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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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One Year Anniversary: Top 12 Ducktales Episodes!

Happy anniversary all you happy people! Yes it was one year ago today I started reviewing animation and it’s been a ride to be sure. I’d always WANTED to be a reviewer: I love going on and on about stuff I love, really digging into it and picking it apart... but I could never get started. I tried youtube but I didn’t have the money for the equipment nor a proper shooting space to record, so my efforts.. were not great. And while I TRIED text reviews, my own looming pile of self hatred meant every attempt I made was shot down when it got hard as me not being good enough.

But one year ago I finally got past that. I’d already been reviewing a bit, doing invididual issues of comics... but got way in over my head trying to do the current line of X-Men comics as it came out, and wisely bowed out of that. But that left a gap: I had nothing to cover week to week and with a demanding new job, I drifted into just doing in charcter chats, little fan fictions script styles. Not bad work, I should do some more at some point and I even got a comissoin once in a while, but nothing I could really live on and not what I wanted to do with my life.

Enter Ducktales. I’d always WANTED to review the show.. and when the double premire happened, I decided fuck it, and put up my thoughts. And then decided.. hey maybe I can do this every week.. and slowly.. my work evolved, getting better and better, getting more and more likes. I picked up Amphibia when that came by week to week.

And eventually.. this went from a hobby, if one I was passionate about to a career. Not a largely paying one, as only one person was really intrested in paying me for it, friend of the blog and our fincial backer @weirdkev27, but .. it’s money and i’m now making about 30 dollars a month due to a comination of comissions and patreon. Other contributers are always welcome mind you, my patreon is here if your curious and comissions are 5 dollars an episode, but i’ts just nice to have money coming in. To have gone from simply WANTING to review things and make a living off it.. to simply doing it.

And it’s been one hell of a year.. and not just because 2020 felt like hell or 2021 began with a full on insurrection. I feel like i’ve acomplished a lot in the year i’ve been doing this: I finished what I started with Ducktales season 3, getting better and better as I went. And I didn’t stop there with ducks: I started covering what brought me to Ducks in the first place, the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, and while that retrospective has slid a bit on the schedule, I intend to get it back on track this month. I reviewed a bunch of Darkwing Duck episodes leading up to the Just Us Justice Ducks.. chronologically anyway. The actual airing order reads like someone took 50 issues of a comic, made it rain with them, then just started reading whatever ones they picked up randomly. I also covered some of Duck Master Carl Barks work with the classics Night on Bear Mountain, A Christmas for Shacktown and Back to the Klondike, with more to come.

And the Duck didn’t stop at just reviews I did on my own: Kev comissioned two MASSIVE retrospectives from me: My first for him was Ride of the Three Caballleros where in just a few short months I covered the boys entire televisied careers together from the movie, to house of mouse, to mickey and the roadster racers, to ducktales (again) and finishing with the wonderful Legend of the Three Caballeros. It has probably the worst Daisy imaginable, but otherwise is really excellent and i’m glad I finally watched it. I also covered Don Rosa’s two stories with the boys as part of it. It was a fun ride and I enjoyed every minute of it... okay most of them again Three Cabs Daisy is the worst. And once that finished Kev started up another idea: Shadow Into Light: a look at Lena’s character arc from start to finish that has gone on to be my most popular series on this blog, and that finishes next week. And there’s more to come as after that there’s a short breather with a look at Lilo and Stitch’s crossover episodes.. folllowed by me looking at all three of season 2′s ducktales arcs. And I fully intend to have covered every episode of the series by this time next year, so stay tuned.

Outside of ducks though I didn’t slow down. I restarted my Tom Lucitor retrospective, covering what i feel to be one of Star Vs’ two best characters, tied with eclipsa, and my personal faviorite as he redeemeed himself, found love and I bitched a lot about the horrible directions the series took and probabably will more as that’s still not done yet. I did what I always wanted to do and started looks at some of my faviorite comics ever, starting with Life and Times and adding in New X-Men and Scott PIlgrim. I also threw in the awesome comic Blacksad. I did pride month for the first time and not only came out publicly, but also did two whole arcs i’m proud of with The Saluna episodes of Loud house and the rednid episodes of OK KO, and generally just had myself a good old fashioned time as an out bi man reviewing childrens cartoons.

I started Season 2 of amphibia with it’s lows of an endlesss road trip and highs of adding Marcy to the cast and giving us more of the silky voiced keith david. And finally Patreon wise Kev’s taken me on a hell o fa journey: In addition to the restrospectives i’ve covered some additional darkwing duck, and a simpsons homage to the duck comics... but also got a bit weird and obscure with detours like the lost animnaics sucessor Histeria, the apocalyptic comedy where Santa dosen’t know how doors work Whoops! and the adventures of Santa’s bratty teen daughter jingle belle. In short.. it’s been a long year but damn has it been fun and there’s more to come. I’d like to thank all of you for reading, thank my Patreons Kev and Emma for supporting me, and thank my family for doing the same. So with that out of the way, I figured the best way to celebrate was to do something i’ve been wanting to do for a long time, something honoring the show that gave me this calling in the first place. And with Season 3 sadly being the last, and enough weeks having passed for me to digest it between the finale and today, I could think of nothing better than my top 12 episodes of Ducktales.

Ducktales is one of the best cartoons of the 2010′s. Brilliantly taking EVERYTHING that had come before, the comics, the original cartoon and every bit of duck media period to craft a masterful, unique and wonderful reboot. It was funny, it was insane, and it had damn good character arcs. By the end every member of the main cast along with major supporting cast members like Fenton, Drake and especially Lena, had changed and signifigantly at that. The show was everything I could’ve dreamed of and more and I miss it terribly, hoping DIsney will do a revivial movie at some point. For now though, Frank and Matt’s run on ducktales, as they called it and I do too since i’m a massive comic book nerd, it’s time to look back on my favorite tales of ducks. So grab your sharks, your number one dimes and your friendship cakes with clear gay undertones and join me under the cut as I celebrate one of my faviorite shows and my anniversary in the best way possible.

12. House of the Lucky Gander!

So as i’ve gone on about before and no doubt will again, Donald kinda got the short end of the stick in season 1. While Frank and Matt had good story intentions, keeping Donald away from adventure since he had no interest in it, in practice it meant a beloved Disney Icon who they and disney HEAVILY promoted as part of the series and whose being here this go round was a big draw for fans of the comics.... was only in a quarter of the season and only got TWO plots centered around him in 23 episodes, with only one being the main plot of the episode. The PIlot and Finale both centered around the family more as a whole if your curious how I counted those so while he got plenty of focus in both, it’s still not a day in the limelight sort of thing.

But unusually for Donald, he lucked out as his one big starring role for Season 1 was both one of my faviorites and one of Season 1′s most inventive outings. A lot of the episodes enegy comes from a one two punch of a great guest star and one of the series best settings. The guest star is of course everyone’s faviorite overly lucky himbo Gladstone Gander. The show adapted the prick perfectly: The original Gladstone from the comics.. was the worst asshole imaginable, utterly insufferable. And for a villian, and Donald’s rival, that’s all well and good.. but his super luck meant he RARELY , if ever, suffered any consequences for being just...

The 87 series simply made him nicer, while Going Quackers simply removed his luck. No adaptation really got how to make this fucker work.. until this one. Here Frank split the diffrence: Gladstone is still smug.. but he’s no longer actively malicious. While he is an insensitive prick to Donald in this one, unlike the comics he’s not constantly bragging about his luck or how great he is or actively BAITING Donald to fight with him or trying to ruin his relationship or a million other reasons he sucks and I hate him.

This version by contrast... is generous. He’s not the most empathetic, because he doesn’t get how life works, but he does share the riches of the casnio with everyone and in a cameo appearance in “Treasure of the Found Lamp” gladly offers his nephews some diamonds. He’s got a nice surface level charm to him that makes you understand why people like him.. but it’s also clear ther’es nothing UNDER that of value, making you equally understand why Scrooge and Donald hate him. Gladstone in this reboot is a perfect example of why we need reboots or new adaptations in the first place: Because sometimes the original got something wrong or something can be done much better by the new writers.

He’s perfectly paired with the setting: The House of Lucky Fortune, a mystical casino with an East Asian astatic based in the country of Macaw and provides two great plots. Donald’s really highlights his character: His understandable jealousy at gladstone earning the boys love through nothing while he struggles to make a living for them, and how he feels like a looser and like Gladstone is simply showing that off instead of just not knowing what empathy is. Having Louie be the one to bond with Gladstone was also just pitch pefefct, as is showing some depth for the boy by having himr ealize his hero is an asshole and be the one to help donald in the end.

The other plot is just pure joy though and is where the setting REALLY shines: Scrooge and the rest of the kids try to leave.. but can’t find the exit. This is where the creative part comes in: The Casino simply morphs to keep people trapped, and caters to them, giving them whatever they want to keep them trapped. In the cases of the kids it’s all hilarious and adorably in character: Huey becomes entranced by a fancy water show, in one of his best bits of the season, Dewey gets a pet tiger who sadly did not come home with him and Webby gets to live the dream we’ve all had of stuffing her face directly in a choclate fountain. Scrooge’s escape is likewise clever: He simply prepares to get a room.. then books it as the check in desk is ALWAYS near the front.

We then find out Gladston’es trapped get the whole mystical contest with absolutely gorgeous animation, i’ll talk about it in full some time but this episode is just a treat to watch, has a great arc for donald and had some memorable gags. I can’t help but smile when I watch it.

11. The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee! As I mentioned before i’m a superhero nerd so naturally Fenton was one of my faviorite parts of the show. Frank and Matt were just damn good at crafting superhero stories, and like gladstone improved fenton turning him from an awkward donald stand in to an awkward peter parker-esque science nerd who just wants to be a good person and the best hero he can be. He got into science not just because he thinks it’s neat, but because he honestly wants to help people and you can’t help but foot for him whenever he pops up. Lin Manuel Miranda is a large reason for that, bringing his incomparable a-game to the character. While we sadly didn’t get a ton of gizmoduck focused episodes, the fatct we got AS MANY as we did and that Lin didn’t drop out for a minute even with his busy schedule was a miracle and I’m acknowledging that.

As for why this one, I feel it builds brilliantly on the previous Fentoncentric episode Who Is Gizmoduck?! which just BARELY didn’t make this list and uses the fact we haven’t seen fenton in a while as both a plot point and to move some things forward without having to spend screentime they clearly didn’t have. By having Fenton be just burnt out on superheroics it finds a way to both explain where he’s been, he’s been busy with his new job, and give us an interesting angle to the old “superhero is tired of the life” thing. He never once complains about saving people or stuff... it’s just like any job it gets tiring after a while. As someone who has his dream job but has struggled with it from time to time, I vastly relate.

Though while I love my boy and Lin is game as always, the episodes real MVP is my other boy Huey. The episode has moved Huey up from being simply Fenton’s fanboy to being his best friend, and adorable as hell relationship. The two clearly respect and appricate each other and Huey is looking out for his buddy the whole episode. His love of love is also just really cute. Added in the mix is Webby, who in one of my faviorite gags of the series, finds out Fenton is Gizmoduck because Huey is incredibly and insanely blatant with his unecessary coverup. But she of course is game to help while Fenton is trying to play it casual. We also just get a waterfall of great gags as everyone overdoes it wingmanning for fenton: Huey sets up an itallian bistro and tries to purposfully create a lady and the tramp situation, and sings opera (With Manny on acordian), the wonderfully 80′s suit from Fenton’s dad his mom gives him to wear, and Launchpad, who gives us a tremendous list of his exes, and plays my favorite song of the series: It’s a Date, a micheal mcdonnel riff.

This episode also wisely ups Mark’s Beaks game as Fenton’s arch enemy, still keeping him hilaroius, with the guy acting like a bored teenager and guzzling so much nanite jucie he turns into a hulk, as well as said hulk mode leading to a ton of great gags from kidnapping the children (”I got your kids.. are they your kids? I don’t know how this family works), to “take that coach dad” to eating a pie with tins and all and wondering about said tins. But he’s an actual threat now, taking on fenton in one hell of a fight, and having an utterly transcendent scene where he hacks his way past gyro’s security while dancing.. and dabbing because of course he does. It’s a fun, well done character piece that’s mostly here for i’ts laugh but Fenton’s struggle with Gizmo overtaking his life, and finding out someone he truly hit it off iwth only wanted him for that.. it’s really good stuff and Lin’s delivery after Fenton finds out, the pure pain and betryal in his voice, is just excellent. Also that opera scene is poetry.

10. Quack Pack!

One of the episodes that started my career naturally landed here. Not for that reason though: Quack Pack is a fun riff on sitcoms, specifically the tgif ones of the 90′s that Disney Afternoon Kids no doubt also watched, the kinds Disney Channel still makes today, and most importanly the kind the Disney Afternoon itself made like Goof Troop and well... Quack Pack.

Riffs on sitcoms are nothing new and the last year has been FULL of them. 2020 gave us this episode, Beef House and the wonderful “The Perfect House” episode of Close Enough, and this year gave us WandaVision, my second favorite MCU project so far, right behind Black Panther, which used the sitcom deconstruction to create one hell of a character study.

So you’d think with a year having passed and this concept happening as an entire mini series would dull this one.. but no. it’s still damn funny, having fun at the cliches while, again like WandaVision, having one of the main cast be responsible by accident but go along with it. The episode pivots from glorious affectionate parody of cheesy sitcoms, to that plus horrifying “Humans”, and a character piece for Donald. This brings Donald’s hatred and fed up ness with adventure to a head revealing his fondest wish is just to have a normal life and not loose anyone again.

It takes one of his best friends to snap him out of it. Look Goofy is my second faviorite of the sensational seven, an episode with him was already an easy sell for me.. but the episode uses him really well. First for laughs as he’s gentically dispositioned to be a perfect sitcom neighbor.. but also for heart. With his family preoccupied and a bit hurt, i’ts Goofy who cuts to the heart of the issue, pointing out NO ONE is normal and even his normal domestic life raising Max, who we see go to prom with roxanne eeeeee, has all sorts of chaos. Normal is what you make of it and pining for some ideal that will never happen was just tearing donald apart piece by piece and by letting go of that.. he finally begins to grow as a person throughout the season. It’s also a great thematic tie in to the season’s overall plot with Bradford and what Makes donald, despite also disliking the chaos his family gets into, different. Donald accepted it and grew as a person.. Bradford clung to his hate and it ate him alive. Or turned him into a non-sapient kind of vulture. Before I close this part out Jaleel White is also excellent and I wish eh’d get back into voice acting. He’s so freaking good at it. Seriously man i’d love to see him and ben in a sonic property together as a mythology gag. Same with Jims cummings and carey. Just think about it whoever owns the sonic movies.. think about it.

9. The Last Adventure!

Look I knew this was coming, you knew this was coming. But it had to be on here. The Last Adventure is not perfect: The lack of a build up episode like the previous two finales had really hurt this one: even at about 70 minutes, it still feels rushed in places and Huey, one of hte main characters of the season, dosen’t feel like he has a full payoff to his character like Dewey and Louie got.

But despite those flaws.. this episode is just a damn good ending. Almost everyone gets a big moment paying off their character arc, everyone in the party that comes to rescue webby and huey, along with the two themselves, gets a moment to show off, and everything comes together to give us one last epic sendoff. There’s just moment stacked on moment stacked on moment from Launchpads heroic second wind and donning of the gizmoduck armor, to Webby’s tearful confrontation with Beakley, to Huey using the greatest adventure of all line to foil bradford in one of the most deligfhully nuts moments of the series, I could go on for days with just how triumphant this finale felt. While it left a lot of doors open.. that feels like part of the design. It’s the end of the fight with FOWL.. but our heroes will never stop adventuring, never stop going and never stop being in our hearts and the curtain call at the end is now my faviorite bit of end credits ever, perfectly giving the main cast and friends one last chance to take a bow in their own unique ways. I will always miss this show but I will never be disapointed by the note it went out on.

8. The 87 Cent Solution!

Look some episodes are show stoppers, some are heartfelt tearjerkers, some are all this and more.. and some episodes are just clever and hilarious. The 87 Solution is the second funniest episode of Ducktales with me and my go to episode when watching the show. It’s just pure fun and with a clever premise: Scrooge notices 87 cents have gone missing, and already coming down with a cold, goes mad with paranoia as the kids slowly don face masks, something that has become even eeerier given everything, one by one realizing he needs to stop.

While David Tennant is an EXCELLENT dramatic actor, his comedy timing is really something that shoudln’t be ignored and i’ts on full display here as his performance gets more and more deranged, to thep oint he thinks an 8th dimensional imp is repsonsible. He nicely balances the disturbing side of Scrooge’s paranoia, his distancing from his family, with plenty of great gags about it too, the standout being when he offers 2 million dollars to whoever took the money like he’s publicly appeasing kidnappers. It’s fucking brilliant.

But while David is awesome as ever what really, truly makes the episode is my boy, one of my faviorite characters on the show if not my single faviriote FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Keith Ferguson is ALWAYS a dream as the character but this is his best performance by far. Part of this is the addition of Zan Owlson, Kev who I mentioned earlier’s faviorite Ducktales character. She’s not only throughly likeable in her own right, but provides the one thing Flinty was missing; a straight man.. or woman in this case. Scrooge wasn’t TERRIBLE in the roll, but can easily step away from his shit or foil it. Owlson has to put up with Glomgold’s nonsense while desperatly trying to stop him from undoing all her hard work with sheer force of jackass. The two jut play off each other brilliantly, Glomgold not getting sh’es not his employee but his equal and Owlson constnatly snarking at him.

And of course both things hit their peak in the climax with the family staging a fake funeral (Though no one told donald it was fake), and we get the funniest scene in the entire fucking show as Glomgold burts in in a white suit, money shades and full dance number to “All I Do Is Win’, which when first watching this I was convinced the song was somehow accidnetly on in the background but nope. They got it after using it in the test phase and the scene is better for it. Glomgold twerking on Scrooge’s casket, trying to get on it to dance, and having to be placated like ac hild is the icing on this very rich cake

And the reveal scene is also gold as Glomgold gets into a YEARLONG staring contest with a baby, fails to steal more than the 87 cents and, in my faviorite touch, put on an imp costume just to make scrooge seem crazier... then keeps the damn thing on the rest of the time for no explicable reason. The episode is the show at it’s comedic peak while giving Glomgold a chance to be a genuine threat and that’s Glomgood.

7. Let’s Get Dangerous!

Frank’s Rebooted Version of Darkwing Duck is probably his greatest achivment with the show. While this show is a team effort, something I slowly realized as I reviewed the show, it’s very clear from the way he talks, how well he knows the show and how much effort was put into porting Darkwing into the reboot that this was his baby. While redefining ducktales for the 2010′s was clearly a huge dream of his... doing the same for the master of suprise was an even bigger goal. And as a huge fan of superheroes i’ve seen my fair share of half assed takes on laired and complex characters. The XCU alone is one giant grab bag of missed opportunities for me.

So i’ts no exageration when I tell you Frank.. nailed it. In one of the most brilliant moves i’ve seen for a superhero work Frank worked his love of the show into the reboot.. by having Darkwing have been a show, one Launchpad loved.. and so did Drake, who was inspried by the show to become an inspriation himself and while his attempt to do that through a zack snydery reboot failed, Launchpad encouraged him to do it for real. Drake was still himself, but the meta aspect and the toning down of some of darkwing’s more obnoxious traits that didn’t work in a universe that, while patently rediciulous still took it’s characters seriously, he made a BETTER version of the character.

This is where all that comes to it’s peak, and hoppefully convinced Disney to let Frank , and possibly matt, run the reboot. And no, even if Point Grey is producing that dosen’t stop that: Thanks to Invincible i’ve now realized that Seth and his friend Evan producing the show dosen’t mean it’ll be RAN by them, nor unrelated to this. It just means their helping make it and if anything given how lush and gorgeous invincible’s animation is, it’s a VERY good sign their helping out with it if it’s true.

But wether this versoin continues or not, Frank gave it his best shot. Part of his diffrent angle is having Drake as a rookie here and as such here we see him truly struggle: he’s had his origin, he ahs the cape, he has the gadgets (in a brilliant turn thanks to fenton, who he actually likes... but is so far the ONLY person to not get he’s Gizmoduck), and the city.. but no crime to fight and no real idea how to go about his lifelong dream. The events of the episode slowly shape him: WHile he already had the spirit for darkwing, never giving up, looking good in a cape etc, this episode gives him the heart the same way it gave his original it: With Gosalyn. Dimantopolis and Beatriz just play off each other perfectly, as the two go from neimies to slowly bonding as Drake realizes this kid needs him and that he needs to fight for more than just filing the ohle inside, and goes to hell and back to help her get her grandpa back, with one of the best moments of the episode to me being when Launchpad helps her realize how hard he’s been working at it, an exausted drake refusing to acccept that he can’t get her grandpa back because he promised. He grows from simply trying to live the dream.. to surpassing the original. We also see more from Launchpad, who grows into his new family and helps push his boyfriend and newa dopted daughter in the right directions. The episode really evolves these characters from the simple disney afternoon versions, who while awesome were made into fully fleshed out characters. Gosalyn still has her edge but now has a hard lesson to learn about doing the right thing, forced to give up someone she loves for the greater good but finding a new family in the process.

Part of what makes the episode work though as while it is funcitonally one big darkwing duck reboot pilot that’s awesome, heartrending and a joy to watch... it’s still a ducktales episode in parts without either part hurting each other. Huey plays a vital role, figuring the ramrod is too good to be true.. and discovering just how it is, then when captured, slowly unravling why Bradford’s there and being at least in part responsible for outing him as a FOWL agent. While this is largely Drakes story the rest of the cast is still vital to it: Scrooge trusting in huey, Louie serving as his logical counter and Dewey meanwhile bonding with team darkwing and helping Gosalyn, knowing exactly where she’s been and providing a nice foil. The episode is just one long and impressive love letter to the original show while creating it’s own thing and that’s really this reboot in a nutshell. It also has some of the best fights of the series, with the first fight between darkwing and bulba, where our hero, unlike his original counterpart, easily troucnes bulba using his speed and skill, is the standout.

6. Woo-Ooo!

I covered this one recently so I won’t go on for too long.. but I will say I hold this one up as the gold standard for first episodes. In one hour, hell even in jus the first half we get a sense of the whole cast, the tone of the show, and the world we’ve been thrust into. It gets all the table setting out of the way by weaving it into a compelling story of Scrooge getting back in the game, finding a reason to get back to what he does best in those he loves most and setting up the season long arc effortlessly in the process. The worst I can say about the episode is it sets the bar a bit high for Season 1 and a lot of the first half really struggled to reach these heights. This episode is a masterwork and the perfect showcase for what the series would be at it’s height.

5. Moonvasion!

Speaking of Golden Standards, Moonvasion is one of the best season finale’s i’ve seen. it’s not THE best.. but that’s a really high bar to clear and that spots currently taken in my heart by “The Crossroads of Destiny” from Avatar the Last Airbender. But while not the best of it’s kind, it’s sitll the best the series put out and is an utterly satisfying epic that ties up season 2.

While I love the Last Adventure, it had a LOT to tie up and was really hampered by having to do all of that with no direct lead in. Moonvasion by contrast hits the ground running with the Moonlanders arriving on earth and all hell breaking loose, and the episode itself breaking into two stellar plots. Scrooge leading an army of every ally he has against the invaders, and Della seemingly going for reinforcements.. but really just trying to keep the kids safe from it, to their anger once they find out.

Both sides end up going badly: Scrooge looses most of his army as Lunaris was one step ahead of him and is left iwth Beakly and Launchpad, while Della ends up marooned.. and finds Donald. The reunion between the two is the highlight of the special, as the two argue as you’d expect (And Dewey cutting in seemingly to stop it.. only to rant at Donald for costing him “ten years of turbo” is the best gag of the episode), before embracing.

Our heroes naturally find ways to bounce back though. Louie, capping off his growth for the season, convinces his mom they can’t just hide.. and in the second best scene of the episode sings the lullabye she wrote.. one Donald sung them every night

And no sooner than Della gets her step back and realizes that dangerous or not she and her newly reunited family have to get back in there, do the cousins show up on Fethry’s giant shrimp/girlfriend Mitzi, and our heroes head back.

Scrooge’s plot hits i’ts peak though as he’s forced to accept the help of an unlikely and unwelcome ally: Glomgold, who turns out to be exactly what they need: While his plan is as stupid, short sighted and insane as you’d expect, complete with forcing Scrooge to dress up as santa just to piss him off and dressing his sharks in parkas (”I call them sharkas”), the sheer lonacy throws Lunaris off as he dosen’t know how to deal with this and Glomgold not only gets the better of him but gets his company back as part of his scheme. “You were prepared for our best but not our dumbest!” “And i’m the dumbest theirs ever been! Muahahahaha! Wait...”

And of course our other heroes arrive just in time to save things.. and the episode still manages to pull off what many works struggle to, something tha’ts very hard to: a SECOND climax. Lunaris decides to just say fuck it and blow up the earth and i’ts up to our core family to kick his ass in space. Epic space battles, Della’s girlfriend meeting the family and more insues and an emotoinal, action packed and fully satisfying finale is had by all... and it’s all topped with one of the best sequel hooks i’ve ever seen as FOWL makes themselves known to us.. and prepares to strike.

4. How Santa Stole Christmas! This one will also be short as i’ve talked about this one.. a lottttt. The initial review, my best christmas specials list and my best of 2020 list. I stand by all of that: this is a unique and wonderful christmas special, i’ll be watching it every year, and i’ts full of charm, humor and gay subtext. In short it’s this series but on christmas footing.

3. Last Crash of the Sunchaser!

Another one I covered very recently, this episode is a master piece of suspense, slowly building tension as our heroes get closer and closer to the truth about Della.. and to death, the simple but deadly stakes making this an absolute nailbiter from start to finish. This is some of the series best pacing bar none... but what seals it is the ending: the masterful flashback finally explaning whatever happened to Della duck, our heroes lashing out at each other.. all cumilating in the best Scene of the show. I said it might be in the review but no I can confirm: Scrooge bitterly ruminating over things while we find out just how much he’s lost... ending with him tearfully and angrily sitting once again alone in one hell of a powerful shot echoing Scrooge’s first apperance. Damn fine stuff.

2. Escape from The Impossbin Only one episode not only matches Last Crash in mounting tension and atmosphere but suprasses it. With FOWL and Bradford’s true nature now out in the wind, this episode uses that to create tension and rattles it’s two most unshakable characters: SCrooge’s normal boundless confidence is shot, not sure he can win this time against an opponent who knows him as well as he knows himself while Beakly slowly unravels, pitting Webby against the boys.. and pitting herself against Webby when Webby sees her terroizing them is only dividing them. Both plots start out funny enough but slowly escalate in tension and stakes until by the end your on the edge of your seat. The Beakly plot is the standout of the two, giving Bentina the starring role she badly needed, having gotten even better in light of the finale. Everyone is at the top of their game and everything builds up to one hell of a twist ending and one hell of a badass boast from our heroes: Their down.. but their far from out and this is far from over.

1. Nightmare On Kimotor Hill!

I”ll be reviewing this episode in full later this week as part of my Lena retrospective, but I stand by putting it up top. This episode is ducktales in it’s purest form and focuses on it’s best original character as Lena grapples with her self hatred and her past. That core helps anchor an amazing concept: going into the Kid’s dreams and finding out their greatest desires. The results.. are all gloriously rediclous and are easily the best gags of hte series as a whole: Dewey’s high school musical santa claus is going ot high school nonsense from getting a’s in Dewology to running away from the abstract concept of a love intrest, to not getting the sybolism of himself crying a moon made of his own tears. Louie quite literally becoming garfield, and my faviorite scene of the show: Huey, wanting to be the tall older brother..g iving himself horrifcly long leg. While everyone else is just understandably baffled, what makes the scene is the banter between Dewey and Huey, with Schwartz and Pudi at their best as Dewey first freaks out and then asks what the hell man, while Huey defends his weird decision (”I”m not good at imagination stuff okay!”), and then tries to get a jar of pickles. Each dream is just so oddly and wonderfully specific to each kid and each one of the triplests dreams, as well as violets being color coded down tot he backgrounds is a very nice touch. The visuals here are just peak ducktales, using the setting for all it’s worth and the climax is utterly emotoinal and heartbreaking... and Lena’s break from her abuser, finally realizing she has the power now is not only a wonderful metaphor... but also just so damn cathartic. And that’s why this one’s the best to me personally: it just packs so much into 20 minutes: some of the series best and most creative jokes, a gripping emtoinal arc, and so much more. It’s just that damn good and tha’ts why it’s the best... that and starting Huelet for me. Seriously that LIbrary scene is so fucking cute.

Thank you all for reading. If you liked this artcle, join my patreon and help me get to my stretch goal for monthly darkwing duck reviews, a review of super ducktales and more after! Until the next rainbow... it’s been a pleasure.

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voidsentprinces · 3 years

Text

Sorry to bang on about this again, but Stormblood is fucking weird.

We go to Ala Mhigo to liberate it but the Resistance has scarce resources and man power. Despite that we get a victory to push back a Garlean Patrol. And like...immediately despite the Skull reports in the Peaks. Raubahn thinks its best we push for the Bridge despite Rhalgr’s Reach’s flank being clearly open.

After a massacre lead by Zenos puts a pin on the whole Ala Mhigan revolution. Our plan becomes: go to Doma and release it from Garlean rule. Which takes the form of the Pirates of the Ruby Sea pushing the Garleans back into Yanxia. Yanxia is like one village and an underground spy network against a well entrenched Garlean Force. But because this time Zenos is super bored and has part of his helm broken. He just abandons the insurrection and leaves it to Yotsuyu. A woman who he abuses physically and mentally for the fun of it and who has been set on a war path due to the wrongs Doman society has inflicted against her as well as her family and because Zenos wanted to see what she’d do with power. Despite having all the time in the world to nip the Namai insurrection in the bud, she sends her Roe bodyguard who isn’t exactly the Garlean Caesar to push into unfamiliar territory with a sizeable but not overwhelming Garlean Force. To hunt the Warrior of Light and hope that the natives don’t take offense to an army just willy nilly waltzing into its territory.

Speaking of the Azim Steppe, Hien meets us, goes hunting with us, and then decides to use us as a bargaining chip along with his friendship with the Mol. To force himself into a sacred culturally significant battle of the clans to crown head leader of the Steppe. While doing this, Gosetsu of all people becomes super narrow minded. In a world of giant fly metal ships, spirits, mythlogical and demonic beings, and the fucking Warrior of Light. Gosetsu draws the line in his belief at a singular, diminished clan of Au Ra who believe in direct reincarnation. Which he openly besmirches in front of them all and...truth be told I don’t think he ever makes amends or wraps his head around by the time we do leave the Steppe.

The Garlean force is destroyed and pushed back but like I said, while it was a sizeable force it was by no means their entire fucking force. There was nothing stopping them from just sending a bigger force against the Namai village and drawing out the House of the Fierce forces nearby. But no I guess just tying a bunch of explosives to the Doman Castle on the off chance you could kill Hien was just the best possible option. So the battle of Doma Castle goes down and we leave Hien to rebuild a castle and retake any outlying Castrums, by himself.

Get back to Ala Mhigo, who have not really gained any new resources or man power. But at least Thancred is here now and the Scions have pitched in. The Scions being...a very small rag tag group of people. Who were outsmarted like four times by a very arrogant man, his obviously on a pay roll Lalafell commander, and a dude who couldn’t even be trusted to handle Garlean shipments let alone be considered a good candidate for Crystal Braves. But because Zenos has become lethargic and even though he has a Scion hostage. He just sits back as we take a bridge, the entirety of the the Peaks, push the entirety of forces back to the Lochs and practically snuff or capture them there. Handing control over to Fordola. Who he’s seen is socially and mentally abused and made a pariah in the Garlean and Ala Mhigan ranks before...also giving her power to see what the fuck would happen....fucking christ.

We accomplish this all without the help of the Domans who we went to liberate for the purpose of having their man power to help take back Ala Mhigo. In fact, we get 3.9/4 way through the recapture before they show up to help us with. *checks notes* Taking care of a small force of Lupin Beastmen...and some flying Garlean Machinery. With no guarantee that we would even be able to best Zenos. Who diminishes his own power by fusing with a Primal which we are practically masters at fighting at this point. Only for Zenos to cope out at the last moment securing victory for Ala Mhigo. Because we gave Zenos mouth bleed.

After successfully taking out Garlemald in Doma and Ala Mhigo. Alphinaud takes a victory lap by going with Arenvald on a treasure adventure. Which funds the reconstruction of Ala Mhigo. We then decide to take an already Pariah Fordola and put an explosive on her neck if she even thinks of betraying us. Before throwing her at some Primals. Cause she goes a sharingan now, giving her the Echo which is...Hydaelyn Tempering for all intents and purposes. Sending her to fight Gods. During this down time we also secure a Salt trade deal between Ala Mhigo and Ul’dah. Allowing for the transfer of leadership between Raubahn stepping down as the Flame General to leave to his people. A situation which you would of thought the Monetarists would of taken advantage of. But, I guess because we consulted Godbert and Lolorito. I guess they ain’t gonna do nothin.

We do however do something useful in helping teach Meffrid’s friend how to defeat the Loch’s marauding creatures. Before going back to learn off screen two of the worst people in the world, who also were responsible for the Crystal Braves betrayal and the sacrifice of hundreds on Baelsar’s Wall. Have now been side line to being arrested off screen and thus far are never seen or heard from ever again.

We then invite Tempered Beastmen to a peace meeting and act surprised when they summon Lakshmi to summon everyone. Lyse then runs to get Fordola to help on a gambit and gets there and back to the Throne Room faster than we can fly to the Ala Mhigan Quarter and back. We then run off to Doma because Gosetsu might be alive, Alphinaud racks up a huge bill with the Scions by buying a sword. We then fight off an invading force of Garleans before ferrying an amnesiac Yotsuyu and crippled Gosetsu across the Ruby Price. Whose pirates are nice enough not to fucking charge us for damages rendered. We then don’t force one of Yotsuyu’s past abusers to stand trial because he was kind of useful to the Doman Spy Network erasing all wrong doings. I fucking guess.

We are then visited by Asahi who might as well of shown up mustache twirling. Because after learning from one of her past abusers that Yotsuyu was sold to a brothel by her parents. How the fuck would you ever even begin to consider talking with her brother? But fine, I guess you needed the Doman people taken to Garlemald. Which, Asahi does eventually bring. Only to find out, he brought a bunch of crystals with him to turn his sister into a Primal.

After both are dead. Alphinaud, despite knowing that the Ascian possessed Zenos has just sent Asahi to kill them. Decides to go back with the unpopular Popularis to try to be diplomatic with ASCIAN POSSESSED ZENOS in the fucking court. Alphinaud also clearly forgetting how peace-forward the Emperor was when we both ran into him back in the Sea of Clouds.

...this story...is fucking baffling.

I might be forgetting a few details...maybe I am missing something that makes some part of this make sense.

#{ long post }

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Link

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 12, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

As expected, this morning the House Republicans removed Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney from her position as conference chair after she refused to stop speaking out against the former president for instigating the January 6 attack on our Capitol and the counting of electoral votes for President Joe Biden. The Republicans ousted her by voice vote, which meant that no one had to go on the record for or against Cheney, and the Republicans kept the split in the party from being measurable. It also ensured that she would lose; she has survived a secret ballot vote before.

Before the vote, Cheney allegedly told her Republican colleagues: “If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person; you have plenty of others to choose from.” After the vote, she went in front of the cameras to say that she would lead the fight to reclaim the party from Trump, and said: “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again goes anywhere near the Oval Office.”

After her ouster, Trump Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn (NC) tweeted ““Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye Liz Cheney.” The former president echoed Cawthorn: “Liz Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being. I watched her yesterday and realized how bad she is for the Republican Party. She has no personality or anything good having to do with politics or our Country.”

After convincing his caucus to dump Cheney and embrace Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told reporters: “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with.”

This was a breathtaking statement. McCarthy himself challenged the certification of Biden’s win, and just last week, Trump made a big announcement in which he called the election of 2020 “fraudulent.” The Big Lie animating the Republicans today is that Trump, not Biden, really won the 2020 election.

But McCarthy is not alone in his gaslighting. Yesterday, in the Senate Rules Committee markup of S1, the For the People Act protecting the vote, ending gerrymandering, and pushing big money out of our elections, Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said: “I don’t think anyone on our side has been arguing that [voter fraud] has been pervasive all over the country.”

The false claim of widespread voter fraud is, of course, exactly what Trump Republicans have stood on since the 2020 election. It is the justification for their voter suppression measures in Republican states, including Texas, Iowa, Georgia, Florida, and, as of yesterday afternoon, Arizona.

In today’s House Oversight Committee hearing on the January 6 insurrection, Republican lawmakers in general tried to gaslight Americans, as they tried to paint that unprecedented attack on our democracy as nothing terribly important. Although 140 law enforcement officers were injured, five people were killed, more than 400 people have been charged with crimes, and rioters did more than $30 million worth of damage, Republican representatives downplayed the events of the day, insisting that they were not really out of the ordinary. Representative Andrew Clyde (R-GA) said that calling the attack on the Capitol an insurrection is a “bald-faced lie” and that “if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit…."

CNN later called Clyde’s remarks “absolute nonsense.” Even the definition of insurrection Clyde quoted—“an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country usually by violence”—showed the attack of January 6 to be an insurrection. And, as lawyer and CNN analyst Asha Rangappa noted tonight on Twitter, at his second impeachment trial even Trump’s own lawyers did not dispute that the events of January 6 were a violent insurrection. The record is clear.

Republican lawmakers like Clyde did, though, echo the former president’s interview on the Fox News Channel in March when he said that when his supporters went into the Capitol they posed “zero threat” and were “hugging and kissing the police and the guards…. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out.”

The former president appears to be continuing to exercise control over his underlings. Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller provided testimony at the House Oversight Committee hearing, and what they would not say was revealing. Rosen refused to answer questions about whether Trump asked him to try to overturn the 2020 election. Miller’s prepared remarks had included a sentence that said “I stand by my prior observation that I personally believe his comments encouraged the protesters that day.” In his testimony, he omitted that line, and later tried to walk it back, trying to draw a line between people who marched on the Capitol and those who broke into it.

But with Cheney and her supporters now in open revolt, and with news about the Capitol attack dropping, and even with more information coming about the ties between the former president and Russia, will Republican Party leaders manage to sweep everything under the rug?

Today, at a hearing on domestic extremism today before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas both testified that the most serious domestic national security threat in the U.S. right now is that of white supremacist gangs. “I think it's fair to say that in my career as a judge, and in law enforcement, I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol,” Garland said. “There was an attempt to interfere with the fundamental passing of an element of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power. And if there has to be a hierarchy of things that we prioritize, this would be the one we'd prioritize. It is the most dangerous threat to our democracy. That does not mean that we don't focus on other threats.”

For his part, President Biden is refusing to get sucked into the Republican drama, instead focusing on the country. Today an advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed the Pfizer vaccine for children as young as 12, and the CDC signed off on the recommendation, making it easier to reopen schools in the fall.

Today Biden met at the White House with Republicans McCarthy and McConnell, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), to try to hash out an infrastructure plan, although the Republicans have said they will absolutely not consider raising the corporate tax rates from where Trump’s 2017 tax cut dropped them. It was the first time McCarthy and McConnell had visited the West Wing since Biden was elected.

It was in the context of visiting the president that McCarthy tried to say that there was no Republican questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election (although, of course, more than two thirds of Republicans currently believe in the Big Lie). “We’re sitting here with the president today,” he told reporters.

Will today’s gesture be enough to make swing voters forget the party’s wholehearted embrace of the former president? Shortly after House Republicans removed Cheney from her leadership position, nine out of 14 voters in an Axios focus group said they would be willing to vote for a Republican in next year’s congressional races. But of those, 8 said they would not back any Republican who supports Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #the big lie #Liz Cheney #January 6 2021 #white supremism #democracy

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youllallriseintheink · 3 years

Text

Prison Cell, chapter 1

Well, this one took on a life of its own. I intended to write a simple one-off taking place in an AU where the studio became the sketch dimension before most of the sacrifices were made. Turns out that this is going to take longer than that. While this AU will have an emphasis on horror, especially in the later chapters, I also want to show the resilience of some of these characters.

---

Joey Drew Studios was once an animation studio. Functionally, it still was. But before everyone’s eyes, it had become Hell.

The machine had been hard to ignore, but easy not to look into. No one seemed to know what it did save for a few, but no one was about to quit over it during the Great Depression.

The cult behaviour, in retrospect, had been the first sign. It isn’t everywhere that your boss demands an item from your workplace as a sacrifice to the Gods. But back then, it had seemed nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Pedestals had been set up in the break rooms. Sometimes your coworkers would go there to pray. It was strange. But again, not worth looking into, and not worth quitting over.

Joey had always been eccentric. Joey had always been unreasonable. Joey had always had an angry streak. If any of that was getting worse, it was getting worse at a fairly slow rate.

All of it happened so slowly. Until it happened all at once. The machine malfunctioned. It went into overdrive. Gent workers had rushed to quiet it. They turned off its power supply, and nothing happened. In desperation, they broke the pipes that had once fed it ink, and nothing happened. Finally, they frantically tried to dismantle it as it spewed ink, and... nothing happened. Even the strongest of men could not so much as loosen a bolt from the machine.

Then, something happened. An rapidly-growing area surrounding the machine lost its colour and detail- reduced to lines on a page.

In a last-ditch attempt to fix the machine, Joey and the closest members of his inner circle entered the ink machine room. No one knew what had happened. To outsiders, it had sounded like the ink machine had exploded. No one who had been in the room at the time emerged except for Sammy Lawrence, who came out limping and covered head-to-toe in ink.

From that point on, no one could leave. Doors to the outside were locked, and windows showed only black void. Sammy talked to many people in private in the coming days, and firm lines were drawn between those who were loyal to the cult, and those who weren’t- those who were donning masks and uniform. Those who were loyal left the studio occasionally- for meetings or to pick up supplies. Those who were not loyal had no way of knowing how they did.

Joey Drew still existed. Early on, there were rumours that he was dead and that his loyalists were merely following him in spirit, but before long, most people knew someone who had seen his new form.

Work remained much the same, albeit with a few fewer people, who had either not been in the studio that day, or whose primary duty was now distribution and getting supplies because they were some of the only people allowed outside. Everyone fulfilled their role. Gent workers maintained the machine. The others made cartoons, which, apparently, were still making it out to the outside world somehow. They ate. They slept. They mourned their losses. They formed small groups and tried to keep hope. A few small insurrections began, but but quickly ended in violence and were abandoned. With no access to medical professionals, no one wanted violence.

While no one in the studio had it easy, Susie Campbell held an additional secret. Every few days in the dead of night, a creature would come to her- a creature with a mask and curling, demonic horns made of ink. She’d wake up to the horrible creature sitting on her chest so she couldn’t move, and it would put a syringe in her neck and draw blood. This went on for weeks. Locking the door didn’t stop it. Eventually, it made her want to sleep as little as possible, and she began to wander the halls at night, oftentimes falling asleep in random places.

One night, after falling asleep in a hallway in the music department, she was roused by Norman Polk.

“Hey. Come with me tonight,” he whispered, helping her up. “That thing’s been stealing your blood, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Susie whispered back.

“I know someone else in that situation. But don’t worry- it doesn’t bother him anymore, either.”

Norman led Susie into one of the offices. Two cots had been set up, and one already had a person sleeping in it. “You settle in. I’ll go and look for another cot to bring in here. If the demon wants your blood, it’ll have to go through me.”

“Thank you,” Susie said. She wanted to say more, but didn’t know what to say. She was fast asleep before Norman returned.

Before the transformation of the studio, it would have been strange to see the two of them together, but times had changed. The big, strange, sneaky cryptid had gone from someone you avoided to someone you wanted on your side. And yet, on a social level Norman still mostly left the music room to themselves most days- he preferred to eavesdrop or hang out with the people who’d accepted him before all of this.

That changed after he started sharing a room with Susie, though. She started inviting him to talk with her and Wally, or any of her other friends in the music room, and he’d agree to it, mostly because he wanted to spend time with her. Eventually it became well-known what he was doing for his ‘guests.’

It continued like that for a few weeks. The creature found other victims before it found her. Then, one night, it slipped into the room, and it did not like what it saw. Two of its previous victims, including Susie Campbell. Susie was tucked into Norman’s arms. She opened her eyes for a moment, saw him, and went back to sleep. She felt safe and protected, and it made the demon’s blood boil. Blood wasn’t worth being clobbered for- not while he could get it elsewhere. But something had to be done.

The night after, Thomas Connor and two men nearly as strong as he was, each wearing loyalist uniforms and masks, entered the room. They pulled Norman out of bed, handcuffed and gagged him, and began to lead him away. Susie woke up to the feeling of him being pulled off of her.

For a moment, she was stunned. The next, she was yelling for help. The man in the other bed woke up as well. Susie had never gotten to know her “roommate,” but that didn’t matter now. “Come with me,” she said. “We need to wake people up!”

“What? Why?”

“You’ll see. Just trust me!” Susie had thought this day might come for quite some time, and she’d planned for it.

And so, the two followed the loyalists down the hall, banging on the doors and yelling to try and wake people up. Susie cursed herself for not finding out where people had been holing up. Her partner eventually found Emma Lamonte. Finally, one of the doors opened- it was Henry Stein- another person who could fight decently enough. “Henry, you’ve got to help. They’re taking Norman away. Hurry!”

Henry looked over to see it happening, and hesitated.

“Henry, if they get him on that elevator, we’ll never see him again!” Henry jolted into action, and soon he and Emma were in close range of the three loyalists.

It ended about as quickly. Emma managed to mule-kick one of the men in the stomach and knock the wind out of him before another one of the men snuck up behind her and began to choke her. Thomas was still holding Norman Polk as he squirmed in attempt to escape. Henry attempted to punch out the man strangling Emma, and he managed a few blows, but the man she’d kicked recovered and restrained Henry until Emma was unconscious. Once she was unconscious, her attacker rejoined Thomas, and they dragged Norman to the elevator. Before morning, Emma had been taken, too. Henry had run.

---

“I should have gotten in there,” Susie’s roommate said, breaking a long, tearful silence between them.

“You couldn’t have done anything. Those men were twice your size.” It hadn’t been as though they hadn’t spent the duration of the fight banging on doors in hopes of finding allies.

“I know.”

“What’s your name? I haven’t seen you around the music department.”

“Grant Cohen. Finances.”

“Oh. Norman’s talked about you. Well, I’m glad you’re from another department. Tomorrow, I’m going to try and get as many people together as possible- a rescue party, I guess. You could help. Tell everyone in your department to meet in the recording theatre after hours.”

Grant laughed bitterly. “Sure. I’ll gather all the bravest souls in accounting and finance.” There was a pause. “Don’t you get it? We’re helpless. People haven’t been forming big groups because when they do, things like this happen. And anyhow, I’d bet anything that Norman is dead already.”

A part of Susie agreed. But that wasn’t the useful part of her right now. “Look, I’m not going to try and convince you. But personally, I don’t like feeling helpless just because I can’t knock out Thomas Connor.”

---

The following evening, Susie had gathered quite a number of people. Henry’s friends had come, terrified that he was essentially a wanted man and that he had to be hidden from loyalists. Grant had showed up with a few others from accounting that had agreed to come along. And of course, the music department had all noticed Norman’s absence.

Susie began the meeting by telling the story of what had happened to Norman. Surprisingly, what followed was a number of other people coming out about various grievances. A few others had had the same experience as Susie, of having their blood harvested. There were also a few from other departments who had refused to work and had been punished by having one of their bones broken in the night. Wally complained about having to mop up blood.

“We need to handle all of that, too. But first can we talk about Norman?” Susie said, trying to regain control of the meeting.

“If he got onto the elevator, he’s probably dead,” Abby said, as gently as she could. “Or at least, he’s on one of their levels. There’s no way we can go down there and rescue him. But, since you’ve brought us all together, we might as well get organized. Maybe there’s a way for us to defend each other. And figure out who will be running the projector from now on.”

A knock at the door sounded, and everyone in the room went perfectly still.

“Do we open it?” Susie asked.

It seemed entirely ridiculous that the loyalists would try to get in by politely knocking.

“If they’re right outside this door, this meeting is over anyhow, and we can’t stay in here forever,” Abby reasoned.

On the other side of the door was Sammy Lawrence, holding a cardboard box. He was wearing the uniform of the loyalists, but thankfully he was alone. “I am not your enemy. I come bearing gifts,” he said.

Abby carefully opened the box, as though she were disarming a bomb. Inside were a few loyalist uniforms and masks of different sizes. She inspected them carefully and found nothing suspicious about them.

“Why?” Abby asked.

“Joey is working on a way out for all of us. None of us are getting out without his help. That is why I’m a loyalist. But, evermore since the machine cursed us, he’s been… worsening. I still have hope that he will get us out of here, but until then, you need to stand up for yourselves. Consider these a tool- they could let you visit the lower levels. But I beg of you- don’t interfere with loyalist work. Loyalist work is what allows some of us to visit the outside, and us going to the outside is what keeps you fed. Remember that.”

Abby nodded. “Thank you. This is very… courageous of you, Mr. Lawrence. But we’re still going to escort you to the elevator now. We can’t risk that this is just you trying to spy on us.”

Sammy did not resist as Henry and Jack escorted him to the elevator, and he left for the lower floors without issue.

“Well," Abby said, “I guess we have a way of finding out what happened to him after all.”

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #susie campbell #norman polk #abby lambert #sammy lawrence #joey drew #my fanfiction #Aus #Story: prison cell

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teaveetamer · 4 years

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Looking at Edelgards wiki page, and aside from all the spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and horrible sentence structure, dear LORD is it filled with such vague, unspecific language to make her look better. Saying in "some endings" she passes on the role of Emperor to someone else while in others she "rules for an unspecified time" to support she steps down after the war, completely ignoring Lysitheas ending where she rules for the rest of her life and not clarifying the specific (1/3)

numbers of endings where she retires (I counted, its two, and even then only in her later years). Crimson Flower apparently ends "much faster" than the other routes instead of directly stating its three months faster. Saying she only spoke so harshly to Dimitri before executing him to allow him to "hate her" until the end (how compassionate of her /s, also I cannot find any proof of this in the script so either I'm missing something or the editor is just posting headcanons). (2/3)

All in all, Edelgards entire personality wiki section is a complete joke. The person that wrote it should have their editing priviledges removed. (3/3)

I mean we know who is making all of those edits. It’s our resident contrarian that people were sending a dozen asks about yesterday. It just comes off as another of many poorly thought out arguments, since they keep pointing to specific supports or text in the game when that’s... Not really necessary. We all played the game, you only do that shit when you’re trying to win an argument.

Honestly if I were in control of the page it’d look more like this:

Edelgard holds herself with a dignified air, but full of melancholy and solemn wistfulness. which can make her appear outwardly cold. As heir of the Adrestian Empire, she is an exemplary student and a natural leader. She keeps a modest stoic front. rarely cutting loose and maintains formality. She rarely cuts loose and maintains formality at all times. Her colleagues classmates (who the fuck calls the people they went to school with “colleagues”?) express great surprise whenever she does relax. While She is generally a private person, she does recognize the importance of her duties and expresses confidence and faith in the abilities of her allies. and she is rarely shown opening up to other people.(the previous line did not make sense, her recognizing the importance of duty has no relationship to being a private person).

She is a capable dancer, having taught Dimitri at a young age and has a talent for drawing portraits, though she is embarrassed to show them to others. (These really belong in a separate “skills” section but whatever the wiki doesn’t appear to have that category for this game). She has a personal nickname, El, of whom which she only allows very close individuals, namely her family, to call her.

Though she tries to keep it a secret, Edelgard is deathly afraid of rats, as they remind her of a past she is uncomfortable with. Edelgard is deathly afraid of rats since they remind her of a past she is uncomfortable with, though she tries to keep this fact a secret. She is also fears afraid of the ocean since because she cannot swim.

Edelgard is far more complex than she initially appears, as she had been scheming to dismantle the corrupt systems of Fódlan, namely the influence of the Church of Seiros, the oppression of the Crest systems, and the hidden machinations of the Agarthans. Driven by her desire to remove these influences, she is willing to sacrifice both her life and reputation as she believes that the only means of achieving her goals is through war and sometimes underhanded tactics. (Such unnecessary fluff). Edelgard will use whatever it takes to achieve her goals, using all three of the aforementioned systems begrudgingly as they are the current means for her to amass any sort of power and influence in order to instigate meaningful change in them. Edelgard is extremely driven, and she is willing to use whatever it takes to achieve her goals. This is evidenced by her willingness to work with Those Who Slither in the Dark, as she believes they are the only ones who can help her amass enough power to achieve her ends.

Edelgard strongly believes that the ends will justify the means if she were to win the war, as she despises the structure of Fódlan society and believes it has to be replaced by a more just system under which humanity can flourish. In the Azure Moon route she states she went to war after weighing all options and determined that it would be much faster with far fewer casualties than to continue on in the continent's current state. This is reflected through the Crimson Flower route that ends much sooner than the other two, albeit a later war is impending against the remaining Agarthians, where she manages to wipe them all out, compared to the other routes where the Agarthans survive to return at a later time. As a result, she does realize the gravity of her orders but chooses to remain steadfast in her belief in improving society for everyone. She also does not desire to remain Emperor for too long as according to a tea time conversation with her, Edelgard states she has no intention of handing the throne to any children she might have, instead planning to pass it on to someone brilliant and kind, which a few endings do, while others she rules for an unspecified time. (Literally this entire paragraph is unnecessary fluff.)

Dimitri has had a significant impact on her life as the two are step-siblings when her mother Anselma married King Lambert under the name "Patricia." In their childhood, neither were aware of their relationship to each other, but they were close nonetheless, with Dimitri affectionately calling her "El" which only those particularly close to her are allowed to call her. Dimitri gifted her a dagger which she held well into the present, which was symbolically meant to tell her to carve out her own ideals and face the numerous hardships she had to endure up until the present. If met at the Goddess Tower during the Academy Phase, she admits that her first love was a Faerghus noble who she cannot recall, implied to be Dimitri. Despite her past feelings towards him, it is heavily implied for most of the game that Edelgard no longer remembers Dimitri nor that he gifted her the dagger, possibly as a result of her trauma from the experiments. In the Azure Moon route, she accepts Dimitri's invitation to parley on a whim. Despite failing to come to an understanding with one another to end the war peacefully, she is nonetheless able to express her gratitude to him for the dagger and the strength it provided her when he reminds her that it was a parting gift from him. (Everything in this paragraph would really be more at home in a separate “relationships” subcategory, which this wiki also does not feature.)

Edelgard's personality and ambitions are a result of tragedies that painted her view of the world. The traumatic imprisonment of her siblings and herself due to the experiments of Those Who Slither in the Dark created her hatred of Crests. Edelgard’s personality and ambitions are a direct result of the suffering she faced at the hands of TWSITD. Her imprisonment and the subsequent experimentation on herself and her family were a key factor in her disillusionment with Fódlan and the Church of Seiros. (Don’t ask me how she got to that conclusion. Also take a shot for every time this dude uses the word “tragic”.) She also despises most nobility, especially the Adrestian Nobles, as they are partially responsible for the circumstances leading to said experiments, but also due to the fact that Crests are used as societal leverage by most nobles as a sign of their prestige. She even shows sympathy and pity to Miklan, whom she praises for becoming a leader despite being disowned and leading a group of bandits, calling his death "a waste". One of her main goals is to dismantle the current nobility system and having the people earn their position by merit rather than birthright, which she achieves in her ending in the Crimson Flower path. (More fluff.)

Edelgard has a complex view of the current Church of Seiros as her tragic history with the Insurrection of the Seven along with the knowledge given by her father regarding the truth of the War of Heroes paints her radical opinion. She bears a large distrust of Rhea due to her withholding of knowledge and context behind the history of the church, even pointing out some of the Church's hypocrisy of remaining neutral across Fódlan, yet allowing the Crest system to flourish that Edelgard despises. She does not fully dismiss the concept of faith however, even allowing it to continue to exist in her rule, though heavily monitored by the Empire. (Oh hey Edelstan is acknowledging her state run religion at least) She even tries to learn more about it from Manuela but does not plan on ever becoming a devout follower by any means. When as an enemy, however, she will cause those who are faithful to be afraid for their lives and flee the Empire. However, during Crimson Flower, several Knights of Seiros that have become unnerved by Rhea flee to the Empire, while those involved with the Church in the Empire flee for the Eastern, but then flee to Faerghus due to lack of a military. (Fluff.)

Despite this, Edelgard expresses fear and anxiety over the consequences of her actions her chosen path should Byleth side with her in Crimson Flower, as she understands that she would be her actions make her responsible for the deaths loss of countless lives. (lmao “the deaths of countless lives”) This is proven further when Randolph and Ladislava die defending Garreg Mach from the Church, and how she laments that another life is lost in the war because of her choices. She mourned Dimitri's death, letting herself be hated by Dimitri to the end by speaking harshly to him to let his perception of her remain, lamenting how she could not save him from Thales's manipulation. (wut) Dimitri's death struck her to the point that Byleth questioned if Edelgard was crying, which she denied, claiming that the Edelgard who cried had perished years ago.

Edelgard's relationship with Byleth greatly affects her personality and fate in the war. Edelgard admits in her support that she feared expresses fear that she would have become "a harsh ruler with a heart of ice" if she had to walk her path alone. In the other routes where she is not taught by them or where Byleth sides with the church against her, this becomes a reality and ultimately leads to her early demise. This is likely expressed in the conversation with Dimitri, where, in the Japanese version, she retorts Dimitri's statement over the lessons he learned with his friends and Byleth with her stating that he can understand that because he has what she lacks, referencing how Edelgard felt Byleth was the only one she could consider an equal that is not bound by status but simply as Edelgard. As her enemy, Edelgard will express regret that the two did not walk the same path and even find some semblance of closure falling to Byleth's sword in the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind paths. Should they choose to support her, she has a far easier time expressing kindness and regret over her actions over the course of the game herself. She will opt to force her enemies to surrender instead of wiping them out, where she even offered to spare Rhea and the Church followers if they surrendered, while the former was willing to sacrifice the city the final battle takes place in. (This doesn’t even make sense, she never forced Rhea to surrender she just half heartedly gave her the option of surrender). She also has several fleeting moments of peace and happiness, such as when she takes to drawing portraits of Byleth, which she is self conscious about due to their lack of quality in her eyes.

That attachment towards Byleth is even perhaps stronger than that of the other house leaders. When they teach the Black Eagles, she makes several attempts to get Byleth to understand her world view, even though Hubert advised her it would not be wise and personally invited Byleth to her coronation. In the Crimson Flower route, Dorothea notes that among the Black Eagles, Edelgard was the most emotionally affected by Byleth's disappearance. Edelgard's fondness for Byleth goes so far as to encourage Byleth to call her El and even let Byleth give her orders on the battlefield despite her dislike of not being in control. Despite her earlier statement that she does not cry, she openly cries at the end of the Crimson Flower route when Byleth supposedly dies after slaying Rhea, but is overjoyed when they are revived. Edelgard's bond with Byleth can ultimately result in the marriage of the two, regardless of their gender. It is in her proposal to them at this level where she asks that they stay close to her and that she will need them for the rest of her life. Regardless of her relationship status with Byleth, in the Crimson Flower route, it is through their influence that she ultimately achieves her goals and is remembered far more kindly than in the other routes where she perishes. (Again, would be more at home in a separate relationships section since it says almost nothing about Edelgard as an individual. You could maybe keep the bit about her disliking not being in control, but I’d combine it with an earlier paragraph since it doesn’t make much sense as its own thing.)

#Anonymous

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, January 25, 2021

Americans remain sorely divided as Biden’s quest for unity begins (Washington Post) The other day, Stu Ross, a retired elementary school teacher, threw his neighbor out of his townhouse in Harrisburg, Pa. The guy had said he saw nothing wrong with the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The two haven’t spoken since. So when Ross heard President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day appeal for a lowered temperature, for unity, he wasn’t seeing a realistic path to that goal. Ross called the new president’s first speech “soothing and calm.” But unity? Normalcy? A return to how things used to be, to Biden’s idea that “politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire?” Come on. At the dawn of an administration that seeks to return to a less fractious, even boring, politics, many Americans grant that Biden’s quest for a quieter culture is a nice enough goal, but, from the left and right, many say the country’s divisions remain too deep to allow for such a shift. In Topeka, Kan., Ed Myers has no patience for the debate over whether to hold Donald Trump to account for his role in inciting the attempted insurrection at the Capitol. A retired farm equipment factory worker, Myers says he was suspended by Twitter after he wrote that Biden is “an illegitimate president.” The way Myers sees it: That puts him in the same boat as Trump, whose Twitter account was banned for “incitement of violence,” which Myers views as a move to stifle free speech. So no, Myers sees no reason to unify, no cause to rally around the new president to combat the virus and revive the economy.

Barred From U.S. Under Trump, Muslims Exult in Biden’s Open Door (NYT) As the results of the American presidential election rolled in on Nov. 4, a young Sudanese couple sat up through the night in their small town south of Khartoum, eyes glued to the television as state tallies were declared, watching anxiously. They had a lot riding on the outcome. A year earlier, Monzir Hashim had won the State Department’s annual lottery to obtain a green card for the United States only to learn that President Trump, in his latest iteration of the “Muslim ban,” had barred Sudanese citizens from immigrating to the United States. The election seemed to offer a second chance, and when Mr. Trump was eventually declared to have lost the vote, Mr. Hashim and his wife, Alaa Jamal, hugged with joy. Few foreigners welcomed Mr. Biden’s election victory as enthusiastically as the tens of thousands of Muslims who have been locked out of the United States for the past four years as a result of the Trump-era immigration restrictions popularly known as the “Muslim ban.” By one count, 42,000 people were prevented from entering the United States from 2017 to 2019, mostly from Muslim-majority nations like Iran, Somalia, Yemen and Syria. But the human cost of Mr. Trump’s measures, stitched into the fabric of disrupted lives stained with tears and even blood, can hardly be counted—families separated for years; weddings and funerals missed; careers and study plans upended; lifesaving operations that did not take place.

A Digital Dragnet Is Coming For The U.S. Capitol Insurrectionists (HuffPost) The insurrectionists might have been able to leave without being arrested. Their friends and family members may not have turned them in. But slowly but surely, the digital surveillance net is tightening on the supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Most of the cases being unveiled by federal authorities are still originating with tips from the public, and there are hundreds of future defendants who have yet to be identified and charged. But a few of the criminal charges appear to be built on wider-spanning search warrants to social media companies that appear to have given federal authorities investigative leads they’ve used to identify lawbreakers. The cellphones that the Capitol insurrectionists carried with them when they tried to overturn the results of the presidential election through force were feeding information to a variety of tech companies that now hold incriminating information about their users’ violations of the law. “We’re all carrying tiny tracking devices with us all the time, and people aren’t necessarily conscious of the extent to which that information is obtainable from a variety of sources,” said Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at Cato and an expert on technology, privacy and civil liberties.

Mexican president Lopez Obrador tests positive for COVID-19 (AP) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday he had tested positive for COVID-19, amid an intense second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that has pushed the health system of the country’s vast capital city close to saturation. The 67-year-old president said in a tweet that his symptoms were light and he was receiving medical treatment. Lopez Obrador has maintained a busy public schedule during the pandemic and has said he enjoys good health, after suffering a serious heart attack at the age of 60 in 2013.

Spain’s virus surge hits mental health of front-line workers (AP) The unrelenting increase in COVID-19 infections in Spain following the holiday season is again straining hospitals, threatening the mental health of doctors and nurses who have been at the forefront of the pandemic for nearly a year. A study released this month by Hospital del Mar looking at the impact of the spring’s COVID-19 surge on more than 9,000 health workers across Spain found that at least 28% suffered major depression. That is six times higher than the rate in the general population before the pandemic, said Dr. Jordi Alonso, one of the chief researchers. In addition, the study found that nearly half of participants had a high risk of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks or substance- and alcohol-abuse problems. Spanish health care workers are far from the only ones to have suffered psychologically from the pandemic. In China, the levels of mental disorders among doctors and nurses were even higher, with 50% reporting depression, 45% reporting anxiety and 34% reporting insomnia, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.K., a survey released last week by the Royal College of Physicians found that 64% of doctors reported feeling tired or exhausted. One in four sought out mental health support. “It is pretty awful at the moment in the world of medicine,” Dr. Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in a statement accompanying the study. “Hospital admissions are at the highest-ever level, staff are exhausted, and although there is light at the end of the tunnel, that light seems a long way away.”

French Roosters Now Crow With the Law Behind Them (NYT) The crow of a rooster and the ringing of a church bell at dawn. The rumble of a tractor and the smell of manure wafting from a nearby stable. The deafening song of cicadas or the discordant croaking of frogs. Quacking ducks, bleating sheep and braying donkeys. Perennial rural sounds and smells such as these were given protection by French law last week, when lawmakers passed a bill to preserve “the sensory heritage of the countryside,” after a series of widely publicized neighborhood spats in France’s rural corners, many of them involving noisy animals. The disputes symbolized tensions between urban newcomers and longtime country dwellers, frictions that have only grown as the coronavirus pandemic and a string of lockdowns draw new residents to the countryside. Perhaps the most prominent of these noisy animals was Maurice, a rooster in Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, a town on an island off France’s western coast. His owner had been sued by neighbors—regular vacationers in the area—because he crowed too loudly. Politicians and thousands of petitioners rushed to the Gallic rooster’s defense, and a court eventually ruled in 2019 that Maurice, who died last summer at the age of six, was well within his rights. It is too late for Maurice. But his successor, Maurice II, can now crow with the full-throated confidence of someone who has the law on their side.

Davos ski resort eerily quiet without economic talkfest this year (Reuters) Student protesters who urged world leaders at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos to “Stop (f)lying to us” must be pleased this year, at least as far as the flying is concerned. The streets of the little Alpine town that welcomed around 3,000 business chiefs, political thinkers and state leaders for last year’s annual meeting lie deserted. Discussions have moved online, starting Monday, and COVID-19 restrictions are also keeping regular tourists away. “Look around, it’s empty. Normally, all hotels would be fully booked at this time,” Reto Branschi, head of Davos Klosters tourism, told Reuters in an interview this week. There are no helicopters patrolling the skies, no protesters trying to outwit security forces sealing off the Alpine resort. But not everybody is sad about the lack of buzz. “Complete peace and quiet,” a local woman wearing a mask said. “I don’t miss it at all.”

Trapped for 2 weeks, 11 workers rescued from China gold mine (AP) Eleven workers trapped for two weeks inside a Chinese gold mine were brought safely to the surface on Sunday, a landmark achievement for an industry long-blighted by disasters and high death tolls. Hundreds of rescue workers and officials stood at attention and applauded as the workers were brought up from the mine in Qixia, a jurisdiction under Yantai in the eastern coastal province of Shandong. The cause of the accident is under investigation but the explosion was large enough to release 70 tons of debris that blocked the shaft, disabling elevators and trapping workers underground. Such protracted and expensive rescue efforts are relatively new in China’s mining industry, which used to average 5,000 deaths per year. Increased supervision has improved safety, although demand for coal and precious metals continues to prompt corner-cutting. A new crackdown was ordered after two accidents in mountainous southwestern Chongqing last year killed 39 miners.

U.S. carrier group enters South China Sea amid Taiwan tensions (Reuters) A U.S. aircraft carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has entered the South China Sea to promote “freedom of the seas”, the U.S. military said on Sunday, at a time when tensions between China and Taiwan have raised concern in Washington. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement the strike group entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the same day Taiwan reported a large incursion of Chinese bombers and fighter jets into its air defence identification zone in the vicinity of the Pratas Islands. The U.S. military said the carrier strike group was in the South China Sea, a large part of which is claimed by China, to conduct routine operations “to ensure freedom of the seas, build partnerships that foster maritime security”. China has repeatedly complained about U.S. Navy ships getting close to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan all have competing claims.

Israel targets flights, religious scofflaws, as virus rages (AP) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel will be closing its international airport to nearly all flights, while Israeli police clashed with ultra-Orthodox protesters in several major cities and the government raced to bring a raging coronavirus outbreak under control. The entry of highly contagious variants of the virus, coupled with poor enforcement of safety rules in ultra-Orthodox communities, has contributed to one of the world’s highest rates of infections. Experts say that a lack of compliance with safety regulations in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox sector has been a major factor in the spread of the virus. Throughout the pandemic, many major ultra-Orthodox sects have flouted safety regulations, continuing to open schools, pray in synagogues and hold mass weddings and funerals despite broader lockdown orders. This has contributed to a disproportionate infection rate: The ultra-Orthodox community accounts for over one-third of Israel’s coronavirus cases, despite making up just over 10% of the population.

Arab Spring exiles look back 10 years after Egypt uprising (AP) The Egyptians who took to the streets on Jan. 25, 2011, knew what they were doing. They knew they risked arrest and worse. But as their numbers swelled in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, they tasted success. Police forces backed off, and within days, former President Hosni Mubarak agreed to demands to step down. But events didn’t turn out the way many of the protesters envisioned. A decade later, thousands are estimated to have fled abroad to escape the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi that is considered even more oppressive. The significant loss of academics, artists, journalists and other intellectuals has, along with a climate of fear, hobbled any political opposition. Human Rights Watch estimated in 2019 that there were 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. The Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Egypt third, behind China and Turkey, in detaining journalists. El-Sissi maintains Egypt has no political prisoners. The arrest of a journalist or a rights worker makes news roughly every month. Many people have been imprisoned on terrorism charges, for breaking a ban on protests or for disseminating false news. Others remain in indefinite pretrial detentions.

Severe winds wreck homes, displace thousands in Mozambique (Reuters) Severe winds and heavy rains wrecked thousands of buildings, ruined crops and displaced almost 7,000 people in Mozambique over the weekend, officials said in their first detailed report on the disaster. Tropical cyclone Eloise hit Mozambique’s Sofala coastal province on Saturday morning before weakening and heading inland to dump rain on Zimbabwe, eSwatini—formerly known as Swaziland—and South Africa. The region’s Buzi district had been particularly hard hit with wind speeds of up to 150 kph.

Raising kids bilingual can make them more attentive and efficient as adults (CNBC) Adults who grew up speaking two different languages can shift their attention between different tasks quicker than those who pick up a second language later in life, according to a new study. This is just one of many cognitive benefits of being bilingual. Research has shown that bilingual kids are constantly switching between two languages in their brain, which increases “cognitive flexibility,” the ability to switch between thinking about different concepts or multiple concepts at once, and “selective attention abilities,” the mental process of focusing on one task or object at a time. Other studies have shown that bilingual children can complete mental puzzles quicker and more efficiently than those who only speak one language. The reason? Speaking two languages requires “executive functioning,” which are higher-level cognitive skills like planning, decision making, problem solving and organization. Basically, this task is a workout for the brain. The mental benefits of starting a new language early appear to last even as children grow into adulthood.

#headlines #news

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abcnewspr · 3 years

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ABC NEWS ANNOUNCES NEW ROLES IN WASHINGTON

ABC News President James Goldston sent the following note to the news division announcing new roles in Washington. See below for Goldston's note to staff:

All,

As we continue our terrific reporting on the historic news from Washington, the transition and the start of a new administration and new Congress, I have exciting news to share about key players on our political team.

Cecilia Vega will become Chief White House Correspondent; Mary Bruce will become our Senior White House Correspondent; Rachel Scott is moving over to Capitol Hill to be our Congressional Correspondent; and MaryAlice Parks is taking on a new role as our weekend White House Correspondent. Jonathan Karl – one of the few reporters in DC to report on the White House, Congress, State Department and Pentagon beats over his impressive career – will serve as our Chief Washington Correspondent and co-anchor of This Week.

Cecilia’s smart, tenacious and fearless reporting and tough questions have held officials to account covering historic presidential elections and the White House. She has covered President Donald Trump since his very first press conference after winning the 2016 election. In many defining moments during his administration, Cecilia pressed the president and government leaders on the most significant issues of our time, including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, relations with Russia, immigration and the family separation policy. She reported on all the major political events of the past several years, including three Supreme Court nominations, the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Mueller report, two presidential impeachments, and all aspects of the president’s reelection campaign, including debates, conventions, election night and the aftermath. Before she covered President Trump, Cecilia spent more than 500 days on the campaign trail reporting on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid, while also anchoring the Saturday edition of World News Tonight. Cecilia will also continue her role as an anchor at ABC, while she brings that same tenacity and relentless pursuit of the facts to covering the Biden Administration.

As ABC News’ lead campaign correspondent during the 2020 election, Mary provided insightful and in-depth reporting on the Biden campaign from all major events, including the conventions, the presidential and vice presidential debates and throughout the primaries. For five straight days, she reported around the clock until a winner was projected in this historic election. Plus, she helped lead our coverage of President Trump’s first impeachment inquiry and trial for more than four months. Her reporting was critical last week as President Trump became the only president to be impeached twice in U.S. history. During her tenure in the last four years as our senior congressional correspondent, Mary was well-known for chasing down answers and putting members of Congress on the record on the important issues of the day. Her peers on Capitol Hill recognized Mary’s excellence by awarding her the 2018 Joan S. Barone Award, in recognition of her reporting on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

On the campaign trail in 2020, Rachel clocked thousands of miles crisscrossing the country covering both the Democratic primary and the Trump campaign often in the same week. She has been an important part of the news division's reporting on the Trump administration, interviewing Vice President Mike Pence on the day of the final impeachment vote for President Trump in 2019. As a racial reckoning swept the country, she was on the frontlines of the protests in Washington providing live coverage for weeks, including during one of the most contentious moments as the president's photo-op at St. John’s turned into a clash between police and peaceful protestors. Rachel’s dedicated reporting on the racial disparities among communities of color during the COVID-19 pandemic shone a light on important stories and raised critical questions about accountability. Already this year she has reported from Georgia for the historic Senate runoffs, as well as from Capitol Hill during the insurrection in Washington on January 6. Following the siege on the Capitol, Rachel reported on how some law enforcement responded to the mob with less force compared to the reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests last summer. Rachel will continue reporting from the White House from time to time while transitioning to Capitol Hill.

Over the past seven years MaryAlice has reported and provided political analysis across ABC News. She helped craft our coverage of the 2020 election as Deputy Political Director, helping to hire and manage our largest and most diverse team of campaign embeds ever. MaryAlice began her ABC News career at This Week as a producer; during part of the summer of 2019, she filled in as the program’s showrunner, and she has served as a panelist on the program’s roundtable. She covered the 2016 Democratic primary and developed an expertise on the party’s fault lines as well as the progressive movement in particular. Since then her extensive reporting on politics has ranged from examining voting rights laws and changes to ballot access to producing an original video series profiling first-time female candidates and the "Pink Wave.” In her new on air role she’ll be vital to helping our audience understand the latest news from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as it happens.

With unmatched experience in Washington, Jonathan has a well-deserved reputation for breaking stories and holding government officials to account. Jonathan secured the first network interview with then-candidate Donald Trump of the 2016 presidential election cycle. Over the past eight years, his exchanges with President Trump and President Obama – and scoops – often drove news cycles – his question to Trump about why he lied to the American people about the danger of COVID-19 is just one example on a long list of standout moments. As the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Jonathan demonstrated exceptional leadership during an unprecedented pandemic, fighting not only to protect access to the White House but also the safety of the reporters covering the president. During his tenure on the WHCA from 2017-2019, he fought to protect reporters at rallies and joined two lawsuits challenging White House attempts to ban reporters the president didn't like. He also swiftly responded to the incitement of violence against reporters. Last year Karl wrote The New York Times bestseller Front Row at the Trump Show and is already at work writing a sequel. Later this spring we’ll launch a new interview-based show that Jonathan will anchor for ABC News Live, streaming everywhere ABC News Live is available, including Hulu. It will draw on Jonathan’s considerable talents for newsmaking interviews with the foremost leaders, thinkers and doers of our time and his analysis that has been so valuable to our election coverage. I can’t wait to see more.

Rounding out our on air team on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Karen Travers will continue in her role at the White House, reporting daily for ABC News Radio and ABC NewsOne. Her reports can be heard on 1700 radio stations and multiple digital distributors and seen across the 200 ABC News affiliate TV stations.

It is a brilliant and path-breaking team, supported by our unmatched bureau in Washington. While the past few weeks have been extremely difficult, the heroic and tireless work by our DC team across our platforms has been nothing short of remarkable. As we look ahead to another consequential year, we’re counting on their experience, talents and dogged pursuit of answers to help our audience understand what’s happening in the world during this tumultuous and uncertain time. Please join me in congratulating them on their new roles and thanking the team for their dedicated service.

James

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newsninjablog · 3 years

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The Role of Counter Intelligence In a Military Coup

I'm really excited to share this information. First, I'm proud that I came to this conclusion before listening to the attached podcast by Mike Adams. It occurred to me after listening to Steve Pieczenik yesterday on Alex Jones.

https://www.infowars.com/posts/is-this-dr-steve-pieczeniks-last-appearance-on-infowars/

I realized I've been looking at this from all the wrong perspective, and it's no accident that I've been seeing it this way, because I believe that this is the way that Trump's team has wanted to portray themselves. I've been visualizing Trump as a lone warrior in the swamp, on the defensive, trying to stop an illegal coup on the left. He is repeatedly portrayed as a mindless bumbling idiot who is kind of like a loose cannon, bumping all over the place and having to be controlled and “handled” by his patient staff. WHAT IF they meant to portray this image to the fake news.

“There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.” ― Lao Tzu

In order to help you understand fully what I’m talking about I have to explain “Q.” I've avoided this point of view because I have always been wary of "Q." Who or what is Q? The prevailing thought is that Q is a consortium of generals (white hat operators) who saw the rising role of the military industrial complex and it’s subsequent murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and committed to take this cabal down. These generals have been replaced over the years, as one passes away, always leaving a core of 200 generals operating down through time. They have been planning a coup to take this evil down for 50+ years. These white hat operators began making cryptic drops of information that can be traced back to Oct. 28, 2017, but perhaps there were earlier drops that the mainstream knows nothing about. Q should be distinguished from Q-Anons, in that the Anons, are people who have taken these cryptic drops and began to interpret the clues and disseminate them out to their followers. Many people have jumped on the Anon band wagon, but many people call their rhetoric “hope-porn.” I basically stayed away from these groups because I didn’t trust any information that was coming from a nameless, faceless source. Then General Flynn posted a video on Twitter of his family saying the Pledge of Allegiance and quoting the Q motto, “Where we go one, we go all.”

His account has been cancelled by Twitter, but here’s a CNN article about the tweet.

When I saw this, I began to sit up and take notice. Because of his endorsement, I believe that Q is a real force and they are the good guys. Does that mean that everything Anon’s have put out has been true, NO. But that’s because while Q has been doing drops to keep Trump’s faithful followers from being utterly demoralized by the mainstream media’s disinformation campaign, (hear me on this because THIS the important premise of this article) Q HAS BEEN ENGAGING IN COUNTER INTELLIGENCE AS WELL, and they have been using their faithful followers to push that information out. Why would they purposely misinform their supporters? BECAUSE, this is the coup... an underground military operation that has been in the works since way, way before Donald Trump. In fact, THEY recruited him. This is a coup, to take back the Republic from enemy hands, which have been slowly taking over more and more of the government. In order to be successful, they HAD to manipulate the enemy to underestimate their Commander and Chief... not to mention subverting attention away from where the real action was happening, by sending followers on wild goose chases at times. Anons became a powerful counter intelligence tool for Q to use to manipulate the enemy and in this way, they have played a crucial role in the success of this operation without knowing it.

If there are two entities that the left loves to HATE ON it’s Q-Anon’s and Alex Jones. They watch these two phenomena like a hawk. Whatever Anons are saying and whatever Alex Jones is saying, they believe this is coming straight from intelligence inside Trump’s inner circle. That’s why there is a barrage of media hit pieces designed to discredit these two sources. Alex Jones was de-platformed and cancelled by big tech years before they turned this on the rest of us. It’s a miracle his media organization has survived, but survive it has.

Anyway, back to my explanation of Q. The Q version of what's happening here is that our country has been slowly taken over by a underground network of bad operators empowered by the intelligence agencies, funded by illegal activities and protected by the pseudo government or Deep State as it is referred to. The cancer has reached the pinnacle of its success by openly and brazenly stealing the presidency right in front of our eyes. Past presidents tried to take this on. JFK was murdered for trying, Ike Eisenhower alluded to it in his "undue influence" speech, and Reagan may have been close to going after it before the assassination attempt. So I'm coming around to realizing that Q's general platform is likely true. In that case, this isn't that Trump is defending himself from an illegal coup. This is Trump, the finisher, following an intricately planned play book to retake the republic. This is the counter coup, and it’s been in the works for a long time. Understand, they knew that the election was going to be stolen and they had to stand down and let it happen, because before they could reveal the evil that the enemy was doing, they had to let it reach a pinnacle of that evil to help open the eyes of the American people. This seems like a cruel punishment for those of us who just wanted to celebrate the victory of our president and go to the inauguration and enjoy another 4 years of his leadership...but we are all a part of the operation now and we have to “hold the line.” Do not be demoralized by the left into thinking that you’re crazy or that Biden is the president elect. This whole operation on the left is depending on an international gas-lighting operation that is trying to deceive the whole world into thinking that this election was legitimate and that Joe Biden is now the “legitimate” leader. It’s all a lie.

Last week’s march on the Capitol was not a fiasco caused by Trump. It was an intricately planned military operation designed to draw the rats out of the sewer. The entire thing was surveilled and recorded. The left purposely planned to bring in insurgents dressed as Trump supporters to attack the Capitol, in order to 1. get sympathy for Joe Biden and the Democrats as the innocent victims of violent insurgents and 2. to paint Trump as inciting violence and therefore unfit to lead. Notice, they tried to remove him the next day using the 25th amendment. MEANWHILE, the geniuses on Trump’s team hijacked their hijacking and went in with special ops to retrieve key laptops from the Speaker and other treasonous Congressmen and women. Please take a look at these two clips showing our white hat special forces guys (recently reorganized by Trump as another branch of the military directly reporting to him..BRILLIANT)

Here the are entering the Capitol

and inside deploying to their designated offices to complete the “laptop mission.” Does that sound like a President who’s laying it down? Does that sound like someone who’s given up?

What’s really cool, is Trump supporters, by showing up in those huge numbers, were a part of the plan, without even knowing it. After the insurgence took place, Trump had to announce that everyone needed to disperse peacefully. This is one of the requirements that must be fulfilled before the In-surrec- tion Act can be invoked.

“To be used, the In-surrec-tion Act says, “he (POTUS) shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.”

Are you getting the picture here? On the surface, this looked like a bumbling attempt by Trump to get his followers to overthrow the government (Trump knows his followers AREN’T those kind of people.) but the media and the Trump haters don’t know this. Brilliant counter intelligence going on here. Follow me...Now the LEFT is so scared of those horrible, violent, racist Trump-sters (as they derisively call us) that they INSIST on military backing in DC. Trump responds to their request by declaring State of Emergency, which allows for the deployment of troops (18,000 and counting) to the nation’s capital, all under the guise that they are protecting Biden and HIS inauguration. Meanwhile, the Insurrection Act has been signed, and under this and the Emergency Declaration, the military and FEMA are in charge. The men at the helm are both Trump appointees who you can bet were strategically placed there for such a time as this. (Please listen to the Mike Adam’s Podcast linked here for a detailed explanation of this).

Meanwhile, over on Info Wars, Alex Jones has been acting very strange. People who don’t know him very well, or haven’t been listening for very long, might not pick up on it, but I’ve been listening on and off for so long, I feel like I could predict his words before they come out of his mouth...suddenly he’s changing his tune A LOT. Everyday seems to be a bashing of Q and Q-Anons...Alex seems to have inside knowledge that the president may be giving up...he’s ranting and panicking and belying the military presence in DC as Biden’s attempt to try and turn us into a military state. He goes on and on and on but something is wrong... Then yesterday, his argument the Steve Pieczenik..it was all so staged in my mind. It occurred to me that Alex is being recruited to push out the narrative to keep the left (who THINK anything Alex Jones says is coming from the inside) will be dissuaded from any worries they might have had about the military presence in DC. Info Wars and Mike Adams were being used for counter intelligence. Now you might ask, how can we trust anything Mike Adams says. Well first of all, he’s one of the good guys who has been fighting corruption in the CDC, Big Pharma and the health industry for YEARS. I strongly recommend you listen to his podcast linked above because you will instantly be able to see the difference between this podcast, which is the real Mike Adams, and the fake one he put out a couple days ago, regarding Pentagon push back. The real Mike Adams would never put something out there as absolute fact unless he was privy to the information personally. His normal approach is to describe the different arguments, critically analyze them and them give people the possible scenarios and which one he thinks is most likely. That’s what he is doing in today’s podcast...completely different from the one he put out two days ago. So why would the good guys want to make the left believe that the Pentagon is not with Trump? Simple? Because they will not worry about the Insurrection Act anymore and they won’t be concerned about the growing military presence. Counter intelligence at it’s best.

Bottomline, on Saturday when certain key individual began pushing out the intel that Trump had signed the Insurrection Act, I responded by wrongly thinking, THIS IS IT! An emergency broadcast is soon to follow. However, although the act has been signed, it won’t be made public until the absolute right moment. Think about it, if they had made it public on Monday, they wouldn’t have had the troops in DC ready to meet with the push back that will surely come when the general public realizes that Joe Biden is not going to be president. They are ready now, but there are probably a LOT of things most of us are still not privy to. We may continue to be used to push our narratives that we think are true, that are really just moving pieces on the chess board, to prepare for the next thing. The only role we can have now is to prepare for the obvious fact that there is going to be rough spell coming with possible shut downs, black outs and maybe even a false flag attack. The left has already revealed their next card, in that they are trying to gin up a militia insurrection at the state capitols this weekend. I hope no one is foolish enough to participate in this one...our president has told us to calm down and stay home...don’t let them use Trump supporters for this. The last thing we want to do is spur on a civil unrest, before the geniuses on the inside have sprung their incredible trap on the Deep State.

That being said...

No plan is perfect or invincible. We have no idea who will win this battle, but we KNOW WHO WINS the war! Our hope is not in Donald John Trump, but in the Lord and of HIS government, there shall be no end. Keep thinking critically about everything you see and hear. Don’t believe a single word the mainstream press is putting out and question everything that is coming at you from all the other sources. Here are some of the things for which I am absolutely certain of (that means 99% at this point)

1. Donald Trump will not commit treason by surrendering the country to a known CCP asset

2. Donald Trump is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar empire and didn’t get there by being dumb and bumbling

3. The Insurrection Act has been signed and is in play

4. We will be looking at a pretty incredible piece of history over the next 7 days...

Stay alert and hopeful!

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youllallriseintheink · 3 years

Text

Prison Cell, Chapter 3

Sorry this took so long- it got so long that I had to split it into two parts. Anyhow, from this point forwards, you can expect a lot of violence, so be warned. This chapter will have a lot of interpersonal stuff, and the final chapter will be pretty much entirely action.

---

Sammy unlocked the door. On the other side of it was a demon. The demon. The one that had stolen her blood.

Its body was humanoid and wearing a suit and white bow tie, but its hands were made of ink. The top of its head was covered in black ink, which spiraled up into horns and spilled down its face, leaving only its mustache, mouth and chin visible. Seeing it in the light for the first time, Susie recognized it as the bottom of Joey’s face.

“Joey?” Susie asked, her voice full of wonder and fear.

“Once,” the demon said, and its voice was not Joey Drew’s. It deep, and rough, and horrible. “But I have taken over. Don’t worry- I don’t want this any more than he does. Once I find a way to separate humans from ink, I’ll go back to my dimension and free all of you to yours.” The demon turned and beckoned Susie to follow him. “Come.”

The demon led Susie through the basement, seemingly one large room full of very strange things. Pentagrams littered the floor. Scattered iron cages contained a few emaciated, ink-covered people. Shelves full of sharp tools and unknowable ingredients lined the walls.

“I can still hear him, you know,” the demon mused, taking a syringe and a number of bottles from a shelf, “Joey. His mind. I can see into him. Learn how to manipulate humans. I asked him how to crush your insurrection, and he said that I’d need to destroy your little story.”

The demon led Susie to a door and opened it, and when he did, she lost all her breath.

It was Norman, chained to the far wall. He was wearing the same clothes he had been when he was taken away several weeks ago, but now they were hanging off of him at sharp angles. Susie ran to him, and he cringed away from her. He didn’t want her to see him like this, or to feel how thin and bony he’d gotten.

“What did you do him!?” Susie demanded.

“Nothing beyond the obvious. You see, you thought that some of you could overcome us with physical power. That was your story- that your hope and your resilience would lead to freedom. I needed to show you that rebellion only forces me to take your strength. This isn’t something I wanted to do. Strong, healthy people do better work, and unfortunately Joey’s desire to manage the studio is in me. But... you forced my hand.”

The demon then pulled Susie Campbell up by the collar, pushed her against the wall, and put the syringe to her throat.

“He can’t protect you now,” the demon explained, perfectly calm. “His ability to do so was always under my control, and you made me take it away.”

All Norman could do was bury his head in his hands and listen to her whimper. The chains were too short for him to reach her, and he didn’t stand a chance against the demon anyhow. Not like this. The demon released her blood into one of the bottles, then reinserted the needle, working at an unhurried pace. He repeated the motion several times before letting her go. She fell onto her hands and knees, faint from blood loss.

---

Utterly haunted, Sammy escorted the two sickly individuals back to the music room, carrying with him the two first-aid kits and a message that Joey had written. The second he entered the recording studio, The instruments went silent. A bassist got up from his instrument and tackled Sammy to the ground.

“Okay, someone get these two to the infirmary and look after them,” the bassist ordered, “And Johnny, get the rope. We have a loyalist to hang!”

“Wait!” Sammy cried, “I carry a message from your lord!”

“Can it! You let this happen to them. Why would we listen to your stupid ‘message?’”

Meanwhile, Jack Fain picked up the message from the ground and read it. “Guys! It says if three days go by without incident, they’ll release our prisoners! Let’s not do this. Please.”

The man who’d tackled Sammy got up, snatched the message out of Jack’s hands, and skimmed over it. “Huh. You’re right. Fine. Take him to the elevator and I’ll take this to Abby. Hopefully she’ll actually use it.”

---

Abby read over the letter.

To the upper levels,

A lot of violence has occurred between the upper and lower levels recently, so let me make myself clear: I do not want war, and no matter what level you come from, you should not want loyalists to die. Without our work, you would starve. I’m sorry to have done what I did, but I think you all needed a reminder of what’s coming for you if you keep interfering with our work. I do not wish to have to do this again.

Simply put, be peaceful, do what’s needed of you, and everything will be fine. As a final peace offering, I will release your prisoners three days from now if the rebellion stops entirely.

-Joey Drew

Abby knew the letter was full of lies. That thing wasn’t Joey, and it wasn’t forced to keep them here. She knew that the others knew that, too, and she knew that now that the upper levels had tasted hope, complete compliance would be even more impossible than before. This so-called war was going to happen sooner or later, so she needed to make sure they started at an advantage. She called on Henry to help her make a plan, and called everyone into the recording studio that night to announce it. Thankfully, it seemed to satisfy even the most rebellious of souls.

---

The door to Susie’s room opened, and Abby stepped in. Susie's eyes opened weakly.

“Hey.”

“Sorry you had to miss the meeting tonight. Big things are happening, and I thought I’d let you know about them.”

“Okay,” Susie said.

“So... Joey, or, his demon, rather, has threatened to come down hard on us if there are any more signs of rebellion- and we both know that there will be. He also promised to release our prisoners if there are three days of good behaviour. So, I’ve decided that we’re breaking out the same night that our prisoners are released. The plan is for someone stealthy to go down there in the dead of night, steal the keys, and come back. After that, we’ll leave in groups of seven in order to sneak out of the portal. We’ll do it as quietly as possible, but we’ll also be packing axes and spears made from the knives you brought up. Hopefully there won’t be too many causalities.”

“Why seven?”

“We’re expecting to have ten injured people, and we’re not leaving anyone behind. There are going to be 68 of us in total, assuming that none of the prisoners died, you know, I thought that one per group would have the least chance of really compromising a group’s chances of escape. Plus, smaller groups will be quicker and quieter.”

Susie nodded.

“Oh, and I’m sure you’ll be better by then. And Norman is fine, too, by the way. Well, physically. We looked him over and he doesn’t have any issues aside from the obvious. He won’t talk to any of us. I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe some kind of spell.”

Susie should have felt something in regards to that, but she was honestly too exhausted from the blood loss.

“Alright. I’ll let you rest now- but tomorrow, I’m going to have to ask you about everything you saw down there- especially anything that might help me plan. Goodnight, Susie.” With that, Abby left.

---

The rebellion required planning, and management. Every axe was pulled off the walls and moved into Sammy’s sanctuary, along with the knives- just in case a loyalist decided to take them away one night. Two people guarded the elevator on each floor and at all times, and not to keep loyalists out. Loyalists were allowed right through, but any especially rebellious souls had to be kept from ruining their plan. Henry and Abby were busy planning the groups and drawing up an easy-to-follow map to the portal room. Every department head struggled to keep the remaining workers to their jobs. It seemed pointless for them to work jobs they’d quickly be fleeing from, but it was essential in order to keep suspicions to a minimum.

---

It was the night before the march. Most were turning in early, knowing that tomorrow, they would have to be on their guard well into the night. Susie had tried to do the same, but she couldn’t sleep. There was too much on her head. Too many factors that had to align if she was ever going to make it out. The horrifying possibility of facing the ink demon again if they failed. And her mind, despite there being there bigger fish to fry, kept going back to Norman, if they could ever have what they had once had again, and if Norman even wanted that anymore.

“Has Norman talked to you, yet?” Susie asked Grant once he entered their room. Since Norman hadn’t rejoined them, there was no real reason for them to still be roommates, but they’d stayed roommates anyhow, just out of habit.

“No. As far as I know, he hasn’t talked to anyone.”

“I saw him speak today. Wally wanted to help him carry something, and Norman snarled at him to back off. So, it’s not a spell- just mental stuff from being imprisoned. I wanna help him, but he won’t talk to me. Can you try?”

“Sure,” Grant said. “I can’t guarantee it’ll work, but I’ll try.”

“Okay,” Susie said, biting back tears. “I just wanna know that he’s in a place where he’ll be able to handle things tomorrow. And... I know that this is the last thing that should be on my mind, but... can you ask why he’s avoiding me?”

“Oh, Susie. I...” Grant tried to find the words to comfort her. “I’ll talk to him.” Honestly, it didn’t seem like Norman was the only one who had to pull themselves together for tomorrow night.

Norman wasn’t used to being pitied. Even as a kid, after all he’d been through, his adoptive family had known that he was a problem child who needed to be set straight before he got even bigger and his aggression became more dangerous. He’d never wanted pity, either, and now that he had it, he couldn’t say that his opinion on it had improved any. He never thought he’d miss his coworkers looking at him like he was a frightening beast. Though he did cut the long, greasy hair he’d grown while imprisoned as soon as he had the chance, he’d been half-tempted to just wash it and keep it, just to somewhat retain that beastly image.

Mostly, he wanted a way to cope. He wanted to talk with his sister, or go for a walk in the woods, or somehow get out of the sight of these people without isolating himself in one room. That had been what he was doing in his off hours- both because there was little else he wanted to do and because he didn’t have the stamina he used to. It wasn’t Susie’s room. Honestly, he’d been too scared to even look at her.

Norman knew of the plan. Honestly, it had happened so quickly after he was released from his imprisonment that it was a little hard to take in. Yes, late tomorrow night, he and everyone else would end up escaping or die trying, and Norman would either reunite with his sister and put his life together from there, or it would be the end of him. It was happening, but it didn’t seem real.

There was a knock at his door. Norman pulled himself up and answered it. It was Grant. Well, out of everyone in the studio it could have been, Grant was the most tolerable.

“Hey, Norman. You... wanna play some cards?” There was a little pity in Grant’s voice. Thankfully not too much.

Norman ushered Grant into the room. They sat down on the floor, and Grant started shuffling the cards.

“So, you ready for tomorrow?”

“I guess. Kind of hard to believe it’s happening.”

Grant’s face lit up. “You’re talking!”

Norman shrugged. “It’s easy when it’s you."

“Uh, thanks. Do you want talk about... you know, what’s happened?”

“No,” Norman said, and the two played cards in silence for a while before Norman spoke up again. “Is Susie okay?”

“She’s fine. She’ll be strong enough to make it out, assuming the plan goes well.”

Norman’s face was unreadable. “Good." A long pause. “Y’know, she’s childish, and shallow, and stupid. But she was impressed with me because I was strong and I could protect her. And so, you know, she was pretty, and we did... things together. I thought that could be all it was, but she was sweet and kind to me and I went and caught feelings for her. Of course, shallow attraction based on one thing won’t last now that I look like starving stray dog, but whatever. So long as she’s okay. She’s a good girl. So long as she’s okay.”

Grant just stared at him. “Have you... looked her in the eye recently?”

“What?”

“Uh, sorry. It’s just that you’re usually so good at figuring this kind of thing out that it borders on the supernatural, and right now, you’re really, really wrong. This entire, organized rebellion started with her trying to put together a rescue team for you. She wanted to be the first one down in loyalist territory, for you. She’s actually the one who sent me, because she’s worried about how you’ll do tomorrow.”

With the last line, Norman’s face went from appreciation and disbelief to twisted anger. “For God’s sake! Joey didn’t cut my fucking legs off!”

“Well, she can’t know how well you’re doing if you avoid her. Look, if you aren’t up for it, I can go back and try to comfort her, tell her you’re fine.”

“No. No. I’ll do it. And I’m sorry that I’m not my most pleasant right now.”

Grant smiled. Nothing ever changed- the best way to get Norman to do anything was to offer to do it for him. Susie slept in Norman’s arms that night, knowing it could be their last chance to be together.

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #joey drew #(sort of)#susie campbell #norman polk #abby lambert #my fanfiction #Story: prison cell

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