There is a reason why third base coaches exist to let you know if it’s a good idea to take that extra base. If he puts up a stop sign with two outs in the last of the 9th when you represent the tying run listen to him.
If you are counting on $1000+ from a relative as a wedding gift, it’s a bad idea to inform them that they are not welcome at your wedding because you would be frightened by their presence because they vote conservative and not invite them on those grounds.
Not only will for forfeit that thousand dollar payday, but you will forfeit any future paydays that might have come up.
Reality doesn’t care if something is proven in court or not. Reality IS. If you base reality on court decisions or the lack thereof you will find yourself played for a fool.
I occasionally scroll down on my browsers news feed. I probably shouldn’t, since almost all the news “curated” for me is sensational click-bait headlines with weak, ad-packed articles. Despite this, I mistakenly scrolled down this morning to find this headline:
For those who (somehow) don’t know, The Witcher is a series of stories by Andrzej Sapkowski written in Poland in the 1990s that was later adapted into a very successful computer game series, and after that into a moderately successful (but now quickly declining) Netflix TV series. The books started being translated into English in 2007, around the same time that a Polish video game producer, CD Projekt Red, made the first of three video games.
The video games and books were wildly popular. The main character, Geralt of Rivia, is a witcher, a human mutated by different poisons and gene-altering drugs, to become an inhumanly deadly warrior, but with no emotions and a desire to stay neutral in most conflicts. Witchers were created to fight monsters that entered the world due to an event called the Conjunction of the Spheres, which is sort of like the Multiverse. The world of the Witcher features a variety of monsters, magic and warring kingdoms, all the things you would expect in a medieval fantasy world.
The Witcher is very different from other fantasy though. As he adventures in the world, Geralt discovers that many monsters are actually sentient and simply trying to live, while humans use the fact they are a monster to place bounties on their heads in order to steal their land and possessions. In many of his quests, Geralt sides with these beings, and when humans point out that he was created to fight monsters, Geralt asks who the real monsters are. This is captured in the video games, where you get to make choices about what quests to take and how to complete them. You can side with the humans, or side with the monsters, or choose a mix, and your ultimate outcome is based on your choices. In many cases, these outcomes are radically different. There is no “right” side…you can find fault in each faction, and even Geralt’s desire to stay neutral can become a fault all on its own.
The other big difference between The Witcher and other fantasy is that it is very adult. Geralt’s mutations render him sterile, so he sleeps around a lot. He has a competing love interest with two different sorceresses (Yennefer and Triss) in the books and the game, and the video games let you sleep with a variety of female characters. The books have plenty of gory fights, and the games don’t shy away from gore or nudity.
With a big following, intriguing characters, and different fantasy world, I was super excited when Henry Cavill was announced to star in the Netflix series. Cavill actually read the books and played the games. The dude is built like The Witcher, and in the first two seasons, he perfectly captured Geralt’s character. I immediately noticed that the writing was…lackluster. We weren’t getting the “choices” themes, we had a weird back story on Yennefer that wasn’t in the books and didn’t add much to the story, and the other supporting characters were twisted a bit out of context.
Which brings me to Jaskier, which is the Polish name for the character Julian Alfred Pankratz, who goes by the stage name Dandelion. In the books he is a sharp contrast to Geralt’s dower and moody behavior, often challenging the notion that Geralt can remain neutral in the middle of the conflict between the various nations. In the video games, he’s a skilled poet, avid business man and notorious womanizer, which gets him in trouble that occasionally requires Geralt to bail him out.
No where, ever, is it implied he is gay or bisexual. You might think that because he is a poet and a snappy dresser, but the books and games don’t ever imply it.
The Netflix series used him first as the butt of a lot of jokes. While he had some good moments (the Toss a Coin to your Witcher song being the best), he is too often a dumb, scared fop of a character. Then, since he’s a poet, and apparently its OK to paint a classist brush across all artistic people, the producer decides to explore his sexuality. Never mind that they are fighting the lore while doing this, that Henry Cavill quit over disagreements about the what the writers and producers were doing to the series, and attempts to add a prequel (The Witcher: Blood Origins) failed miserably. Nope, let’s make a bisexual character, that’ll make our series more popular!!
Funny enough, the world of the Witcher actually HAS a few homosexual and otherwise LGBTQ characters in it. Cirilla, one of the main characters in the book series, at one point has a homosexual tryst with the female leader of the Rats, a group of brigands that she joins after fleeing from the school of magic. Various factions, such as the all-female dryads and some sects of elves, are heavily implied to be homosexual. Most of the more powerful sorceresses have female lovers. The Dopplers, a race of shape-shifting creatures, are portrayed as enjoying the ability to explore both their masculine and feminine sides.
There is PLENTY of existing homosexual and erotic content in the novels and video games that a producer could bring into the Netflix series, and I doubt it would cause issues. Instead, they chose to dumb down an interesting character and shoe-horn him into a bisexual role he was never meant or written for, and to the surprise of nobody, caused serious angst.
Look, if you want gay characters, go write them in your novels. Do the proper character development and make them interesting. Not surprisingly, you might find that if you follow good writing practices and make your transgender warrior an interesting character that has to overcome issues, has flaws, and follows a story arc, people might actually want to read your writing, and if you want an example, look at Japanese anime. The laziness that modern producers have in simply taking good, existing characters and placing them on the LGBTQ spectrum exhausts audiences and reveals that these producers and writers have no real talent.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
The crew of the 73 stood, their skipper gave the toast.
“To Ensign Charles Parker who survived Capture, interrogation and being smuggled out of Germany to make his way back to Volta Fiore & PT 73 that he’s served so well.”
The Ensign blushed as Mama Giovani refilled the glasses. Gruber stood up.
“And the best part, he came back without old Leadbottom!”
The crew drank again as a Jeep pulled into the town square, bearing the Captain his face wearing all he had been through.
The crew moaned as McHale smirked, “Oh well you can’t win ’em all.”
Yesterday the Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and also had one of the most historic takedowns of a SCOTUS judge by another as Clarence Thomas illustrated the difference between a justice who had worked hard despite growing up in the segregated south who knows what a woman is and one that is an affirmative action hire that is unable to answer that question under oath.
Today the court once again told Colorado that they can not compel speech against a person’s religion despite the determined efforts of Colorado to continue to attempt to do this.
Now the reality of these rulings are that both the university system which has a lot of people whose income is based on this kind of thing, and Colorado which didn’t let the last SCOTUS ruling on cakes stop them from playing this game are likely to be either noveled by the Universities or ignored by Colorado neither of which are likely to face consequences for their actions, but it DOES do one important thing.
It makes the case for Donald Trump in election 2024.
There are arguments for and against Donald Trump as the GOP nominee but no argument is better than these two 6-3 rulings which along with the Dobbs ruling nuking abortion as a right, were only made possible by three justices appointed by Trump.
Unlike previous GOP presidents who tended to appoint Justices who had a 50-50 chance of suddenly turning liberal, Trump’s judges have been so solid that old yellowstain Justice Roberts unable to be the 5th vote for the left (see obamacare) has repeatedly decided to join conservative majorities making 6-3 rulings rather than 5-4.
Now there might be those who argue that any GOP President could have delivered these victories, and they might argue that a DeSantis (likely) or a Scott (maybe) or even a Christie (never) might have made the same solid appointments given a chance, they may even be right.
But in the end “any” GOP president did not deliver these victories and while it may or may not be true that a DeSantis or Scott, or Pence of Christie might deliver, Trump can say unequivocally that he DID deliver.
If I ran the Trump campaign I’d be making this case every single day in every single appearance I made in the country.
UPDATE: While I was writing this post SCOTUS struck down Biden’s attempt to toss student loan debt from those who took it on to taxpayers again 6-3. Maybe it’s just me but I think it’s a better argument for Trump then declaring that election 2024 is all about retribution.
I’ll be a longer post addressing this but in short circumstances from the loss of our primary domain to our banning from Youtube has caused us to bleed traffic and subscribers to the point where I need to decide if our 15th anniversary coming up in November will be our last one.
If you think that we still produce content worth your time and support please consider hitting DaTipJar and if you would like us to keep this up for 2024 please consider a subscription to keep me and my writers writing through the 2024 election and beyond.
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