Tammaiya

Hi all, welcome to another new feature on Disgrace to Scholars! We introduce you to In the Weeds, also known as “sorry, we’re gigantic nerds”. The purpose of In the Weeds is to take one aspect of culture or a particular show and examine it in more detail. 

This particular installment of In the Weeds is a two-part feature looking at same sex subtext in East Asian mainstream media, firstly examining the reasons why it is so often not outright confirmed (and why this isn’t the same as queerbaiting), and in part two, looking at some of these signs in more detail.

Hemingway: drabble challenge, 100 word challenge, yes the title is included in the word count, fight me, angst, sad, baby shoes

F Scott Fitzgerald: idk what I’m doing, lol party fic, I’m supposed to be working on something else right now, the real otp is despair

Virginia Wolfe: stream of consciousness, tw: depression and anxiety, tw: food mention, not sure what else to tag this as

Sylvia Plath: esther is not like other girls, depression, suicide, hurt/comfort, fuck the patriarchy

Edgar Allan Poe: detective au, everyone’s a suspect, darkfic, this was supposed to be satire, I’m not sure what happened,

Shakespeare: historical au, for Lizzy <3 <3 <3, either everybody lives or no on lives I haven’t decided yet, dick jokes, puns, stole this from Marlow not even sorry lmao

I used to work for a call center and I was doing a political survey and I called this number that was randomly generated for me and the way our system worked was voice-activated so when the other person said hello you’d get connected to them, so I just launch right into my “Harvard University and NPR blah blah blah” thing and then there’s this long pause and I think the person’s hung up even though I didn’t hear a click

And then I hear “you shouldn’t be able to call this number.”

So I apologize and go into the preset spiel about because we aren’t selling anything, etc. etc. and the answer I get is

“No, I know that. What I mean is that it should be impossible for you to call this number, and I need to know how you got it.”

I explain that it’s randomly generated and I’m very sorry for bothering him, and go to hang up. And before I can click terminate, I hear:

“Ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”

I accidentally called the director of the FBI.

There was no MS Dos involved. Instead, there was a proprietary type-based OS and an actually-uses-transistors refrigerator-sized computer with switches I had to trip at certain times during the night as I watched the data flow from six pm to six AM on Fridays and weekends. If things got stuck, I reset the server. 

The company handled everything from low-end data (hotel and car reservations) to flight plans and tower information. I was weighed every time I came in to make sure it was me. Areas of the building had retina scanners on doors. 

During training. they took us through all the procedures. Including the procedures for the red phone. There was, literally, a red phone on the shelf above my desk. “This is a holdover from the cold war.” They said. “It isn’t going to come up, but here’s the deal. In case of nuclear war or other nation-wide disaster, the phone will ring. Pick up the phone, state your name and station, and await instructions. Do whatever you are told.”

So my third night there, it’s around 2am and there’s a ringing sound. 

I look up, slowly. The Red phone is ringing.

So I reach out, I pick up the phone. I give my name and station number. And I hear every station head in the building do the exact same. One after another, voices giving names and numbers. Then silence for the space of two breaths. Silence broken by…

“Uh… Is Shantavia there?”

It turns out that every toll free, 1-900 or priority number has a corresponding local number that it routs to at its actual destination. Some poor teenage girl was trying to dial a friend of hers, mixed up the numbers, and got the atomic attack alert line for a major air-travel corporation’s command center in the mid-west United States.

There’s another pause, and the guys over in the main data room are cracking up. The overnight site head is saying “I think you have the wrong number, ma’am.” and I’m standing there having faced the specter of nuclear annihilation before I was old enough to legally drink.

Seriously, this is legit.

In December 1955, Sears decided to run a Santa hotline.  Here’s the ad they posted.

Only problem is, they misprinted the number.  And the number they printed?  It went straight through to fucking NORAD.  This was in the middle of the Cold War, when early warning radar was the only thing keeping nuclear annihilation at bay.  NORAD was the front line.

And it wasn’t just any number at NORAD.  Oh no no no.

Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. “Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number,” she says.

“This was the ‘50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States,” Rick says.

The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. “And then there was a small voice that just asked, ‘Is this Santa Claus?’ ”

His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying.

“And Dad realized that it wasn’t a joke,” her sister says. “So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho’d and asked if he had been a good boy and, ‘May I talk to your mother?’ And the mother got on and said, ‘You haven’t seen the paper yet? There’s a phone number to call Santa. It’s in the Sears ad.’ Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus.”

“It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, ‘The old man’s really flipped his lid this time. We’re answering Santa calls,’ ” Terri says.

And then, it got better.

“The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them,” Pam says.

“And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole,” Rick says.

“Dad said, ‘What is that?’ They say, ‘Colonel, we’re sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?’ Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, ‘This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.’ Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, ‘Where’s Santa now?’ ” Terri says.

For real.

“And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information,” she says. “You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he’s known for.”

“Yeah,” Rick [his son] says, “it’s probably the thing he was proudest of, too.”

So yeah.  I think that might be the best wrong number of all time.

Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of my artist friends complain about people reposting their art on the internet. Not just complain, but rant, plead, and beg reposters that reposting their art is disrespectful, that it hurts the artist, and please, please will people stop reposting their art without permission?

Dear artists: you don’t need to beg. You created art, you own the copyright in it.

That gives you power.

THE BASICS

Disclaimer 1: I am not getting into the issue of fanworks and the interplay of original works/derivative works. This post is just sticking with the basics: you, an artist, created an artistic work through your own effort, which you own the copyright for, and someone has reposted it in its entirety without your permission to their own website or social media account.

Disclaimer 2: For simplicity’s sake, this post is just talking about copyright. Issues like moral rights and Creative Commons won’t come into this, those are whole subjects in themselves, and this post is long enough as it is.

How do I get copyright? Automatically. There is no need to register anything, no need to get a lawyer to sign documents, no need to pay any fees, no need post it to yourself or make a sacrifice to Zuul, NONE OF THAT IS NECESSARY(1). Copyright arises automatically the moment you express your idea in material form, ie., the moment you put pen to paper, Photoshop brush to white space, take a photograph, etc. You make it, boom, you automatically own the copyright in it(2).

(1) Yes, the U.S. has a copyright registration system but it’s there as an option to access certain legal extras under U.S. law. It is not a condition to have copyright in the first place. (2) There are exceptions to the “you make it, you own it” rule, the most common one being when you are employed to make the art (eg., you’re employed in an animation studio drawing storyboards, all the storyboards you draw belong to the studio). Being employed to make art is NOT the same as being commissioned as a freelancer to make art: if you are commissioned as a freelancer to make art, at default what you create will be copyright to you, and your client gets a permission to use that art for the purpose they commissioned it. If the client wants to own the copyright, they’ll need a written document signed by you that transfers copyright from you to them. And yes, professional artists do charge more for that transfer.

Is my copyright recognised in other countries? Yes, provided your country and the other country are members of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Under this treaty, all signatory countries agree to recognise copyrights from other signatory countries. Since the Berne Convention currently has 172 signatory countries, in the vast majority of cases when someone else uses your work online, they’re doing so from a country where your copyright is recognised and can be enforced in that country’s legal system.

What does it mean to have a copyright? As a copyright owner, you have exclusive rights to deal with your work. The precise rights may vary depending on the type of work and what jurisdiction you’re in, but fundamentally in the context of reposting they are:

the right to make reproductions of your art (ie., make copies); and

the right to communicate your art (eg., transmit it to or through a website).

These rights are exclusive to you meaning you are the only person who can copy and transmit your art. Anyone who wants to make copies of your art or upload it to a website will need your permission to do so (and you’d be within your rights to charge money for that permission if you wanted), otherwise they risk infringing your copyright. Which brings us to the next part.

PERMISSION VS. INFRINGEMENT

What’s a licence? A licence is a permission from you to another party that lets that other party use your art. For example, if you upload your art to Tumblr/Twitter/Facebook, you have granted Tumblr/Twitter/Facebook a licence to reproduce, display, and host your art within the Tumblr/Twitter/Facebook system. (Want to know the exact wording of that licence? It’s set out in the terms and conditions you agreed to when creating your Tumblr/Twitter/Facebook account).

That permission does not extend to every person, mutant, and unicorn to use your art. If you upload art to Tumblr/Twitter/FB to display, you’ve given a permission to that website, and no one else. Now, Tumblr/Twitter/FB allows other Tumblr/Twitter/FB users to share/reblog/retweet things from your page to their page, and that’s fine, they can do that because it’s a function of the website’s system which you’ve agreed to operate in. That is completely different to a person downloading your art from your page and reuploading it to their own account either on the same website or a completely different website for hits and likes, ie., reposting, ie., likely copyright infringement.

What is copyright infringement? Copyright infringement is when someone uses (eg., copies) all or a substantial part of your art without your permission, and when no copyright exception applies.

Internet defence myth: “The artist put their art on the internet, that’s permission for anyone to use it!” – NO. The artist put their art on a particular place on the internet (ie., their own website, own Tumblr, own Pixv) on their terms. That is not permission for anyone on the internet to download and use their art. If you find some art online that you really like and want to use, contact the artist and ask them.

Internet defence myth: “I changed 10% therefore it’s okay!” – NO. “Substantial part” does not work like that, it’s not about how much you’ve copied, it’s about what. If what you’ve copied is the key, distinct, or essential part of the work, that will be a substantial part even if it’s only 1% of the whole picture. Think of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch: the screaming face is, proportionally, a very small part of the larger picture, but it is the most recognisable and distinctive part. Now, what is and is not a substantial part gets very subjective, but in the context of reposting where a user reposts a whole picture, or crops the edges to remove a watermark/copyright notice/artist credit but keep the pretty art that caught their eye in the first place? That is clearly a substantial part amounting to copyright infringement (and in some jurisdictions, an infringement of laws regarding artist attribution and/or metadata).

What’s a copyright exception? An exception to copyright is a situation where the use of your art meets certain criteria that the law says using art without permission is allowed.

Internet defence myth: “It’s fair use!” – Are you in the United States/South Korea/Israel/other fair use country? If so, then sure, let’s talk fair use. If you’re not in a country with fair use, then you do not get to claim fair use. No fair use for you, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

The majority of jurisdictions in the world do not have fair use. I’m not going to go into every country’s variation, but many (e.g., the U.K., Canada, Australia) will have fair dealing which is a very different creature to fair use. Basically with fair dealing, in order to not be an infringement of copyright, the use of an artwork without the copyright owner’s permission must be for a specific purpose, such as parody or satire, or criticism or review, as well as be fair. If the use of an artwork is not for that specific purpose, it is an infringement of copyright. Reposting art for hits and likes or aesthetics without any serious attempt at comment? Definitely not going to get the fair dealing exception.

For those in the U.S.A.: yes, you get fair use, but it’s a defence against copyright infringement, not a get out of jail free card. The number of times I see people slapping “this is fair use!” on things that are clearly not going to pass the test is ridiculous, and there’s a line of thinking around the internet that just invoking the words “fair use” summons a magic shield to ward off any legal action. It doesn’t do that. Yes, you can claim that what you’ve done with copyright material is fair use, but a copyright owner is free to disagree with your claim and, if they think they have a case, take legal action against you at which point the fair use argument will be tested in court (as the Star Trek Axanar guys found out the hard way – spoiler, judge said no fair use). Now, the fair use debate is huge and ongoing, and this is not the place for it, I’m just focusing on reposting. And in the vast majority of cases where art is reposted in its entirety for hits and likes with zero attempt at critique or parody, it’s likely that fair use won’t apply.

Internet defence myth: “Reposting is okay because it gives the artist publicity/exposure!” – NO. “Giving publicity/exposure” is not an exception for copyright infringement, and helpful as publicity/exposure is, it doesn’t pay the bills. Creating art is work, and just as I get paid to do my work, so should professional artists get paid for their work. There are plenty of think pieces and articles and comics on how harmful it is for the creative sector to be expected to produce high quality work “for exposure”. And when reposting is done without attribution or credit or a link back to the original artist/source, then the exposure “argument” is utterly worthless (and may also be an infringement of moral rights where applicable).

Internet defence myth: “I credited the artist therefore it’s okay!” - NO. Some artists may be all right if you repost with credit. Other artists are not okay with it. Check the artist’s website/statement/permissions, don’t just assume that they’re going to be okay with credit. As far as law goes, the fact that you credited the artists means nothing: you reposted the art without permission where no copyright exception applies, therefore you infringed copyright and the artist copyright owner can act on that.

Internet defence myth: “I’m not making any money I didn’t mean any harm therefore it’s ok!” - NO. As far as liability for infringement goes, none of that matters: you reposted art without permission where no exception applies, you infringed copyright. The fact that no money was made may be taken into account in terms of damages or remedies, but at the end of the day, copyright was infringed, and the artist can hold you liable for it.

WHAT CAN I DO WHEN SOMEONE REPOSTS MY ART?

You can take legal action, which yes, comes with costs, time, effort, and stress. That being said, as a copyright owner, you do have that legal right, and if your art is being infringed in a way that’s earning money for the infringer, court action would be worth considering. Get legal advice first.

In the majority of cases where you don’t want to get a lawyer but do want a repost of your art taken down, you have two options: contact the reposter and get them to take it down, or contact the website hosting the reposted art and get the website to take it down.

Contacting the reposter: A lot of artists seem to take the gentle, friendly, almost apologetic “could you please?” approach to this. That’s up to you, but I will suggest that although you should certainly be polite and courteous, you shouldn’t be afraid to be firm. (Do NOT be aggressive/insulting/rant in all-caps). You’re the copyright owner, you’re the one with the exclusive rights, you’re the one who can hold the reposter legally liable for the infringement. Send a calm, professionally-toned message/email stating that:

you are the artist,

you own copyright in the named images (provide link to images on your official website/blog);

that you did not give permission for the person to reproduce the image and reupload it (list specific HTML links to where the infringing images are located);

that you request that the images be immediately deleted, and/or a new repost be made with credit, and/or an apology;

that if no action is taken or you don’t receive a response, you reserve your rights to further legal action.

Most decent people would, in response to such a letter especially from an artist they admire, respond and apologise and do as requested, hopefully having learned a good lesson. But let’s say you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t care, who sends back a ranty message with <insert>Internet Defence Myth</insert> and that you should be grateful that they like your work. What do you do then?

Contact the hosting website: Almost every social networking and filehosting site, certainly all the big-name ones like Facebook/YouTube/Tumblr/Twitter/Instagram/etc., have notice and takedown procedures built into their systems. These are methods by which copyright owners can send a notice to the website telling them that someone on their site is infringing their copyright, and the website will remove that infringing material.

The exact procedures used by Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter/etc., and places like RedBubble/Society6/Etsy/etc., vary. Some make you click through and fill in a whole bunch of form fields, some ask you to send an email to a specific address. Whatever procedure, the majority of these websites are based in the U.S., meaning that the procedure meets the requirements of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA). Essentially, the DCMA grants websites immunity under U.S. law from infringement actions provided that they have and act on certain procedures regarding infringements on their website. The notice and takedown procedure is part of this procedure.

Even if you yourself and/or the reposter are not in the U.S., if you want the website to take down the repost you will have to go through the DCMA form. Importantly, when you go through the process there will not be someone at the website’s offices making a legal judgment on whether or not a repost infringes copyright; all that matters is that you, the copyright owner, have sent in a correctly filled form/letter stating that the website is hosting material that infringes your copyright.

Second important point: whether you file a notice through a website’s reporting form or send in an email, that notice/email will very likely be shared with the reposter. As the DCMA process requires that you include your full name and contact details, this means your personal details will likely be given to the reposter. If you’re comfortable with doing this you should do so, however some artists understandably don’t want that personal information sent to a disrespectful reposter. While I certainly don’t advise making up completely false ID information to file legal notices (amongst other things, it’ll give the infringing reposter reason to file a counter-notice, see below), it may be worth using instead of your full legal name, the online handle your art is known by, your secondary email, a P.O. Box address, or try generalising your address to a city, state/province and country. If this approach is rejected by the form, you’ll just have to fill in your contact details properly. If you’re a professional artist with an agent or lawyer or other authorised representative, that’s easier: you can name your representative as a contact instead.

Links to major social network notice and takedown forms

Facebook: Report A Violation or Infringement of Your Rights. Form-fill notice. You do not need a FB account to file a notice.

What right is being violated or infringed? Check Copyright then (presuming you are reporting an actual image, and not someone using your idea or style which can’t be protected by copyright) Continue with your copyright report

Copyright Report Form: Click I found content which I believe violates my copyright then Please click here to continue with a copyright report

Contact information. Fill in all the fields, and include direct links to the infringing material on Facebook, as well as a link to the image as it appears on your official website/blog.

Click Yes at the bottom then enter your name before hitting Send.

Twitter/Vine/Periscope: Report copyright infringement. Form-fill notice. Note that it requires a Twitter account, and you have to be logged into Twitter to file a notice, so the notice will be linked to your account. Note also that Twitter says that they will send a copy of all DCMA notices to Lumen for transparency (with your contact information redacted).

Tell us about yourself: Click I am the copyright owner. This opens more form fields below.

Contact information: fill this all in.

About platform of infringing material: Click Twitter/Vine/Periscope as appropriate.

About your copyrighted work: Give the title of your original work and a link to your official website/blog where the original image can be viewed.

About the infringing material: Click Tweet/Moment/Profile image as appropriate. This will open another form field for you to give the direct link to the infringing Tweet/Moment/Profile. There is also a form field for you to describe how your image is being infringed (you can say “[username]’s Tweet has reproduced my copyright image without my permission” or something to that effect).

Required statements: Click both boxes, type in the exact statement as required by the form, and type your name (try your online handle?) otherwise Twitter won’t let you submit.

Hit Submit.

Instagram: Copyright Report Form. Form-fill notice, that is almost exactly the same as Facebook’s notice form. Does not require an Instagram account to file.

Click Continue with your copyright report then I found content that may violate my copyright then Please click here to continue with your copyright report.

Contact information. Fill in all the fields, and include direct links to the infringing material on Instagram, as well as a link to the image as it appears on your official website/blog.

Click Yes at the bottom then enter your name before hitting Send.

Tumblr: DCMA Copyright Notifications. Form-fill, but less detailed than the ones previous. Note that Tumblr explicitly says that the form is for external content that has been reposted on Tumblr without your permission (eg., it was taken from your website/Facebook/other non-Tumblr site and someone posted it to Tumblr). (They have a separate form for stuff you posted to your Tumblr account and another Tumblr user has reposted without attributing you.)

URL of infringing work or material: give the exact HTML link to the infringing image file on Tumblr.

Source URL for work (optional): I’m actually not sure what this is referring to (Tumblr, you and your inexact drafting, why) but it’s an optional field, so it’s not necessary to fill it in.

Add more exact URLs to other infringing works if necessary.

Description of work claimed to be infringed: Give the title of your copyrighted work, maybe the year you created it, and a link to where it may be viewed on your official website/blog.

Contact information: as usual.

Click all three of the click-boxes, and your full name (I’m not sure if typing your online handle as a pseudonym will suffice?) and hit Submit Notification.

As you can see, while the exact boxes and click throughs may vary, each website is asking for the same DCMA requirements: contact details, link to infringing material, link to your original material, legal declarations, and electronic signature. Etsy also has a form system, but other websites (eg., RedBubble, Society6, eBay) require you to send an email to their designated email address. This email has to fit the requirements of the DCMA, and a simple Google search for “DCMA sample notice” will turn up plenty of examples with wording you can use.

NB: The DCMA notice is a notice under U.S. law, and thus should only be used with websites subject to U.S. jurisdiction. If you send a notice saying “this is official notification under section 512© of the DCMA to remove infringing material” to, say, WeChat, or the website of the local community of artists in Canada or Singapore or France, you’ll accomplish nothing except maybe giving someone a good laugh.

What happens when you file a notice: The website should take down the infringing image file you have notified them about. How quick this is depends on how well the website is managed, although the big social media sites are fairly prompt and will typically take down infringing material in 24-48 hours.

Counter-notices: When infringing material is removed, the reposter who put it up would be sent a notice saying that it has been removed, and why. Under a typical website’s DCMA notice and takedown procedure, the reposter may, at that point, send in a counter-notice saying that the original takedown notice is incorrect (eg., that the person claiming to be the if they truly believe they were not infringing copyright (ie., that they had permission from you to upload the image, or their upload comes under a copyright exception). If that happens, the website will forward the counter-notice to you and give you a 10-14 days to come back to them with a legal document saying that you have commenced legal action for copyright infringement against the reposter, or a court order that prohibits the website from reinstating the material. If you don’t get back to the website with such a document, the website will put the material back online.

In theory, this means that even though you have successfully filed a notice to have an infringing repost taken down, the reposter can, if determined or malicious enough, get it put back up. I have no idea how often counter-notices are used, although I’ve seen some commentary that counter-notices aren’t as common as often as people think, particularly when it’s clear that the infringer is infringing copyright. If you do get a counter-notice, your only option to get the infringing material taken down again and stay down is to deal with the reposter and potentially commence legal action. Sometimes this may be worth it, particularly if you have a good case for infringement and the reposter has maliciously sent the counter-notice when they have clearly infringed copyright, because the reposter may have then exposed themselves to extra penalties in a lawsuit. Sometimes it might not be worth it. This, however, is for you yourself to decide, and maybe get private legal advice about.

FINAL NOTE

Reposting is incredibly frustrating for artists, especially when artists don’t even ask people to pay them for the privilege (even though artists have every right to if they so wished), they just want a credit or link back. Do the right thing: if you want to repost, ask permission from the artist, make sure you include full credits to them and links to where people who like the art can contact the artist. It costs hardly any effort to do that, the artist will be grateful and likely create more art for you to enjoy – and you won’t be exposing yourself to any potential legal action.

Artists, it’s your art, you own the copyright in it. Don’t hesitate to use that power where necessary.

(seriously my to-do list is unmanageable)

The other day I watched The Assassin (beautiful movie, so highly recommended if you have the time) and a distant corner of my brain started plotting an LYB AU, while a still more distant corner yelled COUSINS AGAIN?! into the wind.

@tammaiya stepped in to make sure I didn’t start a rock avalanche and kill everyone 😘😘😘

Highlights:

- Lin Shu and Xiao Jingyan were engaged when they were younger, but in order to secure an alliance emperor Worst Dad settled talks to marry his only remaining son and heir Jingyan to the princess of a nearby country.

- Conveniently at this point in time Lin Shu gets kidnapped by the Hua princess Xuanji and is forced to train as an assassin, after a few failed escape attempts, though he is only pretending to obey them (they have enough people to kidnap him from the middle of Jinling and to prevent his parents from finding him, so it follows that he can’t protect anyone until he knows the true scope of the infiltration), and takes up the jianghu name of Mei Changsu.

- At one point Xuanji sends him to kill someone he can’t actually set knife to, like, say Meng? And in order to prove himself, he gets sent to kill Jingyan as a test - so instead of killing him, MCS is instead shadowing his every movement like the worst stalker - because he found out that when he vanished, Jingyan threw a huge fit and refused to marry whoever it was they had set up for him (/lights candle for Niannian) and has stayed single all these long bitter years, etc.

- At some point there’s an attempt on Jingmum’s life, made to look like MCS’ own particular style, and Jingyan, who had been getting attached to this random black-clad person wandering his palace and saving him from threats, flips all the tables, and with someone conveniently leaving out evidence that supposedly links him to whalebro’s death (which took place before Lin Shu was kidnapped but he doesn’t know MCS is Lin Shu yet).

- Meanwhile Meng and Lin Shu’s mum have been slowly getting rid of the Hua agents and also lessening the emperor’s influence, because, as Grand Princess Jinyang says, ‘To knock out a giant, you hamstring him first’, light shining from her eyes as if it had reflected off the sharp edge of a sword.

- The snow scene happens, MCS takes out the assassins around Jingyan but is also injured in the process - Jingmum finds him and nurses him back to health, but self-loathing has kicked in full time and he blames himself for everything he’s done for Xuanji (how could anyone forgive him for killing people in cold blood - he can’t, but he’ll protect Jingyan with his life). He begs Jingmum not to tell Jingyan who he is (no plastic surgery in this verse, so he’s immediately recognized the moment the mask came off), and she respects his choice to pack himself back to his mum (and to lick his own wounds).

- Except Jingyan notices that his mother has Lin Shu’s copy of their betrothal jade ornament (how accidental of you, Jingmum) and storms off to find him. There’s a lot of yelling and MCS points out that he’s been dead for over a decade - no one will believe it’s him, plus the kingdom is kind of unstable at the moment and they need their crown prince.

- MCS departs for the borderlands to contemplate his life choices and his (newly acquired) herds of sheep up close. Then Jingyan chases him to the prairies.

MCS: What??? What about your kingdom!! JY: Mother has that in hand. MCS: …

- The kingdom transitions to their distant cousin Nihuang’s rule, Jinyang and Jingmum come to retire in the hinterlands too, and the boys adopt many cows.

Miyano Mamoru no RADIO SMILE #139 (2016.12.03) - ENG SUB

Mamo-chan talks about Yuri!!! on ICE and his character JJ.

In the name of the moon 🌙 ✨ JJ STYLE 👆👆

avoiding the story path in a dungeon so you can explore all the other paths 

Microsoft lent me a HoloLens to make this video

Hamilton throws away his (gun)shot, but that’s never–in his own mind or in the play itself–been what the metaphorical shot really is, at least not consistently.  “Not throwing away your shot” is about not wasting your opportunities; it’s about making the deliberate choice.  Hamilton throws away his more active military career when he signs on as Washington’s aide, but he views this–at least in the moment–as seizing his shot, because Washington has persuaded him that it’s harder and more honorable to try to live.  He and his men take the bullets out of their guns at Yorktown to better secure their victory.

And it’s not only Hamilton who wins by losing, or at least by forfeiting the showier and more conventional route to victory: it’s Washington, too.  LMM is explicit about this in the notes on “One Last Time”: that the song highlights Washington’s “most radical act/lasting legacy,” which is his decision to walk away from power and not seek it again.  He throws away the most obvious form of power, but he doesn’t throw away his chance for meaningful action: he just redefines what meaningful action looks like.  Even though Hamilton says it will make him look weak, Washington pushes through, because “they will see we’re strong.”  He turns down one shot for another: he teaches a country, and a succession of presidents, and Hamilton himself, to say goodbye.

And that’s what Hamilton learns from him, and from Eliza, who chooses–consciously and actively–to forgive.  He says, “If I throw away my shot, is this how you’ll remember me?  What if this bullet is my legacy?”  And it is, and he knows that, and he chooses this chance, this idea of meaningful action: to aim at the sky.  To not kill, or even feign to kill, “[his] first friend, [his] enemy.”  And we don’t say he’s weak for that; we see he’s strong.

Because kindness, in Hamilton, is always deserving of our awe and respect.  Hamilton’s “non-stop” series of accomplishments is wonderful to behold, but the one thing we’re really asked if we can even imagine is Eliza offering him forgiveness.  When Hamilton chooses to aim for the sky, he doesn’t throw away his shot, he takes stock of everyone he’s loved, and everyone he’s lost, and everything he’s done, and seizes the opportunity–to be kind.  To make peace.

And for us, at least, that’s a substantial part of his legacy.  So part of what makes Hamilton so awesome, for me, is that it recognizes that sometimes deliberately refraining from action is the most powerful action you can take, and it defines its characters by those active refusals, those conscious choices to not go after more.  Hamilton throws away his shot, Eliza throws away her anger, Angelica throws away her chance, Washington throws away his reelection.  Principle is sometimes most meaningfully expressed by where we draw the line and what we refuse to do, which is why Hamilton cannot back Burr after hearing that there’s “nothing [he] wouldn’t do.”

Hamilton never really gives up.  As Burr says in “Wait for It,” all he does is “change the game.”

despite the suspicions aroused by the title

the poem’s most effective tool

serves to rhythmically thrust the subject

the author clearly had a firm grasp of innuendo

the poet, a master bait-and-switcher, erects a facade

the tumescence of his prose

he works long and hard to associate his cock with…

the cherry on top is the climax of the poem

would meet stiff resistance

the teacher noted it was ‘gleefully written’

Uchi/soto translates roughly to inside/outside, and put very simply, it’s how you classify social groupings and social interactions in Japan. It is, among other things, how you know what level of polite language to use with whoever you’re talking to, but it also affects your position in society, and your responsibilities.

Basically, any group you’re a part of, be it your family, your school, your work place, your extra-curricular clubs, etc, that’s uchi. Everyone else is soto. There are various levels, of course, as some groups are “more” uchi than others, so who’s considered uchi vs soto at any given time depends on context. It’s like a Venn diagram from hell or something.

Now, this is probably gonna sound weird to most people from Western cultures, because most Western cultures are highly individualistic and put the individual first, but: In Japan, your every action reflects on the uchi group as a whole, as seen by everyone soto.

If you’ve ever had a job (or school or activity, I guess) where you wear a uniform, you might have been told to act or not act a certain way when in uniform, or maybe even that if a customer yells at you for something, they’re not yelling at you personally, they’re yelling at the uniform. Japanese society is kind of like that, but played on nightmare difficulty, and you cannot take off your uniform.

“Never stop believing that fighting for what is right is worth it.” - Hillary Clinton

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Alabama House of Representatives District 67

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I am guessing Semple has created a new black PIGMENT that is close to the effect of super black. Vantablack is not pigment, and cannot be used in paint. This actually changes the game.