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passionate-reply · 3 years

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In 1993, Billy Idol--yes, that Billy Idol--went completely mad and made an electronic album full of futuristic themes, samples, and techno beats. Many consider Cyberpunk one of the worst albums of all time, but on this week’s installment of Great Albums, we provide a somewhat more positive approach. Check out the video, or read the transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! In this installment, I’ll be taking a look at an artist one might not normally associate with the usual “pantheon” of synthesizer jockeys I usually talk about: Billy Idol. Initially known as the frontman of punk outfit Generation X, Idol found success as a solo artist in the early 1980s, fusing tough-as-nails punk aesthetics with a lavish, almost camp sense of glam, and his visually arresting pop-rock made him an MTV-friendly star of the “Second British Invasion.” While one couldn’t fairly argue that Idol was an “electronic musician,” his early work does contain moments of mild electro-curiosity, perhaps most notably the mercurial ballad, “Eyes Without a Face.”

Music: “Eyes Without a Face”

But despite the minor synth touches of the hit single “Eyes Without a Face,” few in the 1980s could have possibly expected the turn Idol’s career would eventually take by the time of his 5th studio LP: 1993’s Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is, of course, an album with a reputation that precedes it, and that reputation is not a particularly good one. Cyberpunk is a deeply fraught album, which commercially underperformed upon release, and did even worse in the eyes of critics, with the magazine Q dubbing it the 5th worst album of all time. In the nearly 30 years since the album’s release, opinions on it don’t seem to have softened that much, either. But as with everything I choose to talk about, I think Cyberpunk is worth listening to. I think it’s a daring and challenging work of art, and one that stands on its own terms when approached head-on. Whether you’re familiar with this album or not, I encourage you to give it a fresh listen, and a fair shake.

Music: “Wasteland”

Perhaps the most immediately apparent feature of Cyberpunk is its increasingly electronic soundscape, including a prominent sample-based hook on the track “Wasteland.” The album was created in less than a year, and chiefly through use of computers and digital audio software, which Idol evidently found easier to explore and use than earlier forms of music technology. I’m partial to the argument that sees the use of digital software as perfectly compatible with the famed DIY ethos of punk, and hence, not far from Idol’s wheelhouse at all. In the 1990s, computers were still something that far from everyone owned, but in our contemporary world of Soundcloud rappers on seemingly every street, it’s easier to accept the notion of computer music as a grassroots, egalitarian field where even the unskilled are welcome--perhaps even moreso than punk ever was, in the 20th Century. This is one sense in which I think Cyberpunk has aged better than anyone could have possibly imagined. Besides pushing the texture of Idol’s music into new territory, Cyberpunk is also a fairly risky album structurally, opening with a sort of manifesto being read, and peppered with brief interludes between its tracks proper.

Music: “Interlude 3”

It’s only fitting that an album so concerned with the bleeding edge of technology might also try to push the boundaries of the still-fresh CD age. Liberated from the confines of designing chiefly for vinyl, artists like Idol were empowered to create CDs that ostensibly had 20 “tracks,” with no need for empty grooves to separate these brief interludes from the album’s major compositions. This avant-garde touch adds significant amounts of texture to the album, and, dare I say, a sense of world-building. Undoubtedly, one main reason why this album was so poorly received at the time is that it is, quite simply, not what one expects a Billy Idol record to sound like--at least, with the possible exception of its second single, “Shock to the System.”

Music: “Shock to the System”

“Shock to the System” feels like something of an orphan in the tracklisting of Cyberpunk. While tracks like “Wasteland” certainly maintain a rough-edged rock mentality about them, and could never be confused for straightforward techno floor-fillers, “Shock to the System” feels more like it was tacked onto the album just so that it would have something that appealed to those who exclusively prefer Idol’s earlier style--and, given that most of Idol’s greatest hits compilations tend to include “Shock to the System” and nothing else from Cyberpunk, this may have worked. Cyberpunk, as a genre, is often concerned with political themes--its great literary progenitor, William Gibson, once said that “the future is already here, but it’s unevenly distributed,” epitomizing the extent to which the intersection between technology and class is a central issue in cyberpunk media. “Shock to the System” is the most overtly political track on Cyberpunk, inspired by the wave of riots that broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers alleged to have used excessive force in the arrest of a Black man, Rodney King. While the role of computers in daily life has changed a great deal since the 1990s, police brutality and anti-Blackness have sadly remained quite similar.

Few have commented on the perhaps uncomfortable implications of Idol’s dramatization of the LA riots from outside, which seems to transmute the scene into one of high-tech fantasy while largely eliding over the racial implications of why people were rioting in the first place--something that seems particularly strange when one learns how upset members of the underground “cyberculture” were about the alleged co-opting and appropriation of their culture. Some have characterized Idol as an honest appreciator of cyberpunk who just wanted to make art that engaged with its ideas, and others more cynically consider him a profiteer who thought he could commercialize a more palatable version of the counter-culture. While the latter hypothesis may well be true, I’m not sure if it can rightfully be said that Idol had “no right” to mine cyberculture for inspiration, particularly since cyberculture has often encouraged amateur participation. Still, as a sometime fan of the literary genre myself, I’m tempted to agree with those who have questioned how deep Idol’s understanding of cyberpunk actually was, particularly when faced with tracks like “Neuromancer.”

Music: “Neuromancer”

In William Gibson’s novel of the same name, Neuromancer is a super-advanced AI with the ability to preserve people’s personalities in virtual reality...though you probably wouldn’t have guessed any of that from this track. Many who interviewed Idol seemed to think he had a weak grasp on the finer points of cyberculture, and even Gibson himself, upon meeting Idol, failed to take him seriously. Still, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to draw a line in the sand, as some have done, and say that Idol was particularly, individually, responsible for the dilution of cyberpunk ideals, as presented by authors like Gibson. While it may be easy to poke fun at the clownish, overwrought figure of Idol, as the embodiment of people who love books they don’t understand, it’s not like that many people owned this album. I think the success of popular films like Blade Runner and The Matrix has done much more to simplify and proliferate ideas cribbed from Gibson.

But however you feel about this, it’s clear that Cyberpunk was an album that ended up appealing to nearly no-one--it alienated Idol’s existing fans with its stylistic diversions, as well as feeling too commercial and inauthentic to cyberpunk enthusiasts. Something else that I haven’t seen mentioned in discussion of this album is the fact that Billy Idol really wasn’t the first to combine the ideas of cyberpunk and music. By the early 1990s, industrial acts like Front 242 and Front Line Assembly had already been making electronic music about cyber brain implants for years, albeit largely underground and often unnoticed by rock-focused critics. I can’t help but think that the prior existence of this stuff was yet another factor that caused Cyberpunk’s failure to thrive. Compared to the electronic body music scene, Cyberpunk comes across as less subtle, less insider, and much more surface-level.

The cover art of Cyberpunk has attracted nearly as much derision as the associated music. The image of Idol’s face bleeds and distorts “into” and “against” a gridlike field, perhaps the greenish terminal of an early computer screen, a representation of the hacker figure entering the virtual world of cyberspace, and identity blurring along those lines. With its wobbly image distortion and queasy complementary colour palette of yellow and purple, it instantly evokes not only cyberpunk aesthetics generally, but more particularly the fusion between cyberpunk and another popular aesthetic of the early 90s: psychedelia, which experienced a substantial resurgence around this time, related to rave culture and its embrace of hallucinogenic party drugs. So-called “cyberdelic” themes abound on the album as well, particularly on the hypnotic “Adam In Chains,” a track that sounds less like 80s New Wave, and more like 90s New Age.

Following the release and subsequent panning of Cyberpunk in the 1990s, Billy Idol went silent for over a decade. While he claimed that his disinterest in making new music was rooted moreso in mismanagement by Chrysalis Records than it was the album’s failure, it’s very tempting to look for a correlation here. Over the years, Idol was often asked if he ever planned to make more electronic music, and consistently claimed that he was chiefly interested in guitar-centric rock, while never completely trashing his vision for Cyberpunk. True to his word, when Idol finally did return to music with 2005’s Devil’s Playground, he delivered on his “classic” sound, and he’s continued to do so ever since.

Music: “Scream”

My favourite track on Cyberpunk is its lead single, the total showstopper “Heroin.” “Heroin” is actually a cover of a song by the seminal Velvet Underground, and it’s everything I think a cover ought to be: exciting, bizarre, and capable of taking something familiar and kicking it into a whole new territory. What’s the point of covering something without changing it and doing something a bit different? “Heroin” is naturally one of the most psychedelic-oriented tracks on the album, being a cover of a drug-themed 1960s classic, as well as one of the tracks with the most influence from dance genres like techno, boasting a very appealing extended outro that makes it feel like a 12” remix. While I think Cyberpunk is a fascinating album, “Heroin” is the one track I think really crosses the bridge from being interesting to being, quite simply, good, and it’s something I’m much more inclined to sit down and listen to recreationally. That’s everything for today--thanks for listening!

Music: “Heroin”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #billy idol #cyberpunk

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tomistryinghisbest · 3 years

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SIDETRACKED with TGT

Welcome to Sidetracked, the periodical internet show where instead of doing important things, I get sucked down an internet rabbit hole for heavens knows how long. Might as well document my findings/incomitance to focus on tasks.

In this episode: an odd phonetic connection between the popular internet game Among Us and a filmmaker of an anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film from Nazi Germany, the bizarre articles that came from trying to cover the topic— and the journey to accidentally debunking the source of the connection.

First, please watch this. It’s the thing that started this whole escapade.

Apparently, Amon Gus was the pseudonym* (put a pin in that) of the German filmmaker Wolfgang Staudte, who wrote and directed the 1946 film The Murderers Are Among Us (that was obviously anti-Nazi, by the way) and was involved in the filming of the aforementioned propaganda film, Jud Süß, which is stylized in the theater poster as "Jud Süss."

The Murderers Are Among Us was a romance-thriller about a Nazi concentration camp survivor and an ex-soldier struggling with the traumas of WWII. Jud Süß, by contrast, is considered "one of the most notorious and successful pieces of anti-Semitic film propaganda produced in Nazi Germany." One could easily gather (as the Wikipedia article does) that Staudte was perhaps trying to right his wrongs by making a film that was against the ideology he felt guilty for perpetuating. Or perhaps that was a cover-up and he still was a Nazi. It's impossible to truly know.

As of yet, I have not found any conclusive that Staudte actually used Amon Gus as a pseudonym or if that was just fabricated for the joke. Any sources I find gloss over the connection between the two names.

This leads us to the articles that appear to be trying to document this connection, except they're doing it in a way that feels like they're aliens that are trying to disguise as journalists but have absolutely no idea what humans actually care about or even what facts are. One such article from the website ridzeal.com is titled Amon Gus Person Who is Amon Gus Person? Here is an excerpt from the article:

“As of now, the author retains all of his information confidential. We can Not offer much info about his era. He might be 50-60years old as of today. He is not there on any societal media website. No information about his family, wife, kids, parents could be viewed anywhere.”

For context, Wolfgang Staudte died in 1984 at the age of 77.

While reading this, the writing really reminded me of the famous Does Bruno Mars is Gay article, which was evidently written by artificial intelligence. Considering this, it is very likely that ridzeal.com is a site written exclusively by artificial intelligence. Looking at their main page shows many headlines with English ranging from slightly-off to broken, such as “How to Wear a Leather Kilt?“ and “Bestiken Com Reviews Is Bestiken com Legit or Scam?“ All of these are being put out at a fairly rapid pace (multiple a day it seems) and in multiple languages (with no sorting by language, mind you).

There’s nothing on ridzeal.com that shows it’s managed by AI. They have a submission section, so I decided to ask them “Are your articles made by artificial intelligence? Because they really seem like it.” I guess we’ll see if they respond.

Upon further inspection, there were even more articles similar to this, two that even seem to copy each other. Here’s the website that appears to be the original source and a celebrity birthday/height/weight website that copied that (incorrect) information.

Here’s that picture they used:

Isn’t he handsome?

Yeah, that’s not Amon Gus. A quick reverse-image search shows that’s the German author Karl May, who died in March 1912 at 70, five and a half years after Wolfgang Staudte was born.

Here he is on the cover of his book Leben, Werk, Wirkung (which according to Google Translate means “Like, Work, Effect”):

So handsome...

So, is Amon Gus a real person? Maybe, but it’s unlikely. It could be a goof by an AI trying to find new material. Or a fabrication to make a meme. Who knows? I certainly don’t.

Murderer Is Amogus and Jew Sus is still funny though.

And thus concludes my endurance to go further down the rabbit hole as well as tonight’s episode of Sidetracked. I’ve been your host TGT, and remember kids: Check your sources.

#sidetracked #rabbit hole #nazi germany #check your sources #amon gus #among us #reddit #propaganda #literature #sorry to all my teachers #i should go to sleep now #karl may #writers #writers on tumblr

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seriousextrovert · 3 years

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A Over Simplification of the Laws of War

Over the past year the world has seen conflict from a first hand experience. From the heights of Armenia, to the crowded streets of Gaza. We have all seen the same thing, numerous human rights violations and wide spread death. Many people have been throwing around the term war crime, which is true in many aspects.

Because of this let’s look at the basic principles of the Laws of War. They are as follows, Engage Combatants/Do not target civilians, Avoid Civilian casualties, Do not engage protected symbols/areas, do not torture or allow ill treatment of prisoners of war, Allow the sick and wounded to be cared for, certain weapons are off limit, and limit collateral damage. These rules have fallen victim to the recent rise of asymmetrical warfare.

War has and always will exist, it is our job to ensure that the innocent and the helpless do not fall victim to it. All actions that are done on the battlefield have consequences. No matter who or what they are targeted at.

The first rule, only engage combatants sounds pretty simple right? Combatants are pretty easy to spot and identify. Yet in many cases today that is not the case. With the rise of Guerilla warfare and insurgent tactics it is hard to distinguish hostile from non-hostile. You can’t go around to each person and ask them “Hey are you going to launch a mortar at my barracks tonight?” Because of this there are often times incidents like what occurred in Baghdad 2007 when a Apache attack helicopter engaged what it thought was a insurgent cell, but when in reality it was only a group of reporters.

Because of this there are two types of combatants, Lawful Combatants and Unlawful Combatants. A lawful combatant can be a military group with clear identifying factors such as a flag, to identify who they are with, a command structure, and other components that make up most armed forces around the globe. Militia movements and guerrillas also qualify for this definition if they follow all four of the following rules.

Rule 1) Have a command structure

This allows for a chain of command to stay in place. So a leader figure can give orders and punish subordinates for failures, and for a chain of responsibility so that a group does not commit atrocities.

Rule 2) Have a fixed distinctive sign that can be identified

This means to use a flag, to identify your troops and groups so that they do not get confused with civilians. It is meant to protect civilians and non-combatants alike. An example of this would be the Vietcong in the Vietnam War they often times wore a uniform and had a flag to identify them as a armed combatant

This below is not a lawful combatant. She is not easily identifiable. She is not wearing a uniform. As such she would be considered a war criminal and would not be eligible for POW protections.

Rule 3) Carrying weapons openly

Self explanatory a combatant must be openly carrying a weapon, they can not be concealing it or hiding it.

Rule 4) To Conduct Operations in accordance to the laws of war

A partisan movement or a resistance movement must also follow the rules of war. They are no exempt.

Another thing that should be needless to say is killing of Civilians is unacceptable. During the 2007 airstrike in Baghdad the pilots of the helicopter should’ve been prosecuted for their failure to properly evaluate and calculate risk. Military’s around the world should teach and train their forces more and more about what is a weapon and what is not. It is harder to tell today with the rise of digital cameras and the fact that many engagements can occur hundreds of miles away from where one of the combatants is (See drones). Further more certain groups try to purposely target Civilians for the sole reason of demoralization and causing carnage and death. As seen with the actions by Hamas during recent years in Israel.

Yet avoiding of civilian causalities is something that certain states fail to do. During the 2021 Operations against Hamas in Gaza Israel failed on multiple occasions to properly warn and limit civilian casualties lead to the early deaths of 256 civilians, including 60 children. Failure to properly care and properly execute missions against armed combatants comes at a deadly price for civilians.

Protected symbols are symbols that basically mean “Do not shoot we are here to help” these symbols include the red cross, Red Diamond, Red Crescent and the Magen David Adom. The following are listed here

These are all protected flags and symbols which may not be engaged or targeted ever. These protected symbols also include dams, levees, or power plants. Below is a pamphlet that shows all the symbols and what they mean.

(It should be noted civil defense means areas like air raid shelters or evacuation zones). Chaplains are also to not be targeted ever. However protected symbols should not be abused by one side to use them to attack another. During the Second World War a German soldier fired upon a group of Americans from the back of a Ambulance. The Soldier was ultimately tried and hung for his crimes. Attacking from behind a protected symbol constitutes a war crime.

During war Prisoners are taken and prisoners are often times mistreated or hurt for fighting on the opposing side. Prisoners are entailed to the ability to communicate with their loved ones and family, fair treatment, and freedom from torture. Torture includes a lot of things.

Above is a stress position a captured Vietnamese Guerilla was put into. Stress Positions constitute torture and as such are no to be used by any armed force. Torture is not to be tolerated under any circumstances and any cases of it are to be considered war crimes and should be punished as such.

Prisoners should not be put into isolation chambers or isolated from others as that is a form of psychological torture. This was seen prevalent through out the Vietnam War within the Northern Vietnamese camps during which captured Americans were not allowed to communicate with one another. As such that is a war crime.

The sick and wounded no matter what side they are from have a right to be treated. If one side tries to make it so only their wounded and sick get treatment then they are committing a war crime. People are entitled to heal and get better. When they are in a field hospital or a hospital they are not capable of attacking or harming others. As such they are not combatants.

Believe it or not all is not fair during war. The use of anti-personnel mines or cluster munitions are often viewed as war crimes. Their indiscriminate carnage and destruction they cause often hurt civilians more than combatants. As such there are limits on how and if they can be used. Failure to follow these limits or rules constitutes a war crime. Today it is still evolving with the evolution of drones and the introduction of loitering munition and autonomous weapons, people are in danger of being targeted by a ai algorithm or a weapon that is not man controlled. As such new conventions rules and laws should be adopted to prevent their wide spread use or to limit their use.

Lastly limit collateral damage. During times of war there are chances and opportunities to take out targets of high importance. Yet planners and officers should work on limiting damage to civilian infrastructure. If a high ranking officer or target is visiting a power plant, it would be a crime to target them. The military has a obligation to make sure that people’s livelihoods are not destroyed in order to kill one person.

War is a unfortunate reality we have to deal with. Yet it can be mitigated and made to be more humane. In general this is a over simplification.

#War crimes #Israel and Palestine #Geneva Conventions

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icicle-rain · 4 years

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played a warrior cats scenario on ai dungeon and now i have a story

snuffit is supposed to have red eyes but gfgghjkknb.

iciclestar and hazelheart are mates and frost, flame, and smoke are their three kits. flamekit is a good boy and smokekit is a little shit, i don’t know about frostkit though. she has never spoken.

silverfire is the first main villain and meadowfire is his daughter who takes over his spot. iciclestar kills meadowfire in battle.

the deputy is the cat who iciclestar names deputy who the ai didn’t give a name.

full story is below the cut (pretty long)

iciclerain is a riverclan warrior and her mate is hazelheart. the two decide to go hunting. iciclerain gets dragged into the river by the fish she tries to catch and almost drowns, eventually getting help from her wife who was too busy smoking something to notice icicle drowning.

hazelheart then starts to freak out and tells iciclerain to run away with her. iciclerain is confused and hazelheart explains that the silver fire-clan was going to kill them all and they had to get away. iciclerain is a bit annoyed and heads back to camp to get treated by the medicine cat.

the medicine cat, a old man, starts acting strange and asks iciclerain for anti-venom. iciclerain is tired and leaves the medicine den. she chats with one of the warriors and finds out that hazelheart was taken by the silver-fire clan, and that she was the only one who survived an attack.

iciclerain heads out of camp and finds a cat named kit as well as another cat hovering over an injured hazelheart. furious, iciclerain attacks the cats and sends them running off. hazelheart begs for iciclerain to leave her and get help. she runs off and goes to find help back at camp but ends up meeting a patrol of warriors who don’t recognize her. no matter how many times she repeats her name and how long she’s been in the clan, the cats are confused, one of them even calls her a traitor.

eventually a patrol of her clanmates arrives and agrees to go help hazelheart. iciclerain continues on and runs into a small group of cats led by a silver tabby. the silver tabby introduces himself as silverfire, and says he’s the leader of riverclan. iciclerain insults him and says he’s not the leader of riverclan. this enrages him and he beats the shit out of her. she gets flung at a tree and passes out.

she wakes up to firestar and icecloud standing over her. she asks what happened to her clanmates and hazelheart, but they don’t respond. she follows them back to thunderclan camp where hazelheart is sleeping with three kits. whitestorm is also there i dont know how he’s alive, and also iciclerain’s mentor brohawk died. iciclerain doesn’t question it lays down beside her wife. hazelheart calls iciclerain stupid for almost getting herself killed, but is interupted by firestar who calls iciclerain away for a private conversation

iciclerain begins to led patrols to attack the new leader of “riverclan” meadowfire. silverfire was killed by firestar, so she took his place. meadowfire taunts iciclerain before running off once her cats are defeated. hazelheart helps iciclerain back to camp.

the next day cats from another clan are in camp having a small argument with hazelheart. iciclerain snaps at them and they leave. hazelheart tells them to bring back supplies and to be careful, which confuses iciclerain who questions her. the queen responds that the other clan was their ally and they needed to be “civil to each other”. the two chat a bit and hazelheart says she named the three kits frostkit, flamekit, and smokekit. iciclerain heads to her special “lower ranked leaders’ home” to sleep.

iciclerain decides to go out to hunt and ends up getting a bunch of blood on her. she climbs up a tree and finds that a cat has her son. she tries to pursue the kitnapper but suddenly feels ill and falls out of the tree, breaking her leg. iciclerain, about to pass out from pain, is confronted by snuffit, who thinks that icicle killed her sister cinder. (icicle asks if hazelheart is snuffit’s sister since she said “you fooled around with my sister” and snuffit says “no, she’s just really pretty)

icicle takes a quick nap, wakes up, and decides to ask snuffit for help. she says that if snuffit helps her find flamekit, they’ll have their fight. snuffit reluctantly decides to go along with it (snuffit calls iciclerain a “beautiful cat” before following her). they track flamekit down to the thunderpath and into shadowclan territory. he’s passed out on the ground and has to be woken up by icicleran. he has a crushed front paw and a broken back leg.

iciclerain and snuffit take flamekit back to the medicine den. iciclerain explains what happened to hazelheart, who thanks iciclerain for saving him. flamekit wakes up after a nice nap and meows that snuffit “iced [his] cat!” and snuffit can’t deny that she did that.

flamekit reveals that meadowfire has been talking to him and has broken into the nursery. he’s conflicted on whether or not they should kill meadowfire, and leaves the den due to the pressure. iciclerain tells firestar about the nursery infiltration and about flamekit. firestar tries to talk to flamekit, but it doesn’t really work. icicle goes with flamekit to check on his siblings. smokekit admits that she’s still scared of meadowfire.

icicle, hazel, and the kits decide to sleep in icicle’s den. because the nursery wasn't safe. icicle wakes up and goes to speak with firestar. she tells him her plan of drowning meadowfire's cats since the river was going to flood soon. firestar says it wouldn't be a good idea since his cats can't swim and they wouldn't like to learn how to, so icicle gives up on that idea. she asks hazelheart if she'd be willing to fight, and hazel says she'll be there.

icicle wakes up in the middle of the night and goes to see what firestar and his senior warriors are planning. he tells her they've got everything planned out and that she should just keep an eye on things, so she leaves and goes to sit on guard duty. she wakes up around sunhigh and helps her clanmates and thunderclan prepare for battle. snuffit reluctantly agrees to fight alongside them. icicle leads the patrols out. she's with hazelheart and snuffit while the rest of the battle patrols follow behind. they wait by the border until all of meadowfire's patrols, including the one with her on it, goes back into the territory. it's night by the time that happens.

once all the patrols are gone, they attack and start driving meadowfire's cats back. iciclerain manages to catch up with meadowfire and brutally kills her with multiple slashes to the neck. she declares that riverclan has been freed and the cats cheer. blackfoot arrives, says he wants riverclan territory, then leaves.

iciclerain helps the remaining riverclan cats settle down then announces herself as leader. a ginger tom challenges her, saying that she was inexperienced and with her leg injury she wasn't as good as a warrior as she used to be. iciclerain points out she acted as thunderclan's second deputy and killed meadowfire, so he shuts up. icicle chooses a "plump she-cat with fluffy ginger and brown fur" as her deputy then goes to get nine lives. a windclan patrol of six watches them travel to the moonstone. iciclerain is blessed with visions of living and dead cats before being fully brought into starclan. she first sees four cats, then more join them .a black she-cat says iciclerain isn’t worthy of being leader, and a gray tom and brown tabby disagree. the black she-cat nips iciclerain’s ear and decides to give her a life. iciclerain sees a vison of a medicine cat who tells her “we’re your family now.” icicle receives her seven lives then her last life from an ancient cat named twilightcloud, who tells her to use her lives to defend her clan and home from any threat, including other clans. he tells her “then i suppose there’s nothing left to do but begin” before she wakes up

the old riverclan medicine cat jokes that she’s been asleep for three days and that she was purring loudly as she slept. icicle storms out and heads back home. she announces that she got her nine lives to her clan then goes to check on hazelheart. she tells her kits she got nine lives and flamekit says “that’s cool, mom”. hazelheart and iciclestar joke about icicle having nine lives before they decide it’s time for a much deserved nap.

iciclestar says “RiverClan is back, and here to stay.” then the story ends

#tumblr almost gave up multiple times as i typed up the story #warrior cat ocs #warrior cat oc #wc ocs #riverclan #the ai decided near the end to describe the kits as yellow tabbies so had to change my mind designs for them #the story was sometimes super fucking good then other times id have to try over and over again to get a decent response #the nine lives ceremony was not easy

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lunaannkoenig · 4 years

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On my quest to the ultimate list of tropes, here is what I have so far.

-Drop your weapons...All of them (followed by character dropping and ungodly amount of weapons)

-Chosen/Found Families (Band of characters with familial bonds though few or none are related)

-The Calvalry to the Rescue

-Chosen One

-Love Triangle

-Underdog Defeats Powerful Foe

-Old Grumpy Mentor Comes Out of Retirement

-Villain Redemption Arc/Antagonist to Ally

-Character who hates everyone sacrifices self

-Morally Gray Characters

-Antihero who is really a hero

-Love Interests bandaging each other's wounds

-Insta Love

-Trauma Love (2 characters fall in love through traumatic experiences)

-Platonic Love (2 friends with matching sexuality— as in heterosexual or homosexual— do not fall in love with each other)

-Missing Person with Dark Secrets

-Teenage Detective Solves Cold Case

-Marriage of Convienience turns into True Love

-Not Like the Other Girls

-Loud Outspoken Best Friend

-Nerdy Kid with Popular Friend

-Key Witness Has Amnesia

-Boy Who Pretends He Doesn't Love Girl (But Really Does)

-The Gruff Older Character Whose Life is Change by a Precocious Child

-The Plain Jane Who Gets Her Man

-The Unlikely Hero of Humble Origins

-Heroic Last Stand Against Overwhelming Force

-Wise Old Mentor Who's as Badass as Can Be

-Teenager Gains Power on Birthday

-Hero is Instantly Good at Everything

-Hero Struggles Through Training to be Badass

-The Prophecy Guides The Hero

-Magic Swords with Cool Powers

-Dysfunctional Characters Team Up on Quest

-Forgotten Ancient Technology

-Blacksmith Turned Hero

-Lovecraftian Ancient Horror God

-Magical School/Camp

-The White Savior

-Strong Female Character

-Girl Falls in Love with Rapist

-Interrogation Where It's Told in Splices Between Characters

-Interrogation Where the Stories Hilariously Conflict

-Manic Pixie Dream Girl (quirky girl whose entire purpose is to make a boring guy less boring)

-The Reluctant Hero

-Dark Lord

-Orphaned Protagonist

-Forgotten Heir

-Wise Wizard (who likely dies... Gandalf, Moirainne, Dumbledore, etc)

-European Medieval Setting

-Black & White Morality

-Summoning an Evil Entity to Make a Contract

-Magical Artifact/Object of Great Power

-The Quest

-Scientists Create/Find/Genetically Alter a Super Predator and Accidentally Release It

-Forbidden Love

-The Funny Best Friend

-Fake Dating

-Weird Small Town

-Privileged Villains

-Betrayal is the Name of the Villain (someone we love and trust is secretly our villain)

-Who Dunnit

-Villain is Someone Completely Unsuspicious

-The Final Boss is Not the Final Boss

-Religious Basket Case Villain

-Villain is a Monster

-Monster isn't really a Monster

-Unrequited Love

-Unrequited Hatred (You hate the villain, they barely acknowledge you)

-Magical Creatures

-Keeping Secrets to Protect Someone

-Character Finds Out Dark Secret and is Instantly Okay

-Bury Your Gays

-Choose Between Job and Love Life

-City Slicker Falls For Country Boy/Girl/Person

-Everyone Ends Up With Someone

-“I have something to tell you"" then they die.

-Enemies to Friends

-All Adults Are Evil

-Romantic Stalking

-Friends to Lovers

-Bookworm MC

-Roadtrip

-Consensual Romance (characters specifically ask and receive consent)

-Close Quarters in Romance as a vehicle for romance

-Power Couple (No power imbalance, even if their strengths are different)

-Romantic interest loves dogs (Hades and Persephone in Lore Olympus)

-Protective/Overly Protective Partner

-"Love Interest or Big Burly Guy who says ""Hey Buddy I'm protecting you from her."""

-Man who defies or hates his powerful father figure (sometimes an uncle)

-Grouchy love interest

-Rebel with a cause

-Charming Antagonist

-Bromance

-I'm not your dad but I'm your dad

-Dandy/Fop being witty and charming

-Big Scary Softie

-Drunken Confessions

-Accidentally overhearing key information

-Trapped in a closet

-Inanimate objects come to life

-Blind Prophet/Seer

-Bottom Storage (villain isn't killed off but is put in a glass prison in a basement somewhere)

-Over complicated board/card game that the audience only sees glimpses of

-MC assumes another character's intentions are the exact opposite of what they are by misinterpreting their actions

-Age Gap Romance

-Bottomless Bag of Usefull Stuff

-Anti-Villain

-Omniscient Narrator who Contradicts the Characters

-Dry jokes during dire situations

-Men who love their wives and talk about it frequently

-There's people chasing our MCs and where we've chosen to hide has us close

-Confession of Love on the death bed

-Kissing in the rain

-Cute But Viscious

-Strong female character who is actually bad ass

-Crazy Family

-Falling in love with an AI

-AI takes over the world

-Getting trapped in a game or book

-Resurrection

-Damsel (with no agency) in Distress

I know that this is incomplete and it includes tropes that need to die a firey death, but the ultimate list has every last trope. Is your favorite missing? Your least favorite? Let me know!

#writers on tumblr #writeblr #writing #writing inspiration #writing prompt #writers #tropes #i love this trope #trope talk #trope #reader #booklr #bookish #books #bookworm #booknerd #storytelling

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doktorpeace · 4 years

Note

🖊 please introduce us to Erato, I know they're in a masks campaign but I have no idea what else

Oh, gosh, I feel like I talk about them too much as is but I can’t say I’m not glad to have the excuse. This is gonna be really long cause tbh I’m just gonna dump like, a bunch of their lore lmao.

Erato is my Masks: A New Generation character in a campaign being played alongside @twerkyvulture (As Amanda ‘Megafauna’ Ghorbani, The Transformed) @draayder (as Josephine ‘Rattlesnake’ Short, The Reformed) @spitblaze (as Les ‘Void’ Hawking, The Doomed) @heedra (as Enid ‘Frag Beetle’ Day, The Scion) and @skarchomp (as Parker ‘Cobalt’ Andrews, The Legacy) with @dykeceratops as our GM. The current arc features @mechanicalriddle as Zoe, The Nova as a guest member. Here’s a group shot done by @tredlocity. Clockwise from the top left: Cobalt in blue, Erato in the track suit, Les in the cloak, Zoe with the mismatched eyes, Enid’s the big robot, Amanda’s got the scales and claws, and Josephine’s got the mask and tonfa.

To get back to Erato specifically though they’re an Anti Metahuman/Metahuman Suppression Weapon created by the in universe tech group Wright Industries, founded by Ingrid Day, Enid’s mom. They’re generally stronger, faster, and more durable than humans and can copy the superpowers of others for 5-10 minutes by touching them thanks to what is basically a meta-stem cell transplant interacting with other parts of their systems. (Also, I 100% swear to god that I did not consider ‘Robot Hero Who Copies The Powers Of Others’ is literally fucking Mega Man despite loving Mega Man a ton until after I had hashed out the concept with my GM’s assistance. Only once Abby said ‘oh like mega man’ I was like ‘wait, shit’.) I’ll tell you some about them as a person before unloading their history onto you, lol. Being an android built for combat and kept in an underground research lab, kept on a rigid schedule, constantly taking tests, physical, mental, written, oral, ethical, etc. etc. etc. and under constant supervision Erato lacked for real interactive experience before the campaign started only really ever getting to takl with authority figures and their sisters. They were very passive and observational, owing in part to their power set requiring a lot of adaptation to make the most of. They’re naive and very bad at exercising discretion in decision making, sometimes they overstep boundaries when talking with people without meaning to, and they’re really emotional! They have trouble dealing with strong emotions cause they haven’t managed to discover coping mechanisms that work well for them, they tend to get angry kind of easily and need time to blow off steam. But they’re also very genuine, honest, and well meaning. They are almost never mean, rude, or snippy, they do their best to do well by others, and have a strong sense of justice paired with a deep distrust and dislike of the current legal system in universe. This is in part due to the conditions of their creation (and in part because the intent behind it was kind of right!) and in part due to Enid’s life being threatened by a representative of the state while they and their teammates were in jail after being arrested following a huge brawl with an anti-methuman terrorist group. They’re also very willing to put forth the effort to improve as a person and to mend relationship wounds, almost always apologizing first to Enid when they fight and genuinely trying to work in advice and feedback they get from others, which they often get from Les and Parker. They’re also relatively educated, from the tests of their creators, from home and public schooling, from personal research, but that doesn’t undo their naivety. They also just straight up lack some very basic and/or common sense knowledge. Like, they don’t know what a bear is. Why would you teach a battle android working in a densely populated, extremely built up city about wild animals? All in all they’re kind of inexperienced and immature and make mistakes a lot but they’re (usually) very willing to admit their mistakes and to try and improve and get better. They genuinely and truly want what’s best for others and are learning to value them self as much as their teammates. They’ve also taken it upon them self to start doing humanitarian work in their free time over the summer. In a fight Erato is adaptive and quick witted but tends to put themself in more danger than is necessary. They also sometimes use more extreme force than the others believe is called for, but after the first time they did they and Parker had a real heart to heart about it, Les helped Erato learn and practice some coping, centering, behaviors they could do even under pressure and Erato did their best to adapt. That said they Fucking Hate The Keeper So God Damned Much Because Of How Much Suffering He’s Caused Their Friends And How Much Danger He Presents And Would Kill Him With No Remorse. So they don’t intend to apologize for ripping his arms off whatsoever. They and their sisters, collectively known as The Muse Units, were made to work as a group and as a proof of concept that atomized units could replace traditional police for use against metahuman criminals and to slowly phase out The Registry, the legal department which handles general metahuman based laws. If successful the units could be mass produced and improved upon, rapidly replacing current, error prone, law enforcement. At the time of their development, between late 1999 for blueprint drafting and until mid 2002 when the project was shut down, they were the cutting edge for AI development aided in no small part by Ingrid’s technokinetic powers allowing her to make advancements few others could. (As a note Erato’s body was finished being built in early 2001 but their unique personhood didn’t really come to fruition until February 18th, 2002, so that’s what I consider their ‘birthday’.) Ultimately, however, while a few of the Muses excelled some did not perform to expectations, the project fell behind schedule, investors lost interest, and a minor scandal involving a casualty happened, resulting in the project being shut down. The Muses were placed in indefinite storage, the data gained from their short existence used on other projects such and some of the tech advancements used to inform future decisions by the company. And it would have stayed that way, if not for the fact that in 2018 Ingrid Day was revealed to be The Locust in a conflict where Enid tried to defend her against a militia group who had been hired to take her down, being shot and presumably killed in the process. As The Locust she had been terrorizing Boston for over a decade trying to take it over and being involved in the deaths of over 70 people. (Which irl btw would make her like, the 8th most prolific confirmed serial killer of all time, Yikes!) Wright Industries, desperately needing to prove their hard stance against metahuman criminals and needing a PR stunt to deflect from their connection to their former CEO re-awakened Erato. They weren’t the most powerful or best performing of the Muses, but they were above average, obedient, and had an easy enough to monitor and control power set with little risk for property damage to boot, the perfect choice. Erato then took to the streets of Boston acting basically as a vigilante, following orders, stopping minor crimes, and sometimes working alongside the police. They attracted the attention of The Viceroy, a semi-retired 56 year old hero who never registered in spite of it being compulsory legally. They both have the ability to copy the powers of others, though he can just by sight, and he has body elasticity too. These make him durable and extremely adaptable, add to that his detective skills and he’s something of a local Boston legend. He took them in as his Protégé. Though they remained distant for quite some time with Erato still coming and going between his place and Wright Industries, having promised not to reveal his assistance to the doctors who Erato reported their work to. It was this way for about a year and a half before the campaign started and Erato began living with Viceroy full time, no longer wanting to go back to Wright Industries as they began to think more independently and consider what they wanted for them self more. During this time Erato had chance encounters with each of the other characters a few times as they also did minor vigilante work, peaking with a villain who is a member of Superhuman, an extremist pro-metahuman group, attacked the school that Josephine, Les, and Amanda all attend. After that incident Erato was prompted by Viceroy to contact each of these other young potential heroes to form a team, The Upstarts. Additionally during this time Viceroy took in Enid who had been abandoned by her biological father and had been getting bounced around foster care. Over time the three of them have become kind of a weird family, living in a warehouse full of cats with a couple of bedrooms grafted on and an ultra secret basement lair underneath full of advanced stuff Viceroy makes. Though Erato and Enid have definitely had their ups and down, more recently in the story (and we’ve been doing this campaign for well over a year now) they’ve been putting in serious effort to better their relationship and be good adoptive siblings to one another. I love their relationship a lot, they’re good kids.

That gets us up to the start of the campaign but hoo boy, I’ve been writing for like, an hour now. Since then Erato’s helped take down a nazi-aligned terrorist organization, they’ve got a boyfriend in their teammate, Les, and they’ve made friends outside of their core group of teammates. They’ve also enrolled in school doing well on some classes and poorly in others, namely learning how to Code and Woodworking. Currently they’re at a sleep away summer camp for superpowered kids called Camp Justice, about 10 miles outside of Boston. They really, really hate it there. Constant supervision, being made to do tests, things scheduled out against their will, inability to leave the area? Yeah that certainly reminds them of something. The difference between it and school, which does share these features, is they wanted to go to school. They very much Did Not want to go to camp. As a result they’re finally going to have to start facing the trauma they’ve got from their origin and also actually tell the others other than Les and Amanda about their sisters. Whiiiiich...Enid saw one of them disassembled and showed off in parts at a school science fair display set up by Wright Industries to gauge interest in students. And she hasn’t mentioned this to Erato...for 4 months Uh Oh! Lastly, here’s my tag I use mostly for art I make of them, it includes some texts posts and picrew dumps too though, lol. Feel free to look!

#cubecubed #erato #masks

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southeastasianists · 4 years

Link

What is often overlooked is that most of the elephants employed in tourist industry in Thailand come originally from Myanmar. Iconoclastic artist Ai Weiwei recently made a 360-degree VR video documentary (Omni) about Myanmar’s furloughed elephants wandering aimlessly in the jungle since the government prohibited them from working, these scenes are then relayed to images of Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, a particularly poignant testimony of two populations who lost their job and are chased away from their home, a documentary without music or any voice over commentary, stigmatizing a phenomenon that has become common in our chaotic world today.

Ai Weiwei stated in The Guardian in January 2020: “I relate to the elephants. There are lot of small ones who have lost their parents. Elephants are like humans. Without parents they cannot survive. They have to stay with them until they are seven years old.”

Here are two stories of baby elephants told by the Burmese photographer Ko Myo who specialized in the fate of elephants, because Myanmar, and in particular the Karen region, remains the main source of elephants provided for Thai tourism and unfortunately also the poachers of the clandestine market of ivory and elephant skin (for traditional Chinese pharmacy) in Asia. Ko Myo, a regular at the Yangon Photography Festival, has been awarded several times for his documentaries full of empathy and humanism on Burmese elephants. During the 2019 edition of the Yangon Festival of Photography (YFP) the appearance of two elephants caught the imagination of spectators in the Maha Bandoola Park in central Yangon: young and old taking selfies in front of the large prints of the “Last Elephant” by Ko Myo, for whom Myanmar elephants are facing the threat of complete extinction in 20 to 30 years at the current rate of poaching and export to Thailand. Others were photographing themselves in front of Francis Latreille’s baby mammoth, a 40,000-year-old mammoth recovered in Siberia due to global warming. Latreille’s frozen mammoth and the snowy landscapes of Siberia brought the park’s public a welcome freshness under an ambient temperature of more than 30 degrees at dusk in the former capital of Myanmar.

According to Ko Myo, there are less than 50,000 wild Asian elephants in the world today. Myanmar is home to one of the largest populations, although this number has dwindled from 10,000 to one or two thousand head in the past two decades. Myanmar elephants could be extinct by 2030/2035 due to poaching, loss of habitat and land disputes between humans and elephants. Myanmar therefore faces a major challenge to save its elephants: its rate of deforestation is one of the highest in the world and it is the second most vulnerable country to climate change.

So, Ko Myo tells us the story of baby elephant Mi Chaw. One day, bamboo cutters working in the jungle heard a wild elephant screaming near their workplace. Fearing a possible encounter, they made noises to chase him away. They realized too late that they had scared away a mother elephant who had just given birth, leaving her newborn behind. Villagers called the veterinarian Dr. Myo Min Aung, a member of EERU (Elephant Emergency Response Unit). He baptized the female baby Mi Chaw (“Pretty girl”) and cared for her as if she were his own child. Orphan, and deprived of maternal milk, Mi Chaw suffered from acute diarrhea after taking powdered milk, the vet tried in vain with the breast milk of lactating women in the village. The baby elephant was too sick and weak, she slept in the doctor’s house and the village children came to see and pet her every day. After about 20 days in the company of humans, Mi Chaw did not survive the separation from her natural mother. The veterinarian and the mahouts then organized a religious burial led by a Buddhist monk who recited prayers of good deed to accompany Mi Chaw to heaven.

Ko Myo also tells the story of Ayarthu, an eight-month-old female calf elephant. Following the death of her mother at the hands of poachers, Ayarthu got lost and ventured near human habitats. Local villagers called the forestry office to come and capture her and send her to Wingabaw elephant camp. In Ko Myo’s reportage, we can see the mahouts with the help of domesticated elephants, the forest guards and the police trying to capture the Ayarthu baby elephant (at Nga Pu Taw, Irrawaddy, in August 2017). They tried to keep her on the ground after capture. Ayarthu was then tied to wooden poles and struggled all night before being sent to Wingabaw camp. The mother of the baby elephant was killed for her skin by poachers in the Nga Pu Taw Forest Reserve.

Among Ko Myo’s portraits there are the majestic portrait of a domesticated elephant who was working in an elephant camp, and that of a wild elephant, leader of his herd, posing like a statue in the jungle. The most dramatic ones are the portraits of wild elephants killed by poachers, like this carcass of an elephant on his knees almost entirely skinned. At the same time Ko Myo shows us the arrest of two poachers with the tools of their crimes, posing in front of pieces of dried elephant skin, ready to be sold on the underground market for the Chinese traditional pharmacopoeia considered them possessing whatever mysterious therapeutic virtue.

According to Ko Myo, at least 115 wild elephants have been killed by poachers in the past five years in the dense jungle of Irrawaddy, the Pegu range (Bago Yoma) and in the outskirts of the Yangon region, with a record 59 victims in 2017. This sudden spike led to increased support from the Myanmar government for the protection of elephants, as well as international organizations such as WWF and local Civil Society Organizations. Campaigns such as Voice for Momos to ban the sale of wild animals (http://www.wwf.org.mm/en/yangon_wwf_today_list_page/) have been organized and training has been provided to forestry staff, for mahouts and rangers from the Myanmar Emergency Elephant Response Unit. The increase anti-poaching patrols led to 15 arrests of poachers in 2017.

Ko Myo has also documented the destruction of ivory confiscated by the authorities in the fight against trafficking. The destruction ceremony of confiscated elephant ivory and parts of wild animals was organized for the first time by the Myanmar Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation in Naypyidaw on October 4, 2018. According to Ko Myo, in total, 277 pieces of elephant tusk worth US$1.3 million, 227 pieces of elephant and other wildlife bones, 45 slices of skin, 1544 pieces of horn, 45.5kg of pangolin skin, and 128 other wildlife parts confiscated throughout the years were burned at the ceremony.

Fortunately, we have also a playful portrait of a rare young white elephant, considered sacred, the 7-year-old white elephant was properly bathed and washed before receiving the title of “royal” and entering a special enclosure at the royal palace. White elephant had been the subject of a war between Thailand and Burma in the 16th century.

Let us hope that with these rarely seen images of Ko Myo, we will never forget our beloved pachyderm, a giant in the wild, faithful in family, endowed with great memory, the incarnation of the god Ganesh for the Hindus, symbol of wisdom and intelligence, the patron saint of intellectuals, students and writers. Beyond tourism, the circus, zoos in the city, and beyond the exploitation of animals in forest logging work, beyond the safaris and reservations in Africa (*) which continue to see a large number of elephants disappear, we should reflect and review our relationships between humans and elephants in a perspective of harmonious coexistence in how to balance urban and agricultural development with the urgently needed protection of nature, so as to ensure a real sustainable longevity of the elephant.

#ko myo #photography #elephants #myanmar #wildlife trafficking

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dieeisernekaiserinreich · 6 years

Text

Revolutionary Days

0630 HOURS MST, KOFA WILDLIFE REFUGE, ARIZONA.

Set up on a hill about 40 kilometers northeast from the Yuma Proving Grounds, the revolutionary base was abuzz with activity. Scouts had just returned with news of the loyalist force setting up entrenchments on a position on the opposite side of the great open space of scrublands. The command tent was in similar activity, the three generals present discussing tactics over a map while aides scattered to and fro and papers and camp coffee.

Helena, already sensibly buzzed for the morning, was actively shooting holes in a foolish plan to simply charge right across the field like Crusader tanks in North Africa. “Well sure dis plan is all well n’ good bit what are we gun ta do if dey have feckin’ TOWs? Whit’ all dis extra armor n’ ERA youse got fer me Cherchills der still ain’t much we kin do if’n dey has woire-goided rockits dey kin just pop roight ‘tru me buttons! Ai’d kill fer a feckin’ Conk ai would.” The other two simply nodded in agreement, not really expecting much of the idea at any rate. It was a bouncing board to devise actual plausible ideas.

“Helena’s right, Lin. Even with the new Chi-Ri tanks you acquired from that depot back in Tuscon, we don’t really have gunnery capable enough to suppress infanterie anti-tank from across the battlefield like this, and the two self-propelled artillery batteries we have are currently supporting Madeleine and Natalie on the rearguard. I think a pincer would be a better approach. If I take-” Gena was interrupted by a man in flecktarn stepping into the tent and saluting her directly.

“Frau Generalfeldmarschall, there is a guest here to see you.” The fairly short German woman smiled, nodding to the salute.

“Ah! The asset has arrived. ‘Lena, we may have a solution for those raketen yet. Please, Lars, send her in.” The man saluted again and stepped out, holding the tent flap open for this mystery asset.

@usagienforcer

#usagienforcer

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cluelessfanperson · 6 years

Text

(Possibly an) Unpopular SW Opinion* #2

Kylo Ren was a great villain who did not need to be “redeemed.”

The reason I loved Kylo Ren was because, in my opinion, he screamed aspiration. From the mask to the voice, I was instantly intrigued by the character because I felt that this was a man who aspired to be like Darth Vader.

“...I love the mask and the voice, and I felt it added to the aspect that Kylo overcompensated for his power, despite his power being large and unruly; it was the image of intimidation that Kylo chased, after his grandfather’s opposing image.”

The complexity would have rested in the reasons why he opted to put on a facade. Looking back at intriguing antagonists, there are so many options the writers could have played with:

Killmonger -- He lost his father (because of T’Challa’s father) and endured hardships in America, all while Wakanda remained comfortable and hidden. “Two billion people all over the world who look like us whose lives are much harder, and Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all... Where was Wakanda?”

Magneto -- He grew up in a concentration camp and witnessed his entire family die. Later, after his mutation was discovered, the citizens of Vinnitsa burned down the motel (or home) where his daughter, Anya, resided. He lost his own daughter (and wife, Magda) due to humanity’s ignorance and hatred. He did not want other mutants to suffer the same fate he had endured, to be oppressed simply because of their genetic structure. “I am no hero. Merely a man who has seen and done and endured what can never be forgotten or forgiven.”

Roy Batty -- He was a replicant, an AI with a limited lifespan who was also hunted by Blade Runners. He understood that he was proof of human evolution, and wanted to surpass his expiration date in order to fully comprehend his emotions (and even existence, as a conscious replicant). “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.”

Red Hood -- He is more of an anti-hero now, but he was once a major antagonist of Batman’s. He died in the hands of The Joker -- he and his mother were brutally tortured and executed. After being resurrected, he noticed that The Joker was alive. Eventually, he realized that major antagonists, as well as other disgusting figures who committed atrocities, are always incarcerated...rather than executed. He was a former protege of Batman’s and witnessed, firsthand, his mentor’s approaches to “bringing justice.” He believed that Batman’s refusal to kill those who deserved to die is an injustice to society.** “Is that what you think this is about? You letting me die? I don't know what clouds your judgement worse, your guilt or your antiquated sense of morality. Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me. But why, why on God's earth...is he still alive?!”

Here is the thing about all of these antagonists: the films (or comics) did not attempt to redeem them (with the exception of Jason Todd). Instead, these films asked the audience to empathize with them. Without a doubt, all of these antagonists committed horrible atrocities that could not be justified, in the long run. It made their inevitable downfalls more tragic. These are complex villains; characters whose intentions are well, but the manners of executing them are...problematic. Their motives are justified; just not their ways of carrying them out.

Kylo Ren should not have written to be redeemed, but rather empathized with. The backstory behind his turning could have been way better (if the writers had made Kylo his own character, rather than a relative to Han and Leia) and more fleshed out -- the writers kind of limited themselves by including the original trilogy characters, rather than creating and developing new characters that could have actually affected Kylo’s personality (without annihilating the legacy and characteristics of Luke and the new protagonists).

Kylo Ren has (or had) the potential to be a memorable antagonist in the Star Wars Universe. He could have been a gray villain (or anti-hero) who actually pushed the boundaries of the lore (without completely disrespecting it). The reasons as to why he choose to pursuit the image of a Sith -- specifically, why did he create the Knights of Ren -- , could have been extremely compelling and more fleshed out. Unfortunately, the attempt by Rian Johnson (and the other writers) to “redeem” him (despite a kind of weak backstory) did not fully succeed -- that is also partially due to a lack of proper development for him (and basically all of the latest characters).

In short: some of the most memorable villains were never “redeemed.” Instead, they were written for audiences to empathize with.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk! I’d love to (politely) talk with you all about Kylo Ren. What are you opinions about him?

*Opinion - a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. I figured I’d leave this here in case hardcore stans or antis begin to make claims. ** If you can’t tell, I’m a massive Batman fan. I love the Red Hood/Jason Todd because he challenges Batman’s moral code. The same with Killmonger :)

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warninggraphiccontent · 4 years

Text

3 July 2020

Live admin

Lots of links today so I'll keep this short: we had a great time at Data Bites 12 this week, an administrative data special courtesy of ADR UK. Catch up on the presentations - covering health, coronavirus, Troubled Families, homelessness reduction, justice, and population data (and how to engage the public) - and my lockdown hair here. Previous events all here. We'll see you on either Wednesday 5 August or Wednesday 2 September for the next one.

Elsewhere:

A busy week on the civil service reform front. Jane Dudman's article for The Guardian has lots of links to Whitehall Monitor analysis (all our civil service workforce analysis is here). And obviously there's been plenty from the IfG too.

The winners of this year's Orwell Prizes will be announced next Thursday. Full details about how that will play out will appear here soon.

Have a good weekend, and see you next week

Gavin

Today's links:

Tech, tips, etc

Staying connected and looking after your mental and physical health (UK Civil Service)

In Our View, issue 19: Higher marks for homeworking* (Socitm)

How to work well from home (SA Mathieson)

Citizens assemblies are back, in handbook form (mySociety)

The radical technologies to keep offices clear of coronavirus (FT)

Graphic content

Viral content: Leicester is more

Leicester lockdown exposes lack of local Covid testing data* (FT)

Leicester and Merthyr Tydfil top table for UK-wide Covid infections* (FT)

COVID-19: exceedances in Leicester (Public Health England)

Coronavirus: How many cases of COVID-19 where I live? (Sky News)

Data reveals coronavirus hotspots in Bradford, Barnsley and Rochdale (The Guardian)

Viral content: cases

The pace of death (Reuters)

Coronavirus: UK hardest hit by virus among leading G7 nations (BBC News)

Death rate 'back to normal' in UK (BBC News)

Anatomy of a crisis* (New Statesman)

Slow to lock down, slow to stop the spread* (New Statesman)

Ten years of data reveal how austerity weakened the UK's pandemic response* (New Statesman - though some questionable viz choices...)

Newly released data shows towns in the North and Midlands at risk of a second wave* (New Statesman)

This coronavirus mutation has taken over the world. Scientists are trying to understand why.* (Washington Post)

The virus that shut down the world* (Washington Post)

Coronavirus vaccine tracker: How close are we to a vaccine? (The Guardian)

Cox's Bazar refugee camps: where social distancing is impossible (The Guardian)

New normal: How far is safe enough? (Reuters)

Into the fog: How Britain lost track of the coronavirus (Reuters)

How speedy lockdowns save lives* (The Economist)

How the Corona Virus Spreads in Your Region (Zeit Online)

A pandemic primer on excess mortality statistics and their comparability across countries (Our World in Data)

Viral content: consequences

Three Months In, Many Americans See Exaggeration, Conspiracy Theories and Partisanship in COVID-19 News (Pew Research Center)

INFODEMIC COVID-19 IN EUROPE: A VISUAL ANALYSIS OF DISINFORMATION (AFP, CORRECTIV, Pagella Politica/Facta, Maldita.es and Full Fact)

It's been a year since YouGov started tracking Britain's mood on a weekly basis (YouGov, via Ketaki)

Covid-19 and Changing Attitudes: Technology and Big Tech (Institute for Global Change)

N95 mask price differences amongst Latam countries (Ojo-Publico.com via Gavin Hayman)

The Jobs Numbers: Who’s Hiring in America—and Who’s Not* (Bloomberg)

Viral content: sport and leisure

Bookmakers hail return of sports fixtures across Europe* (FT)

Lucrative US college sports industry faces uncertain future* (FT)

Shopping may never be the same again (ONS)

#BlackLivesMatter

Waking up to the realities of racism in the UK* (FT)

Demand for anti-racist literature is up. These black bookstore owners hope it lasts.* (Washington Post)

Lex in depth: Examining the slave trade — ‘Britain has a debt to repay’* (FT)

Britain’s diversity is much more complex than it seems* (New Statesman)

Data point to soaring US gun sales in June* (FT)

Forecasting the US elections (The Economist)

The Supreme Court Struck Down A Louisiana Abortion Law. Here’s Where The Fight Could Head Next. (FiveThirtyEight)

Deadliest Mass Shootings Are Often Preceded by Violence at Home* (Bloomberg)

Mapping America’s Underwater Real Estate* (Bloomberg, via Alice)

Mind the values gap: The social and economic values of MPs, party members and voters (The UK in a Changing Europe)

Maps of local deprivation in England (University of Sheffield/MHCLG/mySociety)

Cabinet committees (Oliver for IfG)

A second Scottish independence referendum (Elspeth for IfG)

Cabinet secretaries (me for IfG)

Meta data

Viral content: appy days

The rise and fall of Hancock’s homegrown tracing app* (FT, via Graham)

COVIDSafe has been downloaded by millions, but yet to identify contacts (and authorities say that's a good thing) (ABC News)

Three cheers for the failed NHS coronavirus app (CapX)

COVID-19 Phone Tracking Apps: This Is What Millions Of New Users Need To Know (Forbes)

Privacy is not the problem with the Apple-Google contact-tracing app (Michael Veale for The Guardian)

Viral content: everything else

COVID-19 Local Area Data (UK Statistics Authority)

How governments use GovTech to fight Covid-19* (Apolitical)

How our silent ‘API army’ has helped DWP’s COVID-19 response (DWP Digital)

Covid 19 coronavirus: Government releases hundreds more documents on pandemic response (NZ Herald, via Andrew)

Almost 17,000 Protesters Had No Idea A Tech Company Was Tracing Their Location (BuzzFeed)

Responding to a crisis: balancing short-term tactics with longer-term priorities (Public Digital)

Caldicott Principles: a consultation about revising, expanding and upholding the principles (National Data Guardian)

HMCTS response to letter on open justice in the COVID-19 emergency (Judith Townend for Inforrm)

COVID-19: Overview of HMCTS response (HMCTS)

How Estonia fights Covid-19 by going online* (Apolitical)

NEED FOR OPEN DATA (letter from the Nuffield Trust to The Times)

Viral misinformation

Democracy under threat from ‘pandemic of misinformation’ online, say Lords Committee (Democracy and Digital Rights Committee)

Click Here For Outrage: Disinformation in the European Parliamentary Elections 2019 (Institute for Strategic Dialogue)

Big tech

New regime needed to take on tech giants (CMA)

Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (CMA, ICO and Ofcom)

India Just Banned TikTok (BuzzFeed)

Andrew Yang Wants You to Own and Sell Your Data (Slate)

A sense of place

FindMyAddress – Making official addresses and UPRNs accessible to the public, for the first time (GeoPlace)

INSPIRE data to be shared under open terms (HM Land Registry/Registers of Scotland)

UK government

The state of the UK’s statistical system (Office for Statistics Regulation)

The UK data governance landscape (Royal Society)

The 2020 to 2021 GOV.UK roadmap (Inside GOV.UK, via Oliver)

Rest of Government: Data misuse as “Missed Use” (medConfidential)

UK Research and Development Roadmap (BEIS)

Launching the Digital, Data and Technology Functional Standard (GDS)

National Data Strategy – "page updated" (Owen Boswarva)

360 x 5

We are 5: our highlights, lessons and hopes for the future (360Giving)

360Giving: About us

Who uses 360Giving data?

Democracy

A democracy sector network? A needs, tools and capacity review (Joe Mitchell)

The Good Web Project (Demos)

Most journalists see AI robots as a threat to their industry: This is why they are wrong (Press Gazette)

How AI helps historians solve ancient puzzles* (FT)

Everything else

Data Bites #12: Getting things done with data in government (IfG)

Missing connections from government platforms (Michael Smethurst)

DARPA vs the Wheely Suitcase; Or, The Quantity vs Quality Theories of Innovation (Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake)

Federated Identity for Access to UK Public Services: 1997-2020 (Jerry Fishenden)

Renew Normal podcast: Martha Lane Fox (Demos)

When Proof Is Not Enough (FiveThirtyEight)

Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto (Nature, via TranspariMED)

Data, Compute, Labour (Ada Lovelace Institute)

The symptoms of toxic technology (Dave Rogers)

Walking the tightrope: 5 tips for writing a data strategy (DataIQ)

Opportunities

EVENT: Careers event at GDS in design and research for under-represented groups (GDS)

JOB: Senior Data Scientist (GDS)

JOB: Data Scientist (GDS)

And finally...

A shipping and delivery map of the UK and Ireland... (Alasdair Rae)

me with a new dataset (Kareem Carr)

When they go low, we go high. (The Lincoln Project)

You can go back 100 years in just four players (David Kane)

How mobile games crushed consoles* (FT)

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kitto-toberu-sa · 7 years

Text

Digimon Adventure Tri – Symbiosis (Part 5) Movie Premier

Aight so I had great seats and I was sitting with a friend so it was great because we were whispering ‘what the fuck’ and crying together. We had a group of us scattered throughout the cinema, so that was cool and we debated for two-three hours after the movie, and the next two days lol.

ALSO: It’s been a few days, emotions were high, my Japanese isn’t flawless, etc etc. I may be wrong, I may accidentally write ‘it was this’ when that’s subjective and not fact etc. Take everything with a grain of salt. I’ve covered pretty much everything, and I’m pretty sure most of it is correct and have noted where I think otherwise.

General opinion: Meiko’s story has gone on too long, and while it’s finally gotten good, it’s too little too late. However, considering everything that Toei has set up so far and what they have to work with, it was a good movie. I think it was better than movie 4, which is my least favourite, but not as good as others. Some moments were stupid and others did not get what they deserved. Ai Kotoba is beautiful and it’s really refreshing and just an all round lovely song.

Let’s get down to eleven pages of business!

We start with Meiko being choked by Gennai, a direct continuation of last movie. Meikuumon goes bonkers. And ends up opening a fuck tonne of portals to the real world and Gennai’s pretty happy because there’s angry Digimon invading the real world. It happens over a while (separate scenes) but these Digimon cause chaos by invading shit and stuff. They aren’t friendly but we don’t really see them do BAD things – it’s more that they have a bad presence and are making people v v nervous. Often Digimon like Tankmon. Like, if there were 50 Tankmon in your street, it wouldn’t matter if they were actively attacking or not. Them being there is enough of an attack to terrorise people. It’s also likely it’s the infection/Mmon’s influence.

Meikuumon almost kills Meiko but Taichi saves her. This isn’t an issue – tbh we all know Meiko can’t do shit for herself. She’s been rescued before, it’s her character type. What the issue is is after her rescued her, he kept holding her. This happens a few more times. The over touching is really unnecessary and leads a heavy TaiMei vibe throughout the movie, which I don’t like, purely because Meiko hasn’t really got much of a deep character). I can ship pretty much anything if it’s written well (even in fics) but Meiko has no character to write well. And considering Taichi was so overly touchy with her, yet abandons Hikari later made me super pissed. Meikuumon disappears into the real world. Meiko’s glasses cracked when Gennai choked her.

There’s a Meikuumon flashback where Mmon comes out of a bush to find Meiko. We see a pool of blood behind it – Meiko doesn’t with feathers in it. Meiko cleans Mmon up, Meiko’s mum is concerned why she has blood on her shirt. Meiko’s like wtf I wasn’t hurt?? It’s from Mmon’s claws. Neither of them figure it out tho (or say so directly). This is from around the time Meiko found Mmon (Meikuumon).

Throughout the film we see lots of Mmon flashbacks. Mei looking after her, bathing her, Mmon being terrified by birds when she gets lost (hence the pool of blood), Mmon sneaking in Meiko’s school bag, being lonely when Mei is away etc. We also see shots of her in a lab, being very unhappy, Meiko’s dad talking about testing and researching, Hime lurking in the lab looking ready to move, Mmon in a trashed lab on a rampage and Mei calming her down, but being scared at the same time.

Hiemkawa is stumbling around calling for her partner. Why did you reject me? Where are you? She’s lost it. She’s completely gone.

The kids are in the Digi World but the Digital World doesn’t want them (Yggdrasil’s doing?). It keeps raining or using plants to attack them. At one point an entire cliff disappears beneath them, so they all fall. Later, when they’re running more from the world itself, Takeru tries to lead the way but the cliff disappears again and he’s just in the moment before he falls and he’s like ‘eh?’ and it’s a really nice bit of humour.

There’s a camp fire scene and there is such a beautiful rendition of Butter-fly playing. Easily one of my top ten moments. I don’t think it entirely matched the scene but damn. Release a stupidly priced BGM album of Tri with this on it and I’ll buy it in a heartbeat. Anyway, the scene is basically another ‘Meiko your part of our group’. One of Yamato’s lines was really cool ‘you’re not a chosen child. We’re the chosen children’. I especially like that line because it applies to ALL children, not just the original adventure kids. It isn’t about what you’ve experienced, it’s about the bond with Digimon some humans have.

Hikari is very much ‘we aren’t wanted. It doesn’t want us here. It’s telling us to leave’. And everyone doesn’t really like hearing that, but Takeru is really the only one going ‘uh, WHY do you feel that??’. Like it’s clear how the world is acting, but why does she think it’s the world attacking them more than a side effect of reboot or something. This is because they refuse to kill Mmon. The world is seeing them as a virus, something that’s unwelcome. Mmon is causing destruction and chaos – the digital world doesn’t want it, and essentially, if you don’t want Mmon dead, you’re on it’s side.

Tai’s mother is very worried about the situation. She’s worried about the world and her kids and the Digimon. She decides she can’t do anything but make sure they’ll be well fed when they get back, so she starts cooking. It might not sound good from my description, but it’s very simple and raw. She loves her kids. She knows she’s powerless. All she can do is hope and make sure they know how much she cares when they come back.

I wish we had more of these. Show me Yamato’s dad looking through footage trying to make sure the kids aren’t there getting hurt, Takeru’s mother harassing media contacts, Jyou’s family wondering about the casualities and hoping Jyou’s studies will help him if he needs it, Koushirou’s parents concerned but knowing how knowledgeable their boy is so he’s probably gonna keep himself out of trouble, Mimi’s parents worried, demanding police and whatever security agencies they can find if they know where she is, Sora’s mother glad that Sora grew up a tomboy and isn’t afraid of dirt and scary things, Meiko’s mother worried about the inner conflict her daughter must be going through.

Nishijima and Meiko’s dad talk while this is happening. MMON IS NOT EVOLVING. It is a power boost, yes, and it’s essentially very similar to the same levels of a shinka digimon, but it is NOT shinka. Mmon is abnormal and always has been. Mmon is confirmed to be related to Apoclymon in some shape – this could mean Mmon is an off shot of Amon, or got power/evil from the same source, anything really. Hackmon is very vague and unhelpful and has a difficult way of speaking. Also I found it really hard to concentrate here since Hackmon is sitting on a tv and looks very dog like, and considering it’s the movie about the cat digimon humans, I thought it was very amusing (small things, small minds?). Also, the tv is showing people debate about Digimon. One dude is very anti Digimon, another is very extra (think the shiny sparkly laser guy from BnHA, but not quite as extra) and then one dude, the closest to the screen, looks like he’s settling in for an angry nap. I love it.

Nishijima is pretty pissed and wants to know more and why Hackmon didn’t tell them anything. Hackmon is all like ‘lmao you couldn’t do shit anything anyway’ and Nishijima’s like ‘…true’. Also, Hackmon says they (Hack and Homeo) didn’t interfere with Mmon because they were trusting Meiko to keep it in line (ie Mmon was given to Meiko to be her partner, rather than them being destined for each other like the others). I mean, that seems like a bad idea, but okay sure, leave everything to the fate of a little girl. Why not. In any case, it’s now up to the Chosen to destroy Mmon.

Meiko is basically Mmon’s hope. Without Meiko, Mmon will lose it, hence why Gennai strangled her. Mmon is a toddler and Meiko is the safety blanket. Take the blanket away and you have a temper tantrum and uncontrollable actions on your hands.

The kids return to the real world with their Digimon. The fear mongering against the Digimon has reached bad levels, but we’re not really shown this so it isn’t as impactful as it could have been. (This could have been shown later with Mimi or Koushirou checking social media and getting pissed that people were talking shit about Digimon. I think they tried to a show don’t tell thing with the press conference on tv, etc, but I just don’t think it was done well, especially in some scenes where we see police/army/enforcement of some description trying to get civilians with cameras away from the Digimon infested spots, so it looks touristy rather than people being scared)

Anyway, a kid starts crying because Digimon are scary. Agumon’s like ?? let’s be friends and a police officer comes over. Obviously, Digimon are bad now so they call in support. Taichi fucking bolts and everyone follows. Digimon escape into the server. The kids are taken in by the police.

As they’re running, Taichi grabs Meiko’s hand. In the end, she’s like ‘um? I can run by myself?’. She’s polite and blushing, which you kinda do when you’re running and have your hand held by a cute boy. He lets go of her hand. There was no reason for him to do that unless he likes her or thinks she’s so weak she needs protecting. He’s never treated the other girls like that so to me it feels OOC. Her words also seem like a rejection to me. It wasn’t funny, didn’t develop anything and was oddly placed. Bad scene is bad.

The kids learn about how people view Digimon. It would have been nice to see interviews from classmates. Seeing Taichi and Yamato react again would have been interesting, plus you could have had Nishijima’s conflict of interests – Digimon dude vs teacher. What does he think of his student’s views, being so close to our chosen and being chosen himself?

Nishijima bails them out but can’t take them home. (Himekawa is missing, so he’s essentially doing her job as well) I guess the police chase was shown on the news or leaked or something, since people are in front of the Chosen’s house. Media too. It isn’t safe for them to go home. I wish they’d played up more of ‘but are our families ok?’. Especially Yamato’s and Takeru’s parents since they’re in the media!! Like, make them feel worried about how it will impact their jobs, or if they can even go to work or whatever.

He shows them a photo of Meikuumon blowing up the power plant. Meiko has new glasses as well as her old cracked ones (maybe she had a same pair of the same style at home that Nishi got for her, but considering he said it was too dangerous for them to go back home, idk. I guess people wouldn’t know who he is, but if the media is there you can bet they want interviews from the neighbours and anyone entering/leaving the building).

Anyway, Nishijima makes them hang out at school in the Calligraphy Club room. Apparently the school is shut for the summer, but mine never shut so… It’s possible this could be Obon, which my schools did shut for and a lot of businesses take a few days off for.

In a throw back to the stage play, now it’s night Mimi decides it’s time to gossip. My group was discussing whether the play took ideas from the movie, or perhaps they purposely tied it in, or new writers or what. A few other things were similar from the play that we hadn’t seen in Tri before, so it’s likely the creative teams spoke at one point.

Takeru says it’s only natural that they do ghost stories since it’s summer. Yamato is overly against it, which calls attention to him. Takeru enjoys mocking how scared he is. Yamato tries to deny it. The girls all gossip about him and he’s desperately trying to be cool. The DIGIMON start to talk shit and he’s even worse.

Jyou makes a lame attempt at telling a story. Yama’s slightly spoked still. Takeru starts (of course, with a torch light on his face). Yamato’s getting more freaked out. But the way Takeru starts just makes Mimi and Sora laugh so he passes the torch to Meiko (who ALL of the Digimon want to hear from :/ - whether you like Meiko or not, the fact that everyone hangs on her word is a little OTT at times).

So she starts. And this is something she actually is good at. Everyone’s freaking out. (It’s pretty generic, in a school hear the ringing of a bike bell blah blah) Yamato is fucking paranoid. “And on the other side of the door-”

Door opens.

SCREAMING

It’s just Nishijima. Nishijima is so confused why they’re all sitting in a dark room. Yamato looks like he had a heart attack ;;;;;; Honestly I can’t do justice to this scene. Everyone was great here and Yamato’s nervous twitching was PERFECT.

Anyway Nishijima buys them food and reminds them that it’s late. He asks if they want to stay the night. Yamato’s NO is perhaps a little too fast and loud lmao More shit talking ensures. Someone makes a snark about him being scared and Nishijima has also suggested a hotel, but Yamato has to gain back his image and says it’s fine to stay there. Jou wants the hotel but if it’s just him, he’d rather stay with everyone than being alone.

They call their families. Mimi is crying (not sobs, just tears, while she’s talking to her parents) and Sora hugs her while she’s also on the phone. We don’t hear most of the conversations, so this is very touching. Jou talks alone on the stair case, Koushirou is happily chatting away. Yamato and Takeru call their respective guardians and Yamato chooses not to talk to his mother. Hikari finishes talking to their mother and passes the phone to Taichi.

“How is she (Hikari)?” “Not gonna ask about your son?” (said in a joking way) “I know you’ll be ok. I’m entrusting the two Digimon and Hikari to you, ok?” “Yeah yeah”

We see their mum has made a huge amount of food to welcome them back because she was so worried about them. She’s relieved their back home, but you can see in her expression she’s still a bit worried.

Taichi is wandering around and finds Meiko on the phone to her dad. She’s very clearly not ok but her dad doesn’t seem to be giving two shits. Like, we don’t hear him talk, but judging by what we’ve seen he isn’t the most emotional man and she didn’t seem to be like ‘thanks for the pep talk. Im still depressed but thanks for trying’. Even when he was talking to Nishijima and they were saying as long as Meiko is safe Mmon is ok – he was like ‘hm, damn, hope she’s alright then because this thing is fucking shit up. So she’s probably not ok. Hm’. Yes, I realise more than Meiko is at stake. But decent parents would show more concern – nobody in the room (Hackmon and Nishi) are his superiors, he wouldn’t lose face, etc. There was no reason for him to be distant except he is distant. So fuck him to be honest. I’m all about good family relationships and I think Digimon has shown enough ‘oh they have family issues’ (Koushirou, Yamato and Takeru, Sora etc) that Meiko didn’t need it in her sob story either.

Taichi approaches Meiko and she is way too real. It’s great she is finally having deep thoughts, but she’s pretty dark and worries about her self worth (I’m someone who can’t do anything). She worries about if it’s ok for everyone to help her and put her in danger to help her rescue her partner. Taichi starts to go back to his leader roots. I wish I understood more of the conversation/could convey it clearer. Meiko really needed this development. This scene was important for her, and I really wish it had come a lot sooner.

The Digimon are all anxiously watching. “Should I tell Sora?” “Maybe I should tell Hikari!” “Yamato would want to know about this!”

Agumon wonders over to Meiko shortly after Taichi leaves. The Digimon do the same thing.

It’s honestly really cute. This is probably the shippiest thing ever. You can see it as friendship, but if Mimi and Jyou were talking I doubt the Digimon would bat an eyelid. Part of it comes with how new Meiko is and part of it is Toei being Toei. All the Digimon are curious to how their humans will react to this one on one time.

Agumon asks if she’s hungry. She mentions she’s fine, but her heart is a little empty. I can’t remember the wording, but he basically said that can be fixed because everyone likes her. It’s very naïve and childish, but it’s innocent and I felt like these incidents cemented her place in the group and made her more willing to trust everyone. She cries and hugs him.

(So I know a lot of people have issues with Tri’s humour. Mostly Agumon and his stupid food obsessed nature. The ghost story scene was done very well, and even Agumon’s scene here was done really well, despite me being bad at describing it. The humour fits the movie, doesn’t feel out of place and has done more to make Meiko a part of the group than so many other scenes combined have. It’s definitely one of the best scenes of the movie (ghosts) and in the Tri franchise)

The next day Mmon appears so everyone runs out to fight it. This fight is very long and the last 1/4? Maybe more of the movie is pure action (from here until the end). Surprisingly the streets are still ok. Everyone gets screen time but nobody really gets a shining moment. Everyone goes perfect and then mega (except Angewoman). Jesmon appears to eliminate Mmon who powers up to Raguelmon.

Maki is still stumbling around, wondering what the fuck she did because she caused the world to be shit and her partner doesn’t even remember her so what’s the point?

Hikari ends up being possessed by homeo again and fights it off. It’s saying they need to kill Mmon and Hikari ain’t about that life. THIS is the Hikari I’ve been waiting for. She doesn’t take shit despite her kind personality. If something was possessing you, would you sit idly by? It was a short scene, and you kinda see the real Hikari as a shadow/ghost, shouting to her body/homeo telling it to fuck off.

There is a pic of Takeru holding Hikari with Meiko in the bg. “I guess this takes place after Hikari breaks free from homeostasis” – yes. I have a lot of issues with this scene. It happens in the free for all fight and Taichi basically runs off to keep fighting. Considering this happens after the call where his mother specifically asked him to look after her, where he is the leader, where he is her brother!!!!, I’m pissed at this decision. Yes, the fight is important, but the digimon can do it by themselves? Humans get in the way? He should have been there for Hikari more instead of letting other people carry her (she’s fatigued and needs two people to support her). It also would have made his disappearance have more of an impact.

They enter the Digital World. (At one point Mmon protects Meiko and everyone is like? Is it because they’re partners or because Mmon wanted to fight Jesmon? The kids were divided on this and weren’t in clearly chosen camps. I personally didn’t see a whole lot of protecting Meiko in this scene – even Meiko wasn’t entirely sure).

Alphamon (Team Ygg) comes to fight Jesmon (Team Homeo). Everyone gets destroyed to baby forms. Omegamon has to fight/protect Raguelmon who is trying to fight Omegamon (from Jesmon). Jesmon charges a massive attack and tries to shoot Raguelmon (I’ll probably use Mmon since it’s easier sorry – also Raguelmon is never called that by name due to no evolution sequence, it never doing anything but screaming unlike every other Digimon, and Koushirou doesn’t look it up even though he looks Jesmon up? etc). Alphamon attacks Jesmon as it’s about to fire and it goes off course, causing the ground to shatter. I wouldn’t say Alphamon is on Omegamon’s side but they aren’t enemies..? As mentioned by Jay on WtW, even Miyazaki Ayumi (side note: AiM was very cute the whole thing, Hikari kept looking to Taichi to help her answer because MAO is kinda spacy and Meiko’s VA is v v v cute) felt some confusion in this fight. Jesmon and Alphamon are nowhere to be seen after this happens and by the time the dust has cleared everyone is back to their baby form bar Mmon.

(I can’t remember at exactly what point it happens, but later on, we Himekawa in the DARK OCEAN!!! She sees the demony things, and has a gun but doesn’t use it. She’s still loony af. She drowns. Her scenes are short but really strong. Nishijima ends up kinda feeling that something happens to her (red string of fate www). He’s also wondering why he was chosen as a child (he did in the Hackmon talk as well – it’s really nice to see him be very human instead of a goof who happens to be a secret agent) and remembers him and Hime with their Digimon as kids.)

Meiko had been running toward Mmon at this point (she decided that it would be best for everyone if Mmon was killed – Taichi accepted this decision, though Yamato was initially against it. Yamato gave in – I believe it was partly because it’s logical – Mmon is causing hell, infecting everyone etc. Part of it is his crest – he doesn’t want his friends hurt (also why he fought the choice) or disrespect them when they’re serious (this seemed to be Taichi’s main motivation). Meiko has finally gotten serious and her choice is the most logical, and she’s the one that hurts the most from it. Disrespecting this would be pretty rude, and there is nobody else who can fight apart from Omegamon.)

Meiko running toward Mmon is partly due to her low feeling of self worth. On top of that, I think she was hoping to get hurt and to give Omegamon a chance to get Mmon. Meiko didn’t make this choice easily. She’s my least fave Tri character, but I really felt for her here. TaiYama had been following her (Yamato first – despite agreeing to Mmon being killed, I don’t think he would let this one slide. Again, she doesn’t need to be hurt, she’s hurting enough, it’s not logical for her to be physically hurt, his crest etc).

The ground shatters, Yama saves Meiko. This could be seen as shippy since he’s saved her more than once (she shouldn’t need to be saved as often as she has been…). But I don’t think so. He has the crest of friendship. He’s seen enough friends die. Again, I don’t think it felt particularly shippy so I think it was Toei being weird when they made him hold her longer than necessary.

Taichi nods to Omegamon in a very short but powerful scene. He’s so far away from the other two. Omon saves Yamato and Meiko as a result. Theres a few shouts as Taichi starts to fall. Nishijima tries to save him but they both fall. This was a really well done scene. I don’t think Digimon has ever filled me with so much dread. Yamato called for Taichi and that hurt. Shipper or not, these two have a strong bond. They don’t always agree or get along, and in Tri they’ve been weird, but they were shot by angels together. Taichi just gave up his life for these two. That’s a bond and a half.

Everyone thinks Taichi’s dead. That’s stupid, but they don’t know they’re anime ;p We don’t see them once they fall, but we don’t need to to know they’re alive. The reactions are lame in my opinion (and I discuss this shortly – the ones as he was falling were fine, but afterwards, I get everyone is in shock, but I don’t think it’s what it should have been). I think Yamato and Meiko will get a bit of time to open up more next movie due to how close they were to being in same boat.

After the dust settles, Hikari realises Taichi isn’t there. Oniichan doushite… Oniichan… Oniichan… Nobody can get close to her and the ‘distortion’ started. She wasn’t possessed or infected from my knowledge (and her eyes do the red glowy thing – kinda like homoe but less rainbow, more red/dark) (I don’t believe it was made clear what it was tho. It could be Yggdrasil influencing her in a moment of weakness, infection, whatever. This is how I see it). Earlier, it was mentioned that those who are the softest and most kind hearted are the easiest to break (Hackmon). Essentially it is the same as Tai going dark – she lost her light and kinda went blank. They really needed to show her breaking a little more instead of just going numb. If they didn’t show her darkness in the previews it would have been so much more effective. Even showing her Digivice cracking, being corrupted or something would have done something. Static noise. This scene wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Takeru tries to call out to her once but nada.

The darkness kind of left Hikari (and left her with a static barrier? So nobody could really get close to her) and it infected her partner (the darkness kind of swallows it??) and we got OFDM. Unfortunately no dark evolution sequence which would have been hella rad. OFDM and Mmon fuse – it doesn’t look like Mmon WANTS to (so it is NOT Jogress). (There was little to no reaction from Meiko – understandable. She almost died, her Digimon is causing terror and hurting people and almost hurt, how is she meant to feel???) OFDM darkness kinda sucks it up? The merge and it’s fucking terrifying.

If you’ve seen Evangelion, the angel that’s pinned to the cross underground?? THINK A GIANT WINGED TERRIFYING VERSION OF THAT IT’S NIGHTMARE FUEL Y’ALL

Big and white, creepy eyes (multiple, I remember them being black), massive butt (I’m sorry but it does), female. It’s creepy and gross and demonic. No hands or legs, like claw things.

So basically, Nmon is forced to evolve into OFDM (I don’t see Hikari’s darkness as attacking Nmon – it’s more like the darkness in Hikari can’t DO anything in Hikari, so it merges with her partner which is able to change forms (evolve) so it can let it’s rage be known – think of it as Hikari’s heart/emotions needing to let go of it’s anger and frustration but obvs, humans have limited ways of doing it, so by going to a creature which can fuck shit up, she can release her emotions better – idk if that’s the official explanation, but that’s how I saw it, especially as the humans and partners are meant to have such strong bonds it makes sense one influences the other, and it’d be a nice throwback to 01 Hikari when she used her inner light against the Numemon or whatever), it sucks Mmon into a portal (it’s darkness kind of leaks down to Mmon, smothers it, drags it up to the portal iirc) and the fusion comes down, Hikari tells it to fucking murder everything, and it goes back into the portal, to our world, and darkness starts to spread over the planet.

Yamato grabs Tai’s goggles and puts them on (!!!!!!!!!). (I cried. They’re my OTP of OTP’s) He basically tells everyone they have to get it together – he’s right. You may not like him as the leader, but someone needs to lead now. Who else will? Jyou who has spent half the series trying to balance two massive tasks? (I love him and would love to see him lead, but I don’t think Tri has really set him up to do that well – and Yamato has always been Taichi’s foil when it came to leadership) Koushirou, who already had a leader role after the reboot? Takeru, who’s focussed on the very numb and out of it Hikari? (Keep in mind Hikari fought homeo which is exhausting, she just lost her brother, she’s been running and fighting all day, her Digimon is now dark and fused with a Digimon that’s been bonkers from the almost start – from what I remember people were essentially helping her do everything, even stand up – it looks very PTSD to me.) Mimi, who’s crying? Meiko, who doesn’t really know anyone because Toei still forces the ‘no Meiko, you ARE our friend’ instead of her already being a friend/integrated group member (validating ur friends is cool – constantly going ‘we're friends’ tho kinda makes it look like they need convincing and it just doesn’t feel right). Sora? Maybe, yeah, I wouldn’t mind it, and tbh she deserves it since she had such a shit movie, but c’mon. We’re not looking at a perfect series and some of the moves made by Toei regarding Digimon as a whole lately have been bad (yes I’m looking at you Fes).

Yamato isn’t claiming to be the new leader or taking over. The WORLD is about to get destroyed by TWO OF THEIR OWN DIGIMON. They’ve essentially lost a mentor (Nishijima, two if you count Gennai) and TWO MEMBERS (Hikari is useless rn, Tai’s gone, three if you count Meiko without Mmon). They need to MOVE. Everyone’s in shock (I guess – I found their reactions pretty piss poor tbh) but he’s the one realising the urgency of the situation and doing something about it. Comparing his leaderships skills now to 01 Yamato’s is honestly stupid. You aren’t the same as you were a few years ago, so why hold that standard to him, especially when Tri (and the stage play) has often emphasised how time and situations make people change.

(In saying that, I’m looking forward to when he gives the goggles back!!! I don’t think there will be time for him to fuck up (though I wouldn’t say no to it), unless the movie is longer than any other. Also, this could well be a coping method for him too – keeping the goggles could mean that he’s ready to give them back, a way of keeping Taichi with them, that he doesn’t want to believe Taichi is gone and is waiting for him to show up aka a coping mechanism)

Koromon is looking down to where Taichi fell. He has such a small voice. “I couldn’t save him…”

It’s heart breaking. I don’t like that they don’t have their original memories, but this is so innocent and pure and the new relationships with their humans aren’t any less valid than the old ones. Yamato is encouraging in his own gruff way to him and leads the way back to everyone else.

Ai Kotoba is a beautiful song. Their voices match beautifully, the lyrics are wonderful and it fits the melancholy feel of the end. Please support them and buy a copy of the CD if you can. I’ll always love Wada-san’s works, but this is honestly a beautiful beautiful song and I’m so upset I can’t go to Miyazaki’s next concert (it’s highly speculated that AiM will be making a guest appearance).

Discussion/Ramblings (Some of this from the With the Will forum. People asked Jay some questions. I sat next to Jay during the movie. Afterwards the group I was with went to dinner – Jay was absent)

No 02 kids. But Gennai was doing a Ken every now and then? No reason for that, I guess he likes changing forms??

People are saying Taichi and Nishijima are dead which is fucking stupid. Tri hasn’t taken many major risks, they aren’t going to up and kill two characters, especially the main. C’mon y’all, really? There are no bodies. General rule = body means dead. No body = alive. They disappeared when the ground was cracking up – there’s plenty of hope. Nobody who saw the movie believes they’re dead.

Our group kinda talked about it and wonder if the 02 kids are in the DOcean or not, and also whether that’s where Taichi and Nishijima would go (02 maybe, not so much the other two).

However, we did think that Wizardmon could be coming back still. He isn’t a Digimon, and if he’s able to travel worlds/realms, if Tai/Nishi aren’t in the DOcean (no reason for them to be), but somewhere else, it’s possible we could see him. Plus, he could serve as a trigger to bring back Tailmon’s (everyones) memories/make her/Hikari come back to the light, especially if he brings the humans with him. I can’t remember the exact discussion, but it sounds more plausible than how I’m writing it lmao.

Attack names aren’t called out either for the most part. Evo scenes were merged, cut etc to cut down screen time, thank god. Taichi has a lot of screen time (more so than Hikari), and I like how they’re showing him becoming more of the diplomat the epilogue showed him to be. Whether the epilogue ends up being canon or not (I don’t care either way tbh), it shows a lot of growth and I enjoy and appreciate it.

DARK OCEAN DARK OCEAN DARK OCEAN

Some thoughts after our discussion: now that Meikuumon is known to be made of something similar to Apocalypmon, why (…I don’t know where I was going with this. I was typing at 2am after the movie after about four hours of discussion… went to bed without finishing the thought… maybe I’ll remember one day)

We’re curious as to what crest Meiko would have. Ken has one, so Meiko should definitely have one. With everyone else, we can kinda look at their actions through the context of their crests, but with Meiko, we have little to work with (no matter how I may sound, I don’t hate her – she is simply there for me. I WANT to like her, but I don’t have a lot of good reasons to…). Giving her a crest could help us understand/like her more, make her actions make more sense etc. I think it’s important for her as a member of the Adventure franchise tbh. The 02 kids had their attributes, so if she doesn’t get one, she’ll be left out in a bad way imo.

Some people seem to think Hikari and Meiko will get more focus in the next movie. Obvs to an extent they will since their partners are the Big Bad now (sure, people behind the scenes (Ygg, Homeo etc), but this is the immediate big bad). But this is the last movie – they can’t afford to spend too much time on these two unless it’s longer than usual. Don’t hold your breath for anything special. However, what can they do? They’ve lost their partner. They’re Chosen but have no partners. Where do they fit on the team? Interesting discussions could be had here.

The TaiMei moments are teasing and tbh, I don’t think either character likes the other in a romantic sense. I just think Toei was trying to be teasing but they failed. I haven’t seen anyone go “oh! Yes thanks I love it!”. Everyone was like “Thanks! I hate it!”. Why? Because it was done weirdly (mostly just by holding Meiko for an awkwardly long time) and it’s OOC on both ends. Meiko is constantly having everyone say ‘yea you’re our friend you’re in the group’ and then suddenly romance teasing? Doesn’t make sense.

Neither Hikari nor OFDM got the time they deserved. OFDM was in the movie for maybe a minute before fusing. I honestly feel bad for Hikari fans. This franchise (Tri) has been mostly Meiko. This was meant to be a movie about both of them (though Meiko honestly shouldn’t get one since they should have established her history etc well before now and she’s had ample screen time in every movie for that to happen with) and Meiko took over. Mmon also has the same issue. OFDM was placed on the poster, and yeah, it created hype, but unless we see more OFDM next movie, or the pure version, it’s honestly shit tbh.

I have a lot of hopes for the last movie, but I don’t have high expectations. Movie 4 is the worst in Tri imo, and 5 was maybe the 2nd or 3rd worse. Not good for this late in the franchise. I believe it will focus mainly on Taichi and Yamato (one needs to get back to the group, the other is de facto leader) and Meiko (because when isn’t Tri focused on her? Plus she lost her partner) and Hikari (many reasons). However, I believe Hikari may get shafted pretty quick a la Sora and once Yamato hands over the leadership again (which essentially means Tai shows up) theres no need to focus on him either. I do hope they punch each other tho. Is it really Adventure if they don’t hit each other??

I don’t think part six can answer all plot holes and questions, or give everyone ample and fair screen time and do well with the plot. I’m looking forward to it, but, I don’t think it can do everything I want it to or everything I need it too or everything it should do (tie up loose ends etc). All in all, enjoyable movie considering how everything has been set up, though it has it’s weird moments.

#Digimon #Digimon Adventure Tri #Tri Spoilers #I didn't talk about the talk segment much sorry!

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