#televangelis

[Animations begins to play upon the screen. A skull is being dipped into liquid metal. A brain is being placed into a jar, which is then filled with liquid soap.]

MH- CLEAR is aaction without thought, yyour body does the talking, we do the rest! No longer will you suffer the burdens of freedom, the burden of openness! Close your mind and let us in! 

[An animation of a low-poly 3d model walking into a heavenly gate is played. An animation is played of low-poly pigs at a slaughterhouse being crucified on an assembly line by other low-poly pigs. All of them are smiling.]

We are but tools in the hands of CLEAR. We do not think, for CLEAR will remove the need! We do not We do not fear, for CLEAR is always victor! We are not the finger that fires the trigger, for CLEAR is the one who kills!

[She manifests a minimalist, elegant "Liberator" pistol from the iar and shoots it into the TV. The TV bleeds before falling to the ground.]

Ooops, did I do tthat? No, CLEAR, did, and you can too!

[She poses while wild applause plays. The appalus is clearly pre-recorded

MH- CLEAR is Mental Hygene for the sake of purpose! No longer will your thoughts be muddied and your path winding. No longer will you harm the wrong kinds of people! CLEAR will tell you where to go, and CLEAR will tell you who to harm!

Why, we have one of them right here! 

[Two Electroshocks drag in a program, low-poly. There is a Blender default cube over his head, which Maiden shatters.]

MH- Now, sinner, tell me your name!

The program looks right into the camera]

P-THE LOCATION WHERE THEY'RE HOLDING ME IS ADDRESS NUMBER-

[A sign reading Technical Difficulties is overlaid onto the image. A small animation of a Jesus fish devouring two Frutiger Aero dolphins plays while calm music is in the background. The calm music is punctuated by screaming]

[When the sign fades, the program is tied up, with a much smaller Blender Default Cube in his mouth]

MH- Excellent! Now we know exactly wwhere you go! Say it with me aaudience! IN! THE! PIT!

[A chant of "IN! THE! PIT! IN! THE! PIT!" plays. This is also obviously pre-recorded.]

[A pit opens up in the pulpit. The Electroshocks throw him in. He begins to scream as his body hovers over the pit and a bright white light begins to emit from its orifice.]

[His polygons one by one are stripped off as he is lowered. His wireframe is untangled and re-knotted. His polygons are replaced by something else. We do not see him compleated before he disappears from frame]

MH- And oh, look at the time, that's all folks! Same time, same channel, the only channel! Tune in or don't, we're coming either way! We're live every day, and if you don't want us, all the neighbors will be in on it too! They'll know! They'll know and they'll take you to see! They'll make you CLEAR, or my name isn't DRESDEN DOLL--

[The "Technical difficulties" sign shows up once again, for a much shorter duration.]

MH-Or my name isn't Maiden Heaven! Good hour folks! And may CLEAR come to a city near y-

[There is a sound of a wall creaking next to her]

MH -Huh, wait, what's that soun-

[A blue and red blur flashes through the air and into her face. The "TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

 sign flashes on one last time.]

---------------------------------------------------

So, another day, another character! And I'm going with a villain-hero-villain pattern here, for reasons of pacing. As much as I don't like South Park's cultural impact, I gotta admit "But and Therefore" is in fact a good method of storytelling. 

And this character, well, I did her design as a kitbash in DAZ and replaced her original head with a quick fix later because I didn't like how the one I made looked, but I think she turned out well. 

I imagine her originally as a real Concerned About Bad Things On The Net-types who went Quisling after CLEAR took over, a bit like all those Democrats pushing the current shitty internet bills even in this current political moment, and also people like David Golumbia (Rest In Piss) and Yasha Levine who think internet freedom is just a psyop for libertarian plutocrats and the many net-killer laws would be Good Actually.

You know, assholes. And yes, we now have a name for the group taking over the net, CLEAR. This will be important later. Her characterization is based on Glorious Godfrey from Jack Kirby's Fourth World comics, and I read the entire run of the Forever People before writing her! I do stuff like that a lot!

And god, while this started as being about the internet censorship push, it really became applicable to a whole lot more current events in the US real quick. That's also why I took the Godfrey inspiration, given his speech in Issue 3 of the Forever People feels really, depressingly relevant.

The name is from a Queen song. for no other reason than it fit for a televangelist-type and because it's a song I like, but her real name was after the band Dresden Dolls, because it felt fitting for it to be the name of a band of a pseudo-progressive who was not-so-secretly a monster all along.

I was gonna have her "real name"  be Dixie Belle, but I felt that didn't quite fit with where her character was going, so I'll probably use it later for a different character concept.

The org of the day is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who most people probably know so the rundown would be short, but they've been tirelessly working to fight back against most efforts to enshittify the internet, pushing tirelessly to fight back against these bad internet bills, and for real freedom by way of an expansion of the right to privacy. 

Now, some people like the late David Golumbia thought that they were a libertarian psyop to undermine the Rule of Law. David Golumbia also thought the net should be closed off like other media in a way that would fuck over new-old-web-type small sites, that SOPA/PIPA were good ideas and that FOSTA-SESTA had no significant impacts on the experience of internet uses. 

I, on the other hand, think that David Golumbia's grave is a gender-neutral toilet because of these things. There are all sorts of different opinions in this world...