community. and there’s also something to be said about seeing a thirty year old man slip into his realization all happy and safe with another firefighter who tried to hide that part of him, and basically i love my lil gay firefighter show
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