Cell analogy stories

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Grayson kept his promise and came over to talk with me. He arrived after classes for both of us were done for the day. It also meant that Cassie was home and this time, she didn’t vanish into her bedroom to give us privacy. She waited until we were both seated in the living room and Titanosaur was settled in Grayson’s lap, thereby preventing him from escaping.
Please don’t read too much into that, as I’ve said before Titanosaur has like three brain cells and will sit in literally anyone’s lap. Our landlady sent her husband over to fix the leaking faucet in the bathroom and Titan was trying to climb in his lap while the poor guy was sitting there with half his body inside of a cabinet.
Then Cassie came over, carrying a chair from the kitchen, and also seated herself with us. I glanced at Grayson. He looked dismayed, but was hiding it well in an effort to be polite. I decided to lean into my non-confrontational side and not ask her to leave.
“You’ve been acting a bit out of character lately,” I began delicately. “As a friend, I’m worried about you.”
“And I’m worried too,” Cassie added. “Maybe you don’t think of me as a friend, but you’ve been hanging out around Ashley enough that I consider you one of mine.”
Huh. I wasn’t expecting that, to be honest. I thought Cassie didn’t like him. I don’t think she was lying, either.
“Have you considered getting grief counseling?” she continued.
Straight to the point. I was glad Cassie was there. My plan was to tiptoe delicately around the subject for what probably would have been another 500 words worth of dialogue here in this post I’m writing up. Fortunately, Cassie’s willingness to address a problem directly saved me the typing and you the tedium.
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t,” Grayson said. “The university doesn’t know he’s gone yet.”
“Who is running this place?” Cassie asked in amazement.
I know. We’ve all been thinking it. Turns out the answer is ‘there’s a board’ and they make all the real decisions. The president is just a figurehead. Which is pretty obvious if you stop and think about it. I wanted to ask if the flickering man reported to the board but I also didn’t want to derail the conversation with things that really didn’t matter anymore. It’s safer to just assume the board is the administration I’ve been wondering about this whole time. Heck, it’s safer to assume everyone except for the students and professors are responsible in some part for the whole monster situation.
Sorry for not finding out for certain, but Grayson was working through some important stuff and I didn’t dare interrupt.
“I don’t want counseling, either,” he continued. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I never cared for him. Not in a familial sense. My presence was more to fill a role.”
Things were starting to connect in my head. This conversation reminded me of some things the flickering man had said. Roles to be filled. A cycle, ushering in new students to fill them. They’d been filling the president’s role with a corpse - a very old one, judging by the date on the photo Cassie took of the headstone - so perhaps that wasn’t the only role being filled.
“Were you adopted?” I asked. “By the president?”
“I was.”
Beside me, Cassie took a deep breath. It wasn’t from shock. It sounded more like… annoyance. If I’m being generous with the term.
“The flickering man said something to me,” I said slowly. “That I wasn’t the first person he’d seen like this and I wouldn’t be the last. Are you… not the only child that the president has adopted?”
“...I’m not.”
This is the point where Cassie just lost it. Stood up, yelled ‘why the fuck didn’t you tell us any of this?!’ and stormed out of the room. She slammed the door to her bedroom shut behind her. Grayson and I sat there in the living room for a good minute, stunned, listening to what I’m 99% certain was Cassie screaming into her pillow. Then the door opened and she returned to calmly sit down on the sofa again.
“I’m good,” she said. “All better. Please continue.”
The details of the conversation get a little fuzzy at this point, as it seems that even though the forgetter is gone I’m still having memory issues. Unfortunately Grayson was right - it wasn’t the forgetter that was responsible for my particular variety of memory loss. There’s something else trying to protect Grayson.
I suspect the tree in the graveyard. Its roots have spread all over campus, after all.
Sorry to be so blase about this but it’s not actually that upsetting anymore. It’s just this thing we’re dealing with.
It’s a good thing Cassie was present for the rest of the conversation. She filled me in on the details later, after we’d confirmed that I had some significant gaps. Grayson explained a bit more about the whole adoption thing. He didn’t know who his birth parents were. He’d never been outside of this town and basically grew up on campus. This is all kind of recapping what we already knew or guessed at, but the adoption angle was new at least. I’d assumed that his dad had died and been replaced, which he had, except it wasn’t his dad at all and Grayson’s role as the son was being replaced over and over also.
Which is all kinds of fucked up.
It also means that this has been going on for generations and I think we all know why that’s rather alarming.
“What happened to the previous adopted kids?” I asked once we’d gotten through this rather confusing summary.
“They died.”
There was a heavy silence in the room.
“How?” I asked.
“Well… one drowned. Another suffocated.” He hesitated. “This is kind of why I’m reluctant to tell people I’m the president’s son.”
“Grayson, are you worried someone will try to kill you?” Cassie asked flatly.
“...yeah. I am, actually.”
Screaming into a pillow myself was starting to look pretty tempting.
Now I’m sure you’re all thinking what I was thinking at this point. If the university was just recycling the president’s corpse and finding new children to play the role of their child for… reasons??? then perhaps that was why the flickering man was interested in me. Perhaps I was Grayson’s replacement, as many of you have theorized.
I mean, it seems pretty suspicious. Grayson’s dad is getting his soul replaced on the regular - or at least, he was. Grayson himself is a replacement for prior Graysons but I guess since they don’t need an adult, they’re just grabbing any ol’ kid to fill the role for a while. But the former Graysons keep dying because the inhumans get him? Grayson has a lot of protection on campus but he’s not immune - I’ve watched him get attacked by the steam ghost in particular.
Which leads me to my own theory. If I am a replacement, I don’t fit the mold. Perhaps that’s why the flickering man hated me so much. I’m too old (legal adult yay) and… I’m not a son.
But I wanted to confirm some things.
We wrapped up the conversation with Grayson because we were running out of mental capacity to ask more questions. He was clearly uncomfortable and there was a lot to process. He did promise to not be so difficult about this in the future. He wasn’t really grieving. He was just… uncertain. He didn’t know what to do anymore. Which is fair. When you’re raised to fill a role and suddenly that role is gone it’s hard to adjust.
I know what that feels like.
After Grayson left I messaged Maria asking if she knew anyone that was good with a camera. Like, really good. And also good in high stress situations. She got back to me pretty quickly. Maria is starting to become one of those people who knows everyone. She’s heading firmly down the road of becoming the subject of one of those unhinged tumblr posts where someone magically summons an army of people to fulfill a task, while she stays on the sidelines quietly directing the ever-increasing chaos.
Fortunately, she’s not there quite yet, but she is freakishly well-connected for a campus of this size. Within an hour she had me in a group chat with someone from the Folklore Society who fit all my requirements, even the unspoken ones. Someone that was good with a camera in “hostile circumstances” (her words, very accurate) and wouldn’t cut and run the moment things got a little weird. I think you all see where I was going with this.
Yeah, we were going to get photos of something inhuman.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
For starters, it’s not safe just getting close to an inhuman to photograph it. And once you do, that opens a whole new set of hazards. If the inhuman takes offense to being photographed, then they’re going to do anything they have to to get the photo destroyed and all rules are off the table when it comes to disguising their existence. Think of it like this - an inhuman might not be able to enter a house due to hospitality rules keeping them out, but this is weighed against their need to keep their presence obscured. The latter wins. Hospitality rules are no longer enough protection.
That’s my understanding, at least.
And sure, there are inhumans that don’t seem to care if a photo or two are leaked to the internet, but you have no way of knowing in advance. Let’s say you get lucky and nothing comes after you to destroy the phone/camera, computer, your social media accounts, and you. You’re not quite off the hook. That photo is a connection to the inhuman and if the creature captured in it doesn’t use it as an access point, something else might.
Photos are just a bad idea all around.
So we agreed that if we were going to go ahead with this stupid plan, we’d do so with as many safety measures as we could. First, the person taking the photo would be fully informed on the potential consequences. I was hoping that they could just teach Maria or I how to use a camera, but considering they were in the inner circle Folklore Society (what I’m calling the folks that know the monsters aren’t just stories) they wanted to come in person. I tried to talk them out of it, they finally made a snarky comment about if I wanted them to sign a waiver, and I dropped the topic.
Secondly, we were going to destroy both the photo and the camera afterwards. I got online and ordered the cheapest digital camera I could find. It was a camera designed for young children so it was pastel pink with teddy bears on it, but whatever, it was digital and didn’t cost over $30. The money from my job at the dining hall has helped with the finances but I didn’t particularly feel like lighting it on fire.
Especially since we planned to literally light the camera on fire when we were done. I wasn’t looking forward to the smell of burning plastic but fire is both a thorough and symbolically traditional way to dispose of things. Like I said, we were trying to do this as safely as we could.
The camera arrived the next day so we decided to go ahead with our plan that evening. Cassie would stay home because we felt having too many people might be a hindrance if we had to bail out. Also, she had “digital date night” with her girlfriend and I didn’t want to interfere.
Then we found a discreet entrance to the steam tunnels.
I wanted a photograph of the steam ghost. It had a face. I wanted to see what that face looked like.
I’d scouted out the steam tunnel entrances beforehand, while waiting for the burner (lol) camera to arrive. Last time I’d looked inside, they were clogged with roots. However, if the roots were originating from the graveyard, then perhaps the parts of campus that were farthest away would be clear enough to traverse. I got lucky and found an entrance inside of one of the dorms that’s out by the parking lot. The lobby is open and from there it’s easy enough to just coast into the stairwell behind someone with a keycard and then down into the basement. There were roots, but they hung from the ceiling as slender tendrils that brushed the top of my head like the faint touch of a moth. I didn’t go far inside. Just enough to confirm it didn’t get any worse and we had a long corridor free of obstruction.
When I came back, I had Maria and the photographer with me.
His name is Jacob and he’s a sophomore. He joined the Folklore Society because he realized he wasn’t making any attempts to be social, at college of all places, and picked a club that seemed like it would be small so he didn’t have to deal with crowds. Large groups of people intimidated him. I can certainly relate to that.
I feel bad for him. Imagine getting caught up in all this bullshit just because you had trouble making friends.
It also occurred to me that this photography excursion was also part of his attempt to make friends, because that’s what landed him in the group that had to hide from the thing in the hallway. Whatever. Maria can deal with that. She’s the extrovert.
“Let’s not forget the plan,” I said nervously as we gathered outside the door. “We get in. We get the photo. We run like hell back out the door.”
I’m happy to say that the plan worked. Every step. Swear to god.
We were about halfway to where the tunnel turned when the steam started to rise out of the ground around us. It seeped through the walls, filling our lungs and making it hard to breathe. The usual. We turned back at that point, as we wanted to be close to the exit so we could snap the photo and run once the steam ghost showed up.
The nice thing about inhumans is that they can be predictable. They have set rules they follow and so long as you follow the prescribed pattern of behavior, you know what to expect. This allows you to plan, as I’d done. So when we loitered within sprinting distance of the door, the steam ghost obliged to show up and chase us off.
Just as expected. And Jacob was ready with our pastel pink camera, so that when its face materialized out of the steam, mouth open in a silent scream and its misty hands stretched towards us, he was able to snap a photo.
Then we ran and reached the door before it caught up.
See? Exactly as planned.
There’s one more rule we learned about though. One that I’d forgotten to factor in for this crucial moment.
The doors in the steam tunnels don’t always open to the same place.
We tumbled through without thinking. I, pulling up the rear, had a moment of hesitation when I saw nothing but darkness ahead of me, but it was too late, I was in a full sprint and besides, Maria had already stumbled through the doorway. I slammed into Jacob’s back, propelling him the few steps he needed to be past the doorway, and then we were all through and the door slammed shut behind us.
The air was warm and damp. The steam tunnels, while warm, aren’t damp unless the steam ghost is present. This felt like being inside of a sauna. I could feel water beads forming on my arms, clinging to the hairs that were currently standing on end in alarm. There was a faint breeze coming from ahead of us, a slowly rhythmic flow to it like a fan. It did nothing to alleviate the heat. If anything, it was even warmer.
Maria turned her phone’s flashlight on.
We were in a corridor, much the same size as the tunnel we’d just escaped. The walls glistened with moisture, shining with the gray-pink color of rotting beef. There were no sharp angles, just a round passageway that vanished into darkness at the edge of Maria’s flashlight beam. The floor beneath our feet was slightly squishy.
And it was full of teeth.
Honestly I think I would have preferred sharp teeth, like an animal’s fangs or something out of science fiction. Instead, we got human incisors, circling the entirety of the tunnel in regular intervals.
The tunnel rippled. There was a faint gurgling sound, like the rumbling of a stomach twisting in hunger. And those rows of teeth began to tighten as the tunnel constricted around us.
“STEAM GHOST,” Maria yelled. “I CHOOSE THE STEAM GHOST.”
And she threw the door behind us open and dove back into the tunnel. Jacob grabbed my arm and dragged me along with him, as I was frozen in fear, staring at all those glistening ivory teeth. I stumbled over the doorframe and fell forwards, hitting the cement floor hard on all fours. I heard the door slam shut behind me. Frantically, I looked up at the tunnel.
No ghost. But the steam was still there, hanging heavy in the air and filling my lungs. The ghost would be back. I was certain of that.
“What now?!” Jacob asked, his earlier calm quickly giving way to panic.
“Try the door again!” I said, scrambling to my feet. “It changes!”
Maria spun around and opened the door a sliver for the second time, just enough to peer through the crack and confirm what was on the other side.
“FUCK.”
Then she slammed it shut. Opened it. Another burst of profanity, slightly more panicked than the last explicative. Meanwhile, Jacob and I cowered at her back, staring at the steam that hung thick in the air all around us, waiting to see if it was going to reform into a malevolent spirit while Maria played Russian roulette with the door.
She did this five times before she finally got the dorm we’d entered through.
Flushed and panting, we stumbled through and Jacob kicked the door to the steam tunnels shut with a determined flourish. There. We’d done it. As I’d said, our plan went perfectly. We got the photo and ran like hell to the door.
Didn’t plan on what happened after we went through the door. This is my lack of attention to detail coming into play, which is probably what also made me a shitty barista.
We crowded around Jacob to see the photo he got. This is why we recruited someone with actual photography skills. He was able to use a truly shitty camera intended for toddlers to somehow focus on a literal ghost’s face in the handful of seconds we had before it reached us, all while not panicking.
Staring at us from the tiny screen was a person’s face. Not a face made of steam. An actual flesh and blood human face. The rest of the shot was obscured by steam, framing it so that all we could see was this disembodied human face staring out at us from the camera’s digital screen. The expression was placid, the eyes hollow and devoid of emotion.
I’d seen this look before, on the library ghost. This distant stare of something that wasn’t wholly here.
“That is… really creepy,” Jacob said.
“We just escaped a hallway full of teeth and this is what you find creepy?” I said.
“No, that was creepy too. I can be terrified by multiple things at once.”
We all stared at the photo for a good few minutes, trying to commit the face to memory because we were not going to retain any copies of it. Then Jacob deleted the photo, handed me the camera, and we awkwardly went our separate ways.
I got out my phone as soon as we’d all walked off. My theory was looking plausible, but there was one more thing I could do to confirm I was on the right track.
I texted Grayson. I asked him if the children before him, the ones the president adopted, were all male.
They were.
The library ghost. The stabbed student. And now… the steam ghost.
All former students. All male. All trapped on campus after their deaths.
And for at least two of them, they seemed to have something against Grayson.
They don’t like Grayson because he replaced them.
Update: HOLY SHIT Y’ALL BATTERIES EXPLODE WHEN YOU SET THEM ON FIRE

I'm sure that title sounds a little melodramatic but I'll try to make a fairly succinct point to go with the sentiment.
I have spent so much time on earth waiting for something to happen to me. I think we all subconsciously think in our heads, one day, maybe with a little effort and good intentions, our life will come out alright. Nice and clean. Our life will finally be ready to be lived like a story, with a linear progression, everything falling into its place, eventually.
Of course anyone reading this that has been through any heartache in life knows that there is no beginning, middle and end. There are babies born every minute with decisions already made for them. There are good people dying every day who were perfectly decent if not understandably flawed, who had their life taken for no reason, suddenly. If they were lucky, they never saw it coming. Just like my brother, who died a month ago from an accidental overdose in a bathtub. He went to take a bath, made a wrong choice and.. that was that.
I don't know why I'm writing this. There's a lot of things happening in my life right now, but I know there's someone out there with this mindset I'm getting ready to address and I believe it may help some of you, who are as stubborn and set in their ways as I am, to come loose from the idea you hold so tight to and try and learn, along with me, how to take each minute as it passes.
Every word you've read this far is in the past. You can go back and reread it, but it's already there casting shadows in your subconscious. Every day you live, you're expecting something new to happen, if you're not expecting novelty, you may be expecting the same comforts or sorrows you face all the time. I want to say to you now: There is nothing you know or see, or will know or have seen, that will set itself in stone before the heavy hand of time erodes your expectations back down to the bedrock.
There's a human right now, lying in a soggy sleeping bag under a bridge, thinking about a women he loved years ago and to be antithetical, there's a human lying in a king sized bed in one of his many bedrooms, thinking of nothing or plagued by symptoms of the same thing the man under the bridge is plagued with.. Life, in all its thievery and abundance, is being placed in front of you one block at a time, measured in moments. What does it take for a person to be happy?
"There are some mistakes too monstrous for remorse to tamper or to dally with" - Edward Arlington Robinson
If you have ever made a mistake or a choice in your life that you regret and all that regret does is cause more pain to bubble up and fester inside you to come out as more poor choices, do away with your regret and start making new, better choices.
Imagine being in a blank room. A prison cell. A place with only your memories and nothing new but tye indents in the concrete walls to show you any more newness, until eventually even the walls are mapped in your mind, every contrasting bubble or imperfections. Pariedolia creating warped faces at you, mocking you from inside your evolved simian brain. At one time in your evolutionary journey, you needed those instincts, to see threats in the darkness, but now we have shone a light on all things, and hidden the things we deem uncomfortable. Now, we sit in a prison of choices, but not choices for life. Choices for moments. What kind of food do you want, what color shirt will you wear, what movie will you watch?
We were not meant to live lives like this, but we have no choice anymore. Society is a runaway vehicle, with nothing to crash into, forever building tension and suspense. That's why some many of us are so nervous and uncomfortable here. There's danger, but it isn't coming from the darkness anymore. It's not predation or a scourge or a war, at least not for the Americans. Not just now.
I'm begging anyone who is having a hard time.. Anyone who has made true mistakes and regretted those mistakes. Anyone who feels like it's hopeless, just keep doing anything. I don't care what it is. Try and make it something nice and useful. Be kind. THINK about what you're doing. You and your girlfriend are arguing? Find some way to make it okay and if it can't be okay, be okay with the idea that it isn't okay and turn your mind to the next thing. Are you waiting on life changing news? A diagnosis? A prison sentence? Something awful? Something great? It will be there, when it gets there. For now, there are sights and sounds that you cannot predict, coming for you at all angles. Appreciate that. Embrace whatever this is and be at peace with it. I don't care what you believe, you cannot tell me you know anything for sure. I know that I will learn and cry and be surprised and not so surprised until the day I leave this world. I watch my son and my parents learn about life at the same pace. There is no learning curve, except for perspective.
I wrote all this and doubt it will be read by many and it doesn't mean anything really..
I wanted to take some of my precious time to tell you, whoever you are, that you are going to be okay. Whether you are well-off, happy, miserable, terminally I'll or just browsing your phone. One day, something bad will happen. One day something good will happen. One day, you will struggle to understand. One day, you will stand in the midst of all knowing.
I am not preaching so much as I am imploring you, admittedly rambling a bit, to take your life as it comes. When you feel you are at the worst points in life, just keep going. It will end eventually and you'll be okay then as well. Hug your family. Love each other. If you make a mistake, try to make it right, but if you can't, move on with better goals. Make this world better than it is, because we all have to live in it.
That's all I wanted to vomit out at the moment. I love you for being human. Know who you are and accept it. Don't run. There's absolutely nowhere to go. Just ride it out until there's a sudden and heavenly release of your tension. One day, you'll have to let go. Start practicing for that moment. Believe me, there's plenty of practice.
Be well. ❤️

.. and if it wasn't for that shady last arc with The Hand, I would consider it to be as good as the Bendis run. The Devil in Cell Block D and the Mr. Fear arc are some of the best Daredevil stories ever, in my opinion.
Writing wise, Brubaker's gonna Brubaker, I mean the guy is just too good. I also absolutely adore Lark's art, which I first discovered during Gotham Central (also written by Brubaker, with Greg Rucka).
Like I said, the very last arc is the only one that made me go "eh". Not that it's terrible, but it simultaneously felt too long but also rushed, if that makes sense. I have never read Diggle's run so I don't know if what Brubaker's laid out payed off in the end.

I've lived in my house for about 5 years now. When we moved in there was a cat outside that would come over every day. If we were outside doing work, he would follow us around. He'd hang out around our house during the day.
He would also hang out at the house across the street. He would disappear during the winter and we always assumed they took him inside. We have no confirmation on this.
Recently, we had to put him down. Last spring, he came back with a gash on his side. We were going to take him to the vet but it started healing on its own. This year, he came back with his jaw all fucked. For about the first month, he stayed on our porch in a cat house we had out there for him. We fed him wet food, and tried to bring him back up to strength. He eventually started wandering around the neighborhood again, but he wasn't gaining any weight and he wasn't acting like himself.
I took him to vet as soon as I got the money to (which was about when my tax refund came in). I was expecting to go in, get some medicine, maybe have to take him inside for a bit. The vet told us he had feline aids and his bone marrow wasn't making any new blood cells. Anything they could do for him could push him over and kill him. Our only real choice was to put him down. It was a hard decision to make, but I was able to end up making it.
I had to take the rest of the day off work bc I couldn't stop crying. The rest of that week wasn't much better. I'm doing a little better, but I still end up tearing up if I think about him.
While I was at work on Saturday, the neighbor across the street came over and talked to my mom. Said that he had been around for at least 15 years (we were estimating 6-8 years). Gave her his whole back story.
Today, they came over to ask if we had anything done with his body. The vet we went to sent him somewhere to get him cremated, and we got his ashes yesterday. Our neighbor had asked for his ashes because she had known him longer and had a "better connection with him".
My mom had gotten me outside for the last part of the conversation. I didn't really say much, I don't like talking to people very much and talking about him still gets me choked up. My mom had stalled saying I had ordered a necklace to put some of his ashes in to keep him with me.
Right now she's looking for another box to put some of his ashes to give to them. We're both feeling bad about separating him. But the box I got from the cremation service has his name engraved on it (which the neighbor has said she doesn't like the name we gave him) and I spent 130 on his cremation stuff alone. The full expenses are around $400.
I'm the one who took him to the vet. I'm the one who had to make the decision. I'm the one who paid for it all.
I already have 4 different memorabilia items shipping for him.
I'm just not sure if I'm doing the right thing. We've ordered another box to put half of him in. We're keeping the pawprint and fur that the cremation business gave us. I just feel bad separating him, even if it is to someone else who cared about him.
I don't even know what response I'm expecting or wanting here. Thank you for letting me get my thoughts out and any feedback you all have.

Expedition Yeltomar
Frank, a human male in his middle ages, sits in the pilot seat of the small single occupant shuttle. It had been a rather challenging descent so he was taking this time to catch his breath and settle his nerves. The Zeno-biologist has been exploring planets for the past year, jumping from system too system, cataloging planets for the galactic federation. He has already cataloged 3 other life bearing planets in the last 17 systems but this one was by far the most challenging.
Star system 2B38A-22 is a fairly mundane system with a larger K-class orange dwarf star at its heart. It contains a single gas giant and a common ice giant in its outer system with the molten metallic core of another gas giant circling in a 15 day orbit of its parent star. Just farther out is the planet he is currently landed on, being a sizable heavy gravity terrestrial world of 2.8 galactic standard gravity and having an unusually dense atmosphere of 8.1 galactic standard.
Frank takes a deep breath and pulls himself out of the seat. The high gravity of this world was proving difficult to fight against after his time in deep space. 'I really need to get more exercise. I'm getting weak here.'; he says too himself. Being an Earth born human, this world is only 1.6 times the gravity of Earth, so should not be this hard to manage. Walking slowly over too the science station he starts taking readings on the atmosphere of the planet too see if he will need the bulky atmosphere isolation suit, or just the re-breather. 'Hmmm. 40% Oxygen, 30% Carbon dioxide, 22% Methane, trace amount of Nitrogen, Neon, Helium, other gasses too low to make out. That's a novelty. Gravity and atmospheric pressure high enough to hold onto Helium.'; he thinks, starting to get into his elements again.
'Dangerously low biodiversity, mostly grasses and a few types of larger shrub and tree analogs. The limited animal life seems to be almost entirely evolved to use some type of flight. Almost no ground based life. But seems to be a stable marine biodiversity. Signs of a recent mass extinction event, no more then 1000 stellar cycles ago. No signs of civilization detected. No ruins or any forms of technology detected. Anomaly? Hmmm. What type of anomaly? Electromagnetic/Radio-logical. Odd... Close by as well. I'll have to check that one out.'; he reads off in his head. The results read out by the sensors were a bit erratic, changing a bit randomly as he watched them. The thick atmosphere and the shifting magnetic field of the planet are having negative effects on the shuttles sensors, making them unreliable.
"The atmosphere should be breathable, even without the re-breather. That's a nice change. But that high methane level will probably stink. Not so sure about the density though. It's thick as soup out there. Might want the re-breather just in case. Temperature seems fine and there isn't anything dangerous in the atmosphere so won't need the suit at least. Thank goodness for that. Wasn't looking forward to trying to move around in that bulky thing in this gravity."; Frank was starting too think out loud again. Being out here in unexplored space was starting to get too him. "Did you get the info dump Bimni? Is the info matching up with your reading up there?"; Frank calls out, having pushed the comms button in the science lab.
BrightEyesAtSea is a female Adelie Astor-geologist who is unfortunately stuck in their "mother-ship" due too the Adelie being unable to handle high gravity planets. She was quite displeased to say the least. So many different interesting mineral combinations to study and she was stuck ship side. Bimni was a name the human, Frank, had said when trying to shorten her name and it just kind of stuck. Not that she minded, but why couldn't he just use her full name? "Reading different up here. Not seeing that anomaly reading either. Blasted electromagnetic interference."; she Warbles out. The translation software working well to convert her Adelie churrs into human guttural speech, and vise verse. "This one is your call. You've got the more accurate atmospheric readings. Not sure about the rest. Something is off on this world, the chemistry just does not add up."
That did not bode well. If Bimni was having bad feelings, then he needed to be careful. Her gut feelings had proven more accurate then any sensor. "Noted. I'll be careful when out and about. Just keep Rover warmed up and send him down if anything goes wrong."; Frank responds in turn. Rover was a military robotic mech that, despite many attempts at reprogramming, they were not able to tone down its brutishly aggressive responses to stimuli. So they never use it for anything but hazardous environments or when things go wrong. "Just be sure to grab as many mineral samples as you can fit onto the shuttle. It would be so much easier if I could just be down there.": Bimni responds with a huff. Frank can feel her telepathic annoyance even from this range, so she must be truly furious about being stuck ship side.
Finding no other reasons to postpone this, Frank grabs the re-breather and walks, still slowly, over too the airlock. "Alright Bimni. I'm heading out. I'll keep in touch with you using the shuttle as a relay. Hopefully the interference doesn't get too bad."; Frank says after after linking up the mobile comms earpiece to the shuttles antenna. It's not like he was going to go far from the shuttle anyways. Not in this gravity. Just far enough to reach that anomaly. Cycling the airlock, he steps inside. Deciding to wait on the re-breather for now, he clips it too his belt. He would see how bad the atmosphere was and decide from there. Pushing the cycle button, he waits for the airlock to balance atmospheres with the outside, getting a taste of the atmosphere in the process.
As the airlock finishes cycling and opens, Frank is hit with the thick humid atmosphere and the raw smell of methane. Huh. The smell was not as bad as he thought it would be. But the thick humid air was another matter. "It's like pea soup out here."; Frank comments. "I could almost swim in this stuff. But at least its not hard too breathe." Bimni quickly responds with; "Gee thanks. Now I want a bowl of pea soup, and you know we ran out 5 cycles ago." She didn't sound any happier after that comment. "Well sorry for making you hungry, with all the good food being on the mother ship and me only having excursion rations."; he jokes back at her hoping to at least lessen her bad mood. "The only solace I have for being stuck up here."; Bimni coos back, seeming to have lost at least some of her bad mood.
Frank takes his first steps out of the airlock onto this new world and... \*SPLAT\* feels something wet and soft hit his head and slide down his side. Lifting a hand up to wipe the side of his head, he is met with a slimy substance with bits of plant matter and something else. Tentatively, he takes a sniff; "Fraaack...."; Frank lets out with a sigh. Looking up he sees a 2 meter long gasbag creature with undulating manta ray like wings slowly swimming away high above him. "First steps out of the shuttle and I get crapped on by an alien."; he says with a bit of disgust. This is quickly answered with a trilling chuckle from Bimni though the comms. "Not a word."; he says too Bimni, who continues to chuckle even louder. Retracing his steps back up to the shuttles airlock, he reaches inside and grabs one of the rag towels and wipes off the droppings from his head and side. What a great start this is...
20 minutes later, Frank has already loaded several unique looking rocks into the shuttle for Bimni to examine later and has determined that there are in fact TWO types of grass in the surrounding area. Wow. And what is that? Another one of those elongated gasbag creatures high above. Both of the grasses are very similar too each other it seems, both being nearly black in color too absorb as much of the very dim light given off by the orange sun in the sky as possible. It is quite dim out despite it being close too mid day with the sky being completely clear. The thick atmosphere dispersing a lot of the light and giving everything a red orange tint with blues being quite faint. In the distance he can see a cluster of shrubs that look like thick orange coral with yellowish black balloon like gas bags growing out of the ends of each branch. And beyond that, in the general direction of the anomaly readings, there is an unusual rock formation overgrown with some type of plants.
"Still not much too see here Bimni, other then a few odd rocks here and there. I grabbed several samples for you already before you ask. The lack of diversity here is quite disconcerting."; Frank comments to Bimni through the comms. In response he only hears the faint crunching of whatever she had found to munch on while he did all the hard work down here. "Still making my way towards the anomaly. Hopefully there will be something interesting there. At least the bushes ahead are something different. Seem to be a thick stemmed Ficus analog with inflated leaf structures that look like balloons. Some type of adaptation to the high gravity I'm sure."; he continues the running dialog he's been trying to keep up since the gasbag poo incident. Though it has been hard too due with how little there has been to discuss.
Closing in on the bushes, they are in fact, just as he though. Similar to a ficus with thick stems, and the leaves are gas filled balloon like structures that hold up the stems. Really not much to look at other then being completely alien with a fascinating symbiosis with a few benign bacteria that seem to produce the gas that fills its leaves. A sudden sound diverts his attention. Frank looks up just in time to track an unusual 1 foot long bird like creature taking off from the ground in a hurry. The creature has 2 pairs of feathered wings attached too a bird like body, a long swan like neck with a bird like beaked head that hangs down below it's body, no legs, and 2 highly aerodynamic gasbags on it's back. This bird is already moving fast and accelerating even faster as it moves at a right angle too him. "That's a new one. A bird like life form. Has both 2 sets of feathered wings and a pair of gasbags for lift. It's fast too!"; he excitedly says too Bimni.
His excitement is short lived though, as a loud POP is heard and a 3 clawed tentacle is suddenly attached through the birds gasbag, holding onto the bird. This tentacle is in turn part of a large wing shaped creature with an open mouth, filled with sharp teeth, attached too the bottom of its wing shaped body. The bird is quickly dragged backwards towards the open mouth and swallowed hole. The whole time this flying wing creature is rippling with different colors like an earth cuddle fish. Before Frank can even exclaim about it, there is a soft booming sound as trails of faint smoke start to come out of a cylindrical shaped bulge on each side of the wing shaped creature before it shoots forwards at high speed, climbing up upwards again before it's body ripples with color one last time then seems to fade into the sky as its body color quickly matches the color of the sky.
"By all that's holy! Your not going to believe this one..."; Frank says in a hushed tone. His excitement replaced with caution and a bit of fear. "There's a flying predator here that can camouflage to match the sky. Damn thing appeared in the sky out of no where and then was gone from sight just as quickly. Wolfed down that bird like you do with those sardines you like so much."
"Are you safe?"; Bimni responds with honest concern in her squawking voice.
"I think so. Don't see that thing anywhere. But you better make sure Rover is ready too launch on a moments notice in case that thing comes back. The damn thing seemed to be jet powered as well."; Frank responds, still a bit shaken up. He was not expecting anything like that, he wasn't going to lie. Looking around him, there was no shelter nearby other then the rock formation ahead.
"Can you take shelter for a bit somewhere? Just in case it's still around?"; Bimni asks, sounding quite concerned as she preps Rover for immediate launch.
"There's no where too take shelter. Closest is that rock formation. Hopefully there is some place to shelter near there."; Frank responds, not feeling very confident. But it's that or make a break for the shuttle, a good 15 minutes away though the open grasses.
"Do it. And by the gods, keep your human senses open!"; Bimni blurts out.
Frank didn't even bother with a response. He went into a full jog, the fastest he could move in the high gravity of this world. Even with his crazy human endurance, he was all too quickly winded and forced too slow down as he neared the rock formation. Finding an overhang with a shallow but human sized indent under it he ducks into it. It might not be much, but at least he only need to worry about what's in front of him now. "I'm there... Found a... overhang. In shelter."; he panted out. "No sign... of danger." He hasn't felt this winded since he used to run marathons back on Earth.
Having taken a moment to catch his breath again, Frank places his hands on the sides of the indent he's tucked into and only now realizes something is off. Pulling his eyes away from looking for danger, he glances at the surfaces around him. Too smooth. He runs his hands along it again and can feel the seams of... construction? "Uh Bimni? This rock formation is not natural. It was constructed."; he says in a slow quiet voice.
"What? Someone carved it?"; she asked. Frank ran his hands along the underside of the overhang while watching for danger, feeling the framework and paneling that was used too construct it. Metal. "No. It's a structure of some type. It's made of metal."; he responds. No ruins or technology my arse! "Wish you were down here even more now, your better with this stuff."
"I'm sending down Rover. I'll put it on manual and pilot it remotely myself."; Bimni states with a sharp chirp, leaving no room for argument. "Yeah, that's a good idea."; Frank responds softly. "I'll wait until Rover touches down before I start exploring. Don't need that big flying wing to catch me off guard."; he replies back.
Frank remains under the ledge while he waits for Rover to drop in, but luckily it's only a matter of a few minutes and the mech descends too the ground, curled into a ball, and under parachute. The mech is ready to go, being able to survive entry without the shuttle thanks to it's built in heat shield. Rover unrolls and stands up, being half the height of Frank, walking on 4 legs, with a manipulate arm on its back. With Rover there to help guard, Frank is able to leave his impromptu shelter. "Nice aim there Bimni. Landed Rover within meters."; he says to Bimni, a bit impressed. "Are you detecting anything new with Rovers sensors?"; Frank asks.
"Only getting the same reading, anomaly."; Bimni's voice comes from the speaker built into Rovers frame. "Now where did you find the metal?"; she asks as Frank gestures Rover over too the underside of the overhang and the indent he was tucked into before. "Back here, and above us. These surfaces are unnatural and the underside of this overhang is metal."; Frank points out.
Bimni pilots Rover under the overhang and uses the manipulator arm, with its light, to examine the surfaces more closely. "hmmm. Fascinating. These surfaces are of an alloy I've never seen before."; she says with a chirp of interest. As she is maneuvering to look at different parts of the surface, she accidentally bumps Rover into a panel on the side of the indent. There is a groaning noise from the back wall before the wall just as suddenly slides sideways revealing an opening. A soft glow is comming from inside along with the sounds of running machinery.
Giving each other a quick glance, both Frank, and Bimni piloting Rover, step in through the open doorway too figure out what is inside. There is a short corridor that leads too a room filled with softly glowing lights and what can only be a computer control room of some sort. Everything is marked with an alien language that is completely undecipherable. "Now this is interesting. And it's still running. Can you make anything of this?"; Frank says too Bimni before going to oe of the control panels and trying to figure out what it says. He doesn't notice Bimni's lack of response as he touches one of the displays.
There is a quick flash of the dim lighting in the room before all the sounds in the room go quite and the light turn off. "Did I touch the wrong thing?"; Frank asks. "Bimni, any idea? Bimni?"; he asks before turning around too see Rover standing un-moving in the corridor. "Hello. Bimni, you there?" There is no response but suddenly there is a burst of of some form of energy that even Frank can feel and an alarm starts blaring. Think now is the time to leave, Frank turns to Rover and grabs the handle on its back, pushing on it to try and get Rover's tactile override to move it. He's a bit grateful when it starts to back up through the corridor as its supposed to.
Once back outside, in the open air, there is a beep, as Bimni is able to reconnect too Rover. "What happened? I suddenly lost signal with Rover and lost your signal as well frank."; Bimni keels out, sounding quite worried.
"Not sure. Rover just stopped moving in the corridor while I was inside the room on the other side. Maybe some kind of shielding or interference?"; Frank responds while the alarm can still be clearly heard in the background.
"What did you do?"; Bimni demands now that the alarm sound can be heard clearly by her as well. "Nothing. I was just trying to see what the panels were and touched one, then the whole thing shut down and the alarm started going off. A growl is heard through Rovers speakers; "You humans have no common sense! You touch everything without even thinking..."; Bimni grumbles out. Frank can only shrug his shoulders sheepishly, can't really fight ones nature.
Any further comments from either of them is cut short as a pair of dragon like creatures land heavily beside them and let out a roar. These creatures are close too 4 feet tall at the shoulders, standing on four thin legs with 4 toed clawed feet. They both are black in color with thin, spindly looking bodies that are covered in very short, dense fur. They have a pair of wings on their back that are larger then their bodies and shaped like the wings of an albatross, and a single row of wide scales running along their backs from the top of their head too half way down their tail. The larger of the two stands up on it's hind legs and starts making shooing motions with its front legs and wings as it takes steps towards them. It is making strange animal vocalizations while it is doing this, sounding like many different animals, most unknown, but some sounding strangely familiar.
Bimni readies to defend Frank using Rover, but a quick gesture by Frank delays her. "Lets back away slowly and see how they respond first."; Frank says as he starts to back away from the structure. Begrudgingly, Bimni follows suit, backing Rover away from the building as well. Their actions are rewarded by the larger creature moving to stand in front of the open passage and crossing its front legs, like it is standing guard. The smaller of the two slips behind the larger one and hurries into the structure, still moving on all four legs. As it slips past, and into the structure, a series of marking can be seen over its back legs and tail. They are green in color and resemble lightning or electricity.
A loud series of animal noises is heard coming out from inside the structure. The larger creature blocking the passageway leans down, without taking its eyes off Rover and Frank and barks a series of noises back into the structure in turn. As it does this, marking can be seen on the sides and back of this creature as well, this time a red flame like pattern can be seen. A quick series of flashes is seen from the corridor and the sound of the alarm is silenced followed by the sounds of machinery starting up again. The smaller creature exits the structure shortly after, using its tail to hit the panel too close the doorway as it exits. Both creatures are now standing there staring at Frank and Rover, not looking too happy.
The smaller of the two creatures standing in front of Frank and Bimni turns too the larger one and lets out a series of barks, pops, clicks, and whistles which the larger one turns its head slightly towards it and gives off a purr sound. The smaller one stands up on it's hind legs and stretches up to rub it's nose on the chin of the larger one before dropping down too all 4 legs again and slipping behind the other. It quickly moves away from everyone and launches its self into the air with some visible effort, flying away on it's long thin wings.
"So what do you think Bimni? They don't seem like animals too me. Their actions seem a bit too civilized."; Frank says too Bimni, with a strange echo. "You think they are the ones who built this structure?"; Bimni responds with no echo from Rovers speaker. "I'm not sure. They might also be another species that found the structures already here."; Frank says with that odd echo again, while turning towards Rover. "I'm not sure."; is repeated in Franks voice. Frank freezes, looking around. Bimni also hears that, and has Rover turn completely around too scan the area. The creature in front of the structure has uncrossed it's front legs and is now standing less defensively with its head cocked too the side.
"I'm not sure."; is said again in Franks voice. This time it is definitely coming from the creature in front of the structure, as it tips its head too the other side. "Did it just copy your voice?"; Bimni asks, having turned Rover to face the creature again. "I think it did."; Frank responds, with no echo. Raising one of his hands up he points at himself and says; "Frank", then points at Rover and says; "Rover". Finally giving an open handed gesture towards the creature, he waits for a response. The creature seems to think about it for a bit and is about to give a response but suddenly turns it's head too the side as three more of the creatures fly in and land nearby.
One of the three that lands is the smaller one with green markings from earlier. Another is only slightly larger with blue markings that look like lightning, while the third is much larger. The largest of the three is even larger then the one standing in front of the structure. It has bright yellow flame markings on it's sides and tail and is carrying some sort of device. All three of them stand up on their hind legs shortly after landing and start talking to each other and the one that was there already quite heatedly. An unusual combination of different animal noises, mixed with pops, whistles, and barks and exchanged before the one at the structure stops and points at Frank and says; "Frank", then at Rover and says; "Rover" in a perfect imitation of Franks voice.
"Well, that settles it. If there was any doubt about intelligence..."; Bimni says after the obvious display. As soon as Bimni speaks, the largest of the beings taps a few times on the device it has and a projection appears above the device like a video screen. On this projected screen is the world they are standing on, seen from high orbit. The projection begins playing a video of sorts that shows a world lush with life. None of which has been seen anywhere. The video changes view, showing different versions of the 4 beings on different parts of the world, with cities and lots of advanced technology around them. Then the view changes again too high orbit where a powerful solar flare is shown flashing over the planet with several chunks of metalic asteroids being swept along with it.
The view changes again so the beings running in terror and crowding into bunkers and sturdy structures as asteroids rain down in fireballs, exploding high in the thick atmosphere. The sky turns flames as the atmosphere is ignited by the asteroids. The view changes again to a few survivors making their way out of bunkers to find a world flattened and burned empty. The view changes to high orbit again, but the view is getting closer too the planet as if what is giving the view is falling towards the planet. The lush planet appears burned barren and brown as the view goes static as the view source starts to burn up as well. Finally the view shifts too the few survivors giving up everything they have to build structures like the one in front of them as plants start to grow around the structures in slowly increasing circles. The 4 beings all turn too look at Rover and Frank while the one in front of the structure points at it then sweeps it's hands around at the general area.
Several days go by with the beings on the planet, soon known to call themselves Yeltarians, surprisingly quickly learning how to use the human language. Their own language involving implied meaning, and the sounds produced expressing that meaning instead of words. With the language barrier broken, the Yeltarians were able to fully explain what happened too their world. A massive solar flare had shattered the dieing inner planet of their system, flinging chunks of the planet outwards with the flare its self. Between the flare and the following planetary chunks, they had set the atmosphere ablaze, catastrophically altering the atmospheric composition. Most non aquatic life was decimated in the initial inferno while much more of the remaining life on the planet slowly dieing off from the atmospheric changes.
When the Yeltarian survivors finally left their bunkers, they found a world leveled by fire and chocked off by a nearly un-breathable atmosphere. Using all their advanced knowledge, the survivors hatched a plan to save both themselves and their world. A massive terraforming project over their entire planet. They built hundreds of terraforming machines around the world using every available scrap and surviving piece of technology they could find. Then to give their planet a chance to heal, they turned to their own culture and shifted it from a materialistic high tech one, to a minimalist druidic society. All this, just to save as much as they could of what life remained.
But the remaining biodiversity of their world is too low, and they continue to loose species to disease and failed genetic alterations. Their world will not last much longer with how few living things remain. Even their terraforming equipment is starting to fail. So this leaves them with only one hope, to find suitable life outside of their own world to balance the failing ecosystems. But, they had torn apart their only remaining spacecraft to build the equipment that sustains their world. And they have no way to rebuild them with all their technology regressed to the state it is in now.
They were also willing to explain their race as well. What had once been several different Yeltarian races, had all become one race after the cataclysm. They are of two different sexs, male and female, with the females being larger and stronger in general. While the males tend to be smaller and much lighter, but also faster and more maneuverable in flight. They also explained the meaning of the markings on their bodies. The color doesn't mean as much, but the pattern shows which of the two divergent genetic traits are active in their bodies. All Yeltarians have the genetics to use an organic fire through the production of alcohol in their bodies, and bio-electrics generated by specialized cells in their bodies. But only one of the two genetic traits ever manifests due to a special gene that randomly activates one trait genetic while blocking the other trait genetics when they reach maturity.
"So, would you be willing to help us out? Take one of us with you to help search for compatible life in the depths of space? Too save our dieing world?"; The leader of the local Yeltarians asks Frank and Bimni. "This is our only chance since we are unwilling to give up our dieing world. Our, Yeltomar."

Context: I love wicked, I saw it twice in the late 2000s, I’ve spent countless hours singing along in the car with friends, and like many ppl who love wicked I was a theater kid. Over the last decade and a half, my tastes have evolved and I enjoy media with a more critical eye. This is not the same as a negative or cynical eye. I have also gone from being *the* musical theater kid to being very much an ex-musical theater kid. And so with the movie coming out I was curious how wicked would hold up for me.
Last night I watched a bootleg. It was pretty good resolution considering, but I think it being a bootleg helped strip away the spectacle to lay bare its structure and quality. And its quality is very inconsistent, both in story and in songs.
For every soaring character moment like Elphie and Glinda grappling with their lives taking them in conflicting directions, there is moment of nauseating fan fiction cringe like the needless fate of the two male leads (a change from the source material that cheapens the show AND wiz of Oz by extension). For every interesting (if underdeveloped) political idea, whether Elphie’s life of underground sentient-rights/Animal advocacy or the the shift of Morrible and the Wizard seeing Glinda as a valuable political asset, there are countering moments where the characters and themes are uselessly undermined in favor of the absolute lamest of conveniences, like the green bottle reveal and the super unclear switch in power dynamics between Glinda and morrible. And why, at the end, must Glinda never know? She would be the perfect ally to them, it makes no sense why they’d keep it from her.
The story quality is truly like an upside down bell curve where it’s either transcendent or the most cringe cheugy bottom of the barrel storytelling.Structurally, act 1 is way better but is nearly back to back songs. It’s almost an opera. Act 2 has a better balance of dialogue but it’s so rushed and the story feels held together with twice used tape.
Same with the songs. Let’s be real y’all. A lot of these songs sound ugly. And so many of them are needless hindrances to the characters and story.
No One Mourns the Wicked - the crowd’s lines are weird and cringe, but glindas parts are very high quality. Could use a rewrite.
Dear old shiz - keep as is. (It’s lucky it’s short.)
Wizard and I - keep but cut the “unlimited” sections since nobody recognizes the reference to over the rainbow anyway unless it’s pointed out to you.
What is this feeling - it’s cute, but adds nothing to the story and is a time suck. Cut.
Something bad - cut. My god cut. Missed opportunity for a dialogue break + develop Dillomond as more than a plot device and have song-less scenes with Elphie and DD be a recurring more grounded storyline. It should also have been meaningfully continued in act 2 when they’re both on the other side of the law, not just the reveal in the palace.
Dancing through life - sorry yall but this song doesn’t cut it. Dancing as a metaphor for laziness? But Dancing isn’t something lazy people do? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s too vague but also too specific (“down at the ozdust”). And like… he sings about valuing his life (“because dust is what we come to”) but in fact it’s the opposite - he takes it for granted and is willing to waste his life until he falls in love with Elphie. The song doesn’t fit the character, or the analogy, and it’s also way too high-school-musical. CUT.
Popular - keep as is.I’m not that girl - keep as is.
One short day - cut and Make it a background score. Or at least Trim it down to the “dress salons and libraries” part, ending with “it’s all green.” Make it a more direct and concise counterpart to “merry old land of Oz”
Sentimental man - CUT.
Defying gravity - keep as is.
Thank goodness - keep as is.
(Missed opportunity for a reprise of popular here)
Wonderful - make it half as long.
As long as your mine - its fine but doesn’t add anything. Cut.
No good deed - keep but get rid of that truly stupid fiyero storyline I mentioned earlier. Would be way more interesting if this was restructured to her trying to save her sister pre-cyclone.
March of the witch hunters - CUT.
For good - keep as is…. But what the hell is a “sky bird”? Lame phrases like that hold it back a bit.
Finale - eh just parse it down to a for good reprise.
They’re not going to do this, but I wish they give Wicked the Grease treatment for the movie and replace all the weaker songs with better ones or fix with structural changes.
TLDR: upon rewatch, wicked is half soaring and half mega cringe, with far too many ugly songs.

if you think about this. people born between 1962-1991 are probably the last people who experienced a pure analog life for most of their lives, since the 20th century was still in the development phase compared to the 21st century which is already full of technology.. if it is either during their adult life, teen years or childhood. that I personally could say this is kind of it own generation. for example.

• 1962-1991 born during the peak of the Cold War. when in 1962 started the Cuban missile crisis and in 1991 when the soviet union ended.
• probably the last true who were born during the 20th century.
• those born mostly with an analog adult/teen/childhood life (means, no cell/smartphones, no social media, and mostly without the internet)
• anyone born before or after 1962-1991 are either close to the 19th or 21st century.

Judge Patrick J. Schiltz:
“It’s surprising how many otherwise competent attorneys ‘punt’ at the sentencing hearing.”
Federal Judge Robert N. Scola:
Judge Scola suggested that lawyers take a page out of the book from our death penalty colleagues and advised,
“Don’t wait to think about sentencing advocacy,” since 99 percent of federal criminal clients will be facing sentencing, start preparing the case for sentencing early on.
Hello, and thank you for tuning into my series, INDICTED AND FACING PRISON: NOW WHAT?
My name is Marc Blatstein. In 2006, I was Indicted, pleaded guilty to a felony, and lost my medical license. To call this a surreal experience is an understatement.

My goal in this series is to provide you with the crucial information you’ll need to survive and navigate these times. I’ll cover a new topic daily so you can move forward with Knowledge, Preparation, and Confidence.

Federal Judge Scola speaks from experience, and this series will highlight what you need to do while advocating for yourself.

Should you have questions, please do not hesitate to call and consider engaging my services at 240.888.7778—this is your life.

Whether you are a COO, CEO, Physician, Lawyer, politician, or anybody else, your decisions today will determine your future.

THERE IS A DOJ-HHS-OIG-OPM WHITE-COLLAR TASK FORCE, and once they're in a hunt with your name...

I will cover the do's, Don'ts, and what-ifs in this series. No one can promise that:
· I know the judge, don't worry.
· There's no rush to prepare - after you've heard that the Feds are asking questions.
· Trials: 0.2% win, you just got home – still with your world shattered
· At sentencing are those who Plea and have lost at Trial
· What can you do to defend yourself? Learn and follow…

If you're already at this point and don’t have the time to wait for my future videos, call me, and we can discuss your situation one-on-one. Once again, my number is 240.888.7778.

~Stages~
Indictment
Arraignment
· Release on personal recognizance.
· Bail or Bond, You’re on Pretrial Supervision; follow the rules eg. No Witness Tampering).
· Remanded, you go directly to jail.
Plea or Trial: Your Defense
· A Well Written Personal Narrative (this is your BRAND, Story, or Autobiography).
o Why? Because the DOJ has gifted you their Story of you: Your Indictment – America Most Wanted
· Release Plan: your judge and other STAKEHOLDERS will want to know your future plans.
Trial Win, Go Home
Trial Lose and Plea
· Pre Trial-Supervision
· Personal Recognizance
· Remanded
Presentence Interview/Investigation Preparation,
· Your Personal NARRATIVE,
· Release Plan,
· Allocution Practiced
The Probation Officer who writes your Presentence Report- Your Advocate?
· They’re overworked and have no time.
· Getting all your files to them one week early, Comprehensive and Organized, may be appreciated.
Sentencing.
· Your Personal NARRATIVE and Release Plan, if attached to your PSR, is read by the Judge and could affect your Sentence.
· Allocution Practiced is your conversation with your Judge.
Sentence options.
· Prison, Halfway House, Home Confinement, Diversion sentencing, or a Combination.
· if you violate any arbitrary rules - it's possibly back to prison.
Probation Supervised Release.
· and then you're mostly done, except for your Felony.
· You’re still under the BOP Rules.
· You're at the mercy of your PO.
· Restitution or not, they will want you to work, volunteer, or care for a relative – but doing nothing may not work.
· No Narrative as part of your PSR; then all they will read about you is from your Indictment and BOP File.

To engage my services or to have your concerns answered, Call me Today: 240.888.7778. This is my Cell, and I personally answer and return all calls. You can also get additional information on my website @: PPRSUS.com
Physician Presentence Report Service, LLC

Keep in mind this is my rating of the enjoyment I get out of the arcs, and not what I think they should receive based on the quality of the arc. For example, I think the Buu Saga easily has the biggest and the most issues out of any arc from DBZ, but that doesn't stop my enjoyment of it as you can tell from my rating. I also think I likely have quite a few hot takes and will anger some of you who can't understand that everyone enjoys different things.
Dragon ball Z
Saiyan Saga - 8.5/10, One of my first hot takes I imagine. Don't get me wrong this arc is iconic and from a writing perspective is one of the best in Dragon ball. I still love it obviously but I won't lie I am just a complete hoe for transformations so the lack of cool blonde hair results in this arc being a bit lower for me. Goku vs Vegeta is still so iconic and I enjoyed Raditz as well.
Frieza Saga - 9.7/10, So close to a 10, but I wouldn't quite go all the way there. I love the seeing Gohan and Krillin going around Namek as well as seeing the introduction to Frieza. He's imo the best villain in all of Dragon ball and he made quite a mark in this arc. Some of the scenes with Vegeta made me feel so tense and worried for the characters. Goku showing up and fucking up the Ginyu force is amazing and obviously going SSJ for the first time is one of the best moments in all of manga/anime. I don't really even have many criticisms of the arc, and on some days I may even give it a 10 honestly.
Cell Saga - 9.8/10, Again quite close to a 10 and I hold it in very similar regard to the Frieza saga. I must've watched Gohan going SSJ2 and fighting Cell hundreds of times as a kid. This arc kind of speaks for itself, I still love Gohan's character to this day and his character which lead to this point was great and this was such an amazing payoff. Trunk's introduction is amazing as well and we get cool characters in the Androids too. I could go on even more but I've rambled enough.
Majin Buu Saga - 9.9/10, I'm sure this is where the hate will come. Again let me say, I do not think this arc is better than the others in DBZ, but I'm ranking my enjoyment of it. There are quite a few stupid aspects of the arc and characters like Gohan were greatly mis-used. Regardless of this though I still find this arc to be insanely captivating and entertaining. One big part of it is that I adore kid Trunks, Goten, and Gotenks. We also have Vegeta's big moment which was great for his development. Like I mentioned before I absolutely love transformations and this arc had tons of them. Also, I honestly like Buu as a villain more than most, especially in his fat form and Kid Buu when he just became even scarier.
Dragon Ball Super
Battle of Gods - 9.5/10, Here comes another hot take. It's worth noting I am talking about the movie, not the anime or the manga. Beerus has become one of my favourite characters in all of Dragon ball and I loved his introduction in this movie. I know some have issues with the CGI used in some scenes but overall I loved the animation of the fights. It also has great moments like when Beerus slaps Bulma which pisses Vegeta off and obviously the big fight between Goku and Beerus. I'm a sucker for the more chill shit like the crew all just hanging out and I enjoyed the comedy throughout.
Resurrection F - 9.2/10, Pretty similar to the Battle of Gods really, I enjoyed the silly scenes and comedy and also thought the fight with Frieza was pretty entertaining. Story wise I think this one has some really big faults but overall I still like watching it despite that. Could it potentially have been so much better? Yeah definitely but what can ya do
Universe 6 Saga - 8.6/10, This arc was solid, I just feel it doesn't have the highs that the other arcs have. It dragged on at points and the fights were solid, but nothing that special when compared to many of the fights from other arcs in DBS. Goku vs Hit is definitely the highlight imo but it was also cool seeing Vegeta take on a mentor role with Cabba.
Goku Black - 9/10, this one is tough because it has some really amazing moments, but also as I'm sure most agree the ending is really stupid. Goku Black as a villain makes the arc entertaining nonetheless and there are some well written moments for Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks in it as well. The fights are fun to watch and I love seeing the new forms.
ToP - 9.6/10, This one is hard to rate honestly, as it has some insane highs but also goes on for a long time with some parts really dragging. Overall the high moments in the arc are enough to make me rate it so highly though. Goku vs Jiren is an all time fight and Ultra Instinct is obviously such a good transformation.
Moro - 9.9, This one may come as a surprise, but I absolutely loved reading this arc. It felt a lot more like DBZ than anything else in Super to this point and overall I thought Moro was a great villain. His design was pretty cool before he transformed and overall I thought the character development for Goku and especially Vegeta was great. The whole concept of Moro as a villain and his powers are so interesting and seeing him actually be such a challenge for Goku and Vegeta was really neat. The final battle between all of them is insanely cool and overall I just love this arc.
Granolah - 9.8/10, This is probably also a shock to you all but similarly to the last arc, I just loved the character development for both Goku and Vegeta. Seeing both of their new forms was great and some of the panels with both of them are next level. This arc definitely had some questionable writing decisions but again the highs of the arc far outweigh that to me. There are some interesting characters like Granolah and it was great to see more about Bardock too.
As you can tell, I love both DBZ and DBS a ton and that I have a very different taste than most in regard to my enjoyment of DBZ and DBS arcs. Feel free to give your thoughts on my ratings as well as your own or just any thoughts

I would have chosen "Venting" for my flair but it did not appear as an option. This is NOT a "seeking" post so cubs, DO NOT DM me if we don't already know each other. I will just delete it. Here is my "disappointment" story:
I am a Cougar (51F) and I posted my info on one of the "seeking" posts in the appropriate subreddit a couple of weeks ago. I specifically said that I was looking to meet a cub within 2 hours driving distance of me for a FWB type relationship. I am poly with a couple of partners but no one with this specific dynamic. Of course I got quite a few messages and I hit it off really well with one guy - but he lives 5 hours drive from me. To me, this was actually NBD because I don't mind road trips. He drives a lot for work so if HE came to see ME, he wanted to fly. Ok - fine.
I should have looked up the dates before I started typing so forgive the vagueness. But I texted quite a bit with this guy over the course of about 2 weeks and we talked on the phone once for 4 hours. It felt like we had a unique connection and there was definitely mutual attraction there. He told me he was "talking with" one other Cougar he met on Reddit and they had met for lunch once but it wasn't serious. So...I was getting excited to meet him and see if we vibes as well in person as we did via text and phone. We started planning for me to visit him on Memorial Day Weekend.
Then last week (I believe) he texted me to ask if I had bought tickets or made reservations yet. He said he had had lunch with the other woman - who lives within 2 hours of him - and she asked if they could be exclusive and he said "yes." Of course this is his choice and I respected it, but I DID ask some questions because I felt like it came out if nowhere. I said something like, "You are willing to be exclusive with someone you have met only twice and not even made out with?" To which he replied, "I never said we hadn't made out." OH. Okay. That's a bit different. 😞
I told him I was disappointed and that I felt like he had downplayed his interest in the other woman when getting to know me. But I had NOT made any reservations so I wasn't out any money. Then - he blocked my cell number, and blocked me on Instagram AND Reddit! Holy crap! That just felt mean and unnecessary!!
So I shook it off (took a couple of days) and went on with my life. Started talking with another cub from Reddit - again - he is a 2 hour PLANE ride away but not a quick car trip. Hmmm. I have tried to take it slower with this guy. We have also been communicating for about 2 weeks now, and the first week he seemed very enthusiastic, but then over the past weekend he was busy and I didn't hear much from him. I asked on Sunday night what he had been up to and he said mostly going out and drinking beer with friends. Cool, sounds like fun.
So today we are texting and I asked him if he wanted to talk about planning for me to visit him. He said he was stressed from work, not in the mood to talk about it, can we talk later. His waning interest feels familiar so I asked point blank if he has started to date someone local. He said he has met a couple of people but isn't dating them. I asked if he was interested in one in particular and he said yes, but he hasn't made a move. So - my Spidey sense is tingling big time. Part of the problem is that I am poly so I don't think starting to date someone is a reason not to meet someone else. But he has told me that eventually he wants to find a wife and get married and be monogamous. The SOONEST I could go for a visit would be June 7 which is over 2 weeks away. And if he is anything like that other guy, he will probably have a girlfriend by then. 😠
So... I get it. Dating can suck. I'm an adult and I can handle disappointment. But I'm not sure how to guard against this SAME thing happening again!! Some ideas: don't even agree to TALK to guys who live more than 2 hours drive from me, stop talking to younger men because 2 weeks seems like forever to them and I usually need a minimum of 2 weeks to plan a visit.
Cubs - if you are reading this, can you PLEASE avoid being like these 2 guys? I made it CLEAR what I was looking for, where I live, etc. These guys acted like they were interested in spite of the distance but basically ditched me for people who are more immediately accessible. If you only want to date local people, that's totally fine and your choice, but for Pete's sake, don't start talking to someone who lives far away and requires planning to see if you can't wait 2 weeks to meet them!!
Ok - end of ranting/venting. Please be kind in the comments. I would appreciate hearing different perspectives. Ideas to avoid this in the future?

First mammogram
NOT OFFICIALLY DIAGNOSED
To preface, I am 23 years old.
I have a very stronger history of family breast cancer, Gma passed away from it (diagnosed 32), my mom has had breast cancer SIX times (among having three other types of cancer as well (she’s less than 50)), and the first time she was 27. My mom and sister tested positive for BRCA1 and I’m currently working on getting tested but y’all know insurance. But anywho, I recently found a Nickle size mass, and figured I’d bring it up to my doctor. During her exam, she pointed out a wayyy bigger mass. I have felt this for a while now but my old doctors in my home state told me it was nothing and at the time it was tiny, so I’ve always thought it was my breast tissue. The big mass covers multiple quadrants of my breast, both lower quads, and the mass i felt I thought it was a lymph node but I don’t know and I have to wait for my apps. I also have a small ball (I’m assuming lymph node?) in my arm pit that is hard.
And I’m well aware that it could be any number of things, just with my family history, Some of my symptoms are: Random boob pain Dimpling My lower half seems squishier? Also looks a little discolored compared to the other one. getting wayyyyyy more sick lately than I have my whole life I have had night sweats for almost 2 years now I have also lost 70 pounds since first noticing symptoms with 40 of those pounds being since November! I now have a BMI of 17 🥲. Working hard on gaining weight but get so sick or full so quickly and nothing sounds good or taste good.
I know not to compare myself to anyone because every case is different and I’m not only my families bad genes, I just want to know other opinions, and stories so I know what to expect for my mammogram and if anyone else has had anything similar to this! I have my mammogram in two days so I am definitely getting more anxious about it all! I hate being so young dealing with this, and trying to understand that I could be the lucky one but just trying to look at the facts and family history with continuous young diagnosis (sister had double mast after precancerous cells and positive brca1 at 25). In just so conflicted and kind of mourning the fact that my last summer before I start my career will be filled with test and imaging and drs apps and I knows that’s selfish but I just graduated college not retired from being the professor. I don’t want to deal with this right now of all times but i know this is something not to play with or wait on.

Have a few items i'm trying to clear out all in good condition, noted if games are loose or CIB.
Open to offers on Bundles especially , bundle lots listed as well with discounts.
$5 Games for various systems available $25 Minimum if only buying from this list please.
$3.50 Shipping for first item & exact amount for bigger bundles sent via USPS and taking Paypal F&F with Pics available upon request.
Total estimate with PriceCharting is about $2,900
Will take and accept $2,400 Shipped on the entire Lot excluding Paperwork Material.

PS4 - $200 on Lot

PS4 Slim 500 GB Console with 1x OEM Black Dualshock $175
Metro Redux CIB $15
Plants vs Zombies 2 : Garden Warfare $10
Deus Ex MD $10
Grand Theft Auto V $10

XBox - $125 on Lot

https://www.flickr.com/photos/200232813@N07/albums/72177720315735025/
Metro Redux $10
Rare Replay/Ultimate Gears of War $20
Torment Tides of Nememura in GameStop Case $10
Transformers Devastation $20
Sunset Overdrive $10
Pillars of Eternity in GameStop Case $10
One Lords of the Fallen $10
XBox One Phantom Black Controller CIB USED $25 (Controller is 7/10 cosmetic wise with bottom back bumpers having heavy scuffs & 9/10 overall function wise)
XBox Series S White OEM Controller - $25 (Controller is 9/10 cosmetic wise. Left trigger buttons gets stuck randomly not sure if something small or dirt is stuck, buttons functions perfectly)

N64 - $500 on lot

https://imgur.com/a/H9g5GqQ
Cruis'N USA - $15
Body Harvest - $20
Aerofighters Assault - $10
Top Gear Overdrive - $10
Tony Hawk 3 - $65
Buck Bumble - $30
Pokemon Puzzle League with Manual (game and manual in great condition) - $40
Space Station Silicon Valley - $40
Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (Entire label was missing so a cheap replacement was made) - $20
Command And Conquer - $20
The New Tetris - $30
Snowboard Kids 1 with Manual (manual and game in great shape small tear on back of Cart) - $70
Robotron 64 - $20
Forsaken 64 (video rental sticker on label) $15
Yoshi's Story - $25
Mischief Makers - $40
Wipeout - $15
Doom 64 - $30
Kobe Bryant In NBA Courtside Box(good shape includes inner tray) - $25
NHL Breakaway '98 Box (good condition no inner tray) - $10
Mario Tennis 64 Game with Box (Box is rough shape, missing ride side flap. includes inner tray, Cart is clean) - $50

Gameboy

TMNT Fall of the Foot Clan - $10

Switch - $325 on lot

Hori Split Pad Pro Blue CIB (used about 7 months in 9/10 condition) - $25
Old Skool GC Controller Adapter (Works on Switch/PC/Wii U) - $20
Hyperkin Joy-Con Grip Charger - $10
Monster Hunter Rise Joy-Cons with Grip NIB - $125
Shin Megami Tensei V [Steelbook Edition] - $30
Blacksad: Under The Skin [Limited Edition] SEALED $25
KORG Gadget $65
Psikyo Collection Vol. 3 JAP $45

PS Vita - $275 on Lot

The Walking Dead: Season 2 $25
Hot Shots Golf World Invitational $15
Legend Of Heroes: Trails Of Cold Steel 1 $40
Dynasty Warriors Next $20
Stranger Of Sword City $25
Shantae Half-Genie Hero [Risky Beats Edition] $45
UnEpic SEALED $65
Risk Of Rain SEALED $35
Aqua Kitty SEALED $40

Dreamcast - $20 on Lot

NBA2K1 loose $10
World Series Baseball 2K1 loose $10
MTV Sports Skateboarding loose $10

3DS - $100 on Lot

Legend Of Legacy Launch Edition SEALED $60
Crush 3D Loose in 3DS Case $10
Cubic Ninja Loose in 3DS Case $10
Codename S.T.E.A.M $10
Smash Bros 3DS CIB $17
Steel Diver CIB $8

PS1 - $45 on Lot

Fighter Maker Loose $10
FF9 CIB (Case damaged) $15
Sim City 2000 Game+Case (damaged) $10
Oddworld Abes Oddysee CIB $20

DS - $50 on Lot

Bleach Blade Of Fate Loose $15
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring Of Fates - $15
OEM Charging Base for original 3DS $20
Intec DS Case(scuffed up) $10

PS3 - $75 on Lot

Final Fantasy X/X2 Remaster Limited Edition CIB $10
NiNoKuni 1 Steelbook CIB $20
Zone Of The Enders HD Collection CIB $15
Yakuza 3 Loose $15
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Loose $15
Genji Days Of The Blade $20
Genji Days Of The Blade Loose $10

PS2 - $225 on Lot

https://imgur.com/a/pBJLqjf
https://imgur.com/a/1odALsV
MGS 2 CIB $10
DQ8 missing Demo Disc $20
Onimusha 2 CIB $15
MX vs ATV Unleashed CIB $10
Tekken 5 CIB $30
Kingdom Hearts 1 GH CIB $10
Kingdom Hearts 2 GH CIB $10
Stuntman CIB $10
Looney Tunes Back in Action CIB Looney Tunes Back in Action $10
Tak CIB $10
Soul Caliber 3 CIB $15
God of War 1 First Print CIB $50
GTA San Andreas (missing manual) $10
Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec $10
Soul Caliber 2 CIB $15
ATV Offroad Fury 4 $10
MDK 2 Armageddon Loose $10
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 $10
The Getaway $10
007 Agent Under Fire Loose $10
Test Drive GH $10
Eye Toy Antigrav with Eye Camera $20

XB360 - $35 on Lot

3rd Party Controller $10
Marvel Ultimate Alliance in Gamestop Case $10
OEM Black Controller with Battery Pack $20

Gamecube - $275 for Lot

GBA to GC Link Cable loose - $15
Donkey Kong Bundle (includes CIB copy of Donkey Konga, 1x loose Bogo Drum controller and DK Jungle Beat Bongo Drum controller in box but missing game BOX IS IN ROUGH SHAPE) - $125
Odama CIB with Microphone (Big Box is in rough shape but Game/Case/Manual/Mic are in perfect condition) $35
GB Player OEM Case Holder *Missing outer cardboard and Manual $25
Monopoly Party+Manual in Blockbuster Case $10
Star Wars Rogue Leader+Manual in DVD Case $15
Spiderman 2 Player's Choice (Missing Manual) $15
Megaman Anniversary Collection (Missing Manual) $20
MC Groovez Dance Craze$10
Fifa Soccer 2002 $10
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 loose in GC Case $15
Resident Evil 1 CIB Players Choice $30

Wii - $20 for Lot

Nights Journey of Dreams in Gamestop Case & Manual $10
Generic Dual Wiimote Charging Dock $10

$5 Games - $150 on Lot

GC 007 NightFire Case with Fantastic Four Games
GC NFL2k3 Loose with Cover & Manual
XB360 BF3 Limited Edition
XB360 Kinect Adventures
XB360 Motionsports
XB360 Call of Duty Ghosts
XB360 Darksiders 2
PS2 Wheel of Fortune
PS2 Motorcross Mania 3
PS2 Seaworld Deep Sea Adventures
PS2 Socom US Navy Seal
PS2 Final Fantasy X-2
PS2 ThrillVille
PS2 Star Wars The Force Unleashed CIB
PS2 Army Men Soldiers of Misfortune
PS2 Welcome to Jumpack Demo Disc
PS2 Metal Arms in Generic Case
PS2 MX vs ATX
PS2 Army Men
PS2 Rocky
PS2 NCAA Football 2004
PS2 Army Men : Sarges Hero
PS2 Full Spectrum Warrior
PS2 FIFA 2001 MLS
PS2 NCAA Football 2003
PS2 NCAA Football 2004
PS3 Need for Speed Most Wanted CIB
PS3 Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 3
PS3 Need for Speed Pro Street
PS3 Red Faction Guerilla x2
PS3 MoH Warfighter LE Loose
PS3 Crysis 2
PS3 Mercenaries 2 in Generic Case
PS3 Call of Duty MW3 x2
PS3 Assassins Creed 4 BF
PS3 Beyond Steelbook (Bad shape broken at spine)
PS3 Uncharted Dual Pack in Custom generic case
PS4 Has Been Heroes
PS4 The Division

Controller Lot for Repair - $75 Shipped

3x XBox One/Series Controllers
(White controller has minor drift on Right thumb stick, 1st Black one has Left Bumper issues where it's not detecting the press always and the 2nd Black one has the B button gets stucken on occasions.
Both Black ones have something small loose inside rattling. And both Black ones come with original back voters as the Power A one shown here is for my rechargeable batteries. Shipping should be around $10-15 at max if that.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/200232813@N07/albums/72177720316925867)

Covers, Cases and Manuals

8x Universal Game Cases (N64,SNES,Genesis,etc) $8 Each
3DS Persona Q : Shadow of the Labyrinth Case $10
PS4 Rise of the Tomb Raider 20th Anniversary Extras Only No Game $10
Grand Kingdom Case $10
Toukiden : Kiwami Case $10
Wii Dragon Quest Swords Manual $7
Wii Monster Hunter 3 Manual $5
Wii Elebits Manual $5
GC Ghost Recon Case & Manual $7
GC True Crime Streets of LA Case & Manual $10
GC Spiderman 1 Case Only $7
GC Dead to Rights Case & Manual $10
GC Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Case & Manual $10
GC Hitman 2 Case & Manual $10
GC MoH Frontline Case & Manual $7
GC Rainbow Six 3 Case & Manual $7
PS2 Red Faction Case $5
PS2 Call of Duty FH Case & Manual $7
GC NFL 2K3 Case $5
PS4 Nioh Case $5
PS Vita Exist Archive Case $5
PS3 Zone of Enders HD Collection Case & Manual $10
PS2 Dragon Quest 8 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Onimusha 2 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Tekken 5 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Kingdom Hearts 1 GH Case & Manual $10
PS2 Kingdom Hearts 2 GH Case & Manual $10
PS2 Area 51 Case PAL version $5
GC NBA 2K2 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Final Fantasy X-2 Case $ Manual $10
PS2 Starwars Battlefront Case & Manual $10
GC Prince of Persia Cover & Manual $10
GC Viewtiful Joe 1 Manual $20
PS2 Katamari Damacy Cover & Manual $10
GC Burnout 3 Takedown $5
PS2 Nightmare before Christmas Oogies Revenge Cover & Manual $15
PS2 GTA San Andreas Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Capcom Classic Collection Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution Manual $5
PS2 Megaman X Collection Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Star Ocean Till the End of Time Cover & Manual $10
PS2 R-Type Final Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Soul Caliber 2 Cover $7
XB Panzer Dragoon Orta Cover & Manual $30
XB Ninja Gaiden Black Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Mad Maestro Cover & Manual $10
PS2 007 Everything or Nothing Manual $5
PS2 Half Life 2 Cover $10
PS2 Devil May Cry 3 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 FF X-2 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 REZ Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Rygar Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Chaos Legion Manual $7
PS2 Zone of Enders 1 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Final Fantasy 12 Manual $7
PS2 Front Mission 4 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence Cover $7
PS2 Escape from Monkey Island Cover $7
PS1 Final Fantasy Chronicles GH Back/Front Cover & Manual $10
PS1 Tenchu 1 Cover & Manual $15
PS1 Final Fantasy 7 GH Front/Back Cover & Manual $15
PS1 Buster Bros Collection Cover & Manual $20
GC Zelda Master Quest Manual + Windwaker Promotional Paperwork $30
PS2 Black Case & Manual $10

Heeramandi is about Mallikajaan and her journey from being a tawaif to a huzoor. She is the protagonist and other ladies are deuteragonists with Sonakshi being the main antagonist. The men had cameos to say the least out of which Taha Shah had the maximum screen time. His role is more like a love interest of one of the deuteragonists. It’s like a flowerpot role where if you take the male hero out, the heroine does not have an independent existence in the story. Same analogy: if you remove Sharmin’s character (which should have been done) Taha will not have much to contribute (unless his role would have been written differently) and same goes for the other male actors in the series. Check the series out again and you’ll notice that most of Taha’s scenes are with Sharmin.
You have to understand that most of these interviews and promotional activities were concluded before the series released. Taha is certainly getting love and appreciation but no one anticipated this. I believe the promotions were conducted keeping the protagonist, deuteragonists and antagonist in mind with the male counterparts thrown in here and there. Even Manisha being the protagonist was barely around as I believe her health does not permit her to exert herself too much and promotions involve continuous activity and travelling.
I don’t think SLB shortchanged Taha as that was how his role was written. Yes, it could have been written better or differently but we are feeling that he was overshadowed or left out because we liked his character a lot and with Taha having become popular now. I’m happy for him nevertheless.

Hopefully this isn’t downvoted instantly, because I know people seem to get strangely very defensive about Beast’s characterization in this run. I think there is a lot of miscommunication whenever a Beast fan complains about how he was depicted here. Often times people will discount those complaints because they think Beast fans just don’t want him to go bad, when that doesn’t really seem to be the whole truth from what I’ve seen. Ultimately, the complaints I raise and I have seen others raise are more about thinking the writing of his spiral in X-Force 2019 was not done well rather than that said spiral shouldn’t have happened at all. With the Krakoa era coming to an end, and “From the Ashes” having the now-rebooted Beast who is pulled all the way from his time on The Defenders, I don’t see any of the flaws here being addressed beyond characters casually referring to how bad he became. So I wanted to take this time in the in-between, where our new Beast is apparently just chilling on Wonder Man’s couch while the rest of the X-Men fight against Orchis and Nimrod, to once and for all lay out the flaws of Beast’s villainous era, and establish not that it shouldn’t have happened, but that it could have been way better.
Problem 1: A Lack of Pathos:
Most X-Men fans who have been reading for awhile will agree that it’s honestly surprising more mutants haven’t gone down a dark path. Their history is one of striving for acceptance, putting their lives on the line for people who would rather see them dead, and being rewarded with not one but multiple genocides on their population. Some of the most interesting stories can actually come from a formally “upstanding” mutant finally deciding enough is enough. When Cyclops went down his “villainous” path, it made a lot of sense. We’d seen him becoming more disenfranchised with the dream for years. We’d seen his trust in Xavier erode time and time again, and so when he decided to stop asking for acceptance and start demanding it, it was hard to blame him. Even as we saw most of his friends turn against him, that didn’t stop people from declaring “Cyclops Was Right,” because his perspective could easily be understood, and he did achieve results. More recently in X-Men ‘97, we saw Rogue go down a dark path in the wake of Genosha being wiped out, including Magneto and Gambit. Again, this was understood, and it was an interesting direction for her character.
This sort of turn would also make a ton of sense for Hank McCoy. Did you know that back towards the start of the original Uncanny X-Men run, Hank was actually the first X-Men we ever saw to leave the team and say that Magneto was right, after he and Bobby were attacked by an angry mob because Hank used his powers to save a young child? Over the years, one of Hank’s most recurring struggles and arcs is self-loathing and eventual acceptance of his condition. Hank has always been at his darkest when he’s trapped in his spiral of self-loathing, but when he comes out the other side, he tends to be one of the most optimistic mutants when it comes to coexistence with humans. He was out making connections and fighting alongside non-mutants before anyone else. Joining the Avengers and Defenders, speaking on behalf of mutant rights before congress, dating human women who were able to accept his appearance, blue fur and all. Until they weren’t… looking at you, Trish Tilby.
So with all of this in mind, it would honestly be an extremely interesting arc to see Hank, this optimistic mutant who has spent his life building bridges and making connections with humanity, to be slowly beaten down and start to believe peace is not an option. As one of the original X-Men, he has been there through every tragedy that struck the mutant population. And as one of the smartest X-Men, he has usually been at the center of these crises. He has seen advancements in science meant to eradicate the mutants. He has fought against viruses that threaten to drive them extinct. He was there in the wreckage of Genosha. He has seen countless friends killed again and again. He has suffered his own mutation evolving and making him less and less human-looking. He saw the development of a mutant “cure” and was tempted to take it. He has seen it all.
And so that brings us to Krakoa. This is the moment where the mutants as a whole decided enough was enough. If they could not be accepted by humanity, they would pack up and form their own nation, and they would force humanity to accept that they exist by developing life-saving drugs that other nations would have to rely on. And what is one of the first things that happens after the establishment of Krakoa? Hank witnesses assassins infiltrate the island and assassinate Charles Xavier. This right here is honestly the perfect setup for Hank to go darker than he has before. Even after literally segregating the mutant population from humanity, like humanity seemed to want, they still decided to come and kill the man at the forefront of the movement. And Hank, recently placed in charge of mutant black-ops, would likely see that all options are on the table.
Unfortunately, Hank’s actual pathos surrounding the decisions he would go on to make is not explored by the book itself. The book has no interest in detailing Hank’s fall from grace as we saw with Cyclops before him. The book just wants us to accept that Hank has already fallen. And in fact, according to the writing, maybe he never had anywhere to fall from. Any time a character in X-Force tries to ask important questions to understand Hank’s thought process, they are cut off. Usually by Wolverine saying “He’s always been like this.” And then on one occasion, when Wolverine asked Hank why he was doing all this dark shit, Hank said, “Didn’t you read the script? I’ve always been like this.” There is no attempt to examine Hank as a character. We don’t need to know why Hank makes the decisions he does, because this book wants Hank to be a black and white villain and so that’s what he will be. Why? Because he’s always been like this.
Problem 2: Rapid Escalation:
One of the major defenses people have when it comes to Krakoan Hank is that he has apparently been on the road to his villainous self for over a decade. The X-Force run itself loved to have characters spout a list of Hank’s previous “crimes” without any context involved, as justification for why he was acting the way he did in the current run. The problem is, that context is very important. Because it shows the disparity in the Hank of previous stories who made mistakes with good intentions vs the Hank of X-Force who did heinous shit because he wanted to. This was less a plane making a slow descent and more a plane that was slowly descending, but then its engines shut off and it plummeted into a fiery explosion.
To make this case, we need to briefly analyze the previous perceived transgressions of Hank McCoy to show what they actually meant for his character and how they differ from the Bond villain X-Force would present us with. Let’s start with Threnody. Somehow, Threnody became a bit of a buzzword for the beginning of the end for Hank. When people talk about the history of Hank and Threnody, they will usually present it as one of Hank’s worst sins, saying something like “Hank callously handed Threnody over to Mr. Sinister so he could experiment on and abuse her!!!” It kind of makes for some whiplash when you actually read the Threnody story people are talking about. Here is a brief rundown of what actually happens:
Threnody is a young woman who cannot control her powers. It causes her no end of grief, and when we are introduced to her, she is homeless and constantly in danger of hurting herself or others. Beast, Rogue, and Iceman come across Threnody who has been found first by Mr. Sinister. Sinister actually has a vested interest in curing the Legacy Virus, and believes he can help Threnody master her powers, at which point she will prove vital in his efforts to study said Virus. Notably, Threnody wants to go with Sinister here. While Rogue disapproves, Hank does believe that Sinister is actually Threnody’s best option, openly stating Sinister can actually help her gain control and the X-Men cannot, because, as Hank directly says, Sinister is willing to damn parts of his soul in pursuit of scientific enlightenment, and the X-Men are not. A few issues later, when breaking into Sinister’s base, Hank encounters Threnody again. She’s happy. Sinister did indeed help her control her powers, and she has been able to use her abilities to help mutants the world over, while also undermining Sinister’s more evil operations from the inside. Hank expresses relief, saying he was kept up at night by his decision to let her go with Sinister, but Threnody actually thanks him for letting her. And that’s it. That’s Hank’s big “crime” here.
Hank’s other “sins” are also of varying levels of severity. There’s the time “Hank worked with his evil self to cure the Legacy Virus!” when the actual story in question is Hank asserting that he won’t stoop to the levels of Dark Beast and compromise his values in the name of science. There’s the time “Hank sided with the Inhumans against the X-Men!” when the actual story is Storm sending Hank to Attilan to find a way to end the conflict between mutants and inhumans before war broke out. Hank runs out of time to find a cure for the terrigen mist cloud, suggests mutants get off-world in the meantime rather than go to war with the inhumans, is thrown into a cell by the other X-Men for his “betrayal”, and then freed at the conclusion of the war by a repentant Storm when it comes to light that the whole conflict was manipulated by Emma Frost. There’s the time “Hank risked the timestream by bringing the original X-Men to the present day!” A decision that was made on his perceived deathbed with the hopes of bringing his old friend Cyclops back to his side. Hank wants to take the young mutants back right away, but they refuse. And instead of others enforcing that they need to return, we actually see Kitty Pride decide to lead them in the present in memory of Charles Xavier. Notably, Kitty would be one of the many mutants in future issues who would yell at Hank about this.
The point of this post isn’t to absolve Hank of all fault. He has made countless mistakes and bad decisions. Regardless of the culpability of others, the pulling of the O5 to the present was his decision. During Secret Empire, Hank would turn a blind eye to Hydra’s activity simply to keep the mutants under his care safe. During all of this, however, Hank’s character was not compromised. He expressed despair and regret over his worse choices, and struggled with thinking he was a good person any longer. Again, going back to his recurring struggle with self-loathing. He had pathos behind his decisions and how they affected him, and would often reunite with Wonder Man as an opportunity to recenter and declare he would “be better tomorrow than he was yesterday.”
You would think, if the aim of X-Force was to turn Hank into a full-on villain, it would take advantage of the long-form storytelling of comics to chronicle that escalation. Like I said, the assassination of Charles Xavier is a great starting point for Hank to start going darker than he ever has before. The problem is, we don’t get an escalation. Hank starts the run by doing some of the most heinous shit imaginable. Regardless of your thoughts on the severity of Hank’s previous mistakes, none of them compare to his opening volley in this run. Hank uses telefloronics to override and genocide an entire country, leaving various people either completely dead or braindead. We later find out that during this time he also established a space station where he ran unethical experiments on prisoners like Krakoa’s very own Dr. Mengele. He then accuses his old ally Colossus of conspiring with Russia against Krakoa, and calls forth the mutant population to witness as he parades a shamed Colossus through its streets. Then he kills Wolverine and resurrects him as a mindless animal who he uses as an attack dog against his perceived enemies. This isn’t an escalation, this is a different character. And the aforementioned lack of pathos means that we don’t get to see him struggle with these choices. We don’t see his thought process as he becomes darker and darker. Why would we? “He’s always been like this.”
Problem 3: No Personality:
One of the most fun aspects of turning a protagonist into an antagonist is seeing how their personality works with a more villainous mindset. When Cyclops became an “antagonist” to the X-Men, he was still Cyclops. He stuck to his convictions, he was a great leader and tactician, and he was able to turn many mutants to his side because of this. We’ve seen an evil Beast before. The creatively-named Dark Beast is from an alternate future where Beast went down a dark path lacking ethics. The fun of this character, besides comparing his ideologies with our Hank McCoy, is seeing how Hank’s penchant for jokes or quotes now become far more sinister and cutting.
There’s a strange narrative that the jokey Hank is reserved for the Avengers while the Hank with the X-Men is all business and science. This isn’t entirely true. Early on when he was a member of the Defenders, Hank talks about this sort of thing. He essentially says that he wears different hats. While working with the X-Men, he used big words essentially to gain respect from both his teammates and humanity. But with other teams, and in his then-new furry form, he dropped all of that. His speech became more naturalistic and he was much more of a goofball. The thing is, it’s the speech patterns that truly change depending on who Hank is hanging with, not his personality. Hank with the X-Men and Hank with the Avengers are both jovial characters who like to tell jokes and quote philosophy. You can see Hank being a bit of a clown among the X-Men in various runs. So it’s not like it’s a given that Hank is some entirely different dry doctor devoid of any sense of humor when among the X-Men.
But this is how Hank is portrayed in X-Force. Part of why this version of Hank is so hard to reconcile with the rest of his history for fans of the character is that he just doesn’t act like himself, even when he isn’t actively committing war crimes. In one early issue of the run, we get a glimpse at Beast’s journal where he accounts a meeting he had with Forge. Now, Beast has been known to be a very physical character. He is often known to sweep others into a hug, or even plant a big kiss on their face in the case of characters like Wonder Man or Iceman. Meanwhile this one page where we read his thoughts on Forge is clearly pretending this is not the case:

I paid Forge a visit in the Armory – and I must say that he can be, like Logan, rather impossible. There is a certain locker room bravado about him I find perplexing, like a language I only half understand. For instance, he refused to shake my hand but instead dragged me into what he called a “bro hug.” Then he challenged me to a “feat of strength,” asking if I would test out this sappy “muck bomb” he had developed that – or so I gather – glues one in place. He wondered if a “big boy” like me might be able to thrash free of the binding. I refused him and said I very much would prefer to get down to business. He then referred to me as a “bookish peckerwood @#$%” but did so with a friendly laugh and clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to make me stagger. I’m not sure how to process this, honestly. Is he being friendly or cruel? Is it possible to be both?

Needless to say, this doesn’t read like Beast. It reads like an android that has never before felt human emotion. I remember before reading this I was theorizing that Hank had been switched with Dark Beast once more to explain his sudden escalation, but after this I realized that couldn’t be the case. Because this sounds like neither Beast nor Dark Beast. Dark Beast understood how to properly write Hank as a villain. He doesn’t suddenly become your typical made scientist devoid of emotion, humor, or basic human understanding. He still makes jokes that are now cruel. He still quotes literature in a way that paints him as a god among men. Hank going bad can be a fun read, but this run was not.
Problem 4: No One Cares:
Another important angle to consider when writing a story of a good person breaking bad is how it affects those around them. Those who are close friends to the person and find themselves disturbed by their current actions. Again, I return to Cyclops. Regardless of where you stand on if he was right or not, he was very much positioned as an antagonist to the mutants at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Yet we see various friends of Cyclops still caring for him and wanting to pull him back from what they perceive as the dark side. Like I previously said, Beast’s whole reason for messing with the timeline was because he felt he was going to die and wanted to try to appeal to his old friend and bring him back around before he passed on. When someone good goes bad, part of the emotional core is seeing former friends try to appeal to their better nature, and even eventually deciding they’ve gone too far to turn back.
Not so with Hank in X-Force. Like I said, this run posits that this is not any kind of heel turn for Hank. This is how he’s always been. “Hank this isn’t you!” “No, he’s always been like this.” “Hank, turn back before it’s too late!” “Turn back where? He’s always been like this.” None of Hank’s friends give a shit. Hank’s best friend amongst the X-Men is Bobby Drake, Iceman, and we never once see any kind of confrontation there. Cyclops and Angel similarly doesn’t care. Now you could argue this is because X-Force is a secretive organization. Bobby and Scott don’t even know what Hank is doing. There are two issues with this. First, things reach a point where they would know. Hank’s actions become public knowledge, and Wolverine goes off to hunt him down while the rest of the X-Men just kinda look the other way. And second, there is someone with a lot of history with Hank that was a part of X-Force and did see everything that was going on. Jean Grey.
But we never get to see Jean wonder what’s happened to her close friend. Jean who was always incredibly close to Hank. Jean who, it was confirmed during the All-New X-Men era, had mutual feelings for Hank and might have started dating him had things been different. But no, Jean, like every character in this run, accepts that Hank has always been like this. That’s the answer to everything. So instead of some kind of emotional confrontation where she tries to appeal to his better nature, we instead have Jean yell at Hank, use her powers to throw him against a wall, and quit X-Force. And then most recently, we see her tell Firestar without hesitation to throw Hank under the bus for any heat that comes her way from her undercover mission. Because everyone will believe Hank is responsible for all the bad shit. Who the hell cares about Hank? According to this run, no one.
Conclusion:
I hope you can see the larger issue here. When Beast fans complain about his Krakoan era, people assume they just don’t want to see their favorite do bad things. But it’s practically accepted at this point in comics that most heroes will have a villain arc. Hell, Iceman is the only one of the original five X-Men who hasn’t gone down a dark path at this point. The problem is that everything about the writing of Hank during this time was just not done well. There is no exploration of Hank’s descent into villainy, and any questioning down that line is immediately shut down by the assertion that this is just who he’s always been. There isn’t any slow escalation because his first move is genocide. Hank is not even written as himself during this era, but rather as a generic bond villain. And none of Hank’s former close friends even show any emotion about his turn to villainy. An evil Hank story could easily work. We saw it with Dark Beast. A story where the former optimistic member of the X-Men has been beaten down so many times that he takes on a “whatever it takes” mentality could be interesting and emotionally resonant as we both understand what drove him here yet hate the man he’s become. But that isn’t what we got. We got a run that wrote him as a complete stranger and then had all the characters tell the reader that they were wrong for ever thinking he was anyone else.

This will sound like a shitpost but I'm trying to be serious.
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I don't listen to much American rap, I'm more of a grime man myself, but when I hear modern day rappers from there like Nettspend, Ken Carson and others, I notice a few similarities.
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I don't know the name of their genre, but it's all very heavily 'hard-autotuned' and pitch corrected for the aesthetic. Although it's all loops, and not through-composed songs like Guilt Trip, They both share very well produced spaced out bass sounds at the low end, sound effects implemented throughout the mix, and often samples. Also the incredibly punchy drums, where I presume attenuation is used (turning down the other instruments on the drum beats to make them louder).
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I think that eventually, American rap will start to slow down in tempo, just as a natural progression. People will get tired of speeding up and up, and start to use electronic "analog" instruments like the 'piano' or 'strings' on Guilt Trip. Songs will become longer, and sectioned. Telling a story, and having more meaning in the lyrics. Singles will turn into albums (I HOPE!)
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If I'm wrong, just tell me! Open to debate

Long story short - I’m trying to find someone to assist with the Game Day Threads next season. This would also include other mod privileges: ability to pin posts, moderate comments and posts, etc. Alternatively, it would be great to find someone experienced enough with mod bots to automate the GDTs.
Long version: I’m trying to spend less time on my cell and will be deleting the Reddit app, and won’t always have access to a computer to post GDTs. Would appreciate a Mavs fan that is interested in keeping the community chugging.
Send a DM or leave a comment!

I think a lot of Severance is really explained by how episode 2 opens. I've noticed this before, but kept forgetting to dive into it. But last night I put on episode 2 to fall asleep to, heard it again, and decided to look into it today.
So iMark shows up for work at the beginning of Ep 2 on his first full day as MDR supervisor. He's looking at the list of his new duties, he's doing all the office prep stuff, and the whole time they're playing "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" as the music.
I truly believe there are no mistakes in this show. Everything has a reason.
So as I'm falling asleep last night, all I'm hearing is the music, I'm singing along in my head and thinking about being in second grade and performing this song with my class for one of the pagents, and then thinking, once again, "why this song?"
Some background: the Battle of Jericho itself, is where they marched around the city once a day for six days, blowing their ram horns (goat reference), and on the 7th day they marched around seven times, blowing their horns until the walls crumbled and they took the city. All fine and well. But... then I started thinking, "ok, but of all the songs they could use as Mark is setting up the office, WHY that song?"
More background: Joshua was the right hand/second behind Moses. He was with Moses when God gave Moses the commandments, but not when Moses wrote them down. Then Joshua was one of the 12 spies Moses sent into Canaan to see if they could settle there, and they were all asked to keep a good tone to the reports. The job of the spies was to map the land, see what the other settlements were doing, figure out if they could be taken over, and report back on the general state of what they had (agriculture, forestry, other resources, etc). When the spies returned, 10 gave mixed or negative reports, with only Joshua and Caleb giving glowing one. Because of this, only Joshua and Caleb were promised spots in the Promised Land. After Moses died, God appointed Joshua as his successor. Joshua then started leading them into Canaan to find places to settle, and the first battle that happened was the Battle of Jericho.
So... what if Petey is our Moses, and Mark is our Joshua? And Because Mark would have been with Petey as they wandered around, they learned what the floor was like, but then Petey wrote and left the "commandments" (aka the Map) when Mark wasn't there.
So now Mark is in charge. And though Petey/Moses is alive on the outside, and giving oMark some direction before he dies (about spying!), iMark is now his full successor inside. He was appointed by the Board/Cobel (the "god" in Severance, who, by the way, iMark never heard the voice of). At this point in time, for the innies, Petey is as good as dead. And, as an aside, there ARE 12 spies, because once they decide to join with O&D, there are 12 of them! (4 in MDR + 8 total in O&D) I double checked in the scene and have a picture.
So, the questions...

1. What is the battle of Jericho?
   
2. The next is the first battle of Ai, which they lose. What is it?
   
3. The first battle of Ai is lost because one of them looted JerJericho for their own personal gain, which they weren't supposed to do, and beyraybetrayed the group. So who is the betrayer here? Who gets "paid off" by the company?
   
4. What will be the successful battle for Ai? (Season 2 or 3?)
   

I just think with all the religious stuff with Kier, Cobel, etc., and the song, "mapping the land" and the innies trying to figure out what's going on and them spying... it's too similar.
To answer some of the questions:

1. I believe the Battle of Jericho is the innies breaching the MDR locked wall that gets installed. By the time it's installed, Petey is truly dead, so both oMark and iMark are his successor in the Moses/Joshua parallel. It's only at this point the battle could happen.

The MDE takes place, and Helly picks defiant jazz. That can symbolize the horns being played around the city walls. IIRC, the way iMark is dancing is even like a little marching step move. After Milchick leaves, the innie gang leaves MDR with Graner's keycard. The walls of Jericho have, indeed, come tumbling down! They then go and make a tentative deal to join forces with O&D, creating the full 12 spies.

1. The battle at Ai, that they lose the first time, could be them waking up in the final episode and it being thwarted. It's not clear (yet) what/how much they accomplished. TBD
   
2. The reason the first battle at Ai is unsuccessful is because someone betrayed the group at Jericho by looting. So, if this analogy holds, did someone decide to take a payoff of some sort after the first overtime contingency test in episode 9? Maybe to stay out of the breakroom? I'm not pointing fingers, but Milchick was offering a lot of new incentives to Dylan, so I guess we'll have to see?
   
3. If the 1st battle of Ai was the OTC in ep 9, then the second would have to be some sort of repeat. But in Joshua's story, the second time he goes with a small contingency and confronts the leaders, I believe (who think it'll be easy to take them down). Meanwhile, the city is lost and 12,000 perish. So... are they going to wake again but have a much better plan this time???
   

Some additional thoughts:
• I can see iIrv, when he puts the egg in the Kier book, being one of the spies being fed up with "the word of God" and broken promises.
• When iMark takes Helly on her "mental health walk" she eventually agrees to help clean up the map. And when they're with the big O&D group, they talk about trying to find out what else is going on down there, exploring, and mapping. This was the job of the 12 spies that Moses sent into Canaan.
• Even if you think about Petey, he looks old. Like older than he should, given what we could guess his age is. And he's wandering alone, lost in his own desert (the greenhouses) for awhile.
Also, he loves the robe. After Mark takes him in, we basically only see Petey in that robe from that point forward. It just reminds me of how many different biblical stories we re-enacted in various school plays, and the boys were always in their dads' bathrobes when they played any biblical characters.
We don't know a lot about Petey's real backstory, but when he leaves Mark's house after Cobel breaks in, he goes into one of his fugue states where he can't tell the difference between reality and being on the severed floor. He's holding the map he drew, and thinks he's following that as he walks across the bridge and into town. As though he is wandering, again, in his own mind desert. And Moses wandered, alone, then died on a mountain while looking over the Promised Land. Petey, after wandering alone, walks out of the convenience store, sees Mark in the distance, and collapses. So does Mark represent, in some way, the idea of the promised land (uncovering what Lumen is really up to on the severed floor) to Petey?
(My whole point there is that Petey really does fit the idea of being the Moses in this dissection of the story, lol)
TL;DR: could Petey be Moses, Mark be Joshua, and the whole show ultimately be about trying to lead the innies and their outies to their promised land (aka the truth of what's really happening on the severed floor)?
Anyway... it seems to fit. And I can't think of another reason to choose that song, out of any song they could have picked, to play during that scene. It was the real transfer of power, when iMark truly became the new leader, taking over even the mundane tasks of leadership in this culture that signaled, to them, that iPetey was gone.
Sure, it could be a stretch. But I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts, especially anyone who might be able to dissect the biblical stories better! 😊

When I talk to people about generations and microgeneration, often people don't know about the microgenerations.
To me, the reason why late Xs arent fully Xs and early millennials aren't fully millennials is because of technology. Half of our childhood was analog and half was digital.
We did all the things that Gen Xers talk about but we also had access to the internet, not smart cell phones, and at home video games. We saw a massive switch in how the world interacts with each other. Many Xers were in college when this technological switch happened.
True millennials had technology all around them for most of the formative years.
What are some other things that differentiate Xennials from Xers and Millennials?

Two summers ago, I drove 7 hours one way to buy a 2019 Manual Genesis G70. It was used, not certified preowned, with just under 12K miles. The OEM tires were approaching the end of their useful life. It had one scratch on the rear passenger door and an annoying dealership permanent sticker on the trunk. It also only had one key. The head unit infotainment screen also had a small delamination crack - visible if you looked close but not perceptible if you ran your fingers across it. I bought it as is, though Genesis has a stellar warranty that transfers to the second owner so I still had 2 years warranty remaining. It was too far away for me to get it to a trusted mechanic to PPI, so the warranty was a huge factor.
On a long drive to the beach, the screens began to flicker. The car still ran mechanically fine, but it was alarming. I also noticed I couldn't get the Genesis Connected Services to work. A few weeks later, the screens were flickering again in my driveway. I shut the car off thinking if I just shut it off and turned it back on it would fix itself - for about 5 minutes I couldn't restart the car. It was as though it had a completely dead battery. I took it to my local dealer which unfortunately is an hour away but fortunately is reached through a combination of great back roads and highways. They were unable to replicate the issue but decided to attribute it to the head unit and replaced the entire thing on the basis of the delamination crack being covered by warranty. A week after I got the car back, the screens flickered again. I tried doing an over the air software update with Genesis Corporate over the phone and it kept failing, so we went back to the dealership. They manually did the update. After a few more weeks, the screens flickered again. I took it back down and they decided to go nuclear, completely uninstalling all software and updates from the car and then reinstalling the latest software as a clean slate. When I got it back - my genesis connected services were working and the screens never flickered again. BUT. My backup camera would now randomly stop working. I took it back and they tried a patch update to the backup camera software as well as replacing a crush washer that's apparently a known failure point for the backup camera. The problem persisted. They informed me there is a sensor in the transmission that tells the backup camera when the car is in reverse and when to turn on. That sensor apparently failed, and the solution is apparently to replace the entire transmission. I personally found that insane, but a new clutch and transmission covered fully under warranty? Sure, I'll enjoy your courtesy car a little longer. Yeah, on that note. Having the car in and out of the shop so often was annoying, but it was all covered under Genesis phenomenal warranty, the dealership was surprisingly patient, understanding and communicative, and since they're an hour away I had an opportunity to enjoy some courtesy cars on a good mix of backroads and highways. The courtesy cars I had in no particular order...

• 2023 Genesis G70, 2.0 Turbo AWD. Felt heavy and the automatic transmission seems to take up more space in the center console than the manual. Definitely quicker than my car, but I don't enjoy the weightyness to it. I think it might have something to do with how the power is being put down? Like it IS faster than my car and it DOES have better traction in corners but it FEELS much heavier.
  
• 2023 Sonata N-Line. Feels fast and light but not for me. The interior after getting out of a G70 is a let down and the front wheel drive and extra power don't do enough to make up for it. To clarify - I think this is a fun car if you want a quick, front wheel drive sedan - but it's not my cup of tea.
  
• 2022 Genesis G80. Cannot say enough good things about this car. Feels like a true luxobarge. Gorgeous, comfortable, quiet interior, everything feels heavy and expensive but it also has the power to get out of its own way. This was by far, hands down, no comparison, the best courtesy car I've ever been given. I'd go as far as to say it's one of the best cars I've ever driven in my life. That's relative of course, but it really was just such an impressive vehicle. It was hard to find anything not to like about it.
  
• 2023 Genesis G70, 3.3 twin turbo AWD. Holy hell this thing moves. So, this car has the sunroof - which I hate. In G70s with the sunroof, I have to put the seat all the way on the floor to have headroom. I'm 5'11" with a 32 inch inseam if that gives you an idea of my torso/leg ratio. It also had the same heavyness I felt in the 2.0 AWD courtesy car - it's something to do with the AWD but I don't know if it's how the system moves power around or if it's literally just the added weight of the system. It doesn't feel flickable the way my RWD car feels. And before you call me an idiot for describing my G70 as flickable, understand it's all relative and I haven't owned or driven that many performance cars in my life. I know my car isn't a miata. That all being said. So. Freaking. Fast. The V6 has a really unique sound to it unlike any other V6 I've experienced, I can't decide if I like it or not but it's definitely unique. The speed is really incredible and the AWD makes it so usable. You can floor it turning right or left off the line at a stoplight and it will hold the road and put the power down. If I weren't so sure this car would get me arrested, I'd want one.
  

I got my car back and I haven't had any issues with screens or backup cameras or anything else since the transmission replacement. So what's to love? Small, sporty, rear wheel drive car that has the power to break traction but isn't so powerful that you can't use all your gears. To me this car is straddling the line of slow car fast. It's incredibly comfortable, has a great stereo, looks cool, and it's got enough room for me, my spouse, my dog and a child seat. Also so glad I got the manual when I did - manual G70s are not easy to find. This was one of four for sale within 500 miles of my zip when I bought it. The rear seat is actually usable, but the foot room is tight. I'm 5'11 with a 32 inch inseam. If I take my shoes off, I can sit behind my driving position. I have the knee and hip room - but the foot room is very tight for an adult male. Decent gas mileage if you're not driving it like a hooligan. Feels light and eager to turn, even at speed.
What's not so good? The trunk has a high load floor so even though you have a good opening and footprint, it's shallow. It's not unusable, it's just not as deep as you'd expect it to be. I was still able to fit everything my spouse, my dog and I needed for a week at the beach. Speaking of long trips - no spare tire. That pissed me off. Not even a space saver? Come on. I think it should be a legal requirement that all cars have at least a space saver. In any case, this car can accept the same space saver spare kit the 3.3 model comes with or the Kia Stinger comes with. I ordered the parts online and installed a space saver spare myself. The backup camera shuts off as soon as you're out of reverse, even if you're rolling backwards in neutral. This is a nitpick, but I do wish the backup camera would stay on until I was rolling forward. Speaking of reverse, the pedal box is tight and I usually wear an 11 or 12 shoe depending on the brand. With certain shoes, I have to modify my left foot motion because my toe will catch the arm of the clutch pedal. Not impossible, but it can be annoying in certain pairs of shoes or if you have big feet.
Clutch and Transmission :: I'm gonna give this it's own section because I feel like this is a very case sensitive matter. Manuals I drove before this - a 2011 Subaru Outback. First manual car I bought and I drove it for 120K miles before an old dude in a Yukon totaled it. Some people have said they don't enjoy the feeling of this transmission, I don't have much to compare it to. I think the stick feel is fine. The actual clutch is a toss up for me. It's hydraulic, so on one hand it's buttery smooth and easy and very forgiving if you're doing a drive through or in stop and go traffic - things I took pains to avoid in my outback. The flip side is, the pedal gives you very little feedback. The bite point is harder to feel and it definitely numbs the experience a bit. If you're looking for a very raw, analog feeling transmission this is not it. This feels much more like an entry level luxury sport sedan that was given a manual just because it would be cool to have a manual, but also trying to do one in such a way that it wouldn't alienate luxury car buyers who generally find manuals to be a nuisance.
Would I go through it all again? Absolutely. The dealer trips were annoying but it let me test drive some cool stuff and I never paid a dime. The only thing I paid for was an oil change, a new set of tires (not from the dealer) and a new key cause I wanted to have two. The key was $700 which is offensive but unfortunately not unheard of with modern cars. The car is a blast. If you want a smallish, luxuryish, sportscarish vehicle that gives you a lot of nice stuff without being too expensive or too harsh, check out a G70. If you're a manual purist, you may love it or hate it - the clutch is definitely a sticking point for many people. Genesis Dealer? Mine is great, thank god. But I have heard plenty of horror stories from other owners who went to more Hyundai focused dealers. Maintenance? No mechanical issues at all, just weird software related glitches that were all covered under warranty. Mods? Not really planning anything big. I added a sun strip to the windshield, a dash cam and wiring for my radar detector. Also the spare tire. And I put PS4s on it. I plan to keep it stock - at least until it's paid off and the warranty is out.
Questions for reddit :: Catch cans! Should I have one on this car? Is there a recommended brand? Do your mechanics charge you more to empty them or do you empty them yourselves? What does a catch can do that the OEM air oil separator doesnt?
TL;DR :: I like my manual G70. It isn't very fast, but I like it.