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johnrossbowie · 3 years

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LEAVING TWITTER

I wrote this earlier in the fall, before the election, after dissolving my Twitter account. I wasn’t sure where to put it (“try up your ass!” – someone, I’m sure) and then I remembered I have a tumblr I never use. Anyway, here tis.

How do you shame someone who thinks Trumps’ half-baked policies and quarter-baked messaging put him in the pantheon of great Presidents? How do you shame someone so lacking in introspection that they will call Obama arrogant while praising Trump’s decisiveness and yet at the same time vehemently deny that they’re racist? How do you shame someone for whom that racism is endearing and maybe long overdue?

You don’t. It’s silly to think otherwise.

Twitter is an addiction of mine, and true to form, my dependence on it grew more serious after I quit drinking in 2010. At first it was a chance to mouth off, make jokes both stupid and erudite and occasionally stick my foot in my mouth (I owe New Yorker writer Tad Friend an apology. He knows why, or (God willing) he’s forgotten. Either way. Sorry.) I blew off steam, steam that was accumulating without booze to dampen the flames. Not always constructive venting, but I also met new friends, and connected with people whose work I’ve admired for literal decades and ended up seeing plays with Lin-Manuel Miranda and hanging backstage with Jane Wiedlin after a Go-Go’s show and exchanging sober thoughts with Mike Doughty. When my mom passed in 2018, a lot of people reached out to tell me they were thinking of me. This was nice. For a while, Twitter was a huge help when I needed it.

I used to hate going to parties and really hated dancing and mingling, but a couple of drinks would fix that. Point is, for a while, booze was a huge help, too.

But my engagement with Twitter changed, and I started calling people my ‘friends’ even though I’d never once met them or even heard their voices. These weren’t even penpals, these were people whose jokes or stances I enjoyed, so with Arthurian benevolence I clicked on a little heart icon, liked their tweet, and assumed therefore that we had signed some sort of blood oath.

We had not. I got glib, and cheap, and a little lazy. And then to make matters much worse, Trump came along and extended his reach with the medium.

There was a while there where I thought I could be a sort of voice for the voiceless, and I thought I was doing that. I tried very hard to only contribute things that I felt were not being said – It wasn’t accomplishing anything to notice “Haha Trump looks like he’s bullshitting his way through an oral report” – such things were self-evident. I tried to point out very specific inconsistencies in his policies, like the Muslim ban meant to curb terrorism that still favored the country that brought forth 13 of the 9/11 hijackers. Like his full-throated cries against media bias performed while he suckled at Roger Ailes’ wrinkly teat. Like his fondness for evangelical votes that coincided with a scriptural knowledge that lagged far behind mine, even though I’m a lapsed Episcopalian, and there is no one less religiously observant than a lapsed Episcopalian. But that eventually gave way to unleashing ad hominem attacks against his higher profile supporters, who I felt weren’t being questioned enough, who I felt were in turn being fawned over by theirdim supporters. If you’re one of these guys, and you think I’m talking about you, you’re probably right, but don’t mistake this for an apology. You suck, and you support someone who sucks, and your idolatry is hurting our country and its standing in the world. Fuck you entirely, but that’s not the point. The point is that me screaming into the toilet of Twitter helps no one – it doesn’t help a family stuck at the border because they’re trying to secure a better life for their kids. It doesn’t help a poor teenager who can’t get an abortion because the party of ‘small government’ has squeezed their tiny jurisdiction into her uterus. It doesn’t help the coal miner who’s staking all his hopes on a dying industry and a President’s empty promises to resurrect it. I was born in New York City, and I currently live in Los Angeles. Those are the only two places I’ve ever lived, if you don’t count the 4 years I spent in Ithaca[1]. So, yes, I live in a liberal bubble, and while I’ve driven across the country a couple of times and did a few weeks in a touring band and am as crushed as any heartlander about the demise of Waffle House, you have me dead to rights if you call me a coastal elitist. And with that in mind, I offer few surprises. A guy who grew up in the theater district and was vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage or felt you should own an AR-15? THAT would be newsworthy. I am not newsworthy. I can preach to the choir, I can confirm people’s biases, but I will likely not sway anyone who is eager to dismiss a Native New Yorker who lives in Hollywood. I grew up in the New York of the 1970s, and that part of my identity did shape my politics. My mom’s boss was gay and the Son of Sam posed a realistic threat. As such, gays are job creators[2] and guns are used for homicide much more often than they are used for self-defense[3]. I have found this to be generally true over the years, and there’s even data to back it up.

“But Mr. Bowie,” you might say, though I insist you call me John - “those studies are conducted by elitist institutions and those institutions suck!” And again, I am not going to reason with people who will dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their limited world view as elitist or, God Help Us, fake news. But the studies above are peer-reviewed, convincing, and there are more where those came from.

“But John,” you might say, and I am soothed that we’re one a first name basis - “Can’t you just stay on Twitter for the jokes?” Ugh. A) apparently not and B) the jokes are few and far between, and I am 100% part of that problem.

I have stuff to offer, but Twitter is not the place from which to offer it.

After years of academically understanding that Twitter is not the real world, Super Tuesday 2020 made the abstract pretty fucking concrete. If you had looked at my feed on the Monday beforehand – my feed which is admittedly curated towards the left, but not monolithic (Hi, Rich Lowry!) – you’d have felt that a solid Bernie surge was imminent, but also that your candidate was going surprise her more vocal critics. When the Biden sweep swept, when Bernie was diminished and when Warren was defeated, I realized that Twitter is not only not the real world, it’s almost some sort of Phillip K. Dickian alternate timeline, untethered to anything we’re actually experiencing in our day to day life. This is both good news and bad news – one, we’re not heading towards a utopia of single payer health care and the eradication of American medical debt any time soon, but two, we’re also not being increasingly governed by diaper-clad jungen like Charlie Kirk. Clouds and their linings. Leaving Twitter may look like ceding ground to the assclowns but get this – the ground. Is not. There.

It’s just air.

There are tangible things I can do with my time - volunteer with a local organization called Food On Foot, who provide food and job training for people experiencing homelessness here in my adopted Los Angeles. I can give money to candidates and causes I support, and I can occasionally even drop by social media to boost a project or an issue and then vanish, like a sort of Caucasian Zorro who doesn’t read his mentions. I can also model good behavior for my kids (ages 10 and 13) who don’t need to see their father glued to his phone, arguing about Trumps incompetence with Constitutional scholars who have a misspelled Bible verse in their bio (three s’ in Ecclesiastes, folks).

So farewell Twitter. I’ll miss a lot of you. Perhaps not as badly as I miss Simon Maloy and Roger Ebert and Harris Wittels and others whose deaths created an unfillable void on the platform. But I won’t miss the yelling, and the lionization of poor grammar, and anonymous trolls telling my Jewish friends that they were gonna leave the country “via chimney.” I will not miss people who think Trump is a stable genius calling me a “fucktard.” I will not miss transphobia or cancelling but I will miss hashtag games, particularly my stellar work during #mypunkmusical (Probably should have quit after that surge, I was on fire that night, real blaze of glory stuff I mean, Christ, Sunday in the Park with the Germs? Husker Du I Hear A Waltz? Fiddler on the Roof (keeping an eye out for the cops)? These are Pulitzer contenders.). Twitter makes me feel lousy, even when I’m right, and I’m often right. There’s just no point in barking bumperstickers at each other, and there are people who are speaking truth to power and doing a cleaner job of it – Aaron Rupar, Steven Pasquale, Louise Mensch, Imani Gandy and Ijeoma Oluo to name five solid mostly politically based accounts (Yes, Pasquale is a Broadway tenor. He’s also a tenacious lefty with good points and research and a dreamy voice. You think you’re straight and then you hear him sing anything from Bridges of Madison County and you want him to spoon you.). You’re probably already following those mentioned, but on the off chance you’re not, get to it. You’ll thank me, but you won’t be able to unless you actually have my email.

_______

[1] And Jesus, that’s worse – Ithaca is such a lefty enclave that they had an actual socialist mayor FOR WHOM I VOTED while I was there. And not socialist the way some people think all Democrats are socialist – I mean Ben Nichols actually ran on the socialist ticket and was re-elected twice for a total of six years.

[2] The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, “America’s LGBT Economy” Jan 20th, 2017

[3] The Violence Policy Institute, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self Defense Gun Use, July 2019.

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lizzybeth1986 · 5 years

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Quick Thoughts on TRH Book 1, Chapter 3

• I'm hoping that if I have this chapter out early enough (doubtful, because compiling and organizing my screenshots takes time, and my drafts often don't save which means there are times I will have to replicate whole paragraphs from scratch. But fingers crossed!), I might try and do revisits of the first book. I did four of those chapters last year, and I think now - when we're looking at some of the stories told to us in Book 1 from a new lens - is a good time to explore that first book again.

• I hope the read more issue is resolved by now. It made posting quite hard the last time. In the meantime these are the tags you can block: #long post, #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs.

• Thanks a lot to @pixieferry for her Hana playthrough, @thefirstcourtesan for her Drake playthrough screenshots and the Abhirio YouTube channel for the Maxwell playthrough screenshots. Not much of those are up, because of lack of space to put up the pictures and the fact that this particular chapter wasn't specifically LI centric.

• Title: Your Kingdom Awaits.

Alternative Title: Tell Me What's Gestating in My Womb Today, Cordonia! A Cordonian Ruby? An Autumn Glory? A Granny Smith?

• Three chapters in and I'm getting more and more baffled by this story by the day. There's stuff I like. Some of the characters I still love. I have fun looking at the little hints, the bits of symbolism, the callbacks. I love theorizing what we'll be doing next! But all of this needs to be glued together by a coherent storyline and this just isn't it.

• Even if we push aside the gross inequalities in balance (re: character development), there's still so much that just doesn't make sense. Why is there so much rush. Why is everyone in this country (and outside) so invasive and entitled over this one noble's child? Why are we doing such insane scales of prep over a process that is in itself is so unpredictable? Why am I learning about Cordonia's allies/potential enemies in such a vague and shoddy fashion? And most of all what kind of bullshit Royal Council is this???

• But I'll elaborate on all those questions later. For now let's move on to the chapter!

• If you didn't buy the corgi in Book 2, they ask you if you'd like to buy it now at the beginning of the chapter. Possibly that may affect the entry of the second corgi in some way? Idk.

• Esther, the Queen of Cordonia is also still the queen of winging it. You'd think they'd have planned a look for her (esp given the amount of time they could spend on the train) and gotten her ready by the time they reached there, not scrambled around for an outfit the minute they reached Valtoria.

• The LI tells the MC that they're fixed an appointment with the best obstetrician they could find, and we will be going there to ask our preliminary questions plus get a check up. I was wondering if in Hana's case they would be going to a fertility specialist instead.

• In any case, Bertrand volunteers to help us with an outfit for the last time in a short while, because he's traveling to Texas to prepare for their wedding. (we're going there too, but later. I'm not looking forward to another round of Savannah-worship - possibly with an added side of Bianca-worship - no thank you).

• Bianca's ranch is called the Walker Ranch, after Jackson's last name. Why Jackson's?

• Our OOTD!

Electric blue with a gold belt and a black and white border on the neckline, accessorized with a necklace (I think it's pearls set in gold?) and a brooch pin in the shape of a crown.

I kinda like this one and knowing the way this team operates when it comes to outfits most of the time, I'm pretty sure the colour scheme was chosen on purpose. With this outfit, the MC is presenting herself in the national colours, with a tiny signifier of what her future role might be. Either as Queen or as mother of the future heir to the Crown. This is an outfit that would send a message during Liam's announcement, whether she is (symbolically) wearing that crown or not.

• I'm obviously not very comfortable with the implications that would go with that outfit (esp if she is not the Queen), but I can't deny it does its job.

• The MC can opt to go for either being poised, acting like a diva or being very casual in her approach. Whatever she does the crowd pretty much worships her.

•

So everyone except Liam has someone (media, a fan, common people) approaching them as a way of showing how famous and revered the entire group has become in Cordonia. Liam doesn't need one coz he's anyway getting his moment with his big speech in front of the Valtoria manor.

Drake - Donnie Brine from the CBC speaks to Drake, positioning him as a man of the masses, the person that the Cordonian people see as their representative. Drake is woefully unprepared and freezes, blurting out that "things are great" which probably might end up becoming a meme on Cordonian internet later. Random Cordonian Woman from Applewood saves him by confirming this statement even though her trees have yet to grow and the tax problems are pretty much making her life "not great".

Maxwell - Where are Jiro and Camellia from Applewood? I like little Marco and Valerie but I hope they're not the only kids PB is going to be showing every time they need to show children. Marco approaches Maxwell and the MC both to sign his copy of Maxwell's book, and Maxwell takes care to do a dramatic signature that will not "obscure the picture of his face". I'm giggling at that image.

Hana - Valerie approaches Hana with a handmade flower necklace, presumably with a pattern made from "the Lee family crest". Now either Lorelai's family in Cordonia have the same surname as Xinghai, or Xinghai got himself a house crest for some reason. Either way, to toss out a detail like that so casually (a family crest is something that passes down through generations, esp in noble families) without even thinking of the logistics of it...(when an entire book of yours has been dedicated to sigils and crests) is pretty lazy.

BUT. In good news this means that my longtime speculation that Hana's mother's house had flowers as part of their court of arms is correct! (I was also right about a couple other things, like Maxwell's ancestors and Liam's mother being alive when Olivia was brought to the palace. YAY! 😁)

• We now move on to Liam's public announcement. Which sounds kinda weird whichever way you look at it. A married Liam announces that he and his wife are on a mission to enjoy babymaking and a single Liam announces this:

(Screenshots from a Hana playthrough by @pixieferry)

I will translate what both Liams are saying into Cordonian:

Married Liam: We don't have an apple cinnamon bun in the oven yet, but we're definitely having fun kneading that dough nudge nudge wink wink.

Single Liam: I'm neither making apple buns nor kneading dough. I'll leave that to my friends the bun-making experts here. I'm just gonna park my butt outside the oven door along with the rest of Cordonia.

Sounds weird? You're welcome. It was meant to sound weird.

• Esther finally reunites with her corgi Joy! I wonder if at some point she'll meet up with her horse Celestia and red pandas Hansel and Gretel too xD

• Mara tells me safety checks have been done, but...it's Mara saying that, so I'm not sure I'm quite convinced. The alternative is Bastien, so...we're kinda screwed I guess.

• The group then discusses the future foetus, and Liam takes this opportunity to hint at their childhood history. You know what that means? DIAMOND SCENE!!

•

(Screenshots for Asian Liam from my playthrough, Black Liam from @pixieferry and White Liam from @thefirstcourtesan)

LOOK AT THE WEE LITTLE KIDDIES AND LIAM'S MOM OMG AAAAAA.

As far as I can tell, among the kids the sprites for all three Liams and Drake are very much new, and the rest come from variations and changes to different faces. Maxwell's face is a copy of Simon from THoBM (only the mouth is slightly different), Hana's has a lot of similarities to young Kenna in TCaTF, but with pigtails instead of tiny buns. Olivia's is a little harder to place but I think there are plenty similarities between hers and RoE Camellia's face. For Queen Eleanor they used Young Mary's (MC's mother) sprite from D&D in accordance to whichever Liam you chose. Perhaps the only Mary sprite not used here would be the brown/Indian one, because Liam's ethnicities mainly feature White, Black and Asian. She even wears Mary's opera outfit (that incidentally Mary also ended up wearing to her wedding lol).

• Somehow they forgot that Maxwell was supposed to be a cute chubby little hippo who was loved by his mother.

• I'd like for Black Liam to grow more hair on his head because the curls on his younger self are lovely 😍

• Since most of the childhood tales revolve around the experience of growing up in the palace, this build up to the diamond scene begins with the MC asking questions about each of the boys (Liam, Drake, Maxwell).

- Little Liam and His Crown: Liam claims he only wore those during state occasions, but Maxwell (who admittedly didn't see Liam as much as Drake did but saw him often nonetheless) saw him practically sleep in the thing, and Drake has pictures to prove it lol.

- Grumpy Drake: Maxwell and Liam agree on Drake becoming grumpier as he grew older, but disagree on what metaphors to use to describe it. Maxwell favours "scratchy bark on a secretly loveable tree", and Liam claims he is "whiskey maturing in its barrell". ("oh", I want to ask Drake, "so that's what they call 'old grain mash' these days?" 🤣 This is my revenge for him referring to wine as old grape juice back in Book 2). No prizes for guessing which metaphor Drake liked better.

- Banning Maxwell from Palace Rooms: Maxwell's lucky he has a king for a friend because apparently before Liam jokingly and unwisely decided to give the man a royal pardon Maxwell was banned from all the good rooms 😅

• Hana clearly hasn't lost her touch when it comes to epic savagery. "I imagined you guys like the Three Musketeers, only...less French". 😅😅

• This diamond scene is split into three parts. You have the fun 'adventures' of the little boys (and later Olivia) at the palace, split in between by a slightly more sombre tale of little Hana's loneliness. The narrative voice in all three is very much that of a child, and focuses on Liam's and Hana's imaginations, so as to make their childhood stories more real to us while still providing us background information about the country's recent history (the "recent history" bit doesn't apply to Hana, though, since she is in China at the time).

- Pirate Adventures at The Palace Courtyard: Liam, Drake and Maxwell pretend to be pirate kings, battling rivals on the palace courtyard. After rescuing Maxwell from being stuck on the branches of a tree, the trio decide to continue their adventures on the gardens that are his mother's brainchild, but are stopped by a palace guard. Liam is briefly saddened by this, but is comforted by Drake and Maxwell. The boys then decide to continue playing in the palace kitchens. This scene begins by focusing on the antics of the little ones, but is really about the changed atmosphere in the palace that the boys themselves were too young to notice at the time.

(We also find out which place in TCaTF the Beaumonts originated from, since young Maxwell refers to himself as a pirate from Panrion in both scenes that he is in *cue Lizzy looking very very smug because I've been saying the Beaumonts were from Panrion/someplace in Ebrimel since way back in Book 2*)

The MC has options to respond to this tale (either about whether they were always this naughty, or about the increased security in the palace). In response to her question about the three of them, the boys tell us that Liam was known for being a free spirit and would skip many diplomacy meetings before he even met the other two (again, Constantine, Liam was A CHILD). If you ask the question they want you to be asking, however, about the increased security in the palace, Drake and Maxwell will tell you the security wasn't as strict earlier, and Liam will explain that the royal family had recently received threats at the time, and his parents were a lot more tense and on-edge than usual. Either way, you either get to know a bit about the political atmosphere at the time, or realize that little Liam wasn't the heavily burdened one we met on that first night in New York.

- Pretend-Teatime with a Young Hana: Hana continues on this thread of conversation by focusing on the bond between the boys, commenting on how she never grew up with that kind of experience. To which Drake and Maxwell have these reactions:

@Drake, pls fall on a cactus.

@Maxwell. Honey. She said this to you yesterday. She's probably said this more than once. You've seen her parents!! Wtf kind of friend are you if you can't even take what she said seriously the first time?

@Hana pls get yourself better friends 😭

Like @callmetippytumbles said in her response to this scene, I have no patience for this kind of selective stupidity.

So Hana's scene is technically a call-back to something she once told the MC back in Book 1 Chapter 6, when they were on their way to the post-Derby tea party with Queen Regina. At the time, Hana spoke of her parents not allowing her toys because they thought them frivolous, and how she had to make do with whatever was lying around instead. We actually see this happen in reality here. We see her PoV of what her inanimate objects do, we see her practicing court etiquette on these objects with her tea set, and we see her leave space for her asshole mother even though Lorelai doesn't deserve that much respect or consideration. There is a lot to unpack in this scene and I want to do that in my General Thoughts section later on...but for now I'll just say that it broke my heart, and not just in an "oh poor Hana" way.

- The Attack from Lythikos: I love this sequence too, not only because it shows us Olivia, a younger Constantine and Liam's mother Eleanor, but because the narrative framing in itself alludes to what happened between Lythikos and the Capitol earlier through the pirate story. Liam and Olivia still speak in the language of their story, but the sequence actually plays out what happens in their real lives. Olivia attacks the pirates, but is left desolate, sword broken, at the end of it (just like her parents tried to, and died in the process - leaving an innocent Olivia alone without support). Liam offers her terms that would give her safety and protection, and in return, she asks to be Pirate Queen and for Drake's sword - which he reluctantly gives.

Constantine mistrusts Olivia and attempts to limit her natural abilities and instincts, but it is Liam's empathy, support and validation of her pain, that eventually makes her the steadfast ally that she becomes as an adult - not Constantine's paranoia. Had Liam followed Constantine's lead, the chances of Olivia falling into the trap of subscribing to her aunt's beliefs would have been much much higher, and Constantine would have found himself at the receiving end of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The narrative may also be implying how deep Eleanor's own impact on her son must be, long after her death, since the narrative frames him as adopting her way of dealing with situations often.

In any case the narrative allows us to see the children as they were before their individual tragedies changed them (except in Olivia's and Hana's cases - where they were still struggling to survive the situations they were in), and allows us to see what shaped them into the adults they are today.

The MC then gets to ask one of two questions: either why Constantine treated Olivia so badly, or about the arguments his parents were having. We learn from these that this incident was shortly after Liam became friends with her and his parents brought her to the palace (this references both Liam's conversation about Olivia to the MC in Book 1 Chapter 7, and Lucretia's complaints about Constantine "keeping Olivia hostage" in her diamond scene in Book 3).

• Possibly this may not be the only scene of its kind we will see. Possibly the next few may be Drake-centric, since we may actually meet Bianca in a few chapters. But these scenes may definitely have an impact on dialogue later, just like how learning of the assassination attempt in Drake's Italian Restaurant Scene and Eleanor's death in Liam's Fydelia Balcony Scene in Book 2 are referred to later (if bought) in the hospital scene with Constantine.

• In any case, we leave the past in the past (for now), and move towards Valtoria's throne room. Where we meet Penelope, just back from her first canine fashion show, Kiara who tells us she has everything kept under control (you always do boo 😍) and Madeleine who is all up our uterus.

• She mentions King Bradshaw from Auvernal and his "impossible to control" wife, then mentions a Queen Amalas immediately after without bothering to tell us where this person is from. WTF? At least tell me the name of her goddamn country if she's another person!! You'd just have to say Queen Amalas of ChickenFeetonia and I would understand.

• ...you're telling me the Queen of this country (in my playthrough) has barely looked at a map of the place she's ruling or checked out who rules what?? You're telling me that the Royal Communications Director is STILL going to give her a gazillion flash cards to read something that she could sum up in five minutes, at the very last minute? Bitch what have you been doing this entire time? Touching up your manicure??

•

@Penelope: No you're not.

@Kiara: STOP ENABLING HER, KIKI, AND GET YOURSELF BETTER FRIENDS.

@Madeleine: Pls fall on a cactus.

• Madeleine hasn't been here for even five minutes and already I've had enough of her entitled ass. "Little apple gestating in your womb"...just...I can't. Ugh. Get your nosy nose out of my oven!!

• Remember how I told you guys about how apple analogies may be used to denote fertility? (mostly because RoE spoke of this apple cutting ceremony and it was a very obvious indicator towards apple metaphors being used to describe pregnancy and childbirth).

• I facepalmed when Kiara agreed with her but she's also probably thinking "well see this is why they call me the smart courtier. I don't have to deal with this shit anymore and now you do" (she isn't wrong).

• WELL HELLO OLIVIA.

• She informs us that we're expected at the solarium. I have a solarium?

• Apparently it was Mara's honeymoon gift to us. More like her "sorry Bastien and I screwed up last book" gift, I'd say.

• So wait where was this roster Liam was speaking about in the last book's epilogue? I see one Cordonian noble and one Englishman who until my wedding wanted to have nothing to do with Cordonia, and who's now bleating "our country, our kingdom, we're under attack" like a panicking patriotic nanny goat.

• Why can I not see Emmeline here, who is clearly the expert on her duchy? (I mean like. Landon is nice, but I'd really like to see more women in this Council too). Also does Kiara's inclusion into the Council cancel out the presence of her father Hakim, who is a seasoned diplomat and might possibly have some really good suggestions for dealing with these foreign powers (and seriously he'd be a better option than Godfrey anyway).

• Now Esther has a suggestion! Let's see what it is...

• A royal ball, apparently. Which...given the company, I'm sure it probably would be appropriate but I'm pretty sure we'll need to have more than that in place. I'm pretty sure the people in this council should either be finding out whether the person making these suggestions knows anything about these issues or whether she is simply talking out of her ass. This was a problem last book as well. The MC rarely feels the need on her own to explore these situations more, is okay with just learning things last minute and rolling with it and has the same solution to everything. It's either tours or balls but very little actual exploration of the situation. (I mean there is even a point where she barely shows any empathy at Portavira - even though they're still reeling from a bunch of natural calamities - and thinks it's appropriate to tell them to come for her wedding anyway. No wonder Liam panicked and started giving her diplomacy lessons, stat!) I'd actually take the MC seriously if she were doing her research and her suggestions weren't so shallow and one-note.

• Hana is grinning and giving justifications like this suggestion makes sense. STOP. ENABLING. HER. HANA.

• I especially want to know what Liam's experiences with these dignitaries have been. Both last chapter and this one, I'm seeing him in a position where he is defiant and digging his heels into whatever ideas he is having, but I don't know the context yet and would like to make sense of that. From whatever I've read so far...Liam took the year following Leo's abdication to familiarize himself with taking the front seat in negotiations, and probably may have been familiar with this kind of situation and the kind of people involved even before he became Crown Prince. It makes me wonder how difficult negotiating with them has been, and I want to see why Liam is so done with these people, so fed up. We're missing some context here and I think learning at least a little more than these scraps would have been better for everyone.

• I like that they remember Kiara as the only one outside of the charmed six to get a seat in this council (Kiki deserves the best). I also liked how succintly she summed up Drake and Hana's points about what the heightened taxes are doing to the people as "a reminder that we're not just here for ourselves".

• I find the entire idea of Drake Walker being the sole commoner representative in the Council laughable, especially in a narrative where every other commoner barely has a face, hardly has a name, and almost never has a voice. A man who has spent a huge chunk of his life in a palace, and who I've hardly seen even interacting with a commoner in the story...I'm expected to believe he will have great insights on commoner issues?? Even in this meeting, it's Hana who does a better job explaining this situation (she's the one highlighting the tax issues) than he does. Then again this Council also somehow gave a seat to Duke Karlington - a man who literally never had Cordonia's best interests in mind last book, and who only ended up attending our wedding because we had to be brought in as family counselors to settle HIS family disputes (I mean lol Godfrey how can you call this wedding a disaster when it caused you to magically become so "patriotic"!)

For God's sake, I want to see other commoners on this council. I want people who are actually living these experiences highlighting their issues. This is an issue I have with the MC too. She started out a commoner herself a waitress who wouldn't even flinch at the sight of rats in a dumpster. For someone of that background and who has possibly lived under the worse circumstances than some Cordinians themselves, you'd think that she'd have questions and show interest in how the people who aren't owning lands and are regular individuals on the street live their lives, and whether things are okay for them. But she's so immersed in the world of nobility that she rarely ever even tries to come out.

• Before Liam takes into account everyone's points and comes to a conclusion, the MC has the opportunity to give them her opinion. She can either say that we can't trust anyone, which Godfrey agrees with, or that an alliance would be good for Cordonia, which Godfrey views as naive, OR (and I didn't expect to like this response but I actually do) that she's a waitress from the States, and wouldn't know all that much about this situation. To which there isn't much of a reaction as such, but that's kind of what seems different about this book compared to the others.

• Once the meeting is wrapped up, our LI and Maxwell/Hana whisper in a corner about a surprise they have in store, and take us upstairs to show us what it is. If you're marrying any of the other three, Maxwell is the one who has arranged and picked out themes and colour schemes for the nursery. If you're married to Maxwell, Hana takes over this role.

• Ooooh. New (I think!) baby music! Nice. Very lullaby-like.

• Every design has these basic components:

a crib with a pillow (which I think will be updated later)

a couch nearby, likely for comfort when the mother wants to breastfeed (the updated versions seem to have a footrest)

a table with a lamp

three empty frames (also to be updated. I'm guessing for one of those "my first hand/foot impression" kind of thing and maybe even photoshoots etc)

a ceiling lamp/chandelier

a hook, also on the ceiling.

The two updated versions have footrests, updated lamps and ceiling decorations, additional carpet and customized designs (except for the crib and the pictures and the hook, which I think will be updated later). The Royal Glam theme is all reds and golds, very luxurious and very Valtoria. The Fairytale Forest theme has more whimsy, with bears, foxes, leaves, flowers and apples on the wallpaper, wood paneling, a beautiful golden lamp. Very pretty. Both seem to reference the MC's journey in TRR: her being either a Royal and the closest thing to one, and her journey being very fairytale-like (remember, the same logic was used for Hana's "something blue" gift for the MC's - where she views her as Cinderella).

• Only problem is...who exactly buys a nursery before they have a baby! Especially considering how unpredictable pregnancy and childbirth can be.

• We now meet Dr Ramirez for an appointment. I'm not sure about her suggestion that prenatal vitamins etc they will deal with after she has conceived. I know a number of people who did pre-pregnancy appointments and vitamins and folic acid were on the top of the list of things they'd start a routine with.

• As expected, all the appointments go roughly the same, with the usual answers to the usual questions (one about sushi, another about morning sickness and a last one about potential complications). The MC and LI are in the clear, and can start preparing - but apparently shouldn't stress. LMAO. Thank you doctor, I'm sure that will be easy to do in this country 😂

• Hana's goes differently, and it's clear this doctor's visit was primarily written to address her situation with the MC. The tests go differently, the suggestions given to them are different, the questions the MC asks (one about choosing donors, when they should start, and who should carry the child). The bombshell that immediately follows this is:

Wow. Seriously. Wow. You couldn't find a more temporary reason for why the MC has to be the one conceiving? It has to be something that would make her overall ability to conceive almost impossible?? (and this we find after one test? No follow ups?) I recall someone putting up/reblogging these screenshots with a caption about how the narrative pretty much took Hana's entire ability to conceive from her, and it's so true - and so disturbing when you place it in the context of how they've dealt with her issues so far (more on this later).

• In Hana's playthrough, she struggles with implications of this news, but constantly tries to veer the focus back to "well at least one of us can is able to have this baby". Twice, she is shown moving away from her pain to ask about the other possibilities for the MC.

• Anyway...we now move to the next morning, when the couple wake up to bad news - and it's concerning the pictures taken during their honeymoon. Given that Maxwell/Hana is holding a magazine when they tell the MC they found out who was responsible...I wonder if it's one of our news outlets. Or whether it's a foreign media rep.

• So I guess this complicates things at our Ball, since we're already on thin ice and this news would have spread to those other dignitaries as well. So we're going to have to deal with whatever implications come with those pictures (perhaps a spin on the royal gang having fun while Cordonia is in a national crisis? Who knows. It would be hypocritical of Cordonians and people from other neighbouring countries to judge the couple over the babymaking that they themselves were enforcing on these two!)

• In any case...royal ball this week. And in the universe of PB's stories that usually means some shit will go down.

General Thoughts and Observations:

• The funny thing about the MC's responses now is that her heightened position now seems to allow her to get away with a lot more than she used to. Now if she gives a joke response, the media and people laugh with her rather than at her. If she is a diva, the crowd will lap it up. I'm guessing what the book is trying to imply is that these are the people she has won over and doesn't exactly need to worry about, and now the ones she will have to convince are from other, more powerful countries - ready to back Cordonia into a corner anytime.

• As you can tell by now, I absolutely loved the childhood sequences. They sounded like children, most of the narrative lines up with what was already said in the previous series, and there were some interesting narrative devices used here.

• I think the third sequence especially drives home the point about what Liam did right, even as a young boy, and what Constantine refusing to look past Olivia's lineage to see her as an individual could have cost him. Constantine's ruthlessness and lack of genuine care for his bonds/friendships (eg. Hakim) had him in a position where he was unable to relate to anyone beyond his own tiny bubble (even his own wife Regina was taking countermeasures to make the best of his horrid plan), and had him make decisions that did more harm than good. For instance, take what he did to the MC, for no fault of her own other than that he didn't think she'd be a good Queen. Not only was what he did utterly disgusting, but it also would have made his own family a subject of shame in the country (which is why Constantine practically begs her never to expose him, because then Liam would be paying the price). Imagine what would have happened if Constantine didn't agree with Liam and perhaps Eleanor, never brought Olivia to the palace, and Liam had never shown her his constant support. Liam's genuine empathy in this case pretty much ensured the safety of his own line.

• I also love the implications of that sequence. Constantine is so wrapped up in his fear that he tries to break what Olivia considers most precious (Zenobia the sword in this case, but this could allude to her parents' deaths and later, her possible marriage to Liam at his Coronation). Liam attempts to fill that gap by taking her in, caring for her, and giving her the tools to continue being the Lythikos fighter she has always been.

• There are a few TCaTF references in the palace scenes: Maxwell mentions Panrion twice, and Olivia calls her sword "Zenobia" in honour of her historical hero (she still speaks of Zenobia with something akin to worship during the Winter Festival in Lythikos).

• Olivia's dress is also modelled on Zenobia's, with the same colour and bodice embroidery. In fact most of the clothes are very similar to their adult garments: Drake still wears denim, Maxwell favours dark colours (still should have been chubby though), Liam's clothes are similar to his casual wear minus the ascot, and Hana wears pink, with flower designs on the skirt.

• What I like most are the narrative voices for both Liam and Hana, who are the ones narrating these stories, and how rooted in their imaginations the scenes themselves sound. But there are significant, heartbreaking differences in how we see their imaginations play out:

Here are a few samples of narration I've managed to save from Liam's PoV. Notice how Liam and his friends are so into their little game that they find adventure in everything? Notice the language they use to describe themselves and what they are doing? Once-defiant topiaries shaking in fear at their antics. "Liberating" chocolate tarts. "Conquering" the upper floors. These boys are playing out their dreams and showing us the kind of men they would want to be. The heroes. The victors. The ones everyone looks at with awe and reverence.

This is also not a story Liam is creating alone. Drake and Maxwell happily join in, sink into their characters and display their heroics alongside him. Olivia also joins in and holds her own, and when Liam's father tries to break her spirit, Olivia shows Liam her trust and faith in him by using the language of the game.

On the other hand, here is what the narration technique in Hana's tea scene looks like:

There is a lot to unpack here. A lot. There is perhaps more in this one scene of Hana's than there is in all of Book 3, where she was pretty much pushed to the sidelines.

We were told in Book 1 that Hana had to get creative because she wasn't allowed toys. This was told to us in a rather matter-of-fact way, by a person who was normalized in this way of life and who hadn't yet realized just wrong her upbringing was or how damaged her self of self was. It's perhaps easy to forget this bit of dialogue if you were reading it for the first time because at the end of the day it's spoken of without much gravity.

It's when you see it play out in front of you, in little Hana's voice, from an adult Hana who will now view this entire sequence very, very differently, that the tragedy of it all really hits you. At such a young age she is forced to make do with the little she has: the little she has in terms of things to play with, the little she has in terms of relationships. What the MC says after that sequence is half-right, it's sweet how Hana used her imagination in spite of her parents' rules and strict lifestyle. But what that misses is the burden experiences like that would place on a child in her earliest, more formative years. What stand out to me the most in this sequence are these:

- The most obvious: the use of a 'tea party' to teach herself etiquette and diplomacy. In the present, Hana tells the group that "a lot of what I learned about courtly negotiations, I learned from the tea table". This is the level Hana chooses to focus on after telling her tale, to soften the blow of the story itself.

- The fact that despite her mother's treatment of her, Hana still leaves space for Lorelai. Still wants to believe the best of her, still wants her involved in her life. Lorelai denies her her support and comfort, which is the initial layer to her injustices against Hana. In a lot of ways, even now - Hana is still leaving space for Lorelai, giving her chances to improve, trying to educate her on respecting her boundaries better. It's a long, exhausting process, and Lorelai doesn't deserve the many chances Hana keeps giving her, but Hana is also a person who struggles to completely cut off from the people in her life, controlling and emotionally abusive though they may be.

- At the end of the day, the objects she is giving a life and a personality to, are inanimate objects used for other purposes. Not toys, not real friends. Every last one of them. Miss Doily is kind and caring, Princess Sinckerdoodle is jealous and gives a damn about etiquette (I like how you can see allusions there to Olivia and the MC in the Bakery Ball dialogue!). But they're essentially all objects that cannot move the way her narration describes them as moving. Even dolls and toys, inanimate though they are, are made for the express purpose of allowing a child to participate in pretend play. They can be given a voice, their limbs can be moved, the child can easily turn such a space into an active space with the use of her toys. The doily, the napkin, the sock...these are things Hana will have very little actual control over. They will not be able to move the way she wants them to, do the things she wants them to. Everything has to be happening in her head and there is very little outlet for her other than the few things she has at hand (a similar example of of Hana using scraps we will also find in Book 2, where she draws whiskers on a rock to replicate a toy mouse).

Look again, at the differences in the way Liam narrates his tale and how Hana narrates hers. Liam's is also a fantasy, also uses inanimate objects. But supporting him in building this imaginary universe are his friends, and the parents who both don't stop him from immersing himself in this imaginary world, and have a safe normal (for now) life to return to when those "adventures" are over. On the other hand, Hana has to do the heavy work...in every way. She has to imagine not only the background of what is happening, but also what the objects in front of her are like, what they will do, how they will interact with her, how they will interact with each other.

If I had to replicate such a scene into film, the loneliness of this sequence would perhaps hit harder. A large, empty room. A tiny girl. A tea set and several strange items - and none of them actually move. She is sitting alone, in the dim light, in the silence, talking to these objects that will never respond so she pretends they do, just to chase away that yawning, aching feeling of not having a single friend. All she gets in return is silence. All she finds in front of her is space, and more space. The kind of space that could swallow a child in its emptiness.

And in the center, is a seat left empty. For a mother who doesn't believe her daughter is worth the time.

I think there will be very few who will appreciate the strength it takes to survive a lifetime of that, and that's sad.

• The little Hana sequence reminds me of the animated film Cinderella, particularly in how the main character uses dreams and imagination as an escape from her life of drudgery and the abuse she faces daily. Particularly the song "Sing Sweet Nightingale", where Cinderella's dull world bursts into vivid colour through the soap bubbles that emerge from the washing bucket.

It's a beautiful, soft, almost surreal little sequence...but when you strip it all down to its basics, what you're essentially seeing is a woman so abused by her family and so trapped in this life she does not deserve, that she has to grasp at straws to find joy. Or in this case, soap bubbles.

What Hana faces in her home is perhaps a little more similar to Rapunzel's situation in Tangled than Cinderella's, but there are definite similarities in the way both characters use their imaginations to soothe and comfort themselves. She is forced into a situation where her imagination - and these things that can't respond to her - are all she has, and the only ways she can keep herself safe and happy. That's way too big a burden for a child so young to bear.

• I wonder if there will be more than the memories. Perhaps documents, news clippings, research material that the MC can use to dig further into what's going on in this country. It's possible, but it's also possible that memories will entirely be how we unravel this mess. I was speaking to @thefirstcourtesan the other day and she mentioned that Bianca and Bastien would both be pretty good sources for finding out more - Bastien, after all, had a lot of respect for the second queen and was close to Jackson, and Bianca would have heard certain things from her husband or witnessed something at the very least (and if they were friends, that angle too). I probably would add Lucretia and maybe Anton (if we see them and if they cooperate), Bertrand or someone new who knew Bartamely (if we can find out more about the Beaumont house that would be lovely!), the Lees, and...Francesco? (I still haven't forgotten that Bertrand mentioned him as being a friend of Liam's mother). I also want to see what new information Olivia got from the last time she did her research on any hidden deals or laws that could endanger the kingdom. There are quite a few possibilities in terms of what we could find and how it can be presented, so I'm looking forward to that. This scene was a good start.

• Having said that, this was something they should have been addressing the previous book. If they hadn't spent so much of their focus on all the wrong things, we wouldn't have as much ground to cover as we do now. And I'm not sure they've learned their lesson enough that we will not see the same mistakes repeated this time.

• Why is the system in place to inform and update the MC on what's happening so poor this time. At least earlier, we'd have a fairly good idea of what would be happening next, even if some important stuff was done last minute. Now the explanations themselves are poorly formed and done without proper thought on whether the MC/readers might understand what's going on or not. It doesn't look good on the story, nor does it look good on those characters esp the MC. This is stuff she could have maybe gotten away with as a suitor. But now she is Duchess/Queen, and an influential figure. What looked good in her days as a suitor won't look so good on her now.

• The Royal Council could be a way forward - for the nobility and royalty-heavy narrative to something that shows us more perspectives from the people who really form the backbone of this country - the commoners who actually populate Cordonia's lands and duchies, whose hard work likely keeps the economy running. Just one Drake isn't adequate for that kind of representation - not when he very rarely addresses their issues in the first place. Please tell me there will be more in that Council because the Council as it stands is in no way an improvement on the status quo.

• I've said more than enough about how bizarre and downright OOC Liam sounds, but I do think we should not ignore the context - the fact that every single individual involved is making these demands of the MC and expecting her to save their country through her child without really checking if she has basic knowledge or other resources in place (such as information about the rulers she is meeting). That includes the LIs. It's very easy to make just a character or two a convenient scapegoat, but let's not forget that there isn't a single person in this entire narrative that is bothering to examine the implications. Not a single.

• What really got me angry...was the Hana doctor sequence. Maybe two books ago it would have just hurt - but more on the level of "it hurts to see Hana like this but I have hope for her". Hope that she would have the space to grieve something she had lost before she could ever even have it, hope that the narrative would validate her pain and encourage her healing. But I can't even hope for that anymore.

This is a very very painful, complicated situation to put a person in. And yes, sometimes those are things you want to talk about and finding out you can't have children when you've always wanted to have them is a very real, very difficult situation - and there is a lot you can explore in terms of how a person with these conditions would feel. But the thing is...Hana has already been on the receiving end of multiple tragic storylines. I have already seen enough and more of her in pain. What I'm not seeing is a good - or even adequate - payoff that validates her painful journey and allows for a release of those emotions. I'm constantly seeing more tragedy, less triumph. I'm not seeing enough satisfactory resolution to those many many issues, and I've spent three books just watching her hurt be brushed aside both by the people who bully her AND the people who are supposed to be her friends (let's be real, they're doing it even now). And now is supposed to be a good time to pile up another difficult situation on her???

• Whenever Hana has been forced into situations that hurt her, her emotions and thoughts have always been pushed to the sidelines - unless and until it was to elevate the MC to a pedestal in Hana's eyes. Hana has rarely - if ever - been given the space to speak out against injustices done to her, has rarely been allowed to have an opinion on people who have harmed her.

When the narrative should have been validating what Madeleine put Hana through, they opted to create sympathy for Madeleine instead...and had her completely minimize what she did to Hana ("I'm sure Hana will be willing to let bygones be bygones").

When the narrative should have been allowing her to discover what her sexuality was, they opted not to talk about it at all. They opted to make her MC-sexual instead. Even with the "alternative LI" they planned for her (*pukes*), they focused more on Madeleine's feelings than Hana's.

When the narrative should have allowed her the space to explore what her parents did wrong and arm her against their faulty arguments about her being the "delicate flower" who cannot survive without them, the writers opted to push her into a 'solution' that was still centered around her usefulness, not her emotional state. Her 'happy ending' with her parents involves constantly educating them on how to treat her with respect, a suffocating, draining process for a child with her background.

When the narrative should have - at least - given her a good wedding, after showing us what dreams she had for it, a wedding where she was treated like a bride, not a bridesmaid, her writers did exactly the opposite. She is more skilled than the MC yet it is the MC that gets the duchy. She is the creative one who comes up with the polo moves yet it is the MC that gets the credit. She is the one that didn't have a chance to fully plan her own wedding the way she wanted earlier, yet the same MC still treats her like her wedding planner rather than a bride. In not one of these situations is she ever allowed to vent about or even speak of what this is doing to her.

Maybe they will give her a chance to explore this difficult journey, maybe they won't. But how dare they push another tragic, difficult (to her) truth such as this, when they have barely allowed her to voice discontent or pain on a host of other issues!

Piling more pain on top of the pain a character already has, isn't going to make your character better developed. Allowing them the space to feel and show those feelings to others will. Thinking of worthy resolutions to those issues, will. If you want to be fair to Hana, center her in her story. Expand on her origins. Focus on story not skills. And validate her pain goddammit!!

• Sigh. Until next time, folks.

#long post #the royal heir #trh quick thoughts #trh qts #king liam #hana lee #maxwell beaumont #drake walker #olivia nevrakis #trr kiara #trr penelope #trr madeleine #bertrand beaumont

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belost-the-watcher · 5 years

Text

Infestation

An orange haze settled throughout the halls of the derelict ship. The airlock groaned and struggled against jammed machinery, finally giving up and sticking half-open. Muffled voices from behind swore and chattered to one another briefly before a metal bar slid through the gap and wrenched the airlock open with a loud grunt. Rust burst out from the seams and joints and a handful of galra stepped through.

Two of them wore heavy armor and were more equipment than person. Known commonly as Raiders. The third was much more lightly geared. A tracker on loan from the Empire's army. All wore gas masks strapped around their heads.

"Alright. Well that's the hard part done," the lead said flatly and stuck the bar to a magnetic mount on his backpack. "Your turn, Windor."

Belost squeezed his way passed the armored giants. The hallways were tight and the two raiders could barely stand side by side without scraping the dust from the walls. He took the lead and knelt to the floor, swiping a finger across the paneling. "Rust. Dust. Motes. We'll probably start seeing eggs soon. Either this ship is smaller on the inside or its more infested than we thought," he forced his words out to be heard through his mask.

"So there's a few more crawlers. So?" A voice from the back spoke up, shotgun strung across his shoulders. The name Noht scratched into his armor.

"So it means there's hardly any ship left that's worth salvaging."

Their commander spoke up again, "We're not here for the ship. Command's looking for a manifest from the ship's old captain. Records for who he sold to and more importantly where he got his supplies from." He hefted a large metal cylinder in one hand, "This is just to make our job shorter. Gas the place, get out, let the tech support come in and do the rest."

Belost stood. With as small as the hallways were, it was still mind boggling how a smuggler could afford a ship this size. It was nothing compared to the Empire's fleet ships, but it was still nearly the size of a light carrier. And those didn't come cheap even to the Navy.

The tracker started off and their commander, Stros, waved on the back to follow along.

____________

"I meant to ask, why not send the entire squad in? Instead of just you two," Belost asked over his shoulder as they moved through. Breaking the silence of his own footsteps was hardly an issue with the clunking raiders behind him.

"With as narrow as these hallways are, what'd be the point?" Noht said from the back.

"I guess so," Belost answered. He was no stranger to being outnumbered and raiders were originally trained as boarding parties. But infestations made him uneasy. Especially on ships where there was usually only one way out. It was new territory for him, he'd only been through one infestation before. But apparently that made him enough of an expert to be brought along. He'd have to remember to thank Sendak later.

Belost slowed to a stop after a few minutes when he noticed rocky looking scales fused to the wall. They resembled the shells some seafood was still served in. He took the lip of one between two fingers and gave it a light twist. The hard tip snapped off then crumbled between his fingers.

"These things are dried out. A lot of matured crawlers. Let's hope the nest is far away from the circulation room. They'll be in hybernation, assuming there wasn't a few years' worth of food on board, but I doubt even they'd be able to sleep through two tanks walking passed them."

"We'll play it by ear, then," Stros replied.

____________

The three walked in relative silence for a few mintues, Belost checking the occasional biological sign along the way. Stros kept an eye on what crude blueprints they could manage for the ship and mapped out their path on his datapad. Noht, who towered over Belost, watched the hallways and junctions over the tracker's head, shotgun ready. A heavy belt ran from his weapon and to a large cannister on his back. An iconic weapon of the raiders.

"So what's up with all the rust?" Noht asked. "This ship was still active two years ago. It can't have gotten into this bad of shape on its own."

"The eggs eat through the coating on the metal and leech chemicals from it. It makes the eggs strong but the metal brittle. Oxidizes it given enough time and enough eggs. Coincidentally, the shit it puts in the air too? Really bad for your lungs," Belost answered. Despite hardly being an expert, he did at least read up on the creatures inside the ship before deployment. "It's why these things are prohibited from transport. They'll wreck a ship in just a few months. Sometimes not even that long. Then you end up with floating hives like this, they get pulled into orbit, some eggs make it out planetside and then it's Tharaon IV all over again. No more machinery, a lot of dead people and pretty much no more planet."

"Banning these things from transport didn't really stop them from making it here, did it?"

"Idiots will smuggle anything as long as the money's good enough," Stros commented.

"But if there's this many eggs, how haven't we seen any yet?" Noht asked.

"They're hybernating. Chances are that if we see one, we'll see all of them. And there's not actually one for every egg. They hatch in a swarm, but these things get cannibalistic when they're in a low food environment. At least up until a certain point. They won't eat another crawler the same size as them, just the smaller ones. Then when they run out of food they stop breeding and hybernate for a while. It's good for us since all of them are probably asleep. But if they wake up..."

Noht began to ask a follow up before Stros cut him off, "Ventilation should be this next turn up ahead. Get ready." He holstered his datapad and drew his submachine gun from a sling on his chest.

Belost saw the hallway diverge into a turn.

____________

"Fuck!" Belost could have spit were it not for the mask. Stros stopped arming the bomb and looked to him.

"What do you see?" Noht asked, hands laced together and holding Belost's boot steady.

"The intake is loaded with eggs and the fan's been rusted through," he said as he dropped back down to the floor.

"A ship like this won't have a secondary ventilation room, either," Stros said mostly to himself.

"So what's there to do now?" Noht asked, shaking his hands out where the treads had dug into his fingers.

"If we can't gas the place out then we'll just need to get the manifest ourselves. My first guess would be to look in the captain's quarters. I doubt he would keep it stored in the ship's intranet."

Belost pat the orange dust from his hands, "Great. Do we know where that is?"

"Not too far. We'll need to backtrack a bit and head in the opposite direction of here."

"Opposite direction, huh? We haven't seen a crawler yet and now we need to go in the opposite direction? You know what that probably means, right?"

Stros hoisted the bomb back into his hand. "That's why I'm keeping this on me."

____________

Heavy breathing surrounded Belost on all sides. If the manifest was not in the Captain's Quarters, he was going to kill Stros himself. 'Like you said, we would just wake them up,' their charismatic leader had told him right before suggesting Belost walk into the veritable horde of sleeping crawlers alone. Even Noht looked uncertain about the plan. Maybe the raider simply disliked having to stay back and let somebody else do all the work. Or maybe sending somebody into a nest of sleeping monsters just did not sit well with him.

The tracker twisted his ankle awkwardly to avoid stepping on a bundle of dark spines sticking from one crawler's back. The creatures themselves looked like what Earth dwellers might know as tailess whip scorpions. Something that had no business being the size of a cow. Their legs were spindly and barbed with thick claws anchored in front of clacking maws.

One infestation had been plenty for Belost. And his experience then had been unfortunately similar to his current. But at least then he had been on a planet. Somewhere with any number of places to run or hide.

A thick limb brushed the back of his calf and he spun, hand already half-drawing The Bell before he found the creature to have only twitched in its sleep.

Some were piled on top of one another, their legs curled up to fit in the tight hallways. Belost could not be sure but he would bet there were some even in the ship's ventilation above him. Who knew where else they could squeeze into?

He came to the door he was looking for, one labeled CQ in bold. He pressed the button beside it which lit up. The mechanism of the door ground audibly, making a wide-eyed Belost check all around him for signs of stirring, and the light faded offline. A one way mirror was beside the door. If only he could have looked through it somehow, see if there was anything even worthwhile inside. He sucked in a deep breath through the filter of his mask and gripped the handle of the door. The galra flexed and pushed, trying to slide it into the wall panel as quietly as he could. Eventually there came a thud and the door slide aside.

More of the orange dust, a mixture of rust and molting residue, flowed out from the now open doorway. Chunks of one of the crawlers lay strewn about the room and the shredded belongings of the captain's quarters were among them. Belost lift a datapad from the ground, the display cracked and sprayed with old blood. It was crushed beyond salvaging, but maybe the datachip inside was still good.

He checked the port, it was empty.

Belost set the datapad down and walked to the terminal on top of the captain's work bench. He stepped around and checked the console. Somehow it was still running. He wiped the orange dust from its display and looked through the system. Eventually, he came across a series of files which detailed various transfers. Names, dates, amounts, product. Everything they needed. And no way to transfer it. Of course. Why would a smuggler want to let anybody get a copy of something like this?

Belost looked around. No ports for datachips or linking devices. Just a display and the casing beside it. The data drive had to be in it. He looked to the terminal and powered it down.

Then silence was shattered by a cheery sounding chime blaring from the terminal's speakers.

This time there was no need to check. Belost heard them stirring immediately. He dug his claws into the tower of the terminal and ripped the brittle side panel off. The fans had just stopped spinning by the time he yanked the data drive from its port.

Heavy footfalls scuttled to the doorway and a crawler stood near eye-level, watching him for only a moment, chattering wildly and scuttered inside. He heard others outside, a domino effect of waking. Belost shuffled around the table, fingers clinging tight to the drive while the other drew The Bell. He pointed it at the crawler that scurted over the table, then to the second that had already taken its place in the doorway, and then to the window.

What few weren't awake already were jostled out of sleep by the gunfire.

Belost leaped through the window and fired another shot into the gathering crowd of clicking and chirping creatures. The explosive payload of The Bell shattered one into chunks of gorey shell. The clicking turned to hissing.

He ran through the halls, retracing his careful steps, firing into whatever crowds might block his way, not daring to look behind him. The distant sound of Noht's shotgun pounded rhythmically. Even in his outright panick, Belost noticed the lack of Stros' weapon in the commotion.

He fired again, scattering a crowd only briefly, but just enough for him to make it through. Dull fire rushed up his thigh. A familiar enough pain to know something somewhere had got a claw half-around his leg at some point.

Belost came across another blocked hallway and rose The Bell. Instead of the crack and kick of recoil, however, it was only a click. He tucked the data drive under his arm and broke the weapon open, an empty cylinder ejecting with its distinct ping. A crawler scuttled towards him and he could feel more near his back.

Then the ones before him exploded in a shower of shot. Noht covered in blackened gore rounded the corner, "Get down!"

Belost dropped, hearing the whoosh of a claw just overhead, and then suddenly the world around him vanished beyond the rumbling explosive roar of the raider's shotgun.

Something heavy rammed into the ground beside Belost and he was enveloped in grey smoke. It stung his eyes and he scrambled forward in the lull of gunfire and a hand grabbed his arm and hoisted him behind Noht. Practice took over and once he stood, Belost reloaded The Bell and took the drive in his hand once again.

Stros was pulling him back through the hallways, Noht following closely behind. Belost noticed the bomb missing from the commander.

____________

The floor shook beneath Belost's feet, his bandaged thigh pulsing painfully. The ship lit up in a bright, purple ball of plasma as it took the entire flagship's broadside. He let himself enjoy what he could. It was going to be an hour or two in quarantine after all that.

Stros was fast tracked through, the data drive's delivery too important to keep waiting for longer than necessary.

Noht and Belost, however, would have to wait for the full package. He just hoped they wouldn't burn his clothes.

#drabble #there #no more sad belost #read more for length

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Are Republicans So Afraid Of Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-are-republicans-so-afraid-of-trump/

Why Are Republicans So Afraid Of Trump

Officer Goes From ‘sadness’ To ‘rage’

Why Are Republicans Still So Afraid Of Trump? | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Sicknicks partner on the Capitol police, Sandra Garza, wrote an essay about the attack and the aftermath in which she said in part, I saw officers being brutalized and beaten, and protesters defying orders to stay back from entering the Capitol. All the while, I kept thinking, Where is the President? Why is it taking so long for the National Guard to arrive? Where is the cavalry!?

She added, As the months passed, my deep sadness turned to outright rage as I watched Republican members of Congress lie on TV and in remarks to reporters and constituents about what happened that day. Over and over they denied the monstrous acts committed by violent protesters.;

For example, when Gosar called the Jan. 6 attackers peaceful patriots.

During the Benghazi hearings, Republicans were laser-focused on trying to place blame on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But after four years of investigations, most of them purely partisan affairs, they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on her part.

Republicans dont want anything close to that type of scrutiny on the Capitol attacks of Jan. 6. In fact, they dont seem to want any scrutiny at all.

Almost as if they know what will be found.

Almost as if I didnt have to use the word almost.

Reach Montini at .

Trump Is Here To Stay And Republicans Should Be Worried

There are Republican office holders who genuinely embrace Trump. For other leading GOP politicians and strategists, it’s a calculation: placate Trump and his crazy stuff now, win the Congress next year and start to move on.

That’s a fantasy.

The narcissistic former president is incapable of just going away. The Trump brand hardly suffers though it seems every week a new book comes out on his tragic governance and those from people without subpoena power.

Start with the 2020 election, which should be history; Biden won the popular vote handily and the electoral college with several states to spare. That has been validated by Republican state officials, dozens of court cases, Congress and Trump’s own attorney general and vice president. It was more clear-cut than Trump’s victory four years earlier and two other presidential elections in this century.

Time to move on, right? Trump won’t allow it.

Trump is an effective demagogue. Six years ago, he had many Republicans questioning whether Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaWhere is Joe Biden’s ‘red line’?Newsom recall spurs unprecedented turnout campaignBiden is steering America to lose asymmetric warsMORE really was born in the United States, even though Obamas 1961 birth in Hawaii was in the newspaper.;

Actually, the former president could take credit for the rapid development of the extraordinarily effective vaccines but this might help Biden, avoiding which apparently motivates Trump more than the lives he might save.

Todays Republicans Really Hate Democrats And Democracy

1) Trumps supporters have embraced anti-democratic ideas

This chart shows results from a two-part survey, conducted in late 2020 and early 2021, of hardcore Trump supporters. The political scientists behind the survey, Rachel Blum and Christian Parker, identified so-called MAGA voters by their activity on pro-Trump Facebook pages. Their subjects are engaged and committed Republican partisans, disproportionately likely to influence conflicts within the party like primary elections.

These voters, according to Blum and Parker, are hostile to bedrock democratic principles.

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John Kasich Says Republicans Are ‘afraid’ Of Trump

EmbedEmbed

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks with NPR’s Leila Fadel about the GOP’s unwillingness to stand up to President Trump, who still refuses to accept the results of the presidential election.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Last night, President Trump received another loss in court. A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the campaign’s attempts to stop the certification of Pennsylvania’s votes. This is just the latest of more than two dozen failed challenges brought by the Trump campaign to overturn the election results. President Trump refuses to concede, and for the most part, his party has supported his efforts to pursue legal challenges based on false allegations of widespread voter fraud.

Very few high-profile Republicans have publicly acknowledged Joe Biden as the winner, but one of them is John Kasich. He’s the former governor of Ohio and a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, and he joins us now.

Governor Kasich, welcome.

JOHN KASICH: Thanks, Leila. Glad to be with you.

FADEL: So you endorsed President-elect Joe Biden. He won this election. What do you make of President Trump’s attempts to overturn the results?

KASICH: It’s just absurd. The whole thing is – it’s just – it’s ridiculous. I mean, he has clearly won this election. And it is just sort of amazing to me that Republicans just keep sitting on their hands. It makes no sense.

FADEL: That was the former Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich.

Governor Kasich, thanks for speaking with us.

Republicans Still Scared To Death Of Trump

Trump went on yet another unhinged rant this weekend during a speech to donors in Florida, attacking Mitch McConnell as a “stone cold loser” for refusing to go along with his attempt to steal the election, but you won’t find any profiles in courage in the GOP willing to stand up to him.

Case in point, on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday, South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune was asked about Trump calling him “weak and inneffective RINO” earlier in the year and saying he might back a primary challenger to Thune. Thune responded telling host Chris Wallace that “I’ve been through wars in South Dakota, political wars, with my own party when I ran the first time, with the Democrats in a couple of hotly contested Senate races, so being afraid of a fight or somebody coming after me is not something that’s going to influence that decision,” but Thune refused to admonish Trump for his rhetoric, and refused to stand up for McConnell when asked about him as well.

Which is pretty much the equivalent of “I support Trump, but I really don’t like the tweeting” that we heard from so many of them over the last five or six years.

As the Fox article discussed, Trump called Thune “Mitch’s boy” when urging Gov. Kristi Noem to challenge Thune in 2022, but no amount of insults are apparently ever breaking point for these jellyfish.

Recommended Reading: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Why Republicans Are Scared Of Texas New Abortion Ban

For years, conservative legislators have passed increasingly restrictive abortion laws, knowing theyd be struck down by the courts. Now, Republicans are going to have to defend their views at the ballot box. And that might not go well for them.

At a pro-choice rally in Texas in 2013, one sign reads “Republicans, your seats aren’t safe.” | AP Photo/Eric Gay

09/18/2021 08:41 AM EDT

Link Copied

Sarah Isgur is a graduate of Harvard Law School who clerked on the Fifth Circuit. She was Justice Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration and is the host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions for the Dispatch.

When the Supreme Court allowed Texas 6-week abortion law to stand earlier this month, it was presented asa major victory for anti-abortion conservatives. After all, Republican state legislators in deep red states have long been passing increasingly restrictive abortion laws, only to see many later get struck down in the courts. Finally, one law got through .

Whats going on? When considering the political ramifications of the Texas abortion law, Ian Malcoms famous line from Jurassic Park comes to mind, with a little social-wars twist: Your were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didnt stop to think if they should.

So the more relevant question is whether the abortion issue motivates voters in both political camps and which side it motivates more.

Filed Under:

As Gop Makes It Harder To Vote Few Republicans Dissent

ATLANTA In Arizona, a Republican state senator worried aloud that his partys proposed voter identification requirements might be too cumbersome. But he voted for the bill anyway.

In Iowa, the states Republican elections chief put out a carefully worded statement that didnt say whether he backs his own partys legislation making it more difficult to vote early.

And in Georgia, Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan left the room as Senate Republicans approved a bill to block early voting for all but the GOPs most reliable voting bloc. Duncan instead watched Mondays proceedings from a television in his office to protest.

This is what amounts to dissent as Republican lawmakers push a wave of legislation through statehouses across the nation to make voting more difficult. The bills are fueled by former President Donald Trumps false claims of widespread voter fraud and many are sponsored by his most loyal allies. But support for the effort is much broader than just Trumps hard-right base, and objections from GOP policymakers are so quiet they can be easy to miss.

Its a startling shift for a party whose voters in some states, such as Florida and Arizona, had embraced absentee and mail voting. Several Republican strategists note the party may be passing laws that only box out their own voters.

Read Also: When Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

An Effort To Investigate Was Blocked In The Senate

Its different with the Jan. 6 insurrection. After Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to investigate, the House decided to investigate on its own.

This time around, however, all but two Republicans in the House Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming voted against setting up a committee to find out what happened on;Jan. 6.

All of Arizonas Republican representatives voted no.;This would include Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar. You may recall that right-wing political activist Ali Alexander claimed that these two Arizona representatives worked with him to plan pro-Trump rallies, including the one that ended with an attack on the Capitol.

That kind of connection to the Capitol riot seems to be what Republicans are worried about. They;fear the exposure of possible;links between the rioters and Republicans, and the implications that may have for former President Donald Trump.

Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Brian Sicknick, said of the Republicans who voted not to investigate the event, I just dont believe anybody could vote no, it doesnt make sense.

Republicans Can Govern Without Winning A Majority That Threatens Our Democracy

âRepublicans Are Afraid Of Donald Trumpâ Despite Election Loss, Kasie Hunt Says | TODAY

So, lets talk about why Cheney is once again on the chopping block and what that means for the Republican Party moving forward that is, can we finally stop debating whether the GOP is Trumps party now?;

But first: the role of the Big Lie. For a while now, refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election has proven a fealty test of sorts to Trump, and its one Cheney has refused to take. How much of that is responsible for Cheneys current situation versus her politics being increasingly out of step with the rest of the party?

related:Bidens Push For Big Government Solutions Is Popular Now But It Could Backfire Read more. »

nrakich :Its the entire reason for her current situation, Sarah.

Ideologically, Cheney is a faithful conservative at least as conservatism used to be defined. According to DW-Nominate, which uses voting records to quantify the ideology of every member of Congress on a scale from 1 to -1 , she has a score of 0.515.

And according to FiveThirtyEights Trump Score, she voted in line with Trumps position 93 percent of the time. Instead, her main transgression appears to be not going along with the Big Lie .

micah : Yeah, agreed. The idea that Cheneys troubles are about policy the argument that her hawkish foreign policy views or her free-trade-y views are behind her split with the bulk of the GOP is a bit silly?

Americans are living in two different realities right now.

micah: Yeah, agreed.

Thats scary!

Don’t Miss: When Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

Is The Census Wrong

nrakich: I agree that its circular, Micah. The reason more Republican elites dont criticize Trump is that theyre afraid of his voters punishing them. But what they dont seem to realize is that they themselves also have power to shape those voters opinions! Theres a lot of evidence in political science that elites can shape public opinion.

sarah: Do GOP elites, though? So much of Trumps story in 2016 and 2020 was about the high voter turnout that he was responsible for driving. And although I think we should question how much turnout helped the GOP in 2020, there does seem to be an unspoken fear among GOP elites that these voters arent really Republicans now that is, they wont turn out for anyone other than Trump which is why so many GOP elites are scared to break with Trumps messaging.

micah: What do you all think would happen public opinion-wise if Republicans in Washington came out hard against the Big Lie but Trump and state-level Republicans kept it going?

nrakich: To be clear, it would be a political risk for Republican politicians to come out forcefully against the Big Lie. A solid chunk of the party would likely stand by Trump and continue to think the election was stolen. But it could lead to serious infighting within the GOP. At least, though, our democracy would be on a healthier path.;

But, hey, Im not staring down midterms.

micah: I think they are not long for this world.

I mean, how many are even left?

sarah: Or John Kasich.

Republican Party Faces Rage From Both Pro

By Peter Eisler, Chris Kahn, Tim Reid, Simon Lewis, Jarrett Renshaw

13 Min Read

WASHINGTON – After riots at the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trumps supporters, the Republican Party is facing defections from two camps of voters it cant afford to lose: those saying Trump and his allies went too far in contesting the election of Democrat Joe Biden – and those saying they didnt go far enough, according to new polling and interviews with two dozen voters.

Paul Foster – a 65-year-old house painter in Ellsworth, Maine – is furious at party leaders for refusing to back the presidents claims that the election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The party is going to be totally broken if it abandons Trump, Foster says, predicting Trump loyalists will spin off into a new third party.

I just wish he would run away with his tail between his legs, Cupelo says.

Though Republicans have now lost control of the White House and both houses of Congress in just four years, Trumps base remains a potent electoral force in the party. That base helped him capture more voters some 74 million than any Republican in history. The vast majority of his supporters, including 70% of Republicans, remain loyal, according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted days after last weeks riot at the Capitol, and many activists say theyre willing to abandon the GOP for any perceived slight against their leader.

Recommended Reading: Dinesh D’souza The Big Switch

Republicans Are Suddenly Afraid Of Democracy

Were not a democracy, Republican Senator Mike Lee tweeted in the middle of Wednesday nights vice-presidential debate. He was reacting to something hed heard onstage there, in his home state of Utah. Another tweet: The word democracy appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. Its a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few. Hours after the debate Lee was still worrying the thought: Democracy isnt the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

Why did Lee choose this momentless than four weeks before an election in which his party seems likely to suffer defeatto make the familiar, even pedantic, point that we live in a republic rather than a pure democracy? Why did he insist on the point so vehemently that he neglected to mention that power in the American system ultimately lies with the people, which means that our system could also be called a representative democracy? Did he mean rank as in foul, rancid, or outright? If the last, does that mean the tyranny of the majority leading to perverse rule by the few? What did this short, misleading course in Civics 101 have to do with anything?

Time To Reckon With Gop Radicalization

The lies about 2020 and the increasing dedication to destroying democratic institutions in the quest for power are inextricable from one another. As Jay Rosen says, the press is comfortable calling out the former it can be packaged as a fact check.” But being forthright about the latter requires depicting one party as far and away the only primary threat to our democratic stability. Thats accurate, but its uncomfortably adversarial.

Relatedly, describing Republicans as cowards who fear Trump casts their machinations as mere reluctant efforts to cope with externally imposed circumstances theyd prefer not to be dealing with. This lets Republicans off the hook in a very fundamental way. It risks misleading the country about the true depths of GOP radicalization and the real dangers it poses.

Also Check: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

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icarusproject2015-blog · 7 years

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*This article would have been published in the next few weeks. However, it is being published ahead of schedule and without being entirely complete due to the recent, savage, and completely FALSE public accusations made by Eduardo Serio of Black Jaguar White Tiger against a heroic young woman who sought to help us and others take a stand against Serio, his lies and his abuse.

Somewhere in Colombia, six lions live in dilapidated circus carriages, the bars eaten with rust, the floors partially rotting. Four lionesses exist cramped together in one, two males in the other. They languish, the distasteful reminder of a country that tried to take a step forward in conservation by banning animal acts in circuses, but failed to consider the lives of the animals they were supposedly protecting. When Colombia made it illegal to utilize animal acts in circuses, it did so without having any feasible way to care for the hundreds of animals suddenly made homeless by their own policies. There was, and remains, scant documentation on the precise number of animals owned by circuses before the ban, or the number of animals abandoned since the ban was set in place. And with the responsibility of these animals strung between environmental agencies, such as the CRA (Corporación Autónoma Regional del Atlántico) things are anything but simple.

Though the six lions range in age from six to eight years–young for lions–at least one of the original seven animals has died during their three years of abandonment. All that keeps starvation at bay for the remaining six, is the devoted attention of a few people, who see to it that the lions have food and water. None of the six animals have left their cramped cages in almost four years. They have not touched grass in even longer. Their suffering is a result of Colombia’s simple inability provide sanctuary for captive exotic animals within their borders.

Though the country of Colombia has indicated it’s desire to join in the growing worldwide conservation movement, the country’s actions continue to show a stark failure to grasp the ethics required to join in such an endeavor. Quick “easy fixes” implemented by Colombia have only resulted in more suffering for the animals, as they were abandoned by owners who could no longer use them. There are no records of how many such animals died, either of starvation, or because their owners chose to kill them in order to comply with the new laws.

In the cases of abandonment, such as with these six lions, forsaken animals linger throughout the country, their fates irrevocably snared in a tangle of dysfunctional Colombian bureaucracy. Despite that Colombia supposedly wants to participate in conservation on an international level, no discernible effort has been made by the the government to secure placement for the hundreds of animals orphaned by their policies. Colombia isn’t the only country in this position, either. As many other countries begin to crackdown on animal exploitation, the matter of where those animals are supposed to live out the rest of their lives has become the foremost obstacle in freeing captive exotic animals from abuse an exploitation. Even when established and knowledgeable conservation groups offer help in addressing the issue, governments often fail to properly utilize that offer aid. This situation in Colombia is a prime example of that failure.

The plight of the six lions discussed in this article, was brought into the international, and public arena, not by the CRA, but by one of the most well known animal exploiters in the world: Eduardo Serio, the founder of Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation.

Famous for his videos and social media posts showcasing tigers running around his mansion, and lions playing in his backyard Eduardo Serio has owned big cats–as pets–since 2013.

Celebrity guests (many of them holdovers from Serio’s childhood days spent in Hollywood, attending parties for the elite) regularly visit Black Jaguar White Tiger, touting the facility while posing for photographs with Serio’s latest batch of big cat cubs, many of which have been purportedly obtained from breeders with whom Serio has connections.

Kate Walsh comes to Blackjaguarwhitetiger Foundation to show her full support. Kate learns a lot of how the Foundation runs from Founder Eduardo Serio. Kate gets to spend time with 5 month old pumas, 4 month old lions, a 5 month old black jaguar, 250 pound year old lions, and gets to play with and feed lion cubs.

Pictured: Kate Walsh Ref: SPL996172 140415 Picture by: EBLV / Splash News

Splash News and Pictures Los Angeles: 310-821-2666 New York: 212-619-2666 London: 870-934-2666 [email protected]

If you ask Serio, he’s “rescued” over 200 big cats, in just three years. Some ignorant fans, like Eli Roth claim that BJWT has saved as many as 300 big cats, and repeat lies that Serio quite his job in order to start the Foundation. Serio never had a job in the first place. Another popular lie that adoring fans are tricked into spreading is the idea that BJWT releases animals into some mystical “protected wild jungle” in Mexico. BJWT has never released a big cat into the wild. Most of their cats are hand raised from birth, and trained to interact with humans–such as guests like Roth, who then leave gushing about how wonderful BJWT is on their own social media hubs–and thus BJWT’s animals can never be released. As for how many animals Serio has “rescued”, according the the public records of the Mexican government, Serio has registered possession of only about 30 cats. The truth about how many cats BJWT possess remains elusive, in no small part, because the Mexican government has never inspected Black Jaguar White Tiger’s facilities. You read that correctly. Despite that SEMARNAT and Profepa actually send confiscated animals to Black Jaguar White Tiger, neither of the government agencies have ever evaluated, or inspected Eduardo Serio’s facility.

This lack of oversight has allowed Serio to literally make up his own rules and standards as he goes. The stories of even the most popular and well documented animals at Black Jaguar White Tiger change on a regular basis. Some cats, like Cielo, the first cat, a black Jaguar Eduardo obtained as a pet in 2013, have been declawed. Others, like Karma, the lion cub Eduardo obtained shortly after Cielo, have died. Some of these deaths remain unexplained to this day, while others have been reported by Serio in contradicting ways, as he changes their stories to suit himself and the situation. The deaths continue even now. In the last months, a healthy Margay died inexplicably. Serio blames many deaths on “inbreeding” but the majority of them–even without necropsy–can be irrefutably linked to mismanagement and improper care.

Karma died after chewing apart household furniture, the pieces of which perforated her intestines. Her last days and hours were filled with agony, while Serio farted around posting on social media that she was “getting better” and “almost perfect”.

Today, Serio adamantly denies that anyone found any wood or other foreign body inside of Karma. He maintains that she died on the operating table and that her death is a mystery. He claims that his “haters” have contrived the lie about Karma ingesting wood out of envy of Serio and his “kids”. He says that we spread this lie in order to “hurt” him. Apparently, he’s forgotten all of his own social media updates made while Karma was actively dying.

Likewise, a lion named Labai, suffered intestinal blockages from chewing on toys and furniture, while Serio posted on Instagram that he was “getting better”. In cases such as Labai’s, Serio patently blames the animals’ former owners, whoever they might be, even when the animals have been in BJWT’s care for weeks or months before problems arise.

Notice the age difference an appreciable growth between when Labai was rescued, and the photo of the young BJWT visitor with him before his death. Yet Serio asserts that his death was a direct result of the lion’s former owners.

In the early days of BJWT, Serio delighted in posting photos of shoes, flip flops, bedding and furniture which had been chewed apart by the cats in his care. He also posted photos of them playing with dog toys and other other inappropriate objects. Now, though, he denies ever allowing such things to take place, yet his cats continue to suffer from intestinal blockages, and digestive issues.

In recent times, the tiger cub, Arizona, regurgitated milk through her nose, due to being improperly fed during a live feed on Facebook (which was quickly deleted, but not before it was captured by several viewers) The tiger cub, just a couple of weeks old at the time, subsequently developed pneumonia and nearly died. Serio promptly blamed “inbreeding” for her trouble, despite that thousands of followers had watched her choke on milk until it drained out of her nose.

Dozens of animals have died in the three short years that Eduardo Serio has owned cats, many of them overlooked or completely forgotten by his devoted followers. There has even been speculation from our contacts within Mexico, that Serio intentionally makes his cats sick, so that he can then “save” them on social media, much to the acclaim of his devoted (and ignorant) fans. Whether or not he actually makes his own animals sick, for anyone with at least a margin of medical knowledge, many of his “rescue” stories simply don’t add up. He describes serious ailments and injuries which are then miraculously healed in a time far too short to be physically viable. In other cases, he claims to heal ailments that simply can’t be healed–like blindness. Not if they were as serious as he described them to be. This indicates that in the least, Serio is untruthful about either the problems the cats suffer, or the timeframe in which they’ve recovered from those problems. Serio’s own lack of medical knowledge is a glaring warning sign to anyone with medical experience.

In addition to “healing” animals with his “Blue Energy” Serio is also well known for associating himself with various groups, or animals in need, simply in a bid for more attention. He notably announced that “We” are launching a “massive audit investigation against Yumka Zoo” when that zoo made headlines for alleged animal abuse. There was, of course, no followup on these claims. He also blamed the zoo for the death of his lion Labai, claiming that they botched an abdominal surgery, which caused his blockage, despite that the lion had been in BJWT’s care for over a month with Serio claiming that he was in perfect health now that he was in their care.

Serio further stated in his post about auditing Yumka, that BJWT received approximately $25,000.00 a month, in donations (not including any profit from merchandise sales) from his followers. He has since claimed that the foundation barely stays afloat monetarily, and the tax forms he so recently released claims that they only made $800,000.00 in 2016. With an average of $300,00.00 in straight donations, between $250,000.00 and $350,000.00 in fundraisers, and then all of the money made from the sale of merchandise, and endorsements from huge companies like Hublot, Instagram, and Swarovski, (the latter four of which Serio has never releases monetary numbers for) one has trouble believing that BJWT is in such desperate need for funding, as Serio claims in his regular adverts for donation.

Never mind the matter that apparently there are two Foundations registered under the name Black Jaguar White Tiger, with Serio listed as the founder. One “foundation” is nothing more than a mailbox in Encino California. All donations received through that address are given to BJWT tax free, thanks to their American 501(c)3 status. The second Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation is registered in Mexico, and the tax and legal information pertaining to that foundation is kept tightly under wraps.

With Serio’s history of jumping on whatever animal crisis is currently in the news, when in December of 2016, he began a campaign to “save” six lions that were in “desperate” need of rescue in Colombia, most of us suspected it was simply a ploy to bring in donations. According to Serio, he needed $65,000.00 dollars to both transport the six lions to Mexico via ship, and to build enclosures for them to live in. Considering that the majority of the cats Serio already owns, according to eyewitnesses, live exclusively in small dog runs, it seemed absurd to think he was going to bring in six more lions. Nevertheless, within just a few days, Black Jaguar White Tiger fans had blindly forked over more than enough money to “save” the tormented lions in Colombia.

What those adoring, and unquestioning, fans don’t know, was that Eduardo Serio had already promised to save these same six lions (seven, at the time) from Colombia an entire year before his 2016 campaign.

According to this article, these same lions were due to be sent to Black Jaguar White Tiger in May of 2015. Serio was already “raising funds” in order to transport them. We learned from our contacts–contacts who have firsthand knowledge of the lions–that Serio had promised to take them, and that he supposedly was in the process of arranging transport for the animals. However, he failed to ever attain the required permits, and subsequently abandoned the project, leaving the lions to live for more than another year in their cramped and decrepit cages.

In the ensuing time, one of them died.

When I.C.A.R.U.S. Inc. learned through contacts, that the CRA was, in truth, willing to allow Serio to take the lions he already abandoned once, our foundation conveyed concern for the animals wellbeing, and asked exactly how much research the CRA had done on Black Jaguar White Tiger. I.C.A.R.U.S. Inc. was shocked to learn that, well, they hadn’t actually researched the Foundation, or Eduardo Serio at all. They were simply aware of him because he was famous on social media. They knew how popular Black Jaguar White Tiger was, our contact explained, so they just assumed that it would be a good place to send the lions. And because media outlets have (unfortunately) highlighted Eduardo Serio playing with his big cat pets, and referred to his “experience”, the CRA simply took these reports at face value, failing to understand that the media has no idea of how to differentiate between true expertise and social popularity.

This lack of understanding about how conservation works on a fundamental level, this ignorant presumption that public popularity somehow equates to genuine ethics and expertise, is as appalling as it is tragic.

It’s like assuming that because Hitler was in charge, he was a good leader, rather than understanding how he came to power, why he was there, and what he was actually doing. Our contact (a like-minded conservationist) was equally appalled and disgusted.

When I.C.A.R.U.S. Inc. reached out to the CRA asking if they would like to learn more about Eduardo Serio, and Black Jaguar White Tiger, they seemed very interested in hearing from experts who wanted to weigh in on the matter, and offered us the opportunity to present them with the facts as presented by leading experts in the fields of conservation and captive big cats, and international animal rescue. I.C.A.R.U.S. Inc. gathered letters of information, and facts which explained why, if Colombia, as a country, wanted to participate in conservation on an International level, they should not enter into dealings with groups like Eduardo Serio and Black Jaguar White Tiger, who value popularity and celebrity status over the wellbeing of their animals.

Once all of the information from willing conservation and captive big cat experts had been gathered, it was sent on to the CRA and other pertinent officials. These letters detailed how Eduardo Serio has no formal education in captive big cat husbandry; how he does not have a medical team on call to care for the cats already in his care; how several cats Black Jaguar White Tiger was given responsibility for, have since been removed by the Mexican government due to neglect and malnourishment; how despite that Black Jaguar White Tiger is registered in the U.S. as a nonprofit, Eduardo Serio has failed to ever post detailed financials of the foundation, as required by U.S. law. (Serio has, on several occasions, posted documents which he claim “prove” that he’s posting financials. However, none of them are a detailed listing of every donation, and every expenditure, which is what’s required. He’s also claimed he doesn’t need to “file taxes” for three years so his naysayers are lying. Again, filing taxes is not the same as posting yearly financial reports of all the income and expenditures)

Delcianna Winders, formerly an Academic Fellow in Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program explained in her letter that to send “the lions to Black Jaguar would not only put them in harms way, but is likely to undermine conservation efforts and to be a public relations disaster for Colombia.” and that “the organization is under investigation by numerous entities and is known within the conservation community as a bad actor. The facility lacks adequate training in the care of big cats, a failing that has resulted in the preventable deaths of numerous animals.” the former Harvard Fellow went on to state that “Cats at Black Jaguar are kept in virtually barren and inadequately sized pens, and some have been removed due to inadequate conditions. The facility also allows—and indeed encourages— public contact with wild animals, a practice that numerous studies have found to be harmful to conservation efforts as it prompts the public to desire wild animals as pets and to believe that threatened species, like lions, are doing okay in the wild when in fact that are greatly imperiled.”

Tim Harrison, Executive Directer of Outreach for Animals has 43 years of experience in the rescue, rehabilitation and relocation of wild, and captive exotic animals. Well known for his award-winning documentary “The Elephant in the Living Room“ –which explores the perilous and complex issues of captive big cats in America’s backyards–Harrison stated that “These lions in Colombia are a perfect example of how a country, and its people, step up and heroically care for these big cats.” and that to send the lions to another country by ship (which is how Eduardo Serio intended to transport them, a long an harrowing ordeal) would offer “many more chances of human error, escaped animals and danger to the public and the big cats.” Harrison went on to say he had “not seen or heard anything positive about Eduardo or his facility, The Black Jaguar-White Tiger Foundation.” and that because of all of the failings of Eduardo Serio, and his damaging influence on conservation that he would “whole heartedly advise the Powers to Be in Colombia, NOT to work with, or associate with, The Black Jaguar-White Tiger Foundation.”

CompassionWorks International is a foundation devoted to spreading awareness about the daily exploitation that millions of captive exotic animals suffer all around the world. CWI focuses on abuse and exploitation carried out by zoos, circuses, aquariums and pseudo or fake sanctuaries just like Eduardo Serio and Black Jaguar White Tiger. Carrie LeBlanc, the Founder and Executive Director of CWI stated that a “transfer of any animal to that [Black Jaguar White Tiger] organization compromises not only the welfare of the animal in question, but also conservation efforts related to lions and big cats both in Colombia and beyond.” Again Eduardo Serio’s lack of education about big cat husbandry was pointed out, as were the issues which arise from such a lack of education. “Problematic husbandry practices are well recorded at BJWTF, which have resulted in the illness and death of numerous animals. BJWTF routinely ignores the importance of maintaining a physical and emotional separation between its animal inhabitants and its employees and visitors. The cohabitation and physical contact encouraged by BJWTF is highly inappropriate to the well being of the animals and poses a grave danger to all who come into contact with the animals.”

From conservationist and animal animal rights activist Soula Stephanopoulos came a litany of issues surrounding Black Jaguar White Tiger such as:

Serio is not qualified, having no education in regard to big cats, or proper big cat husbandry, nor is he able to care for these cats adequately using a diet of only chicken necks and no other game meat.

BJWT has no Conservation nor educational value. BJWT is a commercial brand. Serio began as a private collector who purchased animals as pets, and then saw a way to make money.

Serio does not know anything about the ethical management of captive wildlife. The Mexican Government must also take responsibility for their lack of ethical standards, guidelines and protocols.

An investigation into BJWT and Eduardo Serio has covered subjects such as lack of care, the exploitation of the animals in his care, the abysmal environment, the constant rotation of cubs bred for him to support his business and the gross misrepresentation of conservation, the glorification and promotion of cub petting and wildlife interaction, the lack of transparency, the hidden and often times doctored documents stating what animals have come and gone from his facility, the legal ramifications of his entities.

She closed by imploring the CRA “to think long and hard about sending the rescue lions to his zoological park and entertainment facility.”

Contrary to Eduardo Serio’s claim that BJWT is the “largest sanctuary for big cats in the world”, The Wild Animal Sanctuary, founded by Pat Craig, is actually the oldest and largest nonprofit Sanctuary in the world dedicated exclusively to rescuing captive exotic and endangered large carnivores. Under Craig’s guidance, TWAS has participated in multiple International rescues of captive exotic animals. Craig was shocked by Colombia’s choice to entrust a entity which was founded on the exploitation of captive exotic animals, like BJWT with the care of lions which have already spent their lives in exploitive circumstances. Craig urged the Colombian government to “reconsider placement with BJWT and move in a direction where the lions would have a much greater quality of life,”. While Craig acknowledged that “BJWT has enjoyed a significant increase in public exposure over the past number of years, and seems to offer a viable solution” he pointed out that “there are no viable long- term solutions available within Mexico, especially those involving BJWT.”

In addition to denouncing BJWT as a poor choice as the eventual home of the Colombian lions, Craig even extended an offer to the Colombian government to fully fund the rescue, supply shipping crates, transport and house all six lions on the vast acreage of their own Internationally renown foundation.

This could have solved the issue of rehoming the lions right then and there, if the offer had been accepted.

All of this information, and more, was passed directly to the CRA and other officials,who had taken responsibility for relocating the six lions in question. Within a very short time, it was revealed that despite all of the warnings and educational information provided, Black Jaguar White Tiger was still on the top of the CRA’s list of places to send the lions. Even in the face of facts and information offered by professionals within the world of International conservation, the CRA was still swayed by the easy route, rather than the moral one. Since they had already started the process with Eduardo Serio a year ago, the first time he’d promised to rescue the lions, and then failed to do so, they pointed out that it was already “in the works”.

One might consider, though, that it would take the same amount of effort from the CRA to provide the paperwork for BJWT, as it would for them to provide it to any other reputable and established sanctuary.

In the ensuing time since all of this took place, Eddie–who readers should remember insisted that he did not have the money, to transport and house the lions–has also been given some twenty other big cats, by the Mexican government. Eduardo has gloated and preened over his “salvation” of these twenty-some big cats, and his mindless followers have cheered him on. Not one of them seem to realize that they’ve sent BJWT over $60,000.00 to “rescue” the lions in Colombian because he could not afford to save them, yet he somehow could afford to save and house the twenty-some big cats given to him by the Mexican government. Just in the last few weeks several more cubs have appeared with various stories, including the ever popular trope that a tiger arrived pregnant and then gave birth, but immediately abandoned her cubs. And just a few days ago, Serio proclaimed that BJWT would be getting “a lot more Angels in the coming weeks” and urged fans to buy now-discounted merchandise, and donate to the Foundation. BJWT has also been heavily pushing advertisement for a contest the prize being a visit to BJWT to meet the “Kids”. All you need to do to enter, is buy merchandise.

It’s been business as usual at BJWT, with new celebrity guests (Eli Roth was one of them) coming to play with the animals (including some of the new cubs) and constant advertisement for the “Win a Trip to BJWT!” The only breaks in promotional posting occurred when Serio took a detour from his rhetoric in order to share several shockingly immature and drivel-bloated public posts erroneously defaming an innocent young woman, and declaring that he was going to sue her. Apparently feeling some sort of pressure from within the Colombian government, Serio took to social media, singling out a random woman and stating that she, and she alone, was the reason that the lions from Colombia had not yet reached Black Jaguar White Tiger.

The reality behind this recent attempt at character assassination is that despite how Serio steadfastly refers to the lions as already belonging to BJWT and despite Serio’s continuous claims that the six Colombian lions have already been approved to travel to Mexico by officials, the lions have, in fact, not been cleared for transport. So someone, somewhere in the Colombian government has given Serio the idea that his precious lions might not end up being his.

Because Serio has been guaranteeing to his followers that the lions are coming to BJWT for months, he now needs a “fall guy” whom he can blame if the lions are, in truth, sent somewhere other than BJWT. Otherwise, Serio will be forced to admit that he lied about all of it from the very beginning. And he can’t very well blame the CRA, since he needs them in order to get the lions. So instead, he posted the photo of a young woman, and claimed that she, and she alone, was the cause of the delay in getting the lions to BJWT. By placing the blame on an innocent, and defenseless young conservationist, Serio can avoid throwing shade on the CRA, and he can avoid pissing off someone with the means to fight back against his defamation. The reality is, he jumped the gun, and has been swaggering around boasting that he rescued lions the custody of which he had never actually–and still has not–been awarded.

And let me remind you that Eddie already had the chance to take these lions to BJWT in 2015 but he failed to get any of the paperwork and approvals necessary to bring them to Mexico.

The fact that he still doesn’t have the paperwork, the habitats, or anything else ready has nothing at all to do with the young woman he’s chosen to publicly deride. Of course, it’s also not the first time he’s publicly attacked a young woman. For months, now, Eduardo Serio has lied and publicly tormented a young American woman whose Savannah cats he offered to temporarily house, at Black Jaguar White Tiger. This, after he fraudulently lied on customs documents to get the cats into Mexico, and then promised to return them to their owner in exchange for $1,600.00. And yet, he took the money, still refused to give the cats back, continues to lie about what went on, while calling this young American woman crazy. This is something Serio laughingly boasts about doing on a Facebook photo album. At one point, after a number of BJWT fans offered to find the young woman and kill her in order to get rid of her, Serio published the woman’s personal information, including her phone number and home address.

Such actions are not the behavior of a professional. But then, Eduard Serio is also famous for flaunting dozens of Tramadol pills–a highly addictive pain medication–and joking about how he can’t get through the day without them.

Sources have described watching Serio take Tramadol tablets three or four at a time, all through the day, every day. That Eddie himself has posted multiple times on social media flashing his stash of pain killers (which he calls “pirin tablets”) only supports what witnesses have said about his constant use of them.

His casual jokes regarding the addictive pain meds are not only highly unprofessional, but also a sign that he does not believe taking them constantly is a serious matter. One source has even asserted that one of his American friends regularly takes Tramadol across the border for him. One thing is sure, though, he never has a shortage of his beloved Tramadol, sometimes posting photos of multiple boxes, each of which contain pills. His considerable paranoia and violent attacks on anyone he perceives as a threat to his position also fit into the symptoms of long term pain medicine abuse.

And yet, this is the man the CRA, if not Colombia as a whole, seems inclined to entrust with its lions who are so desperately in need of a home. This is the man that they seem to have deemed their most important contact for big cats and their care.

A pill-popping megalomaniac who thinks nothing of committing his entire social media presence to destroying any group or person who does not worship him. One wonders if perhaps, just perhaps, those in favor of trusting Serio might come to regret their poor choices, if they aren’t already doing so at this moment.

Eduardo Serio posted several rants declaring that the woman pictured caused a three month delay in getting the lions while he was dealing with an issue that she caused. Of course, he can’t “for legal reasons” state precisely what one young woman could possibly have done that would stop two entire countries from working together on an animal transport. He also declared that the woman will “soon be jailed” but did not list why. Nor did he list why there was even a warrant out for her.

Eddie repeatedly mentioned how this young woman “hurt six lions” egging his followers on to hate her by saying that he’s “not surprised that she decided to hurt those poor six lions” and saying that “this monster damaged them on purpose,” urging, by example, his followers to condemn and malign her. Eddie then pulled out his old reliable trope of jealousy, proclaiming that “they had the lions there for years, and nobody cared, then I asked the whole world to help rescue these Angels and they hate me for this.”

Yet Eduardo Serio has still not bothered to tell his followers that HE is the reason those lions have been sitting in those cages.

Eduardo Serio accepted responsibility for the six lions whose fate he is now blaming on an innocent conservationist, and then Eduardo Serio failed to ever get the paperwork required to obtain those animals.

For over a year, Eduardo Serio failed to get the paperwork needed to rescue these six lions.

For over a year, Eduardo Serio failed (supposedly) to have the money needed to rescue these six lions.

For over a year, Eduardo Serio continued to “save” and “rescue” dozens of other big cats (cubs, of course) while never even mentioning the six lions languishing in Colombia that he already promised to rescue and then abandoned.

While Eduardo Serio was using “Blue Energy” to heal lions and tigers, and dogs, and any other animal that looked cute on public posts, one of the original seven lions died in a cramped cage. While Eduardo Serio had professional photographer Gavin Bond over to Black Jaguar White Tiger repeatedly to take photos for a fabulous book they intend to publish, the six remaining Colombian lions each subsisted on two chickens a day. While Eduardo Serio hosted stars like Lewis Hamilton cuddling various batches of cubs he procured, the Colombian lions remained locked in cages, never having the benefit of touching the ground. While Eduardo Serio made lucrative for-profit business contracts with Hublot Watch company, the Swarovski Crystal company, and others, to bring in money to his own foundation, the Colombian lions remained ignored.

Ignored until it became convenient for Serio to bother with them again.

And when Eduardo Serio felt threatened in the “rescue” of the Colombian lions he had been ignoring, when he suddenly got the idea that he just might not end up with those lions, what did he do? He grasped at the name of a young woman who dared speak out against him and his deplorable exploitation of big cats. A young woman whose name was erroneously given to Serio by either an ignorant fool, or an intentional saboteur.

It’s beginning to look like the CRA is more interested in what’s “easy” instead of what’s right. If the fact that they might choose to give the lions to someone who already abandoned them once wasn’t enough of an indicator of their lack of morality, then the fact that the CRA is happy to work with someone who will try to publicly destroy innocent people should be.

Wherever Serio goes, destruction follows. Fake letters threatening legal consequences for infractions that never happened. The public display of private information of individuals that his own followers have offered to kill for him. The longwinded rants placing the blame for his own failings on others. If Serio cannot get something through bribery and promises, then he’ll try to do it through lies and threats and bullying.

Yes, the six (formerly seven) Colombian lions have been living in squalor needlessly for not only months, but years. The cause, however, is not due to one single young woman.

The blame for this disaster, the whole full weight of it, lies on the shoulders of two entities:

The country of Colombia, who in their rush to join the conservation movement, banned the exploitation of animals in entertainment acts before they figured out what they would do with the unwanted animals afterward.

And Eduardo Serio, who promised the Colombian government he would rescue the lions in 2015, and then failed to do so.

Should the CRA decide to move forward with handing their lions over to Eduardo Serio, an overwrought bully who delights in terrorizing anyone he deems beneath him, few genuine conservation professionals will likely ever deal with them again. After all, no genuine conservationist ever wants to be associated with a charlatan such as Serio and his Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation.

And to Eduardo Serio, himself, *slow clap*. It takes a real man to attack a defenseless–and innocent–young woman just for the sake of throwing a temper tantrum and setting up a “fall guy”. You are the one who abandoned those lions back in 2015, and even if your fans are too stubborn to admit that, the rest of us know it, and will not forget it.

Nothing echoes louder than the words of a coward shifting the blame of their own failings onto an innocent who cannot defend themselves.

Money Over Morals: Colombia’s Conservation Failure *This article would have been published in the next few weeks. However, it is being published ahead of schedule and without being entirely complete due to the recent, savage, and completely FALSE public accusations made by Eduardo Serio of Black Jaguar White Tiger against a heroic young woman who sought to help us and others take a stand against Serio, his lies and his abuse.

#Activism #Change #education #Environment #government #Media #mexico #Research #USA

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