Zoro In Opla: I Guess I’ll Join You…………….*goes Thru A Near Death Experience Where He Wakes

Stop what you’re doing. Reblog if you should be sleeping or doing work.

Dad Villain AU Masterpost

Main post! Context is here!

➼ Emelie is totally a good mom. I promise ➼ Mourning Morning. ➼ Tom and Nooroo (1) (2) (3) (4) ➼ Marinette meeting Nooroo, ➼ Nooroo Zooting the Fuck Out, And Zooting Further ➼ Marinette and Zoe (1) ➼ Luka meeting Marinette (1) (2) ➼ Marinette and Alya (1) ➼ Adrien speaking to Mother :D (1) (?) ➼ Adrien investigating the Timeline (1) (2) ➼ Adrien and Marinette meeting <3 / some adorable doting ➼ Adrien/Marinette hanging out (1) (2) (3) (animatic) ➼ Kim smackdown, Dealing with Lila/Chloe (1) (2) (3) ➼ Is That Jagged Fucking Stone??? (1) (2) (3) (4) ➼ Marinette's first episode (1) (2) (3) ➼ Get it, Nathalie. (1) ➼ Felix returns! (1) (?) ➼ Kagami returns! (?) ➼ The Fashion Show (1) (2) ➼ "The Charity Ball" (1) (2) (3) (4) (?) ➼ AU Ladybug, (additional shitpost) ➼ Viceroy attacking the shit out of Gabriel for my amusement (1) (2)

Bless this man

a comic about wine, a wager, and reconnecting through your weird kids

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this behemoth of a comic is finally done - and just in time for zoros birthday huehue. initially i wanted to make a zolu introspective from an outsider POV and was like you know who would have really funny input on this … mihawk. and then it spiraled into seven pages of mishanks sitting and talking. i thought it would be funny if mishanks ended up doing self imposed couples therapy the day mihawk brought luffys bounty bc well. its kind of hilarious to think abt mihawk realizing shanks was onto something all those years ago after he meets zoro and luffy. like sure this new generation is batshit crazy but my god are they cooking. anyways. cheers. get some kids

ALWAYS

Harry Potter as a teen comedy…

Daily fucking reminder that Luigi Mangione is innocent, completely and fully. He has been convicted of no crime. He has had no fair trial. He is a SUSPECT. Luigi Mangione is entirely innocent and everyone needs to stop parroting this insidious propaganda that he “committed” the crime he is only SUSPECTED of. He is not a murderer. He is not a criminal. He is an innocent man.

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)  

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

Propaganda in SOTR

An interesting facet of the way propaganda is used in SOTR is that the Capitol/Plutarch's manipulation of the footage happens gradually over the course of the Games in real time, which means people see multiple versions of the same events. Things are aired and then scrubbed, or else aired and then re-aired, slightly altered, until we get the edited cut that emerges during the Victory Ceremony recap. That 'final' edit succeeds in replacing the nation's collective memory of the Games, but it's important to note that plenty of citizens have, to varying degrees, witnessed parts of the truth!

For example, the footage from when the Games is airing "live" across Panem during mandatory viewing is not tampered with to nearly the same extent as the post-Games recap, both because:

1) the overarching 'narrative' of the Games inherently cannot be determined until the Games are finished and a Victor is named. Even the Gamemakers don't know exactly how the story's going to end. Things that might've seemed like normal gameplay (such as Haymitch and Ampert's initial meetup/alliance) likely air to the public before it becomes clear that what those two are actually up to is rebellious. When they begin to carry out their plot, certainly the cameras cut over to the other players, meaning none of the tank explosion gets shown, but only later would the Ampert & Haymitch alliance have been cut out completely.

2) The five or so minute delay is not long enough to make the kind of changes Haymitch describes watching during his Victor's Ceremony, and it is more likely that it only gives the Gamemakers/broadcasting crews enough lead time to determine which tributes they should be following at any given point of the Games (and when to cut away when someone is involved in something questionable). When the Careers and Haymitch and Maysilee encounter Gamemakers in the arena, for example, you can bet the footage airing across Panem shifts to Wellie in her tree. But later, when Haymitch tracks down Wellie and helps her, that's something that probably is shown at first, only to be erased later.

I'm thinking about this because I read a review where someone was saying this book opens up new plot holes for the original trilogy, because if they changed up Haymitch's games so much they could've just edited out Katniss and Peeta's suicide attempt and the berries altogether. I think it's a lot more complicated than that!

In her SOTR B&N edition interview, Suzanne even discusses how many versions of Haymitch's reaping exist and air to different people at different times. On the one hand you have what actually happens and is first filmed: The peacekeeper's shooting Woodbine, Lenore Dove helping Woodbine's mother, Haymitch's rigged 'reaping.' All of District 12 witnesses this, but the wider nation doesn't. Then you have the version that is aired to the rest of Panem after the 5 minute delay: Haymitch's name is called. No one reacts. Then you have the version Plutarch tweaks for the nightly recap: Sid and Ma are shown reacting to Haymitch's name being called. You then have the version shown during the Victor's Ceremony, post-games: Sid and Ma are scrubbed from the footage. And even then, finally, you get the version Katniss and Peeta watch on the train in Catching Fire, which Suzanne states could very well have been further tweaked over the years to fit an evolving narrative.

One can imagine this is true of many other elements of these Games. Capitol citizens directly witness both the Chariot Parade and the Interviews. Since the Interviews are also mandatory "live" viewing, nationwide, presumably the rest of Panem get much more extended footage of each tribute (with maybe just a couple of their answers cut by the 5 minute delay) than what is ultimately preserved on the tape Katniss & Peeta see. It's only after the games that the Newcomer alliance is all but erased.

The tributes' families are interviewed when there are eight kids remaining. Sid and Ma must've been interviewed back in Twelve, and surely that was shown. It's cut out, after, to make people forget about Haymitch's family. Similarly, the footage of Haymitch receiving the milk in the arena probably airs, because Snow's plan there is to force Haymitch to look like a terrible person (by dumping it when Wellie needed it), or force him to kill his ally (by giving Wellie the milk), or force him to kill himself (by drinking it), all of which needs to be seen to be effective. That entire plot line is cut from the recap footage because it goes nowhere, and no one who did see it probably thinks anything of it because it ends up not being important to Wellie's or Haymitch's death, but this doesn't erase that people did see it.

Ultimately, the point Suzanne's making re: propaganda isn't as simple as the nation being fed one (1) false version of events and believing it because it's the only thing they've ever been shown. It's that many citizens WITNESSED (to various degrees, depending on where and who they are) other versions of these Games, with more, though still not entirely truthful, elements from reality. Yet even though there are plenty of discrepancies for people to question, no one does. Haymitch even comments on this as he's watching the recap. The Capitol's gone so far as to have even changed up the order of the deaths (which wouldn't have been altered in the "live" footage for obvious reasons), and the Capitol audience is eating it up even though they MUST remember it didn't happen like that!! The propaganda, the final narrative, is so effective that it makes people forget even the truths they have seen with their own eyes. Reality gets buried under several layers of falsehood, not just the one. And no one asks any questions.

To bring it back around to Peeta and Katniss, their games and rebellion are harder to alter for several reasons. Some things do get cut, including what Katniss' does for Rue, in the recap. But The Finale is the one point of the games that to some degree needs to be shown in all versions. There's no one else left to cut away to, for one, and there also needs to be some sort of narrative ending to close the Games. It's harder to edit actual deaths, and harder still when it's down to the last two tributes remaining. (I'll point out here that the Capitol doesn't alter the force field trick in Haymitch's games, either, even though some people might have read rebellion even in that [Katniss and Peeta certainly do!] They really couldn't. This is why I think Haymitch's side plot to blow up the cornucopia and kill off Silka and likely himself in the process might have actually worked to cause a visible stark for the rebellion more than anything else that he does. To at least some degree, that would've had to have been shown. They would need it to explain the ending.)

Now, in a best case scenario, the Gamemakers certainly could've sent in a targeted mutt or something to take out Katniss or Peeta, and thus handpicked their singular Victor. But this idea is immediately foiled by the both of them very imminently killing themselves. This time, the Capitol does not have the benefit of time on their side, and the 5 minute delay in the footage makes not one ounce of difference.

Secondly, Katniss & Peeta have the added protection their personal narratives afford them. It's harder to erase Prim from all footage than it was Sid and Ma, because Katniss volunteering for Prim is The Fact about her everyone latches onto pre-Games. The desperate star-crossed lovers storyline, meanwhile, effectively makes the berry trick ambiguous, instead of inherently rebellious. Some might see it as an attack against the Capitol, but plenty more buy into the romance, and even Snow is forced to admit that this narrative can be useful in shifting the public sentiment. By that point in the books, the time for killing them has passed and it makes more sense for the Capitol to use Katniss & Peeta, just as by the end of SOTR, it makes more sense for the Capitol to use Haymitch to solidify their propaganda. Thus, Haymitch's story enhances Katniss and Peeta's, rather than tarnishes its believability. When propaganda works, it will have people believing what they are told above even their own memories. Katniss' ~luck~ comes from what Haymitch never had... a series of other events and people directly aligning with her actions to allow them to break through the Capitol's narrative.

MANIFEST

MANIFEST