Christopher Seagull

reblog with your favourite legendary/mythical from each generation

From a "going out and doing stuff" angle, all it would take to get him involved would be for the antagonist to be a real dick, but also someone sufficiently insulated that he has to do through a whole journey to get them their comeuppance, so he could definitely work as a video game protagonist of some sort.

From an "unsuitable" angle, Everett's a flat and static character whose entire MO is yelling and slapstick violence against rude people. To make him work as a Metroidvania protagonist within his existing character, all the powerups are different ways to flip his shit at enemies for productive effect:

Chase someone while hollering continuously to position them

Run into them to automatically defeat them in a flurry of cartoon violence

Smack them until they curl up in the fetal position to make them a springboard

Hurl them away to hit switches and buttons

Not only does this ensure abilities gained are all vaguely similar instead of a neat spread, later-game platforming challenges involving multiple enemies and environmental hazards devolve into Lemmings (1991) horseshit. I picture having to time your actions to get them and you past obstacles and into very specific spots, with near immediate failure if you get too far (obstacle that one of you dodged hits the other) or too close (Everett automatically grabs them and defeats them somewhere that won't help him platform)

Boss fights are also limited by his Everett's idiom, since an actual drag-out brawl isn't something that happens - instead, each one is some jerk making their surroundings particularly dangerous (street racing, playing with fire, running an unsafe factory, etc). The bosses don't even know Everett is after them and the actual challenge is to get through the set piece surrounding them, at which point Everett is so mad he defeats them in one hit with a newly-developed power-up.

Brief breaks in the usual formula are available in certain situations where the player can do something exceptionally rude, at which point Mrs True will appear to chase them. This gives us higher-speed gameplay where the goal is to make it to a specific dead-end, at which point she will preview an upcoming ability by using it on the player.

Hey did you know there's a tell all book about the behind the scenes of Meta and the author is forbidden from promoting it?

First three couples who registered their marriage in different districts:

some openly queer actresses and a director celebrating this historical day:

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

So Carpathia was not a top-end luxury liner. Her reputation was for being Jolly Comfortable - she was very broad in her proportions, and not super-duper fast, and the result was that she didn’t rock so much on the waves and you couldn’t particularly hear/feel the engines. She was solid and dependable, and lots of people liked using her, but she therefore occupied a lesser niche than Titanic or Olympian or whatever - and crucially, as a result of that, she only had one radio operator on board. This means she only had radio ops for a certain window in the day, unlike Titanic, which had 24 hour radio ops.

So on that night, when Titanic went down, Carpathia’s wireless operator - one Harold Cottam - clocked off his shift at midnight, and went to bed. While he was getting ready for bed, though, he left the transmitter on for the hell of it, and therefore picked up a transmission from Cape Race in Newfoundland, the closest transmitting tower sending messages to the ships. They told him that they had a backlog of private traffic for Titanic that wasn’t getting through. So, even though his shift was over, and it was now 11 minutes past bloody midnight, and he just wanted to go to bed, Harold Cottam decided that nonetheless, he’d be helpful, and let the Titanic know they had messages waiting.

And that’s how he received the Titanic’s distress signal. In spite of no longer being on shift to receive it, and therefore in order to send Carpathia galloping to Titanic’s rescue, and thus saving 705 people.

All because Harold Cottam decided one night to be kind. 

Rostrum had ordered that no messages to the press be sent out of respect to the survivors, for they would have their privacy destroyed as soon as they reached New York. Cottam respected this order, even under extreme duress of fatigue, stress, and the knowledge that in some cases the bribes were almost three times his annual salary.

He eventually went to bed but not before working with one of the rescued Titanic’s radio operators, Harold Bride, to transmit as many messages as possible. Bride was injured (his feet had been crushed in a lifeboat) and had just passed the body of the second of Titanic’s radio operators aboard (Jack Phillips), so neither of them were really in the best shape to keep working, but they did.

There are probably sound reasons why not, one of which is probably that getting yet another ‘Titanic’ project greenlit is far easier - name recognition, pre-sold property, multiple conspiracy theories to play with (all discredited, but when did that stop the “History” Channel?)

Here are a couple of stories about ‘Carpathia’:

As @mylordshesacactus has already said, her boilers and engines were rated for no more than 14 knots and, when she managed 17.5 for the only time in her life it’s said (I hate the phrase but I have to use it) that the Chief Engineer hung his hat over the main pressure gauge so no-one - including himself - could see how far its needle was into the red.

Captain Rostron, a religious man, was seen on several occasions standing privately on the exposed bridge wing with his own hat raised and his mouth moving in silent prayer, and when daylight revealed the extent of the ice-field his ship had passed without harm, he only said “There must have been another Hand on the wheel than mine…”

There’s another problem-of-sorts about a screenplay set aboard ‘Carpathia’ - an astonishing lack of that easy dramatic tool, conflict. Captain Rostron decided he was going to the ‘Titanic’s assistance, and that was that. AFAIK not a single passenger or crewman - not one - questioned the wisdom of his decision either then or afterwards, even when…

…‘Carpathia’ headed at more than full speed, in the dark, through dangerous waters where an iceberg had apparently just sunk an “unsinkable” ship.

It’s easier to write - and sell - a story about pride, arrogance, stupidity, rich against poor and lives lost through hubris, than it is to write one about people who rallied round and did the right thing at the right time, not for reward but because it was the right thing to do.

Here’s Rostron and his officers…

…the ‘Carpathia’ stewards and cabin crew….

…some of her passengers…

…and some of the people they helped.

No one is connecting this to systemic issues in police training and culture and no one is treating this as the canary in the coal mine it is.

Modern police training is functionally cult indoctrination, and intentionally cultivates paranoia. Police learn that everyone is out to get them, danger lurks around every corner, and their only job is to make it home alive after their shift.

They then enter the body of police culture, where questioning the bad behavior of fellow officers is at best strictly socially punished and at worst can get them killed, where they are constantly vigilant to say the right things and portray the right beliefs.

Suddenly, after generations of mainstream culture being generally supportive of police, in the midst of an anxiety-riddled pandemic, there is a highly-publicized backlash against law enforcement. Regular people are saying ACAB, calling cops fascists and murderers and wife-beaters. They're posting officers' service records on social media. Police, unwilling to believe they are evil, experience a cognitive dissonance backlash effect and cling to beliefs that contradict reality.

No one should be shocked - and no one should be hesitant to say - that there is a mental health crisis in law enforcement. They are paranoid, hyper-vigilant, and mired in cognitive dissonance. They have guns and virtually unchecked power to enact violence in their communities. Making up delusional stories about fentanyl is a pretty mild outcome compared to what we should be expecting from these circumstances.

People are doing fentanyl every single day, and while yes there is a tragically high rate of overdose, police seem to be the only people suffering from serious side effects from just touching the shit. If it were really as dangerous as the police claim, fentanyl use would have a 100% overdose rate. It does not.

Watching that reality sink in for her was rather interesting because I could tell she saw this logic was undeniable, and I imagine it really called into question the reliability of police as a whole.

What this means is that every nurse on that unit has fumbled with getting all the leftover fentanyl out of the dosing cartridge and sprayed fentanyl all over their bodies. Sometimes repeatedly. ("And none of us are even getting high, let me tell you.") And yet, despite medical workers frequently interacting with fentanyl in the course of their jobs and spilling it on their bodies, these episodes of hysteria are specific to cops—not medical workers like nurses or doctors.

The Millennial Meme Cringe Power Hour: a singalong.

All Your Base

Cat! I'm a kitty cat!

Yatta! (Irrational exuberance)

the Llama song

Numa Numa

Badger badger badger mushroom

Do you like waffles, the nomnom song

wii shop theme

peanut butter jelly time

Caramelldansen

Nyan cat

shooting star

Guess who got disqualified from the Hugo Awards for unclear, most possibly political reasons!!

Award admin Dave McCarty's response to people asking why:

But this email is apparently just bouncing everything back so here's the full list of the admin team:

https://locusmag.com/2024/01/mccarty-standlee-and-others-censured/

Worldcon Intellectual Property (W.I.P.), the California non-profit that holds the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society including “Hugo Award,” issued this statement in a press release on January 31, 2024:

W.I.P. takes very seriously the recent complaints about the 2023 Hugo Award process and complaints about comments made by persons holding official positions in W.I.P. In connection with these concerns, W.I.P. announces the actions listed below. There may be other actions taken or to be taken that are not in this announcement.

Dave McCarty has resigned as a Director of W.I.P.

Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the W.I.P. Board of Directors (BoD).

W.I.P. has censured or reprimanded the following persons, listed in alphabetic order, for the reason given:

Dave McCarty – censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.

Chen Shi – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.

Kevin Standlee – reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks.

Ben Yalow – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.

Donald Eastlake has been elected Chair of the W.I.P. BoD.

Please note that each year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) is run by a separate organization which administers the Hugo Awards for that year. The Chengdu 2023 Worldcon has asked that any specific questions about the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards be sent to [email protected].

(For media inquiries on topics related to W.I.P. other than the specifics of the 2023 Hugo Awards, you may contact [email protected].)