Sun Ce

Sun Ce is can now be dressed like Urashima Taro. Long (I assume me) story short, he saved a turtle. Turns out it was a goddess or something and they got married. …….Japan is weird.

Da Qiao

Sun Ce’s wife gets to dress up as Otohime, that turtle Urashima Taro married.

Next is a group of characters based on the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tail (from Europe!)

Zhou Yu

Wu’s original strategist gets to be the Big Bad Wolf. So…Yeah, that’s pretty yiffy. Make what you will of that. I like the coloration of the outfit (it makes him look evil like every other adviser ), but his ears and tail just seem kind of stuck on to me.

Xiao Qiao

Zhou Yu’s wife gets be Little Red Riding Hood. Apparently, that interpretation of the fairy tale is a lot more common than I realized. Uncomfortable connotations aside, she does look cute in it. Though that might just be because she’s, like, 12. I get the impression that she’s going trick-or-treating.

Lu Meng

Zhou Yu’s successor Lu Meng plays the Huntsman in this weirdly sexual little fairy tale. So…what, he’s just here to cockblock Zhou Yu? Well, whatever. The outfit looks appropriate on him, and it’s a bit more interesting than his usual clothing choices.

Next comes a bunch of outfits based on Alice in Wonderland – the story that forces me to retract that “Japan is weird” comment and just shake my head at what happens when you tell stories whole smoking a shitload of opium.

Sun Quan

I actually don’t remember the King of Hearts, but that’s who “Train” (as I call him due to the way some character say his name) gets to be. I’d have put him as the Queen, actually, as Train had a habit of trying to execute people when he’d had too much to drink. But I guess they want us to take him seriously or something. I don’t know, I think he’d look good in a dress. The puffy parts don’t look too bad on him, but it’s kind of like putting a dog in a sweater.

Or something.

Lian Shi

Train’s wife is, as you could guess, dressed as the Queen of Hearts. I really don’t think the character suits her very well (see above), but I do really like this outfit. I get an odd, jazzy vibe from it, and the puffy skirt is fun.

Zhou Tai

Zhou Tai looks pretty spiffy as the Trump Soldier. Not a lot of people can still look like a badass while wearing a belt made out of little hearts, but he pulls it off.

Lu Xun

Little Lu Xun gets to be the White Rabbit. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because he got involved so late in the game? I don’t know. As with Zhou Yu, his bunny parts just seem kind of pasted onto his head. I like the rest of the outfit, though. It’s very colorful and fun. His giant watch belt buckle makes me think of Flava Flav.

Gan Ning

…Did I call Zhou Yu yiffy? At least he’s mostly wearing his shirt. Xingba is just hiding behind a red carpet on his chest. Once again, we’ve got the problem of his cat parts being glued on unnaturally. But at least he carries the look off pretty well. I can see him as the Cheshire Cat, he’s got the smile for it. A good choice of costume.

Ling Tong

Ling Tong is the Mad Hatter, and he carries the look off perfectly. He has the perfect body language for it, relaxed but kind of dangerous – perfect for a guy who could just go off on you at any moment like the Hatter could. Dude’s terrifying. I particularly like Ling Tongs pants/shirt and his rainbow belt. Stylin’.

Sun Shangxiang

I run into a personal problem here. I had a crush on Shangxiang a while ago (back in DW4 and 5), and I’ve just recently realized how much she and Gina have in common, personality-wise. It’s actually a little eerie. Thing is, I don’t really like Shangxiang’s body – not curvy enough for my taste. I was in a workable place with that. Then I saw this outfit. My first reaction upon seeing it was “Is Shangxiang dressed as a maid?” The problem being that maid outfits are kind of a thing of mine. So…yeah…uncomfortable now. Why does the universe have to do this to me?

Then again, Gina just realized she can’t choose between Sima Yi and Sima Shi, so she can only shame me a little bit.

The remainder of the outfits don’t really have much of a theme. They’re just fun.

Taishi Ci

Our good buddy Taishi Ci is Kintaro. From what I gather, he was a giant baby with godlike strength. He played with animals, then grew up and moved to the city with a famous samurai. Since he liked it, he brought his mommy to live there with him. Considering how much Taishi Ci loves his mom, I think it’s fitting. I’m just glad they didn’t go with Kintaro’s original getup, which was nothing but a bib with the kanji for “Gold” on it.

Sun Jian

Pappa Wu is Odin, the Allfather. The Norse had some of the most badass deities around, and Odin was the boss, no questions asked. Very fitting for Papa Wu, and the outfit itself looks great on him. I do kind of question his helmet, but it’s a Viking thing, and I try  not to insult Vikings.

Huang Gai

And standing next to Papa Wu is Huang Gai, the octogenarian pyromaniac. Because he’s such a boss, Huang Gai gets to be one of the baddest of all divine asses: Thor. Sounds right to me.

Ding Feng

And finally we come to Ding Feng, already called “the scariest face in Wu”. Fittingly enough, he’s Frankenstein (‘s monster). This actually works on a few levels. His appearance, obviously, is well suited to the costume. But if you’re actually familiar with the story, you might recall that the monster was actually a very intelligent and thoughtful individual – much as Ding Feng is beneath his frightening visage. I approve.

Read the article here.

Azerbaijan gets the fun job of sitting between Iran and Russia. It’s one of our little buddies over in that area, so they take a lot of flak from the Arab nations nearby. The Associated Press reports that just recently, Azerbaijan has arrested 22 of its citizens who were plotting various terrorist attacks against Azerbaijan and American-related companies.

This isn’t the first time Azerbaijan authorities have discovered terrorist cells in their country and prevented them from carrying out various attacks, from the destruction of a McDonalds to the assassination of Jewish teachers. So if these 22 Azeri are part of an Iranian terrorist network, then it’s very good that they’ve been taken down.

There is, of course, the question of whether or not these actually are terrorists. There are some strong indicators that they are – a lot of weapons and explosives were seized when they were arrested. And the article has some details about how they were recruited, when, and by whom. As far as I know, Azerbaijan doesn’t have a history of making these sorts of things up, so I’m willing to believe them. But it is always good to be a little leery, lest we find ourselves in another Red Scare where the accusation is tantamount to evidence.

The other bit of news I got today is much more concrete.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is visiting Afghanistan. Wednesday morning (Tuesday for those of you in my part of the world), he was attacked. As his plane landed in a military base, an Afghan driving a stolen car set it on fire and drove it at the plane. Everyone made it out of the situation alive – including the terrorist, who is being treated for his burns.

It is quite possible that this is not the ‘usual’ sort of terrorist. Rather than being motivated by religious extremism like our usual lunatics, this might have been about the recent shooting spree an American soldier went on, killing 16 Afghans. I suspect this because the guy driving the car actually fled from it rather than, say, blowing himself up as terrorists tend to do. But that’s just my speculation, and I’m hardly an expert.

Source.

Nope, there are death squads roaming Iraq neighborhoods hunting down homosexuals and killing them.

I’m going to start out by saying that this isn’t a new thing. In fact, violence against homosexuals in Iraq is one of the things that got worse after the U.S. invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Hussein’s regime, while technically Islamic, was largely secular. Being the maniac that he was, Hussein didn’t really have much respect for any sort of higher authority. His word was law. And so, while technically his religion and regime condemned homosexuality, he didn’t really care and wasn’t all that interested in hunting down homosexuals. With him out of the way, though, militant groups took to the streets and started enforcing their own rules. While the U.S. soldiers were busy dealing with the al-Qaeda terrorists and remnants of Saddam’s army, the under-trained and inexperienced local police were left to deal with issues like this – and a whole lot of them didn’t really care to.

And yet, while this started to be a serious problem during the U.S. occupation, it has actually gotten worse since the U.S. left Iraq. A gay rights activist under the name Roby Hurriya comments on a surge in violence against homosexuals in the last 2 months. He has evidence of 14 killings in the last three weeks – many of them killed by being held on the ground while someone smashed in their heads with cement blocks. Hurriya believes as many as 200 homosexuals have been killed in recent years. He can name 66 victims who he personally knew. Disgusting as it sounds, the Iraqi government is not classifying these murders in any special way, so we don’t actually know the total death toll for homosexuals in Iraq.

Now, of course, if this article was just about death squads killing homosexuals in Iraq, the title wouldn’t sound so strange. But then I went and threw emos into the mix. Remember them? I know most of us found them annoying here in America. But in Iraq, it’s a fun new thing that the kids love. They see it as a way to express themselves and really, I think that kids in the Middle East have a much bigger problem with their individuality being crushed than we do here in the west, so more power to them.

But say, do you remember what the most common insult we threw at emo kids was? That’s right! We used to say they were all gay.

Please take a moment to recall the previous few paragraphs.

Yeah. These death groups are killing emos as well because they’ve convinced themselves that they really are gay. And if you think that the fact that the killings have spread to heterosexuals as well will help the situation, you’re out of luck. According to the article I read on the subject: “The Interior Ministry added to the atmosphere of menace last month by releasing a statement that labeled the emo culture “Satanism”. It said a special police force would stamp it out.”

So yeah, this is basically condoned by the Iraqi government. This has been going on since 2003 and there’s no end in sight. Nor is there any push for us to do anything about it, from Team Red or Team Blue politicians. It gets harder and harder for me to believe that either party actually cares about anything.

Source.

Recently, in the centrally located city of Homs, 53 people (all but 6 of them women and children) were slaughtered. Both the rebels and the government blame each other, though considering that Asaad’s government is the one with the habit of breaking into peoples homes and killing them, it seems more likely that you can blame this on the people who have done this sort of thing in the past.

Rebellion has been raging in Syria for around a year, claiming 7,500 lives. If that doesn’t sound like a lot to you, let me remind you that Americans have been upset because in Iraq, we lost  4,408 soldiers in 10 years. If the conflict in Syria were to continue for, say, 10 years, that would put the American death toll in Iraq at a pitiful 6% of the lives lost in Syria’s internal struggle. And to all indications, it looks like the rest of the world is content to let Syria struggle as long as it likes to.

No one is agreeing on peace initiatives. The U.S. and its friends want to push resolutions on Syria that Bashar al-Asaad will never accept (ones that require him to give up his power). Russia offers more pragmatic solutions, but even if we get over our outdated hatred of all Russian suggestions (don’t hold your breath until we elect someone born in the 90s) we hate the idea of leaving Asaad in power, for obvious reasons. And given the fact that Asaad is a demonstrated sociopath, it is unlikely he’s going to accept the idea that he’s even done something wrong.

This is one of those times when I would most likely support an actual military initiative. I know people weren’t very happy with the last time we invaded a middle eastern country to remove a lunatic from power and replace him with someone who wasn’t nuts, but one would think we’ve learned from the mistakes of Iraq and could do it better this time.

Or not. We Americans aren’t very fond of learning from our mistakes, are we?

The short:

A suicide attack outside of a Catholic church in Jos, Nigeria killed 3.

The long:

Jos, Nigeria, is in an unfortunate position. Basically, southern Nigeria is Muslim while northern Nigeria is Christian. Jos sits right on that dividing line. This is the second time this has happened in two weeks (the first attack coming on 2.26). That first attack was the work of Boko Haram, a Muslim terrorism sect. It resulted in 3 deaths and 50 injuries.

Regarding Boko Haram, I don’t know much about them. I’ve read rumors that the group has been receiving training from al-Qaeda, but I’m not sure about that.

Read the article here.

Terrorism isn’t just for the middle east. Africa has its share of extremists, on top of all its other problems.

The short:

Kenya has blamed al-Shabaab, the Somali rebels linked to al-Qaeda, for weekend grenade attacks in Nairobi that killed at least six people and injured close to 70.

The long:

So, from what I gather (admitting that my knowledge here is only from this article), Kenya (along with Ethiopia and “Allied African forces” – whatever that means) invaded Somalia last year to root out some Islamist extremists. They didn’t like that, and this is the second attack on Nairobi since then. While al-Shabaab hasn’t taken credit for the attack, it is very similar to past attacks that they have claimed credit for. It also resembles al-Shabaab attacks on various Ethiopian strongholds.

It should be noted that al-Shabaab is currently undergoing serious financial and leadership crises. the attack might be the work of a more local Kenyan militant group called the Muslim Youth Centre. As the article says:

A Kenyan Islamist group, the Muslim Youth Centre, said “jihad is creeping its way into Nairobi” in a tweet following the blasts. The group says it represents “the next generation of terrorist threats” amid claims by the UN it is inspired and mentored by al-Shabaab. “[Kenya Defence Forces] must leave our Muslim land,” it said.

So be aware of the MYC as well.

The short version:

“A suicide bomber attacked a funeral attended by an anti-Taliban politician in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, killing at least 15 mourners.”

The long version:

Peshawar is in northern Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. As you might expect, there are a lot of extremists there, so Peshawar gets some of the worst terror activity. Pakistani security forces have been fighting with the terrorists there for a while, without major success – probably because, being so close to Afghanistan, it’s easy for them to rush across the border and be out of Pakistan’s reach. I would have expected us to have Afghanistan more settled by now, but…well, I don’t really know what’s going on there. Expect to hear more about Peshawar, and Pakistan in general, in the future. This is hardly an isolated incident.

One thing that stands out to me is that pretty much every day, I see another story about terror attacks. Some guy blew himself up in Iraq, someone else went on a killing spree in Pakistan, and so on. I have no idea if these things are in the mainstream news or not (I can’t imagine Google’s sources are all that arcane). What I do know is that when I did watch the news on TV, it was all about proving how stupid G. W. B. was but I didn’t see anywhere near as many stories about terrorism. I don’t know if it’s because they thought that acknowledging widespread terrorism would force them to admit that Bush wasn’t as stupid as they wanted us to think he was, or if there really wasn’t as much of it at the time. The middle east is all stirred up now, between the various revolutions and rebellions as well as our withdraw from Iraq and Iran’s new bold nuclear initiatives. Maybe things really have just gotten worse. Regardless, I’ve started paying more attention to it.

So now I’m going to be sharing with you all whatever little stories Google tosses at me. It might be old news, I really don’t know. Maye this stuff is all over the news anyway – though I honestly doubt it.

Anyway enjoy the stories of horrible atrocities committed in the name of insanity.

You can read it here.

I agree with most of the article, especially the part about the good titles being overshadowed by the bad ones. As far as I’ve seen, everyone is upset about two titles (Catwoman and Red Hood). That leaves 50 other titles, many of which feature women in the leading roles. And most of those women have been changed from their older versions to make them more interesting and powerful. Wonder Woman is a great example – not only is her power level upped, she’s also much more self-assured and self-reliant. And Supergirl is currently more powerful than Superman! It makes me sad that so many quality titles are being completely ignored because of two that upset people, especially when some of them feature exactly what feminist types have demanded all these years.

On a lighter note, here’s a screencap of something else I saw on that site.

Wolverine: More powerful than Jesus Christ...but considerably weaker than He-Man.

Now, the Contagonist isn’t something new. It’s a concept as old as Pro and Ant, as near as I can tell, though the term seems to have been coined by Dramatica. And you see this type of character all the time, even if the author doesn’t realize this is what she is writing. As the name suggests, the Contagonist is against the Protagonist, though in a different way to the Antagonist. While the Antagonist wants to prevent the Protagonist from reaching the Goal, the Contagonist wants to divert the Protagonist. In other words, while the Antagonist will block the doorway, the Contagonist will try to send the Protagonist away from the building altogether.

That’s really all Dramatica (and most sources) have to say about the Contagonist, but of course there’s far more to it than that. Let’s look first at how a Contagonist can function in a story.

The following paragraph is irrelevant, and you can actually skip it and move on to the next one. However, I felt like it needed to be said.

Other sources like to classify a Contagonist with the Pro- and Antagonist. Dramatica suggest that a Contagonist can be aligned with the Antagonist (as a subordinate who perhaps has their own agenda), allied with the Protagonist (a burr in their side who constantly tries to draw them away from what is important) or a force of their own, independant from the others. Of course, any basic logic tells you that these are the options for any character, and thus does not tell you anything about the Contagonist. Everyone in the story is either going to be with the Protagonist, with the Antagonist, or on their own.

Okay, relevant again.

Let’s take a look at the role a Contagonist serves. Basically, there are two types of stories: Plot-driven and Character-driven. Ideally, a good story will be both, but you can get by with one or the other. In a Plot-driven story, it’s all about what happens. The action is centered around what the characters do and the effect that has on the world around them. In this sort of story, an Antagonist is going to be the most important negative force. The story is about what happens. The Protagonist is trying to make something happen and the Antagonist is trying to stop him (or the other way around). Because the story is all about making something happen or not happen, in a Plot-driven story an Antagonist is going to be the Protagonist’s most important obstacle.

It is in the Character-driven story that the Contagonist shines. A Character-driven story isn’t about what happens so much as the people to whom it happens. In this sort of story, you’ll generally see more character growth and development as the experiences of the Protagonist change him/her. That’s where the Contagonist comes in. The Contagonist isn’t opposition so much as temptation or corruption. It isn’t that they want to prevent the Protagonist from reaching their Goal so much as that they want to change the Protagonist, and the Goal becomes irrelevant by default. The Contagonist doesn’t care about the Goal, they care about the Protagonist.

It’s pretty easy to see the Contagonist as the bad guy in a story. This is the character who tries to corrupt the Protagonist and turn him to the Dark Side. It’s the jaded Antihero who tries to get the Hero to give up his morals and accept the Antihero’s way of doing things. It is anyone who tries to change the Protagonist for the worst (according to the morality of the story’s universe). There will probably be a number of small temptations along the Protagonist’s road, and they do not necessarily need to be characters. Things like alcohol, gambling, or sex – anything that could seriously divert the Protagonist from their goal – is a contagonist. I use a lower-case “c” for that, to distinguish between the contagonist as a function and the Contagonist – a character actively seeking to diver the Protagonist.

That said, the Contagonist is not necessarily the villain of the story.  A Contagonist may have the best of intentions for the Protagonist. Instead of trying to turn the Protagonist to the ways of evil, this could be a much more benevolent character. The Protagonist’s mother who doesn’t want him in harm’s way, or a love interest who wants the Protagonist to stay with them rather than go after the Goal.  A Contagonist may have the best of intentions, but the result is the same: the Protagonist is diverted from the Goal.

And, of course, a Contagonist’s goals may not be benevolent or malevolent towards the Protagonist – they may just be different. When a knight goes off to kill a dragon, the king may want that knight to serve in the army against an invading enemy instead. This doesn’t mean that the king is a bad guy, or that he’s opposed to the Protagonist’s Goal. But he wants the Protagonist to choose a different path.

All in all, the definition of the Contagonist as one who wants to divert the Protagonist doesn’t really do it justice, nor is it particularly descriptive; or, in my opinion, perfectly accurate to the contagonist’s intentions. The Contagonist doesn’t care about the Goal, only the person trying to achieve it. Whatever their intentions, they want to change the Protagonist, not thwart him.