............................................. I'm regretfully writing a fanfic.

It's not gonna be big, but dialogue has been running in my head 24/7 and if I don't write it down I'll explode. Writing is a fun break from drawing besides and I genuinely feel like slowly dissecting other characters is helping me revisit my original stories, and dissect my own characters and bring more continuity and subtlety into them.

𝓢𝔀𝓪𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓭 : 𝓐 𝓢𝓷𝓸𝔀 𝓦𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓡𝓮𝓽𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓰

Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Far Far Away, there lived a King & Queen who were happily married. The King’s daily temper tantrums could be heard all over the land, and their silly fights were a matter of regular gossip among the subjects of the province. The aristocratic couple had only one son, Damien, a dark boy with tanned skin & hazel eyes. Everyone who met him, found him to be uniquely beautiful. One unfortunate day, the King had a sudden fall in his kingly bathrooms, & died an untimely death. A tall statue was erected in the town square, to commemorate his valiant wars, during his younger days & all the subjects paid homage at his tomb. The Queen mourned for about a month, feeling lonely for the lack of someone to squabble with. 

 Then began the reign of The Great Queen of Far Far Away.

The Queen set out to expand her empire, fighting valiantly to conquer the domains of the Lords of the West, winning many battles. While her son, now a well mannered boy of fifteen, looked after the daily affairs at his mother's castle. At the same time, the long queues of  kings & princes, asking for her hand in marriage for political leverage, grew steadily. The kingdom flourished during this period of expansion, with a steady inflow of precious metals from the defeated lands making the kingdom's treasury look like a picture from every pirate's dream. 

All was well, until the day her majesty met The Count of Well-Spun-Lies. He was tall, dark, & perceived to be amusingly idiotic. Unfortunately the Queen fell for his masculine charms. The now married couple were in pure bliss for the first few months, until the Queen was bored by the new King’s constant complaints about the quality of the bathing soaps, & aromatic perfumes because the King was very concerned about his flawless bronze skin.

But the new King had a secret, no soul except his own knew. Every night, as the clock struck twelve, The Count would stand before a mirror and chant the twelve most important words of his life, 

“Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the darkest of them all?” 

“Your Majesty, you are the darkest in all the land.”, said the same voice everyday, in its deep baritone. And the The Count would smile slyly, fix his hair & return to his bed-chamber, with peace & calm in his heart. 

                                                             ***

To escape the new King’s narcissistic self-absorption, the Queen entertained herself, by hosting massive dinners and balls with dukes & nobles, to celebrate no occasion in particular. The King & Queen grew further & further apart, but neither really cared. Not until one summer night when the castle was celebrating the eighteenth birthday of the young Prince Damien, where the Queen hoped to get the Prince married off to a dignified princess after the ball. 

The King stood once more in front of his mirror, and for the first time in his life, heard the words he had always dreaded to hear.

“You are ONE among the darkest in the land. But there now exists one who is of a darker beauty & a golden heart.” uttered the voice which was now just above a whisper. 

“And WHO might this impostor be?”, roared the King as he examined his face in the candle light, searching for wrinkles, but finding none. 

“He is the young prince who turned eighteen today.” replied the voice only the king could hear.

The King burned with jealous anger at this terrible news, & plotted his way to reclaim the title of the darkest beauty in the land. He knew the young Prince could not be harmed unless the Queen was removed, & so he laced her wine with rat poison during one of the palace parties. She did not die. So, he increased the dose by vast proportions, & the Queen was finally declared dead by the end of the week. The fate of the young prince now lay in the hands of The Count of Well-Spun-Lies.

Thus, began the evil reign of His Terribleness, the new King of Far Far Away.

The long queues of  queens & princesses, asking to be married to his Majesty returned. The King began by marrying the princesses from lands with expensive spices, perfumes & bathing oils, to regain his dark beauty. He tried every way he could to become younger, from long baths in goat milk to getting tanned in the Sun. But nothing he tried ever worked. In the meanwhile, Prince Damien was confined to the dungeons of a castle that was no longer his home.

                                                               ***

The Forgotten Prince, the subjects called him. Some said he was dead, or that he had died of grief after the death of his poor mother. But no one dared question the King, for fear that they would be beheaded for being beautiful, or worse be used in one of the insane beauty potions to enhance his youthfulness.

As the days went by, the Kings’ frustration grew. The voices in his head mocked him for his ugliness, & he almost went mad when he spotted a slightly greying hair in the mirror. He had had enough, the young prince had to die & his golden heart would be used in his latest beauty potion, mixed with rare herbs from Egypt, whose princess he had most recently been engaged to.

 “Summon the Head Huntswoman!” ordered the King, & the trembling servants rushed out of the throne room, a welcome break from his vexing presence. 

The head Huntswoman walked in, wearing all black with her bow swung over her shoulder. Her skin was brown like honey, her eyes had a fierce fire in them, & her heart was one of stone. She is pleasing to the eye, thought the King, but she has no gold, silver or spices to give me. & so the King dismissed the thought & focused on the pressing matter at hand.

“You summoned me, your Majesty?”, asked the Huntswoman with a small bow. She disliked giving respect to people, when they clearly deserved none.

“I have a proposition for you.”, he said with a stupid smirk, that he thought people found attractive. 

“Today, you will kill the young Prince in the dark forests beyond Far Far Away, & return with his heart, by midnight. Don’t think I’ll be fooled by a pig's heart in place of the Princes! That has been done before. I’ll have my doctors closely examine the heart! You will leave now.” commanded the King. 

She gave a curt nod, showing no sign of weakness. 

The Huntswoman was surprised by her latest errand, because this proved that the forgotten prince was still alive, but she did not show her surprise, for she had committed crimes far worse than killing a Prince at his Majesty’s command. The once happy land of Far Far Away now lived in mortal fear of its erratic King; and the Huntswoman, though she hated it, was another pawn in His Majesty’s wicked game.

“You are dismissed.” he added with an air of annoyance. He was late for his new bath, this time with spices brought all the way from China.

The Huntswoman left without a word, and proceeded to the dark dungeons of the castle, which always brought a chill to her skin. She had been there several times, twice for disobeying the King, and the other times to torture innocent subjects for crimes they had never committed. But she shrugged those painful memories away.

                                                               ***

In under two hours she had the Prince sitting on a horse beside her. All she had told the Prince was that the King had asked them to visit the dangerous forests at the border & find him a special kind of herb for his potions.  

“I’m Damien, you are?”, asked the Prince, studying the handsome Huntswoman beside him who seemed lost in thought. She glanced back at him, noting the way the Sun lit up his hair like a halo, & the dimple on his left cheek when he smiled. Yes, he was beautiful, she said to herself. 

“I’m Gretel.”, she answered rather rudely, feeling bad about it immediately. The Prince sensing her hesitation to speak, did not try to converse with her further as they rode deeper into the woods. 

Suddenly, Gretel had an inkling that they were being watched, as though she was the hunter no longer, & was now the prey. And she wasn't wrong as they soon heard the sound of hooves, voices, and excited dogs following them, rapidly advancing towards them. She recognized the hounds immediately, this was the hunting party of the Princess of the North, a sworn enemy of Far Far Away. They exchanged a look & pushed both their horses into a frantic run, as they sped through the forest brush, as fast as their horses could take them. 

There was hope for a close escape, until an arrow flew through the air, intending to kill Gretel when instead the Prince pushed his horse in the way & the arrow plunged straight through his heart. The Prince fell off his horse with a groan, & immediately fell into a coma. Gretel, quickly stalled her horse & fell by his side in shock,thoroughly puzzled by the sacrifice the Prince had just made for her. Why had he given his life in place of hers, when he knew nothing about her but her name ? And she was supposed to murder him later that evening.

                                                                ***

“And who might this beauty be?”, asked the Princess of the North in her shrill voice, pointing to Damien, who was growing paler by the second. 

“He is the Forgotten Price of Far Far Away.”, replied Gretel in a calm voice, that was the opposite to the turmoil she was facing on the inside. 

“Well, he’s dying. He needs his true loves’ kiss!”, said the Princess matter-of-factly & gave the Prince a long sloppy kiss. But his lips only turned blue, & his skin turned as white as snow. 

“He’s already dead”, said the Princess in irritation. “I shall have him placed in  a glass casket at my castle for all the world to gaze at his deathly beauty.”, she declared, climbing onto her horse & shouting orders for her guards to follow.

When the hunting party had left, Gretel could stay calm no longer,& the tears began streaming down her face, as she leaned in to kiss the Prince on his cheek as a final goodbye. If only they had more time, she would understand his kindness, but now all she felt was guilt, for that arrow could very well have been her own.

“Why are you crying?”, asked the Prince with concern in his tone. Gretel opened her eyes & found lovely hazel eyes staring back at her, as the Prince tried to sit up. 

“I thought you were dead!”, she stated, between tears. 

“Don’t worry, the arrow missed my heart, it's wedged in my shoulder”, he replied, prying the rest of the arrow out. 

“But you turned blue, & white.” she continued, wiping away her tears. 

“Yes, that happens whenever I have fits or concussions”, he replied with  a laugh taking her hands in his.

“Shall we run away?”, he asks, pointing at the horses behind them.

“Why not?”, she replied with a mischievous glint in her eyes, showing him the bag of gold bullion which had been forgotten during the scuffle. And so they raced their horses towards freedom, into a night full of new hopes & beginnings.

                                                      * The End * 

Copyright Ⓒ Megan Pereira 2020

Pic Credits : Wiki Fandom

Reading Saturday

Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey. Book 6 of The Expanse series. "I made my name with the story on the Behemoth. Aliens and wormhole gates and a protomolecule ghost that only talked to the most famous person in the solar system. I don't think my follow-up to that can be "Humans Still Shitty to Each Other". Lacks panache." That's Monica Stuart, a journalist looking for her next story, but it makes a fairly good summary of Nemesis Games as well – though I'd disagree about it lacking panache. After five books of zombie viruses and a vast galaxy of empty planets for the taking and physics-defying abandoned security systems, Nemesis Games features pretty much no alien content at all. Instead we have humanity reacting to these events, mostly in negative ways that feature them being, well, shitty to each other. The biggest reaction comes from the Belters, millions of humans born and raised in no-gravity or low-gravity. Those conditions have led to extremely low bone-mass (among other physical adaptations), which means all those new planets out there for the taking? The Belters won't be going to them, at least not without months or years of expensive medical therapy that's out of reach for most of them. They can see the future coming, and it's going to abandon them to poverty and irrelevance. They lash out with terrorist attacks on a scale grander than any before, as though enough violence will force humanity back to where it was before the first encounter with the alien protomolecule. That might be an impossible goal, but a hell of a lot of people are going to die anyway. Meanwhile, the spaceship Rocinante is in need of repairs, which means our four main characters are out of action for a few months. They take this opportunity to split up and visit family and old friends – Amos to Earth, Alex to Mars, Naomi to the Belt, and Jim stays with the ship at the repair station. Having separate plotlines means that each one gets their own POV, and you guys, I was so excited! I've been waiting to hear Naomi or Alex's voice since Book One, and this does not disappoint. Amos's narration was particularly well-written; he's a straight-up sociopath (though one who tries to do good nonetheless) and struggles to recognize emotions either in himself or in others, often defaulting to describing social situations as a set of maneuvers toward a desired outcome. It lends his POV a curiously flat tone, but one that is really interesting to read. The four crew members are still separated when the terrorist attacks begin, and most of the emotion in the book comes from them trying to desperately make their way back to one another. Each one thinks of the others as family, as home – this is such an absolute fantastic series for those Chosen Family feels – especially Jim, and who would have thought the boring action hero of Book One could become such an adorable softie? He spends a significant portion of this book being sad that no one will do the space-equivalent of texting him back, and I love him so much. Holden could sit at a tiny table skimming the latest news on his hand terminal, reading messages, and finally check out all the books he’d downloaded over the last six years. The bar served the same food as the restaurant out front, and while it was not something anyone from Earth would have mistaken for Italian, it was edible. The cocktails were mediocre and cheap. It might almost have been tolerable if Naomi hadn’t seemingly fallen out of the universe. Alex sent regular updates about where he was and what he was up to. Amos had his terminal automatically send a message letting Holden know his flight had landed on Luna, and then New York. From Naomi, nothing. She still existed, or at least her hand terminal did. The messages he sent arrived somewhere. He never got a failed connection from the network. But the successfully received message was his only reply. After a couple weeks of his new bad Italian food and cheap cocktails routine, his terminal finally rang with an incoming voice request. He knew it couldn’t be from Naomi. The light lag made a live connection unworkable for any two people not living on the same station. But he still pulled the terminal out of his pocket so fast that he fumbled it across the room. Each character gets to star in a very different genre within this one book: Jim himself is in a political thriller, trying to find the mole hidden in the security forces; Amos is making his way through a post-apocalyptic landscape; Naomi is in a prison-break movie; and Alex gets at least two extremely cool car chases (well, spaceship chases) between being a detective following the paper trail. All of them are great, but I think my favorite is Naomi's, which is an incredible depiction of the harm and suffocation of emotional abuse (gaslighting in particular) and the depression and learned helplessness that can result, especially when everyone around you sees nothing wrong. We get a lot more about her long-awaited backstory, as well as Amos's, and there are reappearances of a lot of my favorite secondary characters: Martian marine Bobbie, failed murderer Clarissa Mao, foul-mouthed politician Chrisjen Avasarala. (Though I'm still holding out hope Prax will show up again someday; I miss him.) All through The Expanse series I've admired Corey's focus on petty human squabbling and politicking in the face of grand, universe-changing discoveries. Nemesis Games is that thread turned up to eleven. It's not a cynical series, though; for every narrow-minded failure there's an equally small but important triumph of friendship or justice or well-meaning. It reminds me of Terry Pratchett, in a way. Not at all in Corey's style of writing or type of humor, but they both have a view of humanity which is simultaneously realistic and fond and exasperated. And if there's a bigger compliment than that, I don't know what it is. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. Book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries. A security robot/cyborg armed with all sorts of guns and other methods of killing has hacked its governor module, allowing it to do whatever it wants, and nicknames itself Murderbot. But it turns out that what Murderbot really wants to do is spend hours watching dumb sci-fi TV shows, avoid eye contact or any social encounters with humans, and not have to deal with its own emotions. Unfortunately that last one is hard to avoid. In this book, Murderbot is heading to a mining planet where it knows something bad went down in its past, involving lots of human deaths. But Murderbot can't remember exactly what happened, since its memory was wiped, and so it's off to investigate. Getting to the planet means hitching a ride on a spaceship run by a massively complicated AI (which Murderbot promptly nicknames ART: Asshole Research Transport) and then getting a job as a human bodyguard to a group of scientists heading down to the planet's surface. Things, unsurprisingly, go wrong, and Murderbot finds itself with another pack of dumb humans in need of protection. I enjoyed Artificial Condition a lot, but it's not quite as good as the first book in the series, All Systems Red. Part of that is very simply that it's a middle book of the series, and it shows; progress in the larger plot is made, but not much, and there's a feeling of spinning our wheels while we wait for big events to happen. That said, it's still an extremely enjoyable novella (only about 120 pages), which builds out the world from what we learned in All Systems Red. Now we have sexbots and ship navigators, more about how different governments interact and function (or don't), and some hints as to what's going on with the company that created Murderbot. Plus there's Murderbot's wonderful narration, which honestly is worth the price of admission all on its own. A section from where it introduces ART to trashy entertainment: I watched seven more episodes of Sanctuary Moon with it hanging around my feed. Then it pinged me, like I somehow might not know it had been in my feed all this time, and sent me a request to go back to the new adventure show I had started to watch when it had interrupted me. (It was called Worldhoppers, and was about freelance explorers who extended the wormhole and ring networks into uninhabited star systems. It looked very unrealistic and inaccurate, which was exactly what I liked.) [...] “It’s not realistic,” I told it. “It’s not supposed to be realistic. It’s a story, not a documentary. If you complain about that, I’ll stop watching.” I will refrain from complaint, it said. (Imagine that in the most sarcastic tone you can, and you’ll have some idea of how it sounded.) So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on. At the climax of one of the main story lines, the plot suggested the ship might be catastrophically damaged and members of the crew killed or injured, and the transport was afraid to watch it. (That’s obviously not how it phrased it, but yeah, it was afraid to watch it.) I was feeling a lot more charitable toward it by that point so was willing to let it ease into the episode by watching one to two minutes at a time. After it was over, it just sat there, not even pretending to do diagnostics. It sat there for a full ten minutes, which is a lot of processing time for a bot that sophisticated. Then it said, Again, please. So I started the first episode again. C'mon, tell me you wouldn't read a million pages of that, plot or no plot.

[DW link for easier commenting]

#PABoost: Kris Aquino, the showbiz cockroach, bit off more social media fodder than she can chew

After the Nagasaki and Hiroshima nuclear attacks, reports came out that cockroaches were the only creatures that survived the two blasts. With that said, I think it can be argued that Kris Aquino is the showbiz equivalent of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima Cockroaches, with her atomic blasts being the many scandals she survived throughout her showbiz career. And what's the problem? Kris Aquino's #PABoost Scandal, the latest atomic blast,  is something that even a cockroach like her may not survive.

ANALYZING ANALYTICS DATA

Recall the controversial Pep.ph article "Nicko Falcis swears Kris Aquino said: 'PAPAPATAY KA NG PAMILYA KO'", that most likely triggered her latest press conference. I used an analytics app to find out how the said article went viral on social media and I discovered something really interesting: For the Motherland - Sass Rogando Sasot and Thinking Pinoy appears to have influenced 27,500 or over 65% of the 42,000 shares Pep.ph’s article garnered.

Facebook's CrowdTangle comes as a Google Chrome extension app that instantly provides social media analytics data of any given page.

Facebook's CrowdTangle, a service that describes itself as a tool to "measure social performance and identify influencers with tools designed for publishers.", is a great tool to find out how a given article spreads through Social Media, and that's what I used here. Note that the "Total Interactions" under "Top Referrals" cover only pages and not profiles, so that the over 33,000 total interactions figure shown comes only from pages, while the other 9,000 comes from personal profiles. Going back, analytics data shows most of the article's traffic basically came from TP and Sass' followers, people who are very well aware of the #PABoost controversy, where various screenshots released by the camp of her estranged financial manager Nicko Falcis

KRIS WILFULLY IGNORED #PABOOST

If Kris Aquino's massive social media team is worth its salt, it should also be totally aware of the allegations that Aquino's been funding at least one political propagandist [TP: #PABoost]. Thus, Aquino must have also been aware of the issue, unless her social media people are too scared of telling her about it for fear of suffering the same fate as her former financial manager. Nah! Kris must know about #PABoost: she’s known to be really good at PR work and she’s not totally stupid. Despite this, Aquino in her live video reply to the Pep article totally ignored the #PABoost Scandal and instead resorted to various appeals to emotion: her kids' welfare, her parents' legacy, her supposedly serious medical issues, and what not. But then, there are two important details that Aquino mentioned in her live video:

[1] That her endorsement deals are under threat, supposedly because of the health clause in those contracts. 

[2] That she will take a 14-day hiatus from social media, supposedly per doctors’ advice

And here’s where it gets interesting. These two bits of information from Aquino, mentioned in the previous section, should be taken with a grain of salt. However, what’s clear and stipulatable so far are:

[1] That her endorsement deals are under threat, and

[2] That she will take a 14-day break from social media.

Yes, Aquino cited health concerns to justify both, but considering that someone like her who’s concededly more than adept at Public Relations, I cannot help but think that the alibi is all-too-convenient.

POLITICS AND PRODUCT ENDORSERS

Companies who want to sell to as large a chunk of the population want their endorsers to be likable by the largest possible audience. On the other hand, political discourse is inherently divisive. Thus, there’s a widely-held notion in the advertising industry that product endorsers should never delve too deeply in politics because it limits their ability to enhance product sales. I admit that sans a courtroom trial, we can never definitively prove beyond reasonable doubt that Aquino is funding opposition propagandists. The preponderance of evidence pointing to it, however,  appears to be more than enough to convince the Court of Public Opinion. And there’s the problem: Kris has hundreds of millions worth of endorsement deals from companies who would most likely prefer getting apolitical endorsers. Aquino herself admitted not too long ago that she chose not to run for office in the 2019 midterm elections for fear of losing these contracts.But rumors of a senatorial run pale in comparison to accusations of financing political propaganda. That is, I have reason to believe that Aquino’s involvement in the #PABoost Scandal may have started to become a hot topic in more than a few company boardrooms, likely resulting to more than a few company directors’ suggestions to ditch Aquino in favor of a new endorser who can reach a larger segment of their target markets. Vice Ganda, for example, is a suitable alternative endorser for products that cater to socioeconomic classes C, D, E.

Vice Ganda (L) and Kris Aquino (R)

Surely, Vice Ganda endorsing Uni-Pak sardines will most likely result in better sales than a haciendera Kris Aquino doing the same. We all know that Kris is a socialite to the bone and we hardly expect her to buy Uni-Pak. She probably even feeds something more expensive to her dogs. The relatable Vice Ganda, despite her inclination towards Duterte as shown in what happened during Duterte’s July 2015 Gandang Gabi Vice guesting, remains largely apolitical, unlike Aquino who’s even funding political bloggers. I believe that the treat to her endorsement deals are less about her medical condition and more about her politics. And this theory is further reinforced by her supposedly self-imposed 14-day break from Social Media.

WHY 14 DAYS?

Aquino in her live video announced a 14-day hiatus from social media supposedly to avoid stress that her doctors supposedly said could worsen her Lupus. What I find odd, however, is the seemingly arbitrarily chosen length of her hiatus. Why 14 days? Why not 7? Why not longer? Did her doctors tell her that she’ll be significantly healthier in just 14 days, healthy enough to deal with social media-induced stress? I doubt it. Aquino herself admitted to being allergic to Lupus-related medicines, and Lupus in itself is incurable. If Aquino indeed decided to take a break from social media due to her medical condition, the break should be for a much longer period of, say, at least a few months or even a year. But 14 days, just 14 days? Social media is a fast-paced environment where issues enjoy a very short shelf life. The talk of the town today will most likely be forgotten as soon as another issue comes up. For example, the Tony Labrusca airport scandal along with rumors about his sexuality that erupted earlier this week have been relegated to the sidelines right after Aquino’s press conference.

Chismis time! Ano pang hinihintay n’yo? Pasok! I-tag na ang mga ka-chismosa natin para hindi mahuli. Posted by Senyora on Friday, January 4, 2019

That is, I cannot help but think that the 14-day hiatus is less about her health and more about preserving what’s left of her showbiz career. That is, it appears that she’s hoping that the #PABoost scandal would have died down by the end of her vacation.

KRIS AQUINO, THE COCKROACH OF SHOWBIZ

Right after the United States dropped atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the Second World War, reports came out that cockroaches were the only creatures that survived the two blasts. And I think everyone will agree that in this respect, Kris Aquino is the showbiz equivalent of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima Cockroaches, with her atomic bombs being the many scandals she survived throughout her showbiz career. Do you still remember…

…her affair with the married actor Philip Salvador that produced a baby? …her (yet another) affair with comedian Joey Marquez where she even claimed to have contracted STDs? …her much-publicized rift with her erstwhile best buddy and actress Ai-ai de las Alas? …her seemingly apocalyptic breakup with baller James Yap that includes a protracted custody battle over their child?

These are just some of the many scandals she faced throughout the decades.

Oh, and I forgot Bistek!

Kris Aquino did not only survive all these scandals: she even deftly used the publicity to boost her popularity that, in turn, allowed her to snag multi-million-peso endorsement contracts, catapulting her to top of the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s top individual taxpayers’ list. But there the abovementioned scandals share one common denominator, a common denominator that the recent Aquino-Falcis #PABoost Scandal doesn’t have.

KEEPING IT PERSONAL

The past scandals enumerated in the previous section have one thing in common: the issues are extremely personal in nature, so that the public has no significant stake in the matter. Any regular Filipino who watched each of these quite entertaining events unfold knows full well that nothing in his life change whatever happens. Contrast that to the Aquino-Falcis #PABoost Scandal that, unlike the previous ones, took on a very political dimension. What initially started as a financial squabble slowly metamorphosed into a political issue after Aquino was found out to have been significantly funding anti-government political propagandists. Her financing an opposition-aligned blogger wouldn’t have mattered much if it happened in the 2000s. But a product endorser doing the same is a terrible idea at an age where every Pedro, Pablo, and Pekto is actively engaged in political discourse, and 74% of every Pedro, Pablo, and Pekto are satisfied with the Duterte Administration.

NA-BOOST KAYA NI NICKO FALCIS? Boost is how Facebook calls paid promotional posts. That is, a page administrator can... Posted by Thinking Pinoy on Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Unlike Kris Aquino’s previous scandals, the public now has a stake in her kerfuffle with Falcis. That is, the general public, instead of watching her make a fool of herself as usual just for kicks, feel that any semblance of victory on Kris Aquino’s part is a major blow against general public interest. After all, if Kris Aquino emerges victorious through-and-through, then she can just continue funding anti-government propagandists, to the detriment of Filipinos who are sick and tired of the brand of governance that her brother and former president Noynoy Aquino’s opposition espouses. Kris Aquino, as a product endorser, is basically a salesperson. Now, imagine a salesperson who tells you that you made a stupid decision to support your president then, at the same breath, attempt to sell you Uni-Pak sardines, Ariel detergent, UFC ketchup, Marca Piña soy sauce and what not? That’s ridiculous: I’d rather buy Ligo, Tide, Hunt's Ketchup, and Datu Puti, than help support the livelihood of Kris Aquino, the Kris Aquino who supports the livelihood of propagandists that will bring my country back to the nightmares of Yolanda and Mamasapano.

[UPDATE: Readers pointed out that Tide, like Ariel, is from Procter and Gamble. So I'll just buy Surf, I guess.]

Kris Aquino's many endorsement deals.

The latest developments in the Aquino-Falcis #PABoost brouhaha suggests that Kris is now in a scandal that she, unlike before, cannot possibly take advantage of. Kris Aquino basically bit off more social media fodder than she can chew. Will she continue to fund political propagandists after this? I do not know, but what’s clear is that the Liberal Partygoers, who so fervently paint their social media bloggers as selfless, patriotic, and independent activists, cannot do so anymore. Why? Because Kris Aquino proved that Liberal Party’s ogrish poster girl for social media – Pinoy Ako Blog’s Jover Laurio that she herself finances – is a paid hack. As for Vice Ganda's manager, I strongly suggest that you take even greater care of your talent's interests right away. Here's an opportunity. Grab it. *wink*. [RJ Nieto/ThinkingPinoy]

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