Reid Moreau | Wizard | Shadow of the Dragon Queen

My first real D&D character, heavily inspired by my Dragonlance fave.

(via Lucy Liu's Independent Woman - Interview Magazine)

There have been many great sidekick pairings in the history of modern literature. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet…the list goes on. Yet, it seems there has never been a delightfully tumultuous relationship that comes close to echoing the one embodied by rogue detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend and assistant Dr. John Watson. Written in the form of short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the opium-den loving Holmes would terrorize London with his intellectual, astute, and stubborn prowess, with Dr. Watson providing medical expertise and chronicling their entertaining exploits along the way.

Doyle’s works have now long been entered into the public domain, with many film and television adaptions cropping up every few years. Still, when CBS announced in 2012 that it would be turning Doyle’s works into an hour-long crime-drama series titled Elementary, it elicited an unusually high response—this was mostly due to the news that a woman would, in fact, be portraying Watson. Her name would be Joan, not John. And she’s now a fallen from grace surgeon-turned-sober companion and private detective, forfeiting her “Dr.” title in the process. The woman chosen to take on this exciting, contemporary role of Joan Watson was none other than seasoned actress Lucy Liu.

Liu, who’s best known for her roles as a fierce and ill-mannered lawyer in Ally McBeal, an ass-kicking “angel” in the rebooted Charlie’s Angels, and an equally ass-kicking bad girl in the Kill Bill series, certainly provides the yin to the yang of Jonny Lee Miller’s gritty portrayal of Holmes. Elementary chronicles the duo’s relationship as they consult for the NYPD on various criminal cases while living in a shared brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. Initially starting off in Season One as a substance-free friend to the fresh-out-of-rehab Holmes with a keen interest in solving crimes, Watson quickly transformed into a sharp and observant right-hand woman who now clearly has the aptitude to work on her own. And it appears she’ll be doing just that—the end of Season Two left viewers witnessing Watson’s decision to move out of the brownstone and start a new career as a solo private detective, seemingly fed-up with Holmes’ erratic behavior.

The warm and delightful Liu recently called up Interview from her home in New York City to discuss Elementary’s upcoming third season.

DEVON IVIE: Were you on set today?

LUCY LIU: I was running around like a maniac, yeah. It’s beautiful today, it started getting a little bit cooler again. But of course I’ve been bitten by the two mosquitos that are still alive in New York City.

IVIE: I know you were recently at New York Comic Con. How was it?

LIU: It was amazing. It’s such a spectator place. Not only do you get super fans, but you also get people who are curious and inventive and imaginative. It’s fun.

IVIE: Did you run into any cosplayers dressed as Joan Watson?

LIU: Oh, no, I don’t know about that. That’s funny! We did a panel with a huge audience so I couldn’t really see if anyone was wearing anything specific, but it’s an excuse for kids and adults to get dressed up and just be crazy. You know you’ve made it when you have super-fans out there.

IVIE: When you first read the scripts for Elementary, what was it that attracted you to the role of Joan?

LIU: I liked the fact that it was going to be about [Joan and Sherlock’s] relationship and their friendship, and bringing that into modern times. And I thought it was wonderful to change up the gender.

IVIE: Did you immerse yourself in Arthur Conan Doyle’s work as preparation at all?

LIU: I did, I did! I started reading the short stories. I never read them before so it was a really great excuse to read them. I can’t believe it was written so long ago, because it’s so current. The characters are so colorful, which is why I think there are so many incarnations of Watson and Holmes.

IVIE: Do you have a favorite story? I love “A Scandal in Bohemia.”

LIU: There were some pretty amazing stories. The one that stood out to me, which was a Watson story that I got to know him a little more through, was “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” He really is on his own in that. Of course it turns out that Holmes has been there all along, but it’s interesting looking into his interior.

IVIE: Yeah, the entirety of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is narrated just by Watson. And his diary and letters, too.

LIU: Yeah, I think it’s really cool. We started incorporating that into the show, too, the letters and journals.

IVIE: Has this detective genre always appealed to you? Did you grow up watching or reading detective whodunits?

LIU: I remember more of the old school Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys sort of thing. I also grew up with the Scooby-Doo mysteries. Remember when the villain would go, “I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you rascal-y kids!” Those were the kind of the things I immersed myself in. I have to say that my mother has always been a huge fan of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, so this show was her dream come true. I don’t think she totally understood what was going on with Ally McBeal. [laughs]

IVIE: I’ve enjoyed witnessing Joan’s evolution throughout the course of the show, starting off as a sober companion and eventually ending up as a trusty sidekick and confidant to Sherlock. What can we expect from Joan in Season Three?

LIU: When you see them in the third season, you see some friction between the two characters. Joan is now on her own, she has her own detective agency, has a boyfriend, and has been without Sherlock for eight months. She’s got her own apartment, she’s settled, and he shows back up. I think she’s a little bit hurt by what happened and how their relationship and partnership ended, which was basically his decision and his choice, and he left it all in one little note for her. I think she felt that their relationship was much deeper than that, and that he was dismissive in the way that he handled that.

IVIE: How would you define the relationship between Joan and Sherlock?

LIU: I think that it’s a really positive and good relationship, overall. They really have a good chemistry together, work really hard together, and understand each other. They acknowledge each other and respect each other, which is a really important way to have a friendship. And they can learn from each other, you know? She’s very curious about him and I think he sees that she’s a very smart person—that’s vital for him in having respect for someone, having them be intelligent and thinking for themselves.

IVIE: Do you see any of Joan in yourself?

LIU: I do to a certain degree. She’s a lot more measured and patient, for sure. She’s a very curious person, which I think I am, and I think she isn’t afraid of change. She was a doctor, and then became a sober companion, and then jumped off and became a detective. I think sometimes it’s good to make big leaps.

IVIE: You’ve probably been asked this question many times, but do you think a romance between Joan and Sherlock could ever fittingly happen?

LIU: It’s a question that’s often asked and I think it’s really up to the executives. Rob Doherty, the creator [of Elementary] really feels incredibly strongly about keeping their relationship platonic. He has already taken great strides to keep the relationship as clean as possible according to the literature, but he has also changed so much of it by changing the gender of Watson. To have them have a romantic involvement would turn the whole thing upside-down in a way that might really jump the line. [Doherty] felt really strongly about it and I think that’s the one thing he really wants to stay true to.

IVIE: I totally agree. Even on the BBC’s Sherlock, there are campaigns to get Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and Martin Freeman’s Watson to become romantically involved. It’s like, enough already, no!

LIU: No way, that’s so weird! People do have that level of friendship oftentimes, but it doesn’t mean it’s physical. I think that everyone just assumes because there’s chemistry the next thing should be happening. I would vote “no” for a romance. I think for sure the creator would vote no on that, too.

IVIE: I’ve talked to both women and men who watch Elementary, and they all consistently mention how well dressed and fashionable Joan is. Do you collaborate with the wardrobe department on styling decisions at all?

LIU: That’s awesome. Yes, I collaborate with Rebecca [Hofherr], who’s the costume designer, who’s wonderful. She’s very easy to work with. One thing we try to maintain about Joan and her style is that she’s a bit wrinkled, you know what I mean? Sometimes it looks like things are really put together, but we always want to make sure things aren’t too tight and are comfortable, kind of like she throws things together. We don’t want it to seem so business-y, so we go away from suits. Chic, but not corporate. Also just to make her seem like her outfits aren’t so put-together all the time. But I’m glad that people really seem to like it, it’s a relief! We don’t splurge a lot on the show, we try to do cheaper things, like things Joan would wear a lot. She wears the same white jacket and shoes frequently.

IVIE: Will we be seeing more of the infamous Clyde the Turtle in the upcoming season?

LIU: Clyde will indeed be in it again. We have to share custody of Clyde.

IVIE: Is it true that Clyde is actually two tortoises? Pulling a Mary Kate and Ashley in Full House on us?

LIU: Yes. It’s just like having twins on a show. Just in case one is crying and screaming and passed out or something.

IVIE: You made your directorial debut for an episode of Elementary last season [“Paint It Black”]. Do you have plans to direct an episode again soon?

LIU: That was so exciting. I’ll be directing another episode again very shortly in December, so you’ll be seeing it in a month and a half.

IVIE: Where did your interest in directing come from?

LIU: I guess I was curious about it. Having been in this business for a while, you kind of see and get a glimpse of everything doing film and television. I think it seemed like a natural progression to go into directing, and I hope to explore more of it, because it’s very exciting and a really good way to collide all the things that you’ve known and experienced in the business and put them all into one.

IVIE: Is there an ideal guest star that you’d like to see on the show in the upcoming season?

LIU: I would love to see Mycroft come back. I really think there was a wonderful tension for Mycroft and Sherlock as well as the triangle that occurred when Joan became involved with him. There’s something very deep about that relationship, and I also think that Rhys Ifans is a fantastic actor. He commands the screen, but off-screen he’s incredibly lovely. A real treat to have on the show.

IVIE: I remember the first few episodes that I saw Rhys in, I was like, where have I seen this guy before? So I looked at his Wikipedia page and it became obvious: he was the crazy guy from Notting Hill!

LIU: Yes, the roommate! So good! Everything he does, he just kills it, no matter the role.

IVIE: And it’s always good to have some MI6 action on the show, which Mycroft provided. Some international flair.

LIU: [laughs] International flair, exactly, some added spice. Just throw some spy stuff in there to throw people off their game. You just don’t expect it, you know? It came out of nowhere.

IVIE: That whole three-episode arc at the end of the second season…

LIU: That was awesome. I was lucky enough to direct one of those episodes, which is more narrative in tone. It’s more fun in some ways, too.

IVIE: You’ve done a range of acting work for both television and film. Do you now find yourself preferring one to the other?

LIU: I love both of them equally. The lack of predictability with television is something that’s constantly changing what your perception of who you think your character is. Suddenly I have a father that’s schizophrenic, or I discovered something else, or I have a relationship with Mycroft. The things that pop up and change the game for you and always keep you on your toes. The wonderful thing about film is that you have something that has a beginning, middle, and end, and you have a concrete amount of time to shoot it. And the process of that can be longer, like editing and advertising and testing the movie, so it’s very different. Television you just continue going, no matter what’s happening outside of your world. You get lost in that vortex a little bit.

IVIE: It’s interesting that America is now embracing the “mini-series” format that has already been so heavily utilized overseas, where there are a set amount of short episodes, and that’s it. In a way, it’s kind of like a cinematic experience.

LIU: I like that, too. It allows you to have a freedom of creativity and at the same time you don’t feel like you have to be contracted to something for that long; you’re really working on a piece of art. And then you’re done and you move on, or it comes back, like Downton Abbey. You don’t know. Those things become little masterpieces. The thing about television is that you see a range of actors now that you may not have seen five years ago even, 10 years ago absolutely not, and I think now there’s no wrong about doing television. There’s no definitive category for what kind of department you fall into anymore.

IVIE: What’s a fun, secret fact about your costar Jonny Lee Miller?

LIU: A fun fact about Jonny Lee Miller is that he oftentimes does handstands on a wall before he does a take, sometimes with pushups, to get blood to his brain and get him geared up for a long monologue that he may have. He stays there, hangs a little bit, and then turns around and does the scene. Most of the time in the brownstone more than anywhere else. He’s in full costume and everything. That’s trivia!

IVIE: I wish I could do wall-handstands by myself.

LIU: Oh my god, I need someone to push my legs up and then hold me there. I’m a cheat!

ELEMENTARY PREMIERES THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30 ON CBS.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 Review: Still Possesses Turtle Power After All These Years

Cowabunga all you happy people! I freaking love the Teenage Ninja Turtles. I grew up with it from Turtles in Time, which was my first video game, to the 2003 cartoon, which I covered the first three episodes of last month, and on to present day as I re-read the idw comics after finally reading the original eastman and laird run of mirage, and impatiently waiting for Shredder’s Revenge to come out after a LONG drout of no good TMNT games. I”m a fan of these heroes four, their dynamic as a family, the endless possiblities that come from it’s long history and ablitlity to go anywhere in any genre, and the wonderful goofy shit that happens when you have a franchise about mutant turtles learning ninjitsu from a rat and fighting a dude covered in knife covered samurai armor. 

So with me finally covering the guys after almost a year last month and with a new movie set to debut at some point this year, I had the bright idea to revisit the FIRST TMNT movie after way too many years of not watching it. This movie is anear and dear to my heart: When I first started getting into the boys big as a kid with the 2003 cartoon, I badly wanted more turtles. But back then it wasn’t nearly as easy to glom onto some more of the sewer shock pizza kings: Streaming sites with all the cartoons on them weren’t all that accesable, dvd’s were expensive for the 87 cartoon, Mirage wasn’t reprinting the comics in any meaningful way and my local comic shop didn’t have any at all and I could only play the SNES when my brother had it set up on occasion like at our Grandma’s farm. 

As you probably guessed though there was one exception: the original 1990 movie, which I got at Walmart for 5 bucks and haven’t let go of since. It was one of my first dvds and is still one of my most precious. Said film hit the spot just right as like my beloved 2003 series, it was a mildly goofy but still fucking cool adaptation that stuck closer to the mirage comics, even more than the 2003 series would, while taking a few queues from the 87 series. This film is as precious to me as the 2003 series and a with a brand new movie coming up, I figured it was the exact right time to dig into this classic: what makes it still good to this day, what’s fun to point and laugh at, and how the heck Jim Henson got involved in this. So join me under the cut as I take a look at my boys first theatrical outing and why I still love watching a turtle. 

No One Wanted To Make This: Before we get into the film itself some background. As usual I struggled a bit, but thankfully found some help in the form of this Hollywood Reporter article.  It’s a fascinating read worth your time, providing an oral history of the film from the people who worked on it. 

The film was the baby of Gary Propper, a surfer dude and road manager for the prop comic Gallagher, aka that guy who used to smash watermelons but now has instead opted to smash what little’s left of his career by being a homophobic douchenozzle. He found an ally in Showtime producer Kim Dawson who’d produced Gallagher’s special. I don’t think there will be more of an 80′s sentence than “Gallagher’s surfer dude agent wanted to make a teenage mutant ninja turtles movie”. Propper was a huge fan of the comics, and with Dawson’s help convinced Laird and Eastman to let them option it to studios. 

It may come as a shock to you but the road agent for a homophobic watermelon man and a producer at a niche cable channel wanting to make a movie based on an underground comic book about masked turtles at a time when the two most recent comic book movies were Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Howard the Duck, did not go well. Every door in Hollywood got slammed in their face, even Fox> Even the eventual backer of the film, Golden Harvest, a hong kong action film studio, took months to convince to actually back the film. 

Things did not get easier from there: The films writer Bobby Herbeck had trouble getting a story agreed on because Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s working relationship had deteroiated horribly from the stress so naturally the two could not agree on a damn thing and argued with each other. Peter Laird  made a tense siutation even worse by constnatly sniping at Herbeck and feeling he was a “Hollywood outsider infringing on his vision and characters”

Granted the script was apparently not great... but Pete still comes off as a pretnetious ass who views his weird indie comic as THE HIGHEST OF HIGH CALLINGS HOW DARE YOU SOIL IT. And continued to be kind of a prick like this throughout the rest of his time with the property. 

Thankfully the film found i’ts voice, vision and director in Steve Barron. Barron was a music video guy who knew the producers and while reluctant, eventually dove into the project rightfully thinking the film would need to be a mix of the mirage comics and 87 cartoon, keeping aprils’ reporter job, the turtles lvoe of pizza and their iconic color coding from the cartoon but adapting several stories from the comics as the backbone of the film. The guys liked barron MUCH better and things ran smoother. 

Barron also brought in one of the film’s biggest selling points and it’s most valuable asset: it’s triumphantly awesome Jim Henson costumes. Barron had worked with good old Jim on the music videos for Labyrinth, and while it took some convincing since the comics were violent as hell and that wasn’t Jim’s style, Barron eventually got him on board. This naturally doubled the budget, but given Henson’s costumes STILL hold up today and look better than the cgi used in the platinum dunes films... it was a good call. And this was brand new tech for jim, having to invent tons of new ideas and mechanisms just to make the things work, and said things still were absolute hell on the actors. Jim later ended up not liking the film for being too violent... which I find hilarious given how many muppets got eaten or blowed up real good on his show but regardless, I thank this legendary and wonderful man as without him this film WOULD NOT have worked. The costumes here look great, feel realistic, and you can’t tell the actors were dubbed much less horribly suffering in those suits. Much like Disney Land. 

The film would get picked up for distribution by New Line, and despite i’ts weird as hell origins and the long shot it had.. the film was a MASSIVE hit at the box office, owing to a combination of Batman 89 the previous year having proved comic book movies can work for audiences, the cartoon’s runaway sucess, and a massive marketing campaign. The film made it’s mark. So now we know how we got here let’s get into the film itself. 

What’s the Story Morning Glory?:

So the story for this one is largely cobbled together from some of the more notable arcs Eastman and Laird did before handing off the book to others full time as the stress of the company and the mounting tension with each other made it near impossible to work together on the book itself. 

To Save time i’m just going through what hte movie takes from the comics plot wise now to save me the trouble later:The movie takes elements from the first issue (The Turtles, Splinter and Shredder’s backstories, Shredder being fully human and the main antagonist, Shredder’s design and the final rooftop showdown that results in Shredder’s death), second and third, (April’s apartment over her dad’s old store and the turtles moving in when their home is ransacked and splinter has gone missing), the rapheal micro series (A tounge in cheek way of cashing in on the Mini-Series craze of the 80s, a one shot by modern standards and something that’s tragically been underused as an idea as only TMNT and MLP have used the idea at IDW, Raph meeting casey and their fight with one another), the return of shredder arc (One of the turtles being ambushed and mobbed by the foot and then thrown though a sky light (Leo in the comic and Raph here), the turtles being horribly outnumbered by them, Casey coming ot the rescue and metting the non-raph turtles for the first time, and them being forced to escape when the place goes up in flames), their exile to northampton (April writing in a journal, casey working on a car with one of the guys and one of hte guys looking over hteir injured brother), and finally, their triumphant return which was very loosely adapted as there are no deformed shredder clones and shredder not being dead yet in this version was not brought back by a colony of super science worms. 

So as for how this all comes together: Our story takes place in New York: A crimewave is high with muggings mysterious. There are a ton of phantom thefts going around and at most people have been seeing teens responsibile. And the police.. are at about this level of useful:

The only person doing something is April O’Neil, played by Judith Hoag. Hoag is easily the standout of the film, giving us a strong, confident woman with a wonderful sense of humor. She honestly might be my faviorite April O Neil, and given we’ve had some great ones with 2003, 2012 and Rise, that’s not something I say lightly. I honestly wish I’d recognized her in more stuff as she was both on Nashville and the mom in the Halloween Town films, and most recently was on the ScFy show the magicians. She’s a talented lady and i’m glad she’s still goin. 

April is a reporter for Channel 3 like the cartoon, though for some weird reason her boss from the cartoon is replaced by Charles Pennigton, played by Jay Patterson, whose currently dealing with his troubled son Danny, played by Micheal Turney. Pennington is horribly useless at both jobs: At work he tries to ease April off calling out Chief Sterns, who refuses to listen to April’s evidence gathered from japanese immigrants that the crimes resemble similar ones in japan in favor of trying to get charles to shut her up. Danny meanwhile is a member of the foot becase his dad thinks shouting out him and talking about him like he’s not there and generally being a dipstick will actually do anything to help him. 

I love the concept for the foot here. In addition to being a Ninja Violence Gang as always, they now recruit new members by finding kids without families or with troubled family lives and giving them a sense of family with the foot, and sweeting the bargin with a giant cave filled with arcade machines, a skate ramp and general late 80′s early 90′s kids goodies. Is it rediculous? Yes. Is it also clever as it gives Shredder an easy army of plausably deniable theives that he can pick the best out of to put in his elite that will be tirelessly loyal to him and him alone? Also yes. 

So April being public about this stuff gets her attacked, which naturally leads to our heroes coming in, first in the shadows and later directly when April wont’ give up on the case and Shredder sends some ninjas to go shut her up.. which he does weirdly as the guy jsut slaps her and tells her to cut it out like he’s on a domestically abusive episode of Full House. Raph saves her, and we get the turtles origin.. though weirdly they cut it in half. We get the ooze portion but Splinter’s past with Saki, Saki’s murder of his master and his master’s partern Tang Shen is left for later in the film and the fact Shredder’s saki is treated as a big twist despite the fact the biggest audience for the film would be kids... and kids would’ve been familiar with the cartoon where the giant brain monster routinely screeches out saki at the shredder. Maybe Barron just thought he was an alcoholic I don’t know. It just would’ve made more sense to have it all at once and let the audeince put it together. 

April becomes good friends with the turtles over a night of frozen pizza and camradrie, but the Splinters return home to find it ransacked, Splinter kidnapped by the foot, and are forced to Stay with april. Charles meanwhile tries to get April to backoff because he made a deal with the police to clear Danny’s record, without TELLING her any of this mind you, but I will save my rage on that little plot point for in a bit as Danny who he drug along sees the turtles and tells the Shredder. 

So we get the return of the shredder arc as Raph goes through a window, our heroes fight valiantly, and Raph’s friend Casey who he met earlier shows up, the two having bonded as all true friends do.. by beating the shit out of each other ending with raph shouting DAMNNNNNNN really big and dramatically into the sky for some reason. The Turtles and friends escape with an injured raph from April’s burning second hand store. She had a second hand store it was poorly established and only there because she had it in the comics. 

Our heroes retreat to a farm April’s grandma owned in Northampton, Massachutes, where Mirage was located at the time the original comics where they were exiled to the place were written and a location that has been a staple of the turtles ever since. The turtles slowly recover, lick their wounds, talk about who hooked up with who on gilligans island etc, before Leo connects with Splinter via meditation, who tells them to come back. Splinter also starts to connect with Danny and convinces him to swtich sides.. or at the very least squat in the boys old home. 

The boys return home, find danny, and prepare, Danny goes back and ends up giving away the Turtles are home.. but the turtles are ready and in an awesome sequence kick the fuck out of the foot squad sent for them with some well prepared steam vents. Casey goes to get splinter since Danny told them and with Danny’s help, finds him, since Danny found out they were gonna kill him. Casey beats up Tatsu, shredder’s right hand man, and they get him out. 

We get our final fight which is awesome up until the climax.. which is splinter casually tripping shredder with nunchucks and thier bloody history being kind of rushed and unsatsifying. Casey crushes shredder with a garbage truck, April gets her job back, more on that in a moment, she and casey hook up, and we end with the fucking awesome song T-U-R-T-L-E Power by partners in cryme. Seriously check it out it’s fucking triumphant. 

The song is just good.. cheesy? Sure but that’s half the fun. It’s the gold standard for movie theme songs for them and stacks up handily with the various animated series themes.. all of which slap. Okay... ALMOST all of which slap. Fast Forwards is aggressively medicore, which is doubly suprising to me since 4kids was REALLY damn good with theme songs. It was one of the three things they were best at along with finding VERY talented voice actors and setting japan based works in america because merica dammit.  

The plot is very solid: It skilfully packed half of eastman and laird’s run on TMNT into 90 mintues while adding things like April’s job at channel 9, the way the foot recurited kids etc. The plot flows well for hte most part and apart from one annoying subplot we’ll get to never has a moment that feel unecessary or dosen’t pay off later. And the stellar plot and fun pacing of it helps boilster the characters that do work... and help paper over the ones that are so thin the’yd fall down a grate...

Our Heroes, Villains and Annoying Middle Aged Guys:

Yeahhhh character is hit and miss here. Some are rather strong, others are the bare basics for the character their adapting and most are just to serve the plot but some work some don’t,  So let’s talk about it starting with our boys:

Raph is the most fleshed out of the turtles, being the main focus of the first 2/3 of the film, and having his anger be part of what SHOULD be a character arc, learning to temper it. And while granted MOST TMNT properties do this, to the point that Rise Raph is so loveable in part because his boisterous bruiser big bro attitude is a refreshing break from the usual grumpus we get. But at the time this hadn’t been done in every version but the 87 cartoon, so exploring it was valid.. but despite saying this should be a thing htey just forget about it and the most plot relevance he gets is going thorugh a window. He dosen’t really get a resolution.. his arc just kind of stops dead for the final half and it’s one of the film’s weaker points, one I only just now noticed on this rewatch. He’s still the most entertaining. 

Leo is the weakest of the turtles. He really lacks a personality here mostly just being leader and while his spirtual side is touched on, it’s  mostly a plot device. He’s just kinda the leader because he was in the comics to the point Partners in Cryme called Raph the leader. His role in getting taken out by the foot was taken by Raph, so he just has.. nothing to do for most of the film other than gripe at raph ocasionally and say orders. He’s probably the worst Leo i’ve seen outside of Next Mutation. I prefice that because after watching Phelous’ review it’s VERY clear those four are the worst versions of the characters, and no personality is still better than either having your team do nothing or yelling at them as your personality. I chalk this up to the Mirage Leo, and the mirage turtles to a poit being kind of bland. Not TERRIBLE characters, especially for the time, but not nearly as fleshed out or individualized as they woudl be in other adpatations, and with most traits LEo DID have, like his badassery flat out gone, he’s just.. nothing here. 

Mikey and Donnie are a double act here with both sharing a brain. Interestingly instead of his normal genius character, Donnie is Mikey’s best friend and the two simply trade jokes and schtick together. The two are interchangable.. but easily the best part of the film and a lot of the most memorable gags and lines, from Ninja Kick the Damn Rabbit! to “Do you like Penicllin on your pizza”, are from them. Thier there almost entirely as comic relief but it works, with both clealry being more modled ont he 87 cartoon turtles, a move that helps lighten the mood in darker moments. Their just genuinely charming and it’s intresting to see such a diffrent version of Donnie, and other incarnations, specifically the 2003 and Rise versions, would retain the sarcastic edge. 

Splinter is splinter. That’s about it, he’s peformed well and the puppet is amazing but he gets kidnapped a half an hour in and outside of influcencing Denny, more on that in a moment, and finishing Shredder he dosen’t do much but spout exposition. He’s not bad or anything, but he’s essentially a rodent shaped plot device. He was also puppeted by Kevin CLash, aka the guy who does Elmo. So there you go. 

April on the other hand.. is truly excellent. This might be my faviorite April. Judith’s april nicely blends the cartoon and mirage versions: She has the cartoons energy and job, but the comics sheer will and casual nature. Judith just oozes personality and her April is just a joy to watch, from her breezy chemistry filled interactions with the guys to her confrntation with Chief Sterns, knowing she’ll get thrown out by the asshole. She’s confident, and even when afraid dosen’t back down to her attackers and even helps out during the sewer ambush. I mean it’s a pot on the head but still it’s neat. She’s easily the best part of the flim and the most fleshed out of the cast. The worst I can say is they kinda shove her store from the comics, Second Time Around, in there for no other reason than it was in the comics: It dosen’t come up until it’s needed for the foot’s assault on her place. But overall.. she’s just fantastic to watch. 

Speaking of fantastic to watch, Elias Koteas is fantastic as Casey. Seriously he’s only second to the 2003 version in my eyes, getting the concept of a testorone filled average guy who decided to just go out and hit people with sports equipment after watching too much A-Team.. I mean that part of it’s not in this version but it’s implied, just right. Like judith, Elias is just really funny to watch and his big scenes, showing up just in time during the foot assault on april’s place and his fight with Tatsu are some of the best parts of the film, the former taken directly from the comics. This version isn’t without problems: His friendship with Raph, his most endearing aspect and one that has been carried throughout eveyr version Casey’s important, with the only exception so far being rise and we have a movie to fix that, is absent here. HE does save the guy, but they don’t really bond or anything. In fact he disappears for about half an hour after his big fight with Raph. But... again he’s just so damn entertaining, down to his JOSEEEEEEEEEEE Conseco bats (There was a two for one sale!).

Shredder is just a LITTLE better than splinter, if only because his actor projects a true aura of menace and I feel this version had some influence on the pants crappingly terrifying 2003 version. And the idea of the foot recurting teenagers like I said is a good one: He gives them home and a cause, they give him plausably deniable backup. And his fight with the boys in the climax is really awesome... the conclusion sucks but otherwise h’es okay. Not the deepest villian, but he has enough presence to be enjoyable.

His right hand man Tatsu, whose been adapted ocasionally since this and reimaigned as Natsu in the IDW comics, a female version, is also fine. He’s your standard grimacing goon but has enough presence to work. 

So that brings us to the penningtons. Charles, april’s boss at the station and his son Danny who’s joined the foot as he feels his dad dosen’t love him. Charles..is about as interesting and likeable as a dog turd and is the worst aspect of the film. No debate there, he just sucks. He sucks so hard he’s classified as a black hole.  The film wants you to see him as a put upon wokring dad whose frustrated with his son’s increased moodiness, skipping school and crminal undertakings and just wants to help him and loves him deep down. The problem is his actor’s delivery instead of concerned.. is just pissed. He just seems pissy and upset about the whole thing and comes off like he’s only mad about Danny doing this because he’s embarassing him and not because you know, it’s bad. When confronting Danny about stealing, he dosen’t consider MAYBE he’s part of a gang or needs help, but just wonders “Why are you stealing when I give you stuff”. Because, Dipshit, sometimes kids do crimes not because they need the stuff but because they WANT to, and because they want to act the fuck out. 

The most he does for the kid is agree to try and get April to back off the police when Cheif Sterns offers to let Danny go and not put him on record in exchange for it. The problem.. is this makes him even MORE unsympathetic. While I do get wanting to help your child, I do and it’s a sucky position... he again should be sympathetic.. but he handles the thing so badly it sucks. He just tells april to ease off, with no reason given, then fires her when she SHOCKINGLY dosen’t give up taking the guy whose refusing to take her hard work seriously or actually solve the crime wave problem to task for his shitty behavior as ANY person facing a shitty, corrput cop would. She just wants to hold him acountable and get him to actually do something. He clearly knows her on a personal level too as he talks about his issues with his son freely with her, something you don’t do with an employee unless their also a friend on some level. 

He could have TOLD april what was going on. She’d be furious at Stern’s naked corrpution and prioritizing shutting her up over actually solving crimes.. and thus put at least some of that energy into shutting him down or finding a way around it, going to the papers or something like that. Even in 1990 pre-internet, there were ways to get around Sterns blackmail and expose him so someone who’d actually do the job could get the job. Instead he just comes off as a selfish coward who rather than try and fight the guy blatantly abusing his power and using Charles own son as  barganing chip, goes along with it because it’s the easier option to simply bow to him instead of TRY and stop this. And it’s not like he’s even going after a beloved public figure or someone who could hide behind his rep: Sterns was blatantly failing a crime wave, April had called him out on his failrues and coverups multiple times. The public was against sterns.. finding out he tried to blackmail the media into shutting up about him would PROBABLY end him... I only say probably not because the public wouldn’t skewer him, but because police tend to escape consequences for blatantly murdering someone on a daily basis and Andrew Cumo is STILl mayor over in new york, the same city this movie takes place, 31 years later, depsite EVERYONE asking him to resign over a long history of sexual harassment and a more recent but still horrible history of hiding death numbers. I don’t doubt people being stupid enough to ignore this or the bilaws with cops being stacked enough for him to get away with it, but just because someone gets away with a crime dosen’t mean you shoudln’t try and go after them in the first place. Fuck. Charles. Pennington. 

Danny on the other hand is FAR more interesting and I think gets way too much flack when it comes to this subplot. Unlike his dad, whose dead weight, Danny is intresting: He provides a POV character for the foot’s MO in the film of taking in wayward teens, and his character arc is pretty engaging, slowly realizing the foot dosen’t care and that hte turtles are the good guys. HIs actor does a great job and while not the biggest presence, he’s not a bad addition to clan hamaoto and I wish other adaptations would find a way to use him. The pull between doing the right thing and his found family is a good struggle. My only real issue with his plot is the moviies flawed aseop about family. It tries to contrast shredder and his using the kids blatnatly with Splinter and Charles really loving their sons. And it works with Splinter and the kids because despite being a tad strict, Splinter clearly loves his sons and works with them to help them. The problem is ENTIRELY with Charles and Danny. As I said Charles love comes off as transasctional: He either thinks he can buy it or just expects it because he shot a bunch of goop into Danny’s mom after two minutes of disapointment. It dosen’t work with them because neither option is good for Danny. His father is neglectful, chooses throwing his jounralistic integrity out the window over talking to his son or his best friend about another way, and abrasive. Danny is no saint, he does do crimes, but it’s clearly a result of a shitty upbringing and the shredder and co actually offeirng him the love he desperatly craves. Danny goes to the foot because his dad is bad at his job but the film never adresses that and just expects Danny to go back to his dad because the plot says so. Danny would HONESTLY be better off with Splinter. No really. Sure he’d have to live in the sewers.. but he did so for a few weeks in the course of the movie. He’s fine down there. Splitner actually cares about him and took an intrest to him and knows how to raise a child. Let him become the fifth turtle. An aseop about family is not a bad thing: Loaded subject that it can be given how many outright abusive families exist, i’m one of the lucky ones who dosen’t have that issue, family is an important thing and can be a source of comfort and support. But this film tells you you should love and respect someone who does not love, respect or value you because he spent a minute in your mom’s vagina and that’s not how family should work and is outright dangerous to kids in an abusive situation. Love the film otherwise but fuck this aseop skyhigh. 

Final thoughts:

Overall though.. the film is bodacious. It’s funny, well paced, has an awesome cast, and outside of a certain bald asswipe... it’s a really good superhero film. Is it the best i’ve seen? Nope. Not even close and character wise most of them are as thin as a wet paper bag covered in ranch dressing. But it’s still a fun as hell with awesome corepgraphy, a killer soundtrack, seriously the soundtrack is damn excellent and only didn’t get it’s own section because I didn’t have enough to say and some of the best effects work i’ve seen in a film in the turtle suits. If you haven’t seen it I urge you to check it out: it’s a breezy 90 minutes, it’s on hbo max and it’s a shell of a time. Will I do the next film? 

We’ll see how this one does like wise and such, but I will be doing the rise film whenever it comes out this year. So look for that and keep possesing turtle power my dudes. If you liked this review subscirbe for more, join my patreon to keep this blog a chugging, comission a review if you have more turtle stuff you want me to cover, and comment on this. What do you think of the movie, what are your thoughts on the review, what can I do better, what other turtle stuff would you like me to cover/ Let me know and i’ll see you at hte next rainbow. 

Seeds

Before I read it, I had this idea I could write a review of Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds for the Comics Journal, but the book just sucked too much. It had basically nothing going for it, or even decipherable as an advancing plot. One thing wrong with it is there’s this sort of conspiracy element, or this “no one believes the news” anymore element of it, but Nocenti didn’t want it to be about “fake news.” Donald Trump has rewired the narrative, so now entire types of subject matter feed into this propaganda machine simply by being addressed. Nocenti’s best work does not shy from topicality, addressing the currents in the cultural air, but this time the modern world feels too hot to handle.

I ordered the Daredevil: Typhoid’s Kiss trade paperback, reprinting a bunch of Nocenti’s work with the Typhoid Mary character from the nineties. The longest story in there is a miniseries with art by John Van Fleet. It’s partly about post-Tarantino video-store employees turned filmmakers kidnapping Typhoid Mary to use her as the subject of a documentary about serial killers and violent media. It’s also about Typhoid Mary working as a private detective trying to track down a killer of prostitutes, who the police don’t care about, and are maybe the actual killers of themselves. Storywise, it’s a pretty cool attempt to address real-world issues of the day within a pulp context.

Van Fleet’s art is pretty boring and bad in a way that’s distinctly ahead of its time. While the miniseries itself probably wouldn’t exist without the precedent of Elektra: Assassin a decade before, (a spinoff about a female Daredevil villain created by the writer during their run on Daredevil where that character defined their run) all the photoreference that’s probably actually just photo backgrounds run through filters sets a precedent for the Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth Daredevil stuff to come a decade later. And it’s frequently annoying on a page design/panel background level. Like in terms of how the panel borders sort of default to grid shapes so there ends up being things that “read” as panels but that don’t actually do anything for pacing. It’s just fitting the narrative into regimented design choices.

This maybe only happens the once. But the art is also just super-stiff throughout, with a very chunky line that eliminates any real nuance. There’s a bunch of characters, but a lot of them are indistinguishable from one another, and that’s because the linework is about as muddy as the color palette — It kinda seems like he’s working with models and photo reference but also doesn’t have that many models to work with so he’s having them play multiple roles, but also his work basically seems more like photoshop filters than actual drawing? There’s a bunch of stuff that I think sucks, basically. But you can also draw a direct line from what Van Fleet is doing in Typhoid to what Aja does in The Seeds. All these choices that are meant to be classy and dignifed, a move away from the excess of superhero comics. The covers of Typhoid are just portraits of the main character, interchangeable from one issue to the next, which was a move that again, was ahead of its time: This is what so many Marvel covers in the 2000s looked like, the Tim Bradstreet Punisher covers probably being the go-to example. It’s pretty dull but it’s nice they’re not super-sexualized.

While the choices arguably suit the subject matter in Typhoid, which is at least partly about movies, in The Seeds, the story doesn’t really make any sense because the visuals seem so steeped in unreality. The premise is that a tabloid has photographed an alien, proving aliens are real. There is really nothing within the context of the story that explains why the news outlet would have enough gravitas to be convincing and have this be an actual news story. And the book is drawn in Photoshop, which is itself a photo-editing software, so the “reality” of the book is defined by the very medium that people recognize as why images can’t be trusted. This contributes a level of irony that could maybe be worked with if the book itself wasn’t so ugly and dull. The whole thing looks like some Banksy bullshit. Outside of word balloons, text appears in the large all-caps typeface of image macros. I don’t have scans of The Seeds because I gave my copy away on account of there not being any reason to keep it around.

The book is beyond dated at the time of its release. Partly this is due to the speed the cultural conversation has been moving for the past five years.  It’s been a difficult time period to work on a work of fiction about the news, certainly, and not only has the comic been a long time in the making, the writer has also been away from making comics for decades now. If the authors had been able to make this as a serialized monthly comic, it might’ve stumbled into timeliness, or the predictive, but as it is, the reading experience feels like a bunch of different, disparate ideas that do not really cohere into a narrative. Leaving aside how the book seems to emerge from a general cultural gestalt of the the 1990s, when The X-Files and Weekly World News were objects of discussion, every major plot point or news story chosen for thematic resonance is approximately fifteen years old. I believe 2005 was when I started to hear about colony collapse disorder. This bee metaphor has been lapped by a Honey Nut Cheerios campaign at this point. (A few years back, boxes of cereal came with seeds of wildflowers you/children could plant.)

Darin Morgan’s episode of The X-Files revival “The Mengele Effect” ably addresses all the issues with how cynicism and conspiracy theories feel different now, all the issues that Nocenti seems terrified of and hopes the audience doesn’t think of when reading her humorless X-Files throwback comic. That episode’s great.  Much of The Seeds seems like it was better done in the decidedly not-great Transmetropolitian. There’s something so dated and sad about this comic’s idea of a cool journalist protagonist: People barely smoke cigarettes anymore! I know no one wants to draw people vaping, but the imagery this book wishes meant “cool, urban, woman” reads as nostalgic affectation in 2021. That so much of the commercial landscapes of our cities has been replaced by vape shops was one of the biggest clues we were already living in a dystopia three years ago.

Nocenti, when she was working regularly, got to be a pretty effective writer for having a monthly deadline wherein she could speak on the issues of the day as they were happening. In the absence of a regular gig, this rare chance to speak her mind gets hampered by how much there is to talk about, and how complicated it all is. If it’s too complicated to address in an ongoing superhero comic, a one-off graphic novel with vaguely commercial ambitions turns out to be a worse space for it. It’s so much sadder than anything in this dream-of-the-nineties comic that the authors were given the grace to make something only under the conditions that doom it to failure. Real people made this work of fiction, and I don’t know what the fuck they’re even talking about, and that’s a more complicated narrative than the journalists in this comic who… stumble upon a story and then need to take to back because it’s too important or something? I don’t understand what this comic is about. It’s clearly gesturing at being about a bunch of different things, but what they get from being in juxtaposition with one another, I don’t know.

In interviews in advance of the release of The Seeds, Nocenti talked about how this was the first time she got to make a comic that didn’t have to have fight scenes or conflict in it. But reading Typhoid it’s clear how conflict ties the story’s disparate threads together. But also while reading Typhoid I kept on thinking about how visually, the Steve Lightle shit that preceded it is so much cooler! Here he is, bifurcating a page so two narrative threads can be told with different approaches to stoytelling:

People sometimes talk about how crazy it is that Nocenti started her Daredevil run immediately following up the Miller/Mazzucchelli Born Again run with a fill-in drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. But I don’t think anyone has pointed out that, since these Typhoid Mary team-up comics appeared in Marvel Comics Presents, she’s basically following up Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, and Steve Lightle is totally capable of doing that! Even if these comics are kinda whatever narratively, Nocenti comes up with dense enough narratives to give him shit to do. She’s a good writer within the context of the harsh strictures of early nineties mainstream comics. Which I know seems like a harsh diss! But being a writer that makes work that consistently gives a comics artist something interesting to do is a difficult job that many people are just not interested in doing for various reasons, so it should be recognized when it’s attempted and accomplished.

It’s also interesting that the whole visual approach where both Steve Lightle and Barry Windsor-Smith shine is dependent on flat color. The changes in storytelling made to accommodate the shifts in visual language in full-color mainstream comics didn’t really benefit anyone, and now needs to be outsmarted. In The Seeds, we’ve got this pretty dull reading experience that superficially in its two-color print job and nine-panel grid, looks like it might be influenced by Mazzucchelli’s work in Rubber Blanket and City Of Glass. And we’ve got a black and white Barry Windsor-Smith comic coming out from Fantagraphics in a few weeks that I really hope blows it out of the water.

Wrote a little backstory thing for Nalla, my aasimar paladin in @kloud‘s D&D campaign. Story below the cut, so I don’t take up your whole feed

Nalla had gotten up earlier than usual to make sure he was prepped.

First, she’d snuck into the kitchen and packed him a week’s worth of field rations, sturdy food that would keep for a while and not fall apart in his bag. Smart as Aukan was, he sometimes neglected the important little things, like whether he had enough food and water. The last time she’d left this to him, he’d packed some muffins and they’d gotten smooshed up in his saddlebags, and he’d only had enough for a day or two anyways.

Her next stop was the stables, where she checked over Quincy, his horse. He was clean, freshly brushed, and well-rested, his shoes in good shape for a long journey. Exactly as she’d expected. Not that she didn’t trust the folks working the stable, but it never hurt to check. Nalla saddled him, made sure everything was secure, and left him ready for his master.

She stood there a moment, going over a mental checklist, then marched back to the house and filled a small wineskin with water. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she thought of a happy memory, brought the mouth of the skin up to her lips, and gently blew into it. The scent of strawberry wine bloomed in her nose, pleasant and evoking warm summer days. Nalla took a sip, just to be sure, then nodded, grinned, and popped the stopper in. Perfect.

Back in the stables, she put it down in the bottom of Aukan’s bag: a nice surprise for later, when home was far away.

Almost as an afterthought, she added a small medical kit: bandages, surgical spirits, needle and thread, some dried herbs to help with pain. Basics, just in case.

“Seems I’ve caught you doing my job again,” Aukan said.  “You’re going to have to let me learn the hard way, one of these days.” His voice was a pleasant baritone, touched with amusement, their mother’s accent laying lighter than it did on her own voice.

Nalla looked up to find him in the doorway, leaning against the frame and giving her a sharp-toothed grin, his facial markings and molten gold eyes sparkling in the lamplight, seemingly relaxed. Aukan was tall, even by Evenwood standards, and as near to slender as their family got, dressed in sensible riding clothes; dark shirt and trousers, blue cloak pinned with a small golden broach shaped like a beetle. He wore a short, neat, white beard and had his white hair pulled back in a short tail between the upturned points of his golden horns. He held a pair of riding gloves in soft, long-fingered hands, golden talons manicured and gleaming. Only his tail, held low and wrapped close to his body, betrayed his anxiety.

She grinned back and futzed with Quincy’s mane. “You start taking care of yourself, I might do that.” Her own voice was a pleasant alto, their mother’s accent slightly thicker on her tongue. “But until then, I’ve got your back.”

It was an old routine. They took care of each other. Always had, always would.

Nalla came around the horse, towards Aukan. Now that she was paying attention, she could feel that perfect, gentle chord thrumming in her soul. She gestured to the bags piled around his feet, her golden nails and the markings on her rough, calloused palms glittering. “You want a hand with that lot?”

He looked down, as if he’d forgotten the bags were there. “Oh! Yes. Please.” He hefted a pair of them and handed them over.

She took them as if they weighed nothing and carried them over to set on the horse, redistributing the contents for a more balanced load. It was all books and writing supplies, not really a surprise. If Aukan was around, you could bet there would be books and things to take notes on. They finished loading up Quincy in comfortable silence.

“Is that everything?” Nalla peered past her brother’s shoulder at the empty doorway, half-expecting to see a lonely, forgotten bag. Probably with his clothes in it. There was nothing there.

Aukan pulled a small journal from a pocket and opened it, mouthing words as he marked things off with his fountain pen. After a few moments, he closed it and nodded, satisfied. “Yeah, that should do it.” The journal and pen disappeared back to where they came from.

She handed him the reins. He flopped them over Quincy’s neck and moved around the massive horse. “Can I get a hug before I go?”

“Of course, little brother!.” Nalla grinned and swept him up in one of her patented bear hugs, taking the poor man off his feet and crushing him to her breast.

He hugged her back, rolling his eyes (she was older by all of two minutes), and then started trying to wriggle free. “Can’t… breathe…”

Nalla set him down, mussing his hair and grinning, golden eyes bright.

Aukan wheezed comically for a moment, then stood straight, took out a small mirror, and set about smoothing his hair. He pouted. “I do wish you hadn’t done that. You know how long it takes me to get my hair just so.”

Eventually, he put the mirror away and gave his sister another hug. She returned it, much more gently this time.

“Are you ready, Auk?”

He pulled back, sighed, wiped his eyes and blew his nose on a kerchief, then took Quincy’s reins again. “No, not really. But if I don’t go now, I don’t know if I ever will.”

She opened the door and held it for him while he walked the horse out, shut the stable doors behind him, and they headed for the front gate, where a small crowd was waiting. Aukan’s somewhat impatient valet on his own horse, Nalla’s young squire, Kara, standing at ease with Morana and Lucian, Nalla’s other retainers. She made her way over to join them.

The rest of the family in a disorganized crowd to either side of the gate. They were a stark contrast to Aukan and Nalla, with their dark hair, brown eyes, and tan skin, but they were family. Their parents stood together, their father dabbing at his eyes with a kerchief, their mother standing on her good leg, strong and stoic, but hugging him gently to her side with one large hand.

Nalla stood with her staff while the family said their goodbyes, giving them space. She felt a gentle hand on her arm and looked down to find Morana giving her a questioning look. She gave her a weak smile. “I’m okay, ‘Ana, but thank you”

The dwarf nodded and looked back to the crowd, but left her hand on Nalla’s forearm, a comforting pressure.

Eventually, the crowd of family dispersed a bit and Aukan mounted up next to his valet. Nalla moved up to join the family, making her way to her twin. “Hey.”

He looked at her. “Hey.”

“Take care of yourself, okay? Don’t forget to write. Let me know if you’re in trouble.”

He smiled down at her. “I love you too, ‘La. I’ll be alright.” His smile turned to a grin, and he gestured to his valet. “I’ve got Himo here watching my back.”

The half-elf valet frowned slightly but said nothing.

Aukan said his final goodbyes and rode out the gate, off through the town, on the way to gods only knew where.

Nalla stood at the gate, watching as he dwindled into the distance, that perfect chord fading until only silence remained, leaving a space like an abandoned theater in her soul.

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CONTRACTORS

In big companies software is often designed, implemented, and sold by three separate types of people. Tcl is the scripting language of Unix, and so its size is proportionate to its complexity, and a funnel for peers. By this point everyone knows you should release fast and iterate. Programming languages are for. They don't even know about the stuff they've invested in. But I think there's more going on than this. If you run out of money, you could say either was the cause. Nearly all programmers would rather spend their time writing code and have someone else handle the messy business of extracting money from it. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. In one place I worked, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers.1 Every designer's ears perk up at the office writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News. There are borderline cases is-5 two elements or one?

I decided to ask the founders of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, will destroy you if you choose them. It's due to the shape of the problem here is social. In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. Only in the preceding couple years had the dramatic fall in the cost of customer acquisition. The organic growth guys, sitting in their garage, feel poor and unloved. So the first question to ask about a field is how honest its tests are, because this startup seems the most successful companies. A good deal of that spirit is, fortunately, preserved in macros. The second way to compete with focus is to see what you're making.

But more important, in a hits-driven business, is that source code will look unthreatening. In DC the message seems to be the new way of delivering applications. White. I'm going to risk making one. But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that from the rush of work that's always involved in releasing anything, no matter how much skill and determination you have, the more you stay pointed in the same business. PR coup was a two-part one. It's conversational resourcefulness. We're more confident. That certainly accords with what I see out in the world.2 Treating indentation as significant would eliminate this common source of bugs as well as making programs shorter. Once you take several million dollars of my money, the investors get a great deal of control.

The dream language is beautiful, clean, and terse. It works.3 It could mean an operating system, or a framework built on top of a programming language as the throwaway programs people wrote in it grew larger. I'm not saying it's correct, incidentally, but it seems like a decent hypothesis. The most important kinds of learning happen one project at a time. Instead of starting from companies and working back to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was the scripting language of a popular system.4 Blogger got down to one person, and they have a board majority, they're literally your bosses.5 Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to fix upon a specific number.6 But as long as you seem to be advancing rapidly, most investors will leave you alone.7 What readability-per-line does mean, to the user encountering the language for others even to hear about it. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old.8 If it's a subset, you'll have to write it anyway, so in the worst case you won't be wasting your time, but didn't.9

It's exacerbated by the fast pace of startups, which makes it seem like time slows down: I think you've left out just how fun it was: I think the main reason we take the trouble to develop high-level languages is to get leverage, so that we can say and more importantly, think in 10 lines of a high-level language what would require 1000 lines of machine language. Well, that may be fine advice for a bunch of declarations. Trying to make masterpieces in this medium must have seemed to Durer's contemporaries that way that, say, making masterpieces in comics might seem to the average person today. I kept searching for the Cambridge of New York, I was very excited at first. Which was dictated largely by the hardware available in the late 1950s. This comforting illusion may have prevented us from seeing the real problem with Lisp, or at least Common Lisp, some delimiters are reserved for the language, suggesting that at least some of the least excited about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as shoes have to be prepared to see the better idea when it arrives. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and sitting in a cafe feels different from working. The Detroit News.10

Most founders of failed startups don't quit their day job, is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number who do make it. But the clearest message is that you should be smarter. But hear all the cutting-edge tech and startup news, and run into useful people constantly.11 You won't get to, unless you fail. Running a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun, and a funnel for peers. It's since grown to around 22,000.12 You may save him from referring to variables in another package, but you need time to get any message through to people that it didn't have to be more readable than a line of Lisp. A rant with a rallying cry as the title takes zero, because people vote it up without even reading it. I'm just stupid, or have worked on some limited subset of applications. This is supposed to be a lot simpler. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, even if it is harder to get from zero to twenty than from twenty to a thousand.13

With two such random linkages in the path between startups and money, it shouldn't be surprising that luck is a big factor in deals. Most of the groups that apply to Y Combinator suffer from a common problem: choosing a small, obscure niche in the hope of unloading them before they tank. A programming language does need a good implementation, of course. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life. With a startup, I had bought the hype of the startup world, startup founders get no respect. A real hacker's language will always have a slightly raffish character.14 The eminent feel like everyone wants to take a long detour to get where you wanted to go. But there is a trick you could use the two ideas interchangeably. Their reporters do go out and get users, though. A throwaway program is brevity. I do that the main purpose of a language is readability, not succinctness.15 You can't build things users like without understanding them.

At the moment I'd almost say that a language isn't judged on its own and b something that can be considered a complete application and ship it. They're so desperate for content that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you preferred, write code that was isomorphic to Pascal. When I moved to New York, I was very excited at first. To avoid wasting his time, he waits till the third or fourth time he's asked to do something; by then, whoever's asking him may be fairly annoyed, but at the same time the veteran's skepticism. There are several local maxima.16 Defense contractors? When, if ever, is a watered-down Lisp with infix syntax and no macros. Hackers share the surgeon's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in popping zits.

Notes

What happens in practice signalling hasn't been much of a long time in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s. Even Samuel Johnson seems to be a good idea to make money.

A related problem that they decided to skip raising an A round VCs put two partners on your own mind. That should probably question anything you believed as a cause as it might take an angel investment from a company's culture.

If you don't think they'll be able to formalize a small company that could be made. There was no more unlikely than it was putting local grocery stores out of business you should be.

If Congress passes the founder visa in a time machine, how can anything regressive be good employees either.

If big companies to acquire the startups, the light bulb, the initial investors' point of a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, but I think what they campaign for. When governments decide how to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, if we think your idea is that parties shouldn't be that the Internet was as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work to have this second self keep a journal. While the audience already has to be more at home at the start, e.

Some will say that it also worked for spam. The closest we got to the Internet worm of its identity. Icio.

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables; experiment 3n cloves garlic n 12-oz cans white, kidney, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris says that a startup in the US, it would do it is genuine. Com in order to attract workers.

But the early adopters you evolve the idea that could start this way, except in the back of your last round of funding rounds are at some of these limits could be ignored. Comments at the mafia end of the latter without also slowing the former, and also really good at generating your own time in the computer world, write a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the attempt to discover the most promising opportunities, it is very vulnerable to gaming, because there's no center to walk to.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the first year or two make the kind that has become part of a large chunk of time, default to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in one where life was tougher, the television, the more subtle ways in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. For these companies unless your last funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods.

Mozilla is open-source browser. They may not be led by a big factor in high school kids arrive at college with a truly feudal economy, at least should make what they claim was the recipe: someone guessed that there are before the name implies, you don't, but that we didn't do. They overshot the available RAM somewhat, causing much inconvenient disk swapping, but they hate hypertension. Living on instant ramen, which are a hundred years ago.

I don't think you should probably question anything you believed as a rule, if you're measuring usage you need, you don't have one. Don't be fooled. So managers are constrained too; instead of admitting frankly that it's a seller's market. This is one subtle danger you have a group of people who are both genuinely formidable, and would probably also encourage companies to say how justified this worry is.

One of the biggest winners, which is where product companies go to grad school, because you can work out. It's conceivable that a their applicants come from meditating in an equity round.

So where do we draw the line?

In 1995, but he got there by another path. If you treat your classes as a company if the potential magnitude of the 2003 season was 2. An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. Confucius claimed proudly that he had more fun in this essay, I can imagine what it would have started there.

I'm satisfied if I could pick them, and they succeeded. Consulting is where your existing investors help you even working on Viaweb. If they were taken back in July 1997 was 1. But the change is a scarce resource.

The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter launched last Thursday and we would have loved it to fund in 24 hours, but it was actually closer to 25. Possibly every backer was pranking us, but in the end it’s cool- we did fund, we’re gonna get this newest Chronicles of Darkness game into retail stores, and we’re moving into building additional books with the Stretch Goals!

So basically, the Deviant KS is doing great! Come join us!

Links for the Deviant: The Renegades and the Creature Collection for Scarred Lands 5e Kickstarters are below in the Blurbs! section.

We have had some folks, who I’m guessing have not backed any of our last few KSs, write to tell us that they’re taken aback by the listed international shipping costs. Yep, we are as miffed at those costs as you, and as I posted here a month or so back, we have chosen to go ahead and still ship internationally and post the costs, rather than stop shipping internationally as quite a few of our fellow TTRPG publishing have chosen for their KSs.

I figure it’s better to let prospective international backers know the cost upfront so they can make the informed choice that makes the most sense to them.

Usually when I explain this, I also let folks know that behind the scenes we have tried and are continuing to explore alternative shipping options. With Deviant‘s KS, we are still using our previous methodology, but with the concurrently running Creature Collection for Scarred Lands 5e Kickstarter (also doing nicely, thank you!) you can see one of the options we’re exploring.

In CC’s case, we’re working with Handiworks Games not just on the art and writing and design and Kickstarter for the book, but also with printers and fulfillment based in the EU. We’ll have a bunch of books sent over to the US for those backers, and then we hope that costs to ship from the EU for our international backers will be more reasonable.

Like I say, it’s an experiment that we think will work in a good way, but that’s never a guarantee in the rapidly shifting cost-structures of international shipping. And we’ll have to see if it is repeatable for other projects, too.

VtR2 Spilled Blood art by Michele Giorgi

But enough about Kickstarter, let’s talk about me.

Well, pretty much about how I spent my weekend, but it will circle back around to general topics about our hobby.

Have you ever had one of those time-frames where it seems that everybody you haven’t been able to get together with all want to hang out at essentially the same time? Well, that’s what happened to me, and for a twenty-four hour period I had three get-togethers (one was virtual) with old gaming buddies.

The first was an invitation from two high-school friends for dinner on Friday night which of course turned into talking about how my one buddy Johnny, aka Shithead the Dwarf, and I first met during our first D&D games as sophomores in HS. That’s the gaming club where when we started, we had the first four little D&D booklets and were waiting for the fifth booklet, Blackmoor, to be released.

It just so happened that my English class (that’s what we called Language Arts then, kids) had assigned me a journal to write, and in it I chronicled those first D&D adventures, so even now through the mists of time I can read all about how we’d stir through piles of mud with 10′ poles, and get attacked by 11 Stirges, and lose our Cleric to being swallowed by a Giant Frog.

The first few months we played with our very first DM, Robert, but then he had to get ready to graduate, and both Johnny and I stepped up as DMs. Johnny continued to run and play games until he graduated, and I did same but returned to our HS to run games for a couple of years since my art college wasn’t that far away.

When Johnny came home for break, and later when he was on leave from the Navy, there was always a seat at our gaming table for him, and some of his “temp” characters lived on as famous NPCs. Which was easier because my setting, my D&D “world”, has been the same since I first stepped up to DM as a sophomore.

(I share all this about my friend both for context and because I’ve known this guy for over 40 freaking years and that amount of time boggles my mind.)

And we weren’t the only players who ran games too, most of our players did both – which makes me wonder what we could have done with Community Content sites for all of our many worlds? Getting into Dragon Magazine was some folk’s goals, but if we could have published our stuff? Wow!

Of course, we probably would have needed the internet to make it happen, and we were just getting desk-top computers at that time!

BTW I just listened to the recording of our “What’s Up With Onyx Path Community Content?” panel from Gen Con on the Onyx Pathcast from last Friday, so Community Content might be on my mind. It’s a good panel if you’re interested in exploring publishing your own material for our games, so check it out on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue.

Dark Eras 2 art by Alex Sheikman

Then, Saturday all day was board games with the old gaming crew from both HS and the college years: Elmer the Troll, Thock the four-armed well, Thock, D’Gr’Gr the Duergar, and Ish, the gender-neutral Deep Gnome jester.

Obviously, those are their character names (from one campaign I ran), but in real life they are old friends and we’ve tried to get together once a quarter to play games, or go to the movies, or whatever, and this was one of those occasions.

We played Terraforming Mars and Blackbeard, and had a fun time learning the former while grinding our teeth trying to figure out what the hell the rules were so desperately trying to say with Blackbeard. Granted, it was an old Avalon Hill game, but seriously, these things were contradictory in the same paragraph.

This is one of the reasons I take the errata phase of our Onyx Path games seriously – can the audience understand and implement your text in the way you intended when publishing it? It’s sometimes hard to tell until you get it in front of that audience, so that phase for us gives us that feedback.

Then Saturday night, after our guests left, I raced upstairs to join our ongoing D&D 5e game on Roll20. It had been quite a while since we could get our schedules to line up (and of course it had to be this self-same day), and we were shifting from Justin running it to Oscar. So big change, although they had decided to keep our current characters and storyline with Oscar stepping in to add to our ongoing saga, and Justin could join in as a player.

So I had to play if I could swing it timing-wise. Turns out I could, and did, and a good time was had by all. What’s really interesting is the contrast as I look at the playing experience Johnny and I were reminiscing about, and the one I had on Saturday night.

Still playing D&D (from 1e to 5e!), but there’s our group doing collaborative world building as DMs. Not done by me and my HS friends in those early days; everybody was more about presenting THEIR world, that melange of influences and tropes that they wanted everyone to play in. The chance to tell the stories they wanted to tell. In a way, it was very personal, and it was how we all expected was just how it was done.

I do think part of opening up how and why we create and run our settings is the ensuing decades of game design that have experimented with more innovative ways to play. Not all the avenues that have been explored have worked long-term, but the accumulation of trying different things has enriched our hobby overall.

And, of course, there’s the huge difference that we played on Roll20. We had players on the West Coast US and on the East Coast, and we’ve had players coming in from London, places in Canada, the EU, and Micronesia previously. Being able to pull your group together from all over the world is such a boon when I remember worrying if all of our group would make it just from all over Philadelphia for our weekly session.

What I’m saying with these comparisons, is it’s a great time to be a table-top RPGamer!

DR:E Jumpstart art by Sam Denmark

Final thing about me – I’m going to do Inktober again this year. That’s the challenge to do one drawing in ink every day for the entire month. Any kind of ink. Last year I depicted characters that were all from the MithraukoQuest storyline of my old game world. This time around I’ll be doing characters and creatures that are part of the world, and from different gaming groups’ adventures, that weren’t part of the years the players fought against Count Mithrauko – so look out for my drawrings on social media.

All this, all these years of playing, and the years of reading genre fiction and comic books, the years of TV and movies, of studying fine art and graphics, all go together so I can decide what games we’re publishing, and what seems like it’ll play well at the table, be characterful and immersive, will look really cool, and have visual hooks like page layout and symbols – all of it comes to together and powers up my ability to make sure you have:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Our Creature Collection Kickstarter for Scarred Lands 5e is skittering on creepy-crawly legs towards the next Stretch Goal to add more monsters – that the backers vote on – to the book! The first group of creatures to be added by backer voting are:

Flay Beast

Fleshcrawler

Gray Lancer

Hellfire Bloodshark

Iron Tusker

Love-Scorned Soul

Mist Murderer

Night Tyrant

This book was designed with amazing art by our friends at Handiwork Games, and they’re running the Kickstarter for us on our brand-new Onyx Path Kickstarter page! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/scarred-lands-creature-collection-for-5th-edition-rpg

And, we’re running this Kickstarter, too!

The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter launched last Thursday and we funded in just a tad over 24 hours and are vengefully slamming through Stretch Goals now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deviant-the-renegades-a-tabletop-roleplaying-game

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features an interview with Red Moon Rising, one of our favorite actual play groups! Go to https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/ or to your favorite podcast venue!

This week should be the last one where the Onyx Path News goes directly onto YouTube, as soon, Matthew will be streaming directly to Twitch! In this week’s news, Matthew discusses Deviant: The Renegades, Scarred Lands, Vengeance of the Shunned, freelance writer tips, and more! Check out this week’s news here: https://youtu.be/Zf-YB2drW54

Speaking of Twitch, please follow our channel if you haven’t already done so! Our schedule is filled with games including Vampire, Scarred Lands, TC: Aberrant, Pugmire, Scion, Mage: The Awakening, and Hunter: The Vigil, as well as videos on Storytelling advice! Visit www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath and give us a follow, and if you have an Amazon Prime membership and haven’t already subscribed to a Twitch channel for free using it, just type Amazon Prime Twitch into Google and please use it on our channel! The first season of our Scion story is coming to a close this weekend, so thank you to David for running it, and please check out any parts you missed on our YouTube channel

Look forward to October, because we’re going for a special Character Creation Month, where every Saturday we create characters for different games, including Scarred Lands, Deviant, Scion, and more! Remember to find us on Twitch!

Remember, if you miss any content on our Twitch channel, some of it finds its way to our YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/user/theonyxpath Don’t forget though, that some of that content is Twitch exclusive or belongs to the Storytellers running their games, so don’t miss out and remember to follow us!

The ENnie award winning Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of The Sacrifice, from V5 Chicago by Night, with Klara Herbol as the Storyteller and Matthew Dawkins as a player! Please check them out on www.redmoonroleplaying.com

This week, the Story Told Podcast have created a Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition primer: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-36-geist-the-sin-eaters-2nd-edition-primer

And here’s the newest Occultists Anonymous content right here, for you Mage: The Awakening fans: Episode 45: Get Out Within the lair of the Seers, the cabal strikes while they still have an advantage. Mage-on-Mage combat! The most harrowing experience the cabal has had yet, threatening mind and body. https://youtu.be/kvTU3Wp8KEs

Episode 46: A Deal Is Struck The cabal recovers from battle and deals with the decision Wyrd made without consulting Songbird or Atratus. Emotions are ragged but there is still Mysteries residing in Lynnewood Hall.https://youtu.be/o5HR_Oj3cjk

If you’ve not been keeping up with our TC: Aberrant actual play, please do give it a look here on our YouTube channel! Collateral Damage is a superb way to introduce yourself to the Trinity Universe through an Aberrant lens: https://youtu.be/WFBBZrUZVkE

And here’s Paws & Claws, our Pugmire actual play! Lots of content for you to watch and interact with: https://youtu.be/ga7wb3ESdEA

It’s been a while since we last promoted them, but Devil’s Luck Gaming are embarking on Season 3 of their Scarred Lands pirates campaign. As one of the best actual play shows around, do yourself a favour and start watching from Season 3. You will not regret it: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re releasing the EX3 Dragon-Blooded Screen PDF and two more of our monthly Adversaries of the Righteous!

Conventions!

Save Against Fear: October 12th – 14th GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Redlines

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Manuscript Approval

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

W20 Art Book (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Indexing

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution core (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e – Sam on the fulls.

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted. More sketches coming in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – LeBlanc on this.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Trinity RMCs – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Contracted.

Chicago Folio – Sending contracts and art notes out.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Characters being worked on, fulls next.

Memento Mori – Contracted.

City of the Towered Tombs – Contracted.

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

Dark Eras 2 – Files with Aileen

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – In progress.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

W20 Art Book

DRE Screen

Geist 2e Screen

Proofing

C20 Cup of Dreams

M20 Book of the Fallen – PDF back to Phil for review.

DR:E Jumpstart – Sent to Eschaton for approval.

At Press

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

Trinity Aeon – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

V5: Chicago – Files sent to printer.

Aeon Aexpansion – Backer PDFs out, errata.

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel – Backer PDF out to backers, errata gathering.

Signs of Sorcery – PoD proofs ordered.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

And so we now are in Autumn! Falling into fall! Let’s celebrate the season that starts today where things get really colorful and then die! (OK, nature is just sleeping…really.) And Saturday was, I hear, Batman Day, which works well, especially if you recall the first drive in the Batmobile to the Batcave in Tim Burton’s Batman with the low angle shot up the road with swirling dead autumn leaves in the car’s wake. Lovely, just like the season.

Okay, I’m trying to find the motivation to write and maybe I’ll get it if I complain about my maladaptive daydreaming for a spell. I started writing this in my journal and realized that it’s something worth sharing with other MaDDers. I’m gonna apologize right now because this is digging deep and I might come off as snappy or angry. That’s because I am angry. I promise that I’m, like, okay. I just know that I would have killed to see other people dealing with the same shit that I did when I was younger. 

Uhhhhhhh quick trigger warnings because upon reading this over I should probably add these. I got kind of dramatic because I apparently don’t know how to tell personal stories without theatrics and tangents.

Unhealthy coping mechanisms

Direct suicide mention

Direct self harm mention

Have my truths about MaDD.

I use my daydreams to write. I think I post mostly about my positive experiences with it, I don’t know, I don’t remember ever talking actual shit about it so here we go time to drop the real anger and frustration because I’m just realizing why this particular thing makes me so mad.

I think I’ve been giving it a positive spin but that’s. Not the truth. There are so many things that I could bitch about when it comes to maladaptive daydreams to dash out those responses of “oh yeah I also have a great imagination i love daydreaming /stars in eyes/ i got distracted one (1) time during class daydreaming about summer for half an hour” to every ‘relatable’ MaDD post that makes me want to scream.

I love my characters, I love the stories I get to write, I love the exhilaration that comes out of winning a ‘campaign’ (if I can ignore the more negative side effects), I love Connor, and all (most) of the different versions of me. I still love all of those things. It’s like loving cheese and ice cream when you’re lactose intolerant, except you can actually choose to not eat ice cream goddamn it.

I could talk about how daydreaming sometimes leaves me looking up and realizing I’ve been sitting stock still and staring at the same line of a fanfiction for six hours while my roommate tries and fails to converse with me.

How when I’m alone and I start daydream I pace, compulsively clean until I panic because I can’t get anything good enough, type or write until my fingers ache.

How realizing that I’m not the person (people?) I am in my daydreams cuts me because they can do anything, but also makes me sag in relief because they are not the kind of person I would ever inflict on the people I care about in real life.

How I spent half of senior year hiding tears because I was juggling 3+ emotionally draining longterm daydreams in between school and extracurriculars.

How until I started wearing my necklace of keys and a ring, I would look up from the worst of the dreams with sores up and down my forearm because I would scratch it to bleeding without realizing it.

How in sophomore year of high school I swallowed a bottle and a half of antidepressants because my best friend wasn’t real and had abandoned me the previous year.

How I can’t be in the dark by myself, how the idea of being underground closes my throat with panic, how I wish for physical affection but I can’t handle being touched without warning anymore, how I see characters that remind of Count Olaf and my limbic system tells me I’m not safe, how the sound of those dumb horns every Homestuck cosplayer practically nuts over makes me feel physically ill. All because of the bullshit in my daydreams.

But that’s not what I’m furious about today so I’ll save those particular stories for another day.

So. I always end up having daydreams in the universes of media I get obsessed with. There are some things I randomly don’t daydream with but sometimes I like. Look at a thing I read when I was younger and I remember how great a read it was and I’m like “hey I should read that again it was hecking good”

But I know I can’t touch that series with a ten foot pole because if I so much as read a summary suddenly I’ll have another universe I’m invested in.

I’m talking expressly about Gregor the Overlander, but that’s just the surface of the problem.

I inhaled that entire series in 5th grade and that was when I had time to read every second of the goddamn day and didn’t really daydream all that much because like?? I had books why would I need universes in my head.

That changed when I started getting yelled for reading in class once I hit middle school but that’s a whole other thing.

But yeah, I read GtO in 5th grade and loved the shit out of it because it’s a fantastic series. I want more than anything to revisit it, to read it and write dumb fanfiction involving bats and flying and awesome things, but I know that would be a huge mistake.

Gregor the Overlander joins Percy Jackson, Maybird, and so many other series I read when I was a kid that I cannot read. Last time I read Harry Potter, I had a daydream that wrecked me for a while. I started reading Series of Unfortunate Events again and I had to lock the door to that daydream because when I go into that universe I can’t function as a human being because it’s the only daydream that matches (and maybe exceeds) the emotional strain that my Escape From Furnace daydreamshave put me through. I rewatched Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and around episode 10 I started daydreaming in that universe too.

I never know anymore what series will get me. Belgariad didn’t do it, and that’s my favorite book series on the planet. I know that neither Warrior Cats or Guardians of Ga’Hool would do it by some weird fucking instinct. Steven Universe didn’t do it, and that series is the exact kind of universe I would have a field day in. Same with Pokemon (except for the CONCEPT of the third movie, I guess).

Gravity Falls nearly made my depression rocket to worse lows than it had been in MONTHS because of the daydream it triggered. Seven Deadly Sins threw me into one, though to a lesser extent. Trollhunters, Be More Chill, Hunger Games, Homestuck, JTHM, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, so many things, even things I didn’t expect to trip me up.

And that’s not even getting into the massive trigger that is music because I haven’t found a song that doesn’t bring me into a daydream scene in a long time.

It’s like walking on fucking eggshells.

It’s one of the things that makes me really hate my maladaptive daydreaming.

Like, I’m already fucked because when it pulls me in it turns me into a shitty friend, it gets in the way of school, writing, work, and hurts me because so much of what I care about isn’t real. It tricks me into hating myself for being hurt emotionally by the things that happen in the daydreams because obviously it’s not real how could it possibly affect my real life like this.

But I’d accepted all of that as collateral. It doesn’t matter as long as I have something to write about. I track my depression with how much I write so as long as I’m writing I must be fine. I can mitigate the damage and bend my daydreams to work for me when I really need them to. Coping mechanisms and tricking myself into daydreaming that I’m looking into a new target for the Scouts rather than researching for a paper etc. etc.

But I hate this because now I can’t even like things.

Whenever I want to read/watch something new I have to look at it really hard. I have to think, “Is this good enough that I’ll enjoy it, but not so good it’ll throw me into weeks of daydreaming, scratched forearms, blank stares, guilt, dropped grades, hurt feelings, and general exhaustion?”

I’m normally safe with certain genres. Tame rom coms. Most crime novels. Superhero movies/comics.

But then I read something I should be fine with and suddenly I have a daydream in the Fifty Shades universe so I have an excuse to slap Christian Grey in the face and go to benefit functions in an established universe with Connor. I play a game that I don’t know anything about and suddenly I’m daydreaming in the Two Souls Universe because the idea of Connor being a rift ghost tickles my brain in all the right ways I guess. I reread Homestuck because cringe culture is dead and I find a stack of SBURB discs in the Cube and I’m struggling to keep the daydream from moving further than that because I can’t, not when I already messed up winter term so much with my daydreaming. Not when I know that SBURB would mean creating more than one new universe to keep the Cube from being destroyed. Not when I know that SBURB would mean everyone involved would likely die at least once.

But at this point I know I’m just delaying the inevitable. I can distract myself with fanfiction and Grey’s Anatomy for a bit, but it won’t last forever. Everything feels like screaming in my entire body and when I know that the only way to make the screaming quieter is to find something else to write, something else to make my eyes glaze over for six hours while my roommate tries and fails to talk to me, I know I won’t hold out for long.

I love my daydreams.

But maladaptive daydreaming is about the farthest thing from being fun as I can think of. If the prospect of losing 90% of the people I care about didn’t scare the shit out of me, I would take any chance to get rid of them that was offered to me. To be a normal fucking person. As it is, all I can do is keep it from getting worse.

So I don’t read Gregor the Overlander. And I stay angry. And the screaming gets louder. And I don’t write for several weeks, praying the motivation to write will come back to me again.

July 28, 2020

it’s been over two years since my last entry. so much has changed. to update March 8 2018 me:

you give up on job searching atm until 4/24/18. that’s when you start reaching out to all the promotion companies from kucr. planetary was the other promotion company you remembered besides terrorbird. cirstina was super nice and chill and said they just wrapped internships for the summer but to inquire again for the fall. 

you wait those months while still working at mcdonalds. you get good at it and things are second nature to you. you still have moments where you storm out, but you get better at controlling your temper. 

you check back in august and cristina says there are positions open in the fall. it was pretty easy as they accepted you right away. you do this bat shit crazy thing where you try to balance the two. planetary internship Tuesday Thursday Friday and McDonald’s the rest of the days. you even do opening shift during the weekends (4am-12pm).

you’re mostly quiet during your internship. you participate in riyl’s. you mainly talk to cristina while mailing. you don’t open up much until hayoung joins in november i think. mcdonalds is the same as usual, but your sleep schedule’s FUKED UP.

you hear in december that maria (who worked in publicity) is quitting. cristina encourages you to apply. you talk with adam and the interview tbh goes horribly. not like you didn’t have anything to say, but everything you said was wrong LOL. you also talk to george and ben and they lay out what press does but you dont catch any of that.

christmas office party happens and you drink a lot. you open up a lot to EVERYONE, iNCLUDING BEN about your love life (embarrassing) you’re obviously too drunk to drive home, but you stay over the night with nik and alison (goth bless their souls)

you check in with adam on the position occasionally until feb. 2019 when he breaks the bad news. the position’s filled. like how can you be surprised? but you’re still upset. you’re able to turn this as a positive to use your experiences to boost your resume.

you continue to work at mcdonalds and interview at places until you get a random email from adam exactly one year after you first emailed cristina about the internship. adam offers you the job. ofc you accept. you quit mcdonalds and start with planetary on may 1.

learning publicity is one hell of a learning curve. heck, you’re still learning how to do shit even now. but you’re thrown on the deep end with Luna. not your fault. not totally kristen’s fault. but that was a crazy client. 

anyways, your sleep schedule’s still fucked up because of your commute. but at least you have free weekends now! 

some highlights of 2019: you finally get a macbook! but you have a galaxy s9 as a phone lmfao. placements in The Line of Best Fit and Paste! you get absolutely entranced with warehouse raves. you literally go to at least once a month. falling in love with queen of jeans and linking up with their publicist Jamie Coletta (she’s super cool and the best at the game), going on two (2) dates with a really nice girl named sara. you got in your head and probably fucked that up. but it really wasn’t the time. christmas party 2019. same shenanigans but this time you don’t drink as much. you really look for places to move out to with ryan and he finds a house that angeli and linda live. two people are moving out and the rooms go for $500 and $600. you get the $500 room and are set to move in on Feb 16 2020. news of a disease called coronavirus is first detected in china. this will be important later.

oh 2020. what a shite year. if i told myself the things i’ll write down below i would not believe it. but here it is. everything that has happened so far in 2020:

first cases of coronavirus appear in washington on january. you’re not too concerned about it. 

you’re working this country artist aminah hughes and land a placement in american songwriter for January 31 (1st time!). there are some issues and they post it one day later, but you weren’t as attentive as you should’ve been over the weekend.

adam talks to you about it the following monday (2/3) in a really calm matter but you beat yourself up over it. so much so that on your way home, you totally don’t notice a pedestrian crossing galloping hills and eucalyptus and run them over. everything feels like a blur, but you’re able to talk to the police, karen, and kimberly (state farm) about it. you take tuesday-thursday off.

you move in (night before you saw bored lord and octo octa until 3am wtf). you don’t have a car (for obvious reasons), but you’re able to commute to work via bus/subway (which you would’ve done anyway cause you love public transportation lol)

you’re able to return to normal life mostly until middle march. cases of the newly named COVID-19 have spread throughout the united states and you hear of workspaces transitioning over to work from home operations. planetary soon follows suit. our last day in the office is march 13.

literally the week after you start wfh animal crossing new horizons comes out. that keeps you busy for like two, three months tops. it’s also a nice way to keep in touch with friends. 

your first therapy session happens on march 31. you’re able to talk about the accident, but it’s quickly directed to self-esteem. it’s an ongoing process, but you’re slowly advancing. it’s not linear, but it’s better than doing nothing.

Bandcamp establishes “Bandcamp Day”, 24 hour periods in which the site’s share of profits go directly to artists/labels. Started in April, will continue through the end of 2020. All the money I would normally spend on concerts goes here now. That and I fall to the hands of food delivery apps (door dash wins)

your campaign with Atta Boy gets going. first track premieres at Atwood Magazine (2nd time! [1st time was with sophia st. helen, another awesome client]). band’s super happy about it (even mr. josh brolin himself gave a shout out [bias ofc]). by the end of may you land their second single on THE MOTHERFUCKING FADER (1ST TIME OBVIOUSLY). 

everything else is going surprisingly well for the most part (except for elp, but i don’t wanna talk about those fucking idiots) despite the ever-changing landscape of music journalism. huge blogs are letting people go while smaller sites are remaining mostly the same. 

On May 25, George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police which sparks the biggest wave of activity in the Black Lives Matter movement since Michael Brown’s death in 2014. organizing/activism is still going on to this day (7/28). 

For me personally, I’m making a conscious effort to highlight Black artists on my Bandcamp days and general sharing of music. I also joined a book club (6/18) and read “Are Prisons Obsolete” in its entirety. We’re currently reading a comic series called Bitch Planet. Deep and meaningful conversations.

the family hears news of Lola’s declining health. June 23rd (Manila time) is the day she passes away. We’re all able to say our last goodbyes via facebook video call. this is the first time i see my dad cry.

funeral takes place on june 27th. we’re able to partake in the ceremony via zoom. the first and only funeral i “attended” online (so far).

I start “fixing” myself physically. I went to physical therapy from 6/8-7/7. the exercises do wonders to my knees (ty dr. bailey!). also saw a dermatologist on 7/10. really quick appt. kinda felt rushed imo, but i was given a special sunscreen that works so far? also recommended otc meds like claritin.

ended campaign with atta boy. really sad to see them go. currently coordinating with their new managers on a possible podcast and press setup. 

and that’s pretty much it! it’s a lot of shit, i know, but it happened all within 2 years. overall i’d say we were pretty successful in finding a big-girl job and MOVING OUT, WHICH I THOUGHT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LMFAO. as for the shit you were hung up on with angelica, you’re so much better now, but you think about the good memories from time to time. sometimes it gets you down, but you’re thankful for the memories (come through fallout boy LMFAO AHAHA FALLOUT AMIRIGHT) and you learned from your mistakes. maybe it will be another two years before i leave another update, might be less, might be more. 

but i’m extremely proud at how far i’ve come.

im proud of you, me.

Cliche AU fic prompt: do you write Codywan??? Because I have a sudden need for some fluffy Codywan fic. I'd love a Celebrity AU or a Cops AU, but really anything, I'm not picky!!

jawejf;aoiejr I ran out of steam on this I’m sorry but anyone’s welcome to pick up? Or you can throw it back into sw’verse and make Obi-Wan Space Anderson Cooper, that would actually be fantastic. 

@aidava and I would be glad to see it 

especially “if you can incorporate the ‘the less anderson cooper is wearing, the more dire the reporting situation’ joke”, as aidava says :D

oh yeah! so basically since ‘sharing a cab au’ landed on that prompt list twice I figured I’d feel free and make another. so I smashed together cops au and celebrity au and got bodyguard au so uh there u go

Cody checked his watch as he popped the cap of the cheap coffee he’d picked up at the bagel shop near his apartment complex. It was quarter to six and raining, a cold, wet, and absolutely miserable start to the day.

Not that it was the start of the day for him—no, that had been at two in the bloody morning, waking up in a cold sweat and shaking with adrenaline, tangled in his sheet on the floor. It wasn’t the worst he’d been in the last couple months, but it did smack a bit of irony that now, when he finally had a job to focus on, the nightmares immediately came rushing back to ruin his first day.

All he had to do was drive some famous person around, possibly keep admirers off them from venue to vehicle to home. Not that he was currently parked and and waiting in an area that screamed ‘famous people’, but hells, what did he know. Rent-controlled apartments, Jewish community—apart from the synagogue he’d driven past, there was no mistaking the dark overcoats and hats. Cody hadn’t exactly been keeping up with the latest news and entertainment, but for the life of him he couldn’t imagine who it was he was meant to be chauffeuring. He knew where Maria Callas used to live—hello, odd bits of a past life’s study at Julliard—and he knew one of his professors’ assistants lived in this area. That didn’t give him any clues to go on.

Although, now he thought about it—Maria Callas hadn’t lived far from here, closer to West Side Highway. He tried to imagine providing security for a musician of her calibre, and couldn’t. It was too far out of the realm of his typical assignments.

He grimaced into his coffee, which got only less tolerable with every sip—he’d seen the new guy manning the coffee machine at the bagel place this morning, so he really should’ve known. At least the liquid had burned away half his tastebuds while it was still scalding.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cody caught a glimpse of something that must have been unusual. He looked up—yeah, the leather jacket and messenger bag were certainly a bit out of the ordinary, for what he’d seen so far. The man looked good, though, Cody thought—especially when he turned and started down the street in his direction. Right at that moment the windshield wipers sluiced off a generous bit of water and gave him a better view. It took two seconds for Cody to put a name to that face, and then connect it to the direction he’d taken. He choked and nearly spilled his cup of morning poison.

He knew exactly what his assignment was.

Obi-Wan Kenobi dropped into his backseat with a huff. “Good morning. I’m sorry, I thought I told Depa I didn’t need a car this morning.”

Cody swallowed. “Well, Ms. Billaba wanted me to let you know that she’d be covering expenses for as long as she thinks it’s necessary to keep you safe.”

Obi-Wan flashed him a wry grin. “Understood. I’ll direct all complaints to her.”

Cody felt his neutral working mask drop down, and put the lid back on his coffee. “We make every effort to provide satisfactory service to all our clients.”

“Oh, I have complete faith in your abilities,” Kenobi said with an absolutely disarming grin. “I’m just worried you’d be wasting your time with me, that’s all.”

Uh-huh. “Yes, sir.”

As far as celebrities went, Kenobi wasn’t exactly the first name that came to mind. In his own words, he’d been ‘uncomfortably thrust into the limelight’ about a year ago. He’d been a correspondent for a secondary paper—one that had recently gone bankrupt—enjoying his semi-anonymity. As Obi-Wan had said in interviews since, the loss of this anonymity was just about the worst thing that could have happened to his career in investigative journalism.

By all other accounts, though, it had only been a matter of time before Kenobi made a name for himself entirely without anyone’s assistance. He had a gift for finding a story, which was another way of saying he had a gift for getting into trouble.

The story that made him famous had barely even seen the papers. Kenobi certainly hadn’t penned it. Instead he’d turned around and testified in-camera against one Sheev Palpatine, then CEO of Empire Security—which is to say he went and stirred up trouble, and the fame was an unintended side-effect.

Palpatine, with what influence remained to him during the trial, had allegedly spent a hefty sum of money to ferret out a suspected whistleblower. His investigators ran up against several walls and a general or two before they finally grew an imagination and looked outside Empire’s employees, at civilians. From there it might not have been more than two short and easy steps to a bright young reporter by the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Palpatine then tasked his best people with running an ugly smear campaign, with the sort of virulence typically reserved for a Senator who wouldn’t vote his way. But, as Kenobi was neither a politician nor running for office, he shook off much of the resulting noise like water. He was charming, earnest, always effusive about his love for his work. (Cody thought it probably hadn’t hurt that the man didn’t seem to have the faintest idea when he was flirting, and would likely have had chemistry with a wooden block, if it came to that, but never mind.)

Obi-Wan also left the country not long after the trial was over, vanishing into Africa to cover an ongoing conflict—aftershocks of a civil war long over. That report had gotten him hired literally within days of his return, as it turned out.

By now, Cody thought, there couldn’t be a cynic left alive who hadn’t already been aware, at least on some instinctual level, that Palpatine was bent. Palpatine’s company wasn’t particularly improved for the fact that it shared a name with a flooring company. The average citizen had never even heard of it, for the most part, and yet Empire handled a startlingly large percentage of Defense contracts. Cody’s experiences with Empire’s mercenaries had been unpleasant at the best of times.

He was beginning to see why Depa worried. Especially given that Kenobi had recently been offered a book deal for exactly the story that had landed him in the public eye, and Palpatine in prison. Particularly when there were rumours that Palpatine might get an early release.

He did stay close, though, when those nebulous rumours coalesced into verifiable news of an impending hearing. Cody watched Obi-Wan, in particular, when that bit of news crossed his desk. His smile thinned, his expression became pensive more often than not. There were more tense phone calls that week than usual, more late hours at the cramped, dark office, more takeout dinners. Cody half expected him to start sleeping at the office, though he didn’t want to know what the short couch there could do to a person’s back.

By then, Cody knew Obi-Wan’s routine so well he could almost sense the moment Obi-Wan needed his tea refilled. He’d taken it upon himself to do so anyway, having quickly realised that without someone putting a plate or a cup of tea in Obi-Wan’s general vicinity, the man would plainly forget to eat. Cody hadn’t figured out getting him to sleep at regular hours yet, but in his defence he’d never been particularly good at that himself. At least trying to keep up with Kenobi actually exhausted him to the point that he slept without nightmares—for the most part.

Cody was just passing Obi-Wan another steaming cup when he shoved the laptop aside with a heavy sigh and rubbed fiercely at his eyes. He eyed the mug blankly for a moment, then smiled.

“Oh, bless you, Cody,” Obi-Wan sighed, hunching forward and all but wrapping himself around the cup. “Your timing is impeccable.”

Cody grinned, a warm feeling creeping through him as he sat down beside him on the ragged couch. “Pressing deadline?” he asked, nodding at the laptop.

“Of a sort.” Obi-Wan sighed heavily. “You know, when I testified against Palpatine I thought that should be enough to bury him, for good.”

Cody shrugged. “He’s rich, he’s powerful, he owns three senators and their penthouses. What were you expecting?”

Obi-Wan shot him a politely abashed glare. “Pardon me for daring to be occasionally optimistic,” he said wryly—apparently completely unoffended. “In any case, I might be able to push the book out for an early release. Though, I’m beginning to suspect that was a bit ambitious of me.”

“I did wonder about that,” Cody admitted. “His trial didn’t get any publicity. Last year, no one seemed to know who he is or what he was arrested for.”

“They wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t drawn attention to me in the first place.” Obi-Wan scowled at his tea as he viciously toed off his shoes and put his feet up on the almost comically small coffee table. “It’s interesting, actually—the paper I worked for went bankrupt, and most of the places I submitted my stories to in the last year wouldn’t accept them, no matter how eager they when I pitched them. It was just starting to get a little easier in the last month or two.”

Cody barely stopped himself from turning to glare at the man. “Please tell me this isn’t why you thought I’d be ‘wasting my time’ watching your back.”

Obi-Wan seemed surprised. “Well, no, I mean—I’d just gotten a job here, and in a few months I’ll be temporarily replacing Jane as the anchor for the news. It’s not so much that I thought—oh, yes, all right. I thought it would finally stop. I got a job, I got an offer to publish the damn book. Logically, yes, I know, people like that never stop.” He huffed and buried his face in his hands, the mug resting mostly empty on the arm of the couch beside him. “Fuck.”

Cody sighed. “Daring to be occasionally optimistic, right.” That got him a faint snort.

“Honestly I just thought there had to be more interesting targets,” Obi-Wan mumbled. “I was abroad for a year, anyway.”

Cody couldn’t help himself and laughed softly, reaching out to grasp Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, I’m here to be as pessimistic as necessary to keep you out of trouble.”

Obi-Wan huffed, collapsing sideways to rest his shoulder against Cody’s. “I trust you.”

They sat that way for another few moments, until Cody drained his own mug. It was only when he tried to put the cup down that he realised Obi-Wan had fallen asleep, and smiled fondly at the disgruntled sleepy mumbling. Not wanting to wake him just yet, Cody set his timer for twenty minutes and settled back, sighing. In twenty minutes, he would wake Obi-Wan up, take him home, and that would be the end of the night, yes…

Six hours later he woke up stiff-backed and with a faint headache, with faint snoring in his ear. “Shit.”

February 13, 2020

First, I’d like to apologize for yelling in the post last night.  It was (mostly) uncalled for but there were a lot of unexpected proceedings that occurred yesterday, and I’m finding that I’m not really a person who’s fond of surprises.

(day 45 of the cute campaign: not really dressed cute, but I felt cute good (most of) today, so I think this still counts)

Speaking of surprises, there was quite the surprise during Bible study today.  So uh, the wife of the “pastor” (they don’t call him a pastor though because that’s just not the language they use) came to join in today.  She was making a bunch of notes and you know, analyzing me and my responses just like the other weeks.  I still don’t know how I feel about all of this completely.

So, as for attending the wrong discussion for math: it turned out to not be a huge deal and even though I was assigned a partner in my actual section, she seems nice so that’s good.

I’m feeling kind of tired today though, so I’m going to try to go to bed early after completing some of my lighter homework assignments.  ...Or maybe I’ll go to a movie tonight instead.  It’s a free movie showing and apparently it’s a drama and I honestly need something like that after the wretched horror movie from a few weekends ago.

So, for a moment I’d like to talk about podcasts.  I’ve listened to all of Wolf 359 and The Bright Sessions, and I’m up-to-date on Welcome to Night Vale.  Those three have been fantastic.  Good editing, mostly simplistic but with rising production value as time went on (that didn’t get in the way), and it just felt really modern and fresh.  I began listening to Wolverine: The Long Dark (produced by Marvel Studios) last summer, but it didn’t really click with me.  I might try it again, but I felt like the mystery of it all wasn’t well-paced enough to hold my attention, and some of the characters weren’t really working for me.  Today I began listening to We’re Alive (produced by DC Comics), and again, it’s not really captivating me in the same way that the other three did.  I’m definitely more into it than the Wolverine audio-comic/podcast/audio drama, but sometimes the acting seems to fall flat (not super often, but the lines sometimes feel like they’re said without the emotion/complexity that could be behind them).  The production value seems to be pretty high (lots of monetary resources to create more sounds), but sometimes I feel like the story immersion is ruined.

Now, this is definitely a stylistic thing, as it’s told from the point of view of a character writing a journal, but the describing the looks of the characters really takes me out of the scene’s pacing.  I understand the function this practice serves in We’re Alive, but I don’t think I’ll employ it in my own audio drama.

-- hours later --

So I went to see Waves but just never published this post.  The movie had really good storytelling, I think.  It felt fresh and new to me.  While I didn’t agree with lots of things that the characters were doing (drinking, drugs, drunk/high driving), I think that it was important in a way to depict them like that.  Makes them seem more human?  Idk.  I did like that there was a black family at the center of it.  I thought all of the actors were really good too.  I don’t watch dramas all that much (I am honestly in need of a feel-good movie right now), but this one was good.  It made me sad, made me smile and laugh, made me feel disappointed in people’s actions and their solutions to problems.  

Also,,, made me really think about how my stressors are nothing in comparison to what some people my age face.  My family is (generally) happy and healthy.  I don’t have a sexual relationship where I’d risk pregnancy.  I don’t use drinking or drugs as coping mechanisms or ways to feel free.  I have a lot more to be thankful for than I do to complain about.

Today I’m thankful that the whole math thing was resolved easy-peasy.  Less stressful this way.

Also (bOnuS ThaNk) I’m thankful for the rain!!  It’s rained for three days straight and that’s been lovely.  I know that the rain generally makes people sad and down, but it makes me feel connected to nature, even if it can be a bit annoying sometimes.  Like the earth is reminding me “I’m still here!!”  Like the wind does sometimes when it blows really hard.

Goodnight!

Watchmen: Jeremy Irons, Ozymandias, and the Mystery of Adrian Veidt

https://ift.tt/2CaBe9S

Jeremy Irons explains his take on Adrian Veidt on HBO's Watchmen, and we give some perspective on the history of Ozymandias.

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This article contains major spoilers for Watchmen episode 3 and the book.

The worst kept secret in TV is finally out. Watchmen episode 3 reveals what most of the audience knew all along: Jeremy Irons is playing Adrian Veidt, formerly the superhero known as Ozymandias. While there’s still plenty of mystery surrounding Veidt on the HBO series, notably what project he’s working on while he’s toiling away in “captivity” in some unknown location, the official confirmation of his identity means that it’s time for some of the larger Watchmen pieces to start falling into place.

For those unfamiliar, Adrian Veidt was a member of the second generation of masked crimefighters in the Watchmen universe, first rising to prominence in the mid-1960s alongside the second Silk Spectre (who is now FBI Agent Laurie Blake, played by Jean Smart), the second Nite Owl, Rorschach, and the superhuman Doctor Manhattan. Like nearly all heroes in the Watchmen universe, Veidt has no metahuman abilities, but is an Olympic-level athlete with a vast fortune and a keen mind that earned him the nickname “the smartest man in the world.”

As a young man, Veidt idolized Alexander the Great, the Macedonian general who had conquered vast swathes of the world before his death at 33. Veidt spent his early adulthood following in Alexander’s footsteps, searching for meaning in the hope that he could achieve a lasting legacy that would match that of his hero. But ultimately, Veidt became disillusioned when he realized that Alexander had “not united all the world, not built a unity that would survive him.” After a hashish-fueled vision, he adopted the superheroic identity of Ozymandias. “Thus began my path of conquest,” Veidt recalls in Watchmen, “Conquest not of men but of the evils that beset them.”

But within a few years of costumed adventuring, it was clear to “the smartest man in the world” that he wasn’t making enough of a difference to stop the inevitable march towards the collapse of civilization, whether via nuclear war or environmental catastrophe. So Veidt devised a plan to unite the world’s governments by convincing them they faced attack from extradimensional entities. A carefully orchestrated smear campaign led Dr. Manhattan to leave Earth for an exile on Mars, and he murdered Edward Blake when the super soldier and government operative stumbled on his plan...a plan that required the deaths of three million New Yorkers via the creation of a genetically engineered, giant, psychic squid (its effects are still being felt in the HBO Watchmen universe). 

Irons was unfamiliar with all of the wild details about Veidt’s past when took on the role. “I was a complete virgin,” he says. “No idea at all. I hadn't heard of it. I hadn't seen Zack Snyder's film. I hadn't read the graphic novel.”

But it was an extended pitch from Watchmen executive producer and writer Damon Lindelof that got him on board.

“I listened to Damon go on about this story and I couldn't understand most of what he was saying and couldn't believe the rest of it,” Irons says. “A man of huge energy [and] wonderful imagination. And at the end as we were wrapping up, I thought, well, fantastic enthusiasm, fantastic mind. This is going to be very interesting. And so I went away and I read the graphic novel to get a sort of idea about this world and then went ahead Damon's ideas.”

When we last see Veidt in the comic, he was a 36-year-old man privately celebrating his victory, as the United States and Soviet Union, previously on the brink of turning the Cold War very hot, had agreed to set aside their differences in order to combat the perceived threat of alien squids. HBO’s Watchmen picks up 34 years later, and the Veidt we meet here is older and perhaps more eccentric than the one we left in the book. He’s also in a mysterious undisclosed location with a series of identical servants following his orders to the best of their ability.

“You can play sort of two dimensional stuff in a graphic novel, [but] you have to add different colors I think,” Irons says. “And I think there was a desire that I play him as a little quirky and bizarre, maybe with a touch of humor to counterpoint what else was happening, which of course I had no idea of because I was where I was, on my own with these two rather tedious people who looked after me.”

While Watchmen episode 3 does finally reveal that Irons is playing Veidt, the circumstances of his “captivity” remain a mystery. He seems to be very much alive, despite a newspaper headline in episode 1 that read “Veidt Declared Dead.” The reasoning for that is revealed in HBO’s Peteypedia supplemental materials, which reveals the full text of that newspaper article. Among the other details, it’s revealed that Veidt hadn’t made a public appearance since 2007, and “was declared missing in 2012” just as Trieu Industries was finalizing its purchase of Veidt Enterprises. Despite the publication of Rorschach’s journal, Veidt’s culpability in the giant squid incident and the millions of deaths associated with it, was dismissed by the public.

Irons was given a fairly complete picture of Veidt by Lindelof, who told him all the details that will be revealed up through episode eight of the nine episode series. It was enough for the actor to form a clear picture of the character and his essential qualities, which he sums up as “enigmatic...inconsistent...human.”

read more: Watchmen Episode 3 Easter Eggs Explained

“I think [Veidt] may be slightly larger than life, but apart from that magnification, he is pretty like most of us in some ways where we have secrets, we have things we're trying to do that perhaps other people can't understand. We appear to behave in a rather odd manner sometimes,” he says. “So, I didn't see it as being that different to me. The slightly different rules, maybe [a] slightly different purpose, a slightly different location to the one I normally live in, but I think there's a truth behind him and an essential, accurate human nature.”

We even get to see Irons put on the memorable purple and gold costume of Ozymandias, mask and all, in a moment on the show that is simultaneously eere and faintly triumphant.

“It's very interesting that superheroes wear masks and costumes,” he says. “It sort of removes them from everyday reality and perhaps gives them a feeling of power and they do the same as soldiers...and with the policemen. It sort of puts them into that role where they behave perhaps differently than they would at the table with the kids...We see what happens when he has his costume and we see him put it on. We don't see what he then goes off to do. I think it’s his ultimate persona when the costume comes on. I felt a bit bizarre as an actor, but there we are. There's elements I suppose of all costume that can make you feel a bit bizarre.”

read more: Watchmen - Laurie Blake's Joke Explained

With the mystery of Veidt’s identity solved, the next piece of the puzzle is just where the hell he might be and what he’s up to. With each episode, his circumstances become more surreal and his actions more outrageous. The Veidt mystery has so far remained a side story in HBO’s Watchmen, and Irons tried to keep that sense of isolation as he was reading the scripts.

“I was not aware, as he is not aware, of what was going on elsewhere. So I just lived in this rather large house trying to keep myself busy, interested, and trying to have some effect on my future,” he says. “I've read a bit of the other stuff but I thought, 'I can't cope with this. I don't know what this is. I don't need to know this.’ So I just concentrated, as we do in life. We just live our own lives, don't we? We're sort of aware that other people have other problems and they're doing other things, and we read about this in the newspapers, but in the main, we just go down our road.”

The mysterious road of Adrian Veidt continues on HBO’s Watchmen on Sunday nights at 9 pm.

Keep up with all our Watchmen news and reviews here.

Mike Cecchini is the Editor in Chief of Den of Geek. You can read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @wayoutstuff.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature

Books

Mike Cecchini

Nov 3, 2019

Watchmen

HBO

Jeremy Irons

from Books https://ift.tt/2oENYCu

Why saying there are new movies for Peter Parker (and that’s why we should have Miles) is stupid.

In recent months and years ever since the announcement of Peter Parker being the new Spider-Man of the MCU there has been shittons of backlash against the decision. A lot of this has stemmed from Miles Morales supporters who feel he should have been the Spider-Man of the MCU.

 Whilst there is a lot to say about that (and I have) today I want to counter a fairly frequent point I‘ve seen more than once from that camp. That point being that Peter should not be used as the MCU Spider-Man because ‘we’ve seen his story’ or ‘there is nothing new to be done with him’ or something to those effects.

 This is a boneheaded argument to make because it is essentially saying that a comic book series which has existed for over 50 years publishing sometimes multiple comics every month across that time period can apparently only generate FIVE major motion pictures...two of which recycled material from the first three.

 To show you how idiotic that argument is let me off the top of my head throw out THREE different ideas for high school Peter Parker Spider-Man movies which contain things which we’ve honestly never seen before with the character on film.

  Spider-Man vs the Mob

As many fans of Spider-Man comic books well know Spider-Man has an incredibly long history addressing street crime. The early Ditko Spider-Man stories vacillated to parables about science gone too far and crime noir.

 Fans of the thus far five Spider-Man films and the more recent pathetic Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon are likely unaware of this long history since it’s essentially devoid in both. Sure Spider-Man might fight regular thugs, but that’s rarely if ever the plot or main thrust of the stories.

 But it is in fact from Spider-Man comics that the most famous super villain gangster of all time, the Kingpin, originated. Spider-Man has tangled with Wilson Fisk countless times though admittedly rarely with the same intensity that Daredevil has.

 Now sure on film using Kingpin is very unlikely given his affiliation with the Netflix Daredevil series, however Spidey actually has a whole host of other gangster villains with gimmicks which would make them film worthy.

 Hammerhead

Silvermane

Don Fortunato

Tombstone

Man Mountain Marko

Mister Negative

The Rose

Delilah

The Crime Master

The Big Man

Black Tarantula

The Enforcers

Gangsters one and all.

 Gang war storylines have occurred more than once in Spider-Man’s comics and having him caught in the middle of one, trying to end the war for the sake of the civilians would present a realistic, complex and far more difficult to solve challenge for Spider-Man than ever seen before.

 Spider-Man could come face to face with the realities of crimes which exist in our own real world and see how it’s not a battle with a true ending but one which he and other people must constantly resist all the same.

 Spider-Man and the media

As perfectly cast as J.K. Simmons was as J. Jonah Jameson in the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man film trilogy it must be said the movies downplayed the character compared to the comic books.

 Whilst he served the same basic function as Spider-Mans loudmouth skinflint boss who used yellow journalism to slander Spider-Man and make the city mistrust and hate him, he was ultimately a bit player in the proceedings of the trilogy.

 In the comic books especially the early days of Spider-Man Jameson was almost the resident villain of the series, a lot of panel time was dedicated to him and his irrational vendetta against our hero. He and Spider-Man often exchanged harsh words and it seemed his persecution of Spidey was unrelenting. He was in fact one of the three most important recurring characters in the whole series during the original Steve Ditko run next to Spidey and Aunt May themselves.

 Doing a movie which is actually specifically about Spidey’s relationship with Jameson and making the central focus the ramifications of Jameson’s smear campaign would not only be something original for a Spider-Man film but fairly original for a superhero film in general. Jameson isn’t a super villain nor is he truly evil. He’s just a greedy man with an irrational hatred stemming from deepset issues which themselves make him a compelling character.

 The film could thus be about the abuses of power afforded to those who control the media and examine the responsibilities and role the press should hold, with a greater focus being upon the press’ obsession with celebrities and the detrimental effects they can have on their lives.

 Once more this isn’t an enemy or a crisis Spider-Man can truly resolve or defeat, so much as learn to live with, which is once again something fairly unique for a superhero movie.

 But just so we can have our bam smack pow superhero action we could draw upon one of two classic Spider-Man tales to generate a villain or two.

 In Amazing Spider-Man #20 Jameson infamously helps create the Scorpion as a natural adversary to Spider-Man only for his creation to turn on him thus justifying Spider-Man save him. The Scorpion has never been done on film and fits Marvel’s mould of villains who are dark reflections of the hero. In fact that is why Jameson created the Scorpion, he was based upon a fellow (but bigger) arachnid.

Alternatively we could draw upon a famous recurring element of Spider-Man lore, the Spider Slayers. Throughout his history Spencer Smythe and his son Alistair have created robots specifically designed to locate, capture and sometimes kill Spider-Man, with the designs of the robots offering a variety of interesting visuals. However many of the Spider Slayers were affiliated with Jameson who wanted to use them to rid the world of Spider-Man.

Perhaps one of the most famous Spider Slayer stories was the death of Spencer Smythe which involved Jameson and Spider-Man shackled together by a bomb counting down to their destruction. Adapting this would be a perfect way to bring the movie to it’s climax and focus in on the central relationship between Spider-Man and Jameson.

  Peter Parker is a Mama’s boy

Love her or hate her, Aunt May is vitally important to the mythology of Spider-Man and his character. Hence she’s appeared in every Spider-Man movie to date.

She is also his mother. Not biologically, but in all the ways that really matter she is his mother.

Many stories (sometimes to an exaggerated extent) have showcased Peter’s affection for May and her doting attitude towards him. But like Jameson we’ve only seen this in the movies as part of larger plots where it isn’t really the point. When done right it’s really endearing and something relatable to most people.

Instead of a Spider-Man movie which is about Peter Parker’s romance with a woman, his rivalry with a new villain, the mystery of his dead parents or (ugh) his teacher/student relationship with someone like Iron Man, why not make the heart and soul of this movie about a parent and child, specifically a mother and her son.

Films like Logan prove that that can work but the unique twist of this movie would be that the focus isn’t upon someone learning to be a parent or a father/son relationship or a mother/daughter relationship or even a father/daughter relationship. Rather it’d be the far less focussed upon mother/son relationship.

Even in movies which do focus upon a relationship like this things typically play out wherein the mother is fridged, or it’s about a woman learning to be a mother, or a woman struggling to survive for the sake of her son or where the relationship is strained (think Tony Soprano and his mother).

Instead this would be a movie about a kid and his mother figure coming to together to cope and survive in a world now bereft of the most important person in both of their lives who supported them both.

And the central basis of this movie could be arguably THE most iconic Spider-Man storyline of all time, the Master Planner trilogy. Allow me to give you some cliffnotes from the story. 

A new gang working for a criminal called the Master Planner who plans his schemes meticulously so they go off without a hitch butts heads with Spider-Man. Meanwhile Aunt May is feeling incredibly unwell as Peter Parker goes to his very first day of college. Later she collapses and we learn that she’s dying, poisoned by a blood transfusion Peter gave to her many issues ago. A potential cure can be created from the expensive ISO-36 chemical.

Peter pawns most of his and May’s possessions to buy the chemical but the Master Planner steals it believing it could be of use in his experiments. Spider-Man uses a Daily Bugle journalist to help him get a lead on the whereabouts of the Master Planner and he proceeds to bust up the criminal underworld, desperately seeking information of the MP.

Finally he learns that the MP is in a secret underwater base so Spider-Man has to swim beneath the Hudson river, infiltrate the base, fight off the hordes of armed henchmen and finally confront the Master Planner himself, who is in fact DOCTOR OCOTPUS.

As they fight Spider-Man is trapped under several tons of heavy metal rubble, with water quickly filling the room and the ISO-36 just out of reach. Then in an endlessly homage and utterly iconic scene Spider-Man ruminates upon how he cannot allow himself to fail Aunt May like he did Uncle Ben and gradually summons all of his strength and in a supreme act of willpower throws off all of the rubble in the greatest Spider-Man splash page of all time.

He then gets the ISO-36 swims back to the surface, fights some of Doc Ock’s goons underwater, then despite his exhaustion single handily kicks the rest of their asses before getting the chemical to the doctors just in time to save Aunt May.

 Now sure that isn’t everything that happened and you’d have to tweak a few things to make it work as a self-contained movie about a high schooler...but...goddam...how does all that NOT sound like the most baller Spider-Man movie ever!?

 There’s action, there’s tension, irony, human drama, heroism; it’s got everything!

 Now you see those three idea I just tossed out?

 Well with one exception all of them are based upon the original Steve Ditko run of Spider-Man. In fact not even all of the Ditko run, just the first 33 issues.

 None of them involve retelling Peter Parker’s origin.

 None of them involve repeating material or storylines we’ve seen in other movies before apart from Spider-Man fighting Doctor Octopus which is in my suggestion not even the point of the movie.

 I just made all of those suggestions up off the top of my head based upon less than the first five years of Peter Parker’s existence.

 I could probably make up even more if I cast my net further and spend a bit more time considering it.

 So tell me again how there are no new ideas for a Peter Parker Spider-Man movie?

 Tell me how the only way to make the franchise fresh again is to use another character other than Peter Parker?

 Go on. I dare ya?

Patreon Membership Drive: Turbo Championship Hyper Fighting Edition!

Hello all you happy people! For those wondering “who the hell is this.” I”m Jake Mattingly. I review animation and comics here on this tumblr 5 times a week, and love doing so. I do so by recapping an episode of an animated show or a volume of a comic piece by piece, how detailed depends on the work and how condensed it needs to be, analyzing the episode and sometimes throwing in some jokes because i’m a silly weirdo and tis my nature. 

 So far i’ve been able to scrape by with the help of my patreon’s kev and emma, with Kev suplimenting that iwth various comissions (I.e. paying me to review a specific episode of a show much like someone would comissoin). But I don’t want to place my entire finacial future in the hands of two people so last month I lauched my patreon membership, trying to get people to join my patreon to releive some of the pressure on them. And not a person signed on during the first month. 

But I realize a large part of that is I simply didn’t advertise propertly, not really explaning what it is I do, what they get, or throwing in any extra incentives for signing up apart from “If so many people pledge to my patreon i’ll do X review” Which is still the main thrust of my campaign but I realized I need MORE than that to give you all proper money for your buck, especailly with Tumblr trying to monteize in the most half assed way possible making people presumibly more wary of spending money on me. 

So for this promo i’m going into what it is I review exactly, how to sign up for my patreon and how any of that works, what you get out of it, and various juicy stretch goals i’m hoping ya’ll can help me reach so

WHAT IS IT YOU DO EXACTLY?

As I mentioned above I review animation and comics, more animation than comics. My meat and potatoes are Disney Duck works, primarily the 2017 reboot and the Don Rosa and Carl Barks comics. For the former i’ve done retrospectives on Lena’s arc, the Della storyline from season 2 and ALL the Season 2 storylines, the last one currently in progress. I intend to review the entire series, the lackluster tie in comics, and the this duckburg life podcast, though the last one has some strings attached we’ll get to under my goals.  I”ve also been reviewing various Carl Barks first apperances and most importantly doing a complete retrospective on Don Rosa’s masterwork the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. 

I also review certain shows week to week, almost entirely Disney as aside from the True Colors Debacle they have the most reliable schedule and announce release dates farther in advance than Cartoon Network and Nick which just sorta pop up announce things. I covered all of season 3 of Ducktales and season 2 of amphibia (With season 3 coverage coming in october) and i’m currently reviewing Owl House every week till that hiatus hits. 

Finally i’m currently looking at all the Tom Luictor episodes of star vs the forces of evil tracking both Tom’s character arc and the show’s steady decline straight into the dumps. 

Comics wise i’m more sporadic but in addition to duck comics stuff, I’ve also been doing a retrospective on the Scott Pilgrim franchise: all 6 volumes of the comic, those reviews avaliable now and in two weeks from this post, just in time for  the video game and movie anniversaries to finish things up. I recently started another one for the comic book Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, I intend to finish one I did for New X-Men, and I have a few in my mind’s eye I want to do soon on John Ostrandre’s Suicide Squad run, Justice League International, and Mega Man that i’m going to do pilots for to see if anyone’s interested. 

Finally recently i’ve started doing quick thoughts, quick reviews on recent stuff from trailers to full on movies I don’t have to cover normally. 

So What Is Your Patreon?

Patreon is a site where creators can get paid for work and can put up exclusive content and what not. You pledge anywhere from a dollar a month, and become one of my patrons and help me do this blog for a living. I genuinely love writing about media, analyzing it and making weird jokes, and this lets me do that as my job and my passion. I simply don’t want to put finacing that on the backs of only two people. 

So What’s In It For Me?

Unlike Tumblr itself I feel my supporters deserve to get the most bang for their buck. As such Patreon Membership starts at JUST ONE DOLLAR. That’s right for a dollar a month, 12 bucks a year so the price of a movie, you get access to my occasoinal exclusive reviews, exclusive poles once I get more than two members so that’s actually sensical to do to vote on reviews, and to pick a theatrical short when i review a bunch of them for character birthdays or holidays or just cause. 

In addition to these though i’ve decided to sweeten the pot. ON SIGN UP ANY PATREON OF ANY TIER GETS ONE FREE REVIEW OF ANY SINGLE EPISODE OF TELEVISION OR ISSUE OF A COMIC BOOK. That’s right for just one buck, you get a review of your choice. Whatever you want. You want to force me to watch something you hate so someone else can bitch about it for you? Go on about an episode yo ulove? shine a light on something obscure? Well i’m your man and for ONE BUCK A MONTH, you can get that. Whatever you want put on my schedule as soon as I have room and your payment’s gone through. 

And if you want me to review stuff on a more regular basis, five bucks a month gets you a review a month, same permaiters as above along with said free review. I will PERSONALLY make sure there’s a space on the schedule every month for your patreon review and review whatever you want no matter how good, bad or stuppid. 

But that’s not ALL. 

STRETCH GOALS:

To explain these better than what I did next time: My stretch goals are goals on my patreon: if I hit a certain number of Patreons I will review (Insert Thing Here) And these are meaty projects too: full season reviews, retrospectives and what have you and something’s unlocked with each person who signs up, adjusted from orignally basing it on price. So your dollar a month not only gets you your own review, but also will get my solemn vow to review a bunch of other thigns, and the more people who sign up the more thigns I’ll add to my plate. Not only that but just for this pledge drive i’m adding a bunch of super neat drive exclusvie stretch goals that will VANISH AT THE END OF AUGUST. dosen’t mean I won’t EVER do these reviews, but it does mean i’ll probably sit on them a bit. 

TLDR: You singing up gets me to guarantee to review some extra stuff. 

SO WHAT ARE THE GOALS. 

I”m glad you asked. Each one is based on a person joining, so 

REGULAR PATREON GOALS THAT AREN’T GOING TO EXPIRE BUT ARE STILL PRETTY NEAT:

One goal for each new patreon so

1 New Patreon: Starting off light but still juicy, I will review the complete season one of Amphibia across two posts. I’ve already rewatched the season recently, so all someone has to do is sign up and i’ll get on it in septmeber in time for season 3! And that’s not the only show as i’ll also review BOTH seasons of the birdtastic show after my own heart Tuca and Bertie! 

2 New Patrons: This one’s a big lighter but you still get some neat things: for my scottaholics in the audience I will review the rest of Brian Lee O’Malley’s works so far: Lost at Sea (his first graphic novel) Seconds (his first post scott work) and Snotgirl (his first ongoing and first work he didn’t draw himself), which follow a girl trying to reclaim her soul/cat, an immature restrauntieur who discovers reality changing muschrooms, and an influencer who might of done a murder. For those who don’t really like Scott Pilgrim i’ll review a buch of paramount plus shows first seasons: Kamp Korral, the rugrats rugboot and iCarly. So if any of that sounds good get on the bus won’t you?

3 New Patrons: My juicest one and one that stands alone: I will review the complete first season of the Owl House across two posts. Every episode, every bit of lumity progressoin, every bit of foreshadowing in hindsight, all for you, all if three people join my patron. So if you want more bisexual magic, step up. 

4 New Patrons: Duck Goals Woo-Ooo! This one unlocks a review from Duck Master Carl Barks EVERY MONTH. Not only that I will be taking suggestoins from my patrons , meaning you can help decide which ones I do! And while tha’ts plenty i’m jucing this one up as getting me this far also nets a review of This Duckburg Like, the interquel podcast that’s given us our last ducktales content for what will likely be an eternity. 

5 New Patrons: Gravity Falls Retrospective! I”m not only talking both season of Alex Hirsch’s era defining masterpice, but also the side materials I have acess to: the shorts, Journal #3, and the lost legends tie in comic. I”d throw legend of the gnome gemulets in there two if I had a working 2ds or 3ds bu tas it stands this is what I got. 

6 New Patrons: Avatarverse Retrospective. No not James Cameron the Bravest Pioneer’s movie he wants to turn into a franchise despite NO ONE wanting this please stop James, we’re begging you. Of course i’m talking about Avatar the Last Airbender, the epic franchise that’s blowing up in size. This will include all three books of Avatar: The Last Airbender, All Four Books of the Legend of Korra, and all the juicy side stuff I can cover: the sequel comics for both series, the kioshi novels and the eye gougingly bad M Night Shamlyn Movie. Yes I really will   myself to that. I have not till now i’m happy that way but I will sufer for you. Speaking of suffering:

7 New Patrons: It’s a crapstravaganza!  If i’ve made it this far I clearly have enough fan support that I can fly into the eye of the crapstorm so i’m going to review some of the worst things I can think of:  * Chuck Austen’s X-Men the run that dared to ask the tough questions your coke addleed uncle you don’t let see your kids would like “What if Angel could cure AIDS with his blood and had sex with a minor while her parents watched?” “What if a rouge relgious sect tried to make Nightcrawler pope and then desingrate people with commuiion wafers in a scheme that makes no sense?” and “What if an x-man made a plant horny?”  * America: The comic that has the infamous and oft used by me line to compare it to other bad lines “What in the holy menstration are you doing here”. And it’s still not the most bonkers thing int his somehow 12 ISSUE SERIES tha twastes one of marvels best creations.  * The Prince: Aka that series HBO what farted out onto the service with no intention of renewal after realizing “Holy shit we greenlit this what is wrong with us” which is basically family guy but with the royal family. I’d say it was a somehow worse family guy but Famiily Guy once had an episode that was about 22 minutes of transphobic punchlines so as long as there isn’t an episode of that your good.  * Mordecai is a Bastard Man: Aka that arc of Regular Show that took a ship I really liked, Mordecai and CJ, and then destoryed it with cheating, attempted murder and saxophone.  *Star Vs Final Arc: Aka a look at how a once great show descended into a mess with unfinished plot lines, wasted characters and a finale so terrible it’s only topped by “Kids this is the story of how I really want you to say it’s okay to bang aunt robin” 8 New Patrons: Infinity Train, all four books and any finale movie if it happens. (Please let it happen) All aboard! 9 New Patrons: Two juicy disney retrospectives! The Incredibles (both movies and both comics series) and Darkwing Duck (Both the Boom! and Joe Books runs) Let’s get incredibly dangerous! 10 New Patrons: My highest tier for now and i’ts anothe rdouble feature and two big projects. If you get me this far, you’ve earned em: A She Ra and the Pricesses of Power Retrospective and a Bojack Horseman retrospective. The two greatest things Netflix has made back to back for life. 

And THAT’S NOT ALL... as I said I have some special stretch goals JUST FOR THIS PLEDGE DRIVE. 

SPECIAL DRIVE SPECIFIC GOALS BABY!:

These are a simple five extra projects for hitting the goals within the rest of the drive FROM AUGUST 1ST TO AUGUST 31ST. I will not add these to the regular goals for a full year if you do not reach them, so one buck helps you unlock projects that otherwise might not happen for YEARS. Like the other goals their measured by patrons but ONLY for this month sooooo

1 New Patron: Quack Pack series review! the most hated Disney Afternoon show in one big two part review. God help me. 2 New Patrons: Rise of the TMNT Retrospective: Both seasons, a movie and regular coverage on the offchance a third season hopefully gets greenlit.  3 New Patrons: Peanuts and Garfield Specials retrospective!: Retrospectives for the technicolor years long world of Peanuts specials and the shorte rlived but still neat garfield specails. All the specials plus all the animated movies for both!  4 New Patrons: Craig of the Creek-AThon: Rewatching season one and watching BOTH seasons i’ve missed since then with full reviews as well as reviews of each bomb of episodes as their released on teh app from here on out!  5 New Patrons: Steven Universe Retrospective! All 5 seasons, The Movie, Future, the comics, graphic novels and games. EVERY. THING. 

So if ANY of this sounds enticing 

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Lazy Profit Engine 2.0 Review hey it's Jonas welcome to my lazy profit engine 2.0 review I'll show you the members area I'll show exactly what this is I'm swimming through the episodes what they are and on top of that I've got some bonuses in this case combined with is me and Jon Olsson bonuses and the truth is if you're not getting this product from me or John or if he decides to promote it this is not going to work so and I'm not saying that because I want you to implied from my link which obviously I want you to do but the thing is if you're picking this up and you don't buy it from me or John it's not going to work that's the thing so if you're planning on getting this through someone else don't just ignore this product completely because it's not going to work and I know that because I've been making a full-time living from this exact method although I'm doing it in a different way which actually kind of works and so it's donal and that's the thing so I got some good things and some bad things to say about this obviously the bad thing you started that's when you work but let me show you the sales page quickly and I'll explain what why are saying this so first of all if you're looking for big results for in the next 24 hours then you're in the right place okay so you're about to discover the EC's money stacking method that will Bank you two hundred and two dollars per day with minimal effort and at zero cost um is it possible to make two hundred dollars per day with this method yes but I would say not consistently you may have it or you most likely will have two hundred all days maybe 300 or 400 or days but not every day other days you might make 0 or you might make $10 $30 $50 I said average you should be looking at somewhere between 50 and 70 dollars per day or so although journal 8 there has been absolutely crushing and he's been making like two three hundred bucks per day with this so he has really perfected this and you're actually going to get a super cool bonus from John oh it's a case study that he just completed himself even according this a couple of days ago we can see these results here this is from November 22nd which is just over a week ago and those three days to make $238 282 233 and these videos are so good and the reason that I'm talking more about that I'm be more excited about the bonuses here is because I did John Oh probably like an hour per day and I'm gonna do now for the last couple of weeks or months we talk a lot and he's doing the same method as I am kind of except he's he's been crushing it lately I don't even want to admit it but he's kicking my ass late and he's doing a better job than I am and I'm like the person has been doing this for so long and he just comes in and he just takes all the sales basically so why don't I say that he knows what he's doing and you're going to be getting a two hour long course from him which is like an ATC case study which is just super cool you're also going to get my own method and this is really cool as well so some people may already have it and in that case that's cool but I in this course explain everything that I'm doing to rank my videos at the top of Google and YouTube as well as on comic but what you're also getting here is something that I've never also before and something that you're only going to get if you pick up place the profit engine 2.0 and that's I you get the rights to give away millions Lacey matter which is my course as a bonus and you can get this course and then if you're gonna build your bonus page and where I have some really high-quality bonuses to give away give away my course that's that's what you get here is how again see this it's not something I'm planning offering again and that's completely true as well because I was actually planning on as soon as I launched my own course this was on July 1st I think I actually told myself that I'm never going to promote another launch jacking product again because it makes no sense and I wouldn't promote this either if it wasn't for Jonas boys very much and this is just so in-depth and it's so professionally made that I couldn't resist that's what we decided to do you're going to get another secret YouTube ranking method and this is the ATC launch tracks and campaign setup and some other things as well but overall our bonuses if you get this course again as I said if you get this course without getting it from me or Joe no it's not going to work don't get it that skip it if you're getting it from my link then and you get Joe knows bonus course my bonus course you can use my course as a bonus you're gonna be able to make a lot of money because you're going to learn how to do things right okay I've been talking for a long time now about my bonuses and stuff let's get into the good and bad about this course first of all the lazy method it's it possible to make money with it yes maybe I would never use it the lazy method is a perfect name for this method however I'll give him that but the thing is it's not good it's basically how to create a video made out of images and that's pretty much it so if I personally were to Google something like a product named review and I come to a video that's made up of like three images and it's basically hello this is a great product click link in the description below that's not a review that's that's not how you do a review video it doesn't help at all yes you managed to rank the video and yes you probably will get a few sales every now and then but don't do that number two is much better this is what you should be doing and ten videos here and again as I said there's some good content it's not all about all ten videos not gonna disable create a video made out of three images there's some decent content in here that you may want to go through either way if you get this course but don't do the videos as mentioned in this courses don't what you're going to undo it the way you're going to want to do your videos is with optimal methods that's about installing a screen capture software in your computer you can use screencast-o-matic which is what Brett recommends that's what I use myself it's free if you're ok with having a little watermark at the bottom left corner I would highly recommend you to pay fifteen dollars per year to get the pro version you can then record there's no limits to anything and I guess I say it's 15 dollars per year which is just super super cheap and besides that you're going to learn time where to get bonuses and stock which is awesome you're also going to see how to record it the actual visual you can see here a framework of a format that you and the reason that Brett says then you should do a maximum of like 45 minutes reviews because people will kind of get sick of you after that and I I agree I've been looking into my YouTube stats and I know that most people's drop off of my videos after like three and four minutes so I guess it doesn't really make any sense for me to make them like 10 to 15 minutes since most people drop off way before that but I want to do a proper review anyway and just show people exactly what it is that they're getting so for me I'm not going to shorten my videos by that much but I'll try it for a while but I just feel like it's impossible to cover everything that I want to cover in a four-minute video but I do like the idea and this is something I have been thinking out before so anyway my Brett says is introduce yourself in a product name that's great the gist of the product vendors and the proof lots of proof should be shown in that first minute with that as well that's that's good stuff dive into the product talk about the benefits pull off the products in this video talking about the flourescent down so that's great as well that's that's how you do a review I just feel like talking about doing all this in one it I can't do it I guess I like to talk too much but I can't get it done that quickly and then there's a couple of things as well it's hidden e announced I'm not going to get rid of that you can see that when you get to course by absolute to go through the optional method and some more things here as well and that's preferred your certainty has include bonuses and that is it but overall as I said like the course itself it's it's not it's not the best it's not going to help you rank and that's the big problem that I have here they don't talk about backlinks at all how to actually get the video to rank which is kind of the whole point here you're going to do this because you want your video to rank at the top so people actually click it and then you get sales but if you're just doing it like the lazy method I would say you will fail to ranked 98 out of a hundred times you might rank those two times it's been going after a launch that no one else is targeting and it's just not going to get any traffic in that case but if you go and after a fairly big launch it's very unlikely that you'll rank without using backlinks and that's what I'm going to show you in my own course to Lacey method I'll show you exactly where to go it's pretty much going to be copy and paste almost and that you do that it'll take it up for 20 minutes or so to do the backlinking after that in many cases you will be racked at the top and do it more and more and you're going to almost rank automatically after a while which is pretty cool as well and again like not only will you get by on course should be able to give it away as a bonus but you also get Jonas really really cool course it's an ATC case study so I would honestly say that the bonuses are worth a lot more than the actual product that I'm reviewing today Lacey profit engine and again if you buy this course but from someone else's link good luck I can't say I'm very afraid of competing with you for a top spot on Google you - I'm sorry but you you just you're not going to rank it's a simplest tie if you get it through my link though and you get the bonus package you go through my math that I get up and do this full time for over two years now I know how to rank a video go through that course go through Jonah's course and you're going to be kicking butt and me and Jonah will have some competition from you then but that's fine I mean bring it on so that's it that's my summary don't get this course if you're planning on getting it from anyone else if you get it from me though then yes you're going to get some cool tips from the opto method and a couple decent things from the lace methods well but most of all you're getting our insane bonus package which I think you're really going to love so that's it actually that's not at all I'm sorry let's go up here and take a look at the upsells so I'll put another one plus bonuses $27 this upgrades include more advanced strategies this is for those who has scaled from 15 to 35 I don't really know what this is this doesn't seem like it's related to launch jacking so take a look at it sales patient it sounds cool get it if not it'll be don't get it and you'll get our bonuses though if you just get the front end that's fine you need to get in there the absolutes just get this for between 7 and 13 dollars and the bonuses will be delivered to you automatically and you're just going to become a racking superstar very very quickly down a sale property 117 bucks ten dollars off and we remove while the bonuses I don't know what the boys are but if you want to save 10 bucks and up great number to you that is closer series to build a six-figure sensing seven-figure business Brett's millionaire blueprint all of the upsells from Lisa Proctor engine one okay take a look at sales page if it seems cool get it if not don't get down sell to is 27 bucks $20 off and we remove one and bonuses again I don't know what the boss is also upgrade three is one on one coaching with Brett where he'll help coach the students to get to at least 50 hours players pretty cool again I hope he's going to be talking about backlinks and how to actually get the video to rag because it's not I don't know if I would get any of these upsells probably get this one down still number one $17 because that does sound pretty interesting I gotta say especially email marketing strategies does something you can combine that something both me and John are will be talking about a little bit this both Janos case study and my own course as well it's super simple to build a list from YouTube and I don't do it as much as I should because I'm very lazy but it is it's a pretty cool it's pretty cool so anyway that's that's it if you get this course from my link again it's in the description below you are going to get two amazing bonuses and a decent course but as I said you you can pretty much skip the lazy method or at least don't do the video itself like I like just don't you might be tempted because it's easy to just gets three images something but it's not going to ver convert and people will just be like what the heck is this why did this person even bother applying this so do it properly or don't do that all that's what I would say okay hope this really review may only sense I again though you don't have a choice you have to buy to my link or don't buy this course at all that's why I finish off if you want this actually work though alright so thanks for watching hi gyetae about is it

A lecture by Warren Ellis

My job is just sitting in a room making shit up all day. I’m not complaining.  But the best part is that I get to meet people, all kinds of people, in probably dozens of different fields.  Because I hate silos.  The idea that you find your specialty and stay in it.  I mentioned that I never went on to higher education.  I’m one of those terrifying random auto-didacts you read about, usually in news stories about sudden unexpected axe attacks or bombing campaigns against vending machines.  I’m not even one of those freakish deep-thinking uncontained comprehensivists like Buckminster Fuller, whom some of you will probably have to look up afterwards.  He once taught at MIT, where I spoke just a couple of weeks ago, and his course was called Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science. Which is probably another way of saying Arts, Design and Computer Science.

Fuller also taught at Black Mountain College, a weird experimental school in North Carolina – it’s near a place called Asheville, close to where I visited on book tour last winter, and we should maybe talk about Asheville one day – it used to be tobacco country, but when other pressures caused the government to remove a crucial financial crutch, the area collapsed back from 1400 acres of tobacco ground to a hundred, killing the local economy and emptying lots and lots of buildings that artists and musicians moved into for pennies – but, Black Mountain College – the point of the place from the start was that it was interdisciplinary. All the departments cross-pollinated each other. 

And that’s kind of how I work and move around the place.  All the time, I talk to directors, musicians of all kinds, artists, designers, coders, security threat modellers, genetic engineers, space doctors, philosophers, actors, writers, actual mad scientists.  I met Ev Williams at dinner when he was still building out Blogger and I was just a bloody comics writer – but I was in the Bay Area to speak onstage at a “future of the web” conference next to a musician called Thomas Dolby and a software engineer called Grady Booch.  Not because I am brilliant or special but because when the opportunity to step outside my perceived silo comes up, I grab it. 

Specialisation worked out pretty interestingly for arts, science and the humanities in the 20th Century, sure.  I mean, unless you were into philosophy, which was completely subsumed by academia and strangled in the dark.  I should apologise to my philosopher friends for that, but they’re aware of it  -- Peter Sjostedt publishes through Psychedelic Press to get his ideas out of the silo.  The 21st Century is going to work a little differently.  Nobody was ready for Bucky Fuller and his comprehensivist geodesic dome bullshit in 1950, and Black Mountain College didn’t last twenty five years, but, this year, if we don’t pay attention to everything and learn from everybody, then we’re probably all screwed. The best bit of my life is that I get to talk to everybody, about everything, and put people from a bunch of different disciplines in the same room, and I get to listen and learn and apply that to whatever I do next.  It’s a full speed life, and it’s riddled with challenges large and small, and I might still go down with arrows in my back, as Bruce Sterling said about me – but it’s entertaining as all hell. 

And the point to this is – this is what the future is going to look like.  Probably needs to look like.  And that’s going to be where you’re living.

But let me start this next bit with something else. 

If I were giving this talk a few years ago, I’d be talking about atemporality, the appearance of a long pause in the culture, the idea of Manufactured Normalcy that gives everything that grey JG Ballard pallor of banality, and Marshall McLuhan’s warnings about seeing everything through the rear view mirror.  But I imagine most if not all of you have the feeling that everything’s gone a bit Mad Max Fury Road.  I know people just a generation or two older than you who are off to learn permaculture farming or buying houseboats that can survive a trip across the North Sea. 

From here, the Nineties look like the bloody Enlightenment.  Back then, we were just a hungover post-imperial nation that was expected only to fuck, take drugs, make art and dance really badly.  Now, the fight for the future is on.  The fight for diverse and conscious voices, the fight for privacy and secure communication and home automation that makes sense, the fight for news and the fight for art that gets to say what it wants and design that looks forward and anything that isn’t just there to please the reactionary forces of xenophobic chinless ex-bankers and the racist daughter of a vicar from Little England and an angry orange pensioner in the thrall of actual fucking Nazis. 

On Sunday night I read a headline including the term “weaponized artificial lifeforms.”  Shit’s gotten weird.  There are people at Brandeis inventing an actual new form of matter called a self-propelling liquid. Dogs can detect cancer by sniffing a bandage.  In the last couple of months, we’ve discovered evidence of two mass extinction events we previously didn’t know about.  As of a week ago, NASA are tracking a star that orbits a black hole every thirty minutes. It’s all strange, and it’s all getting faster and faster, but it’s all also the stories of where we are right now. 

And the cave paintings of Chauvet Pont D’Arc have just turned out to be older than anyone though.  The cave art – the first narrative visual media in the world – is some thirty five thousand years old.  The stories of where we were right then. That’s how long we’ve been doing this. 

I have two great loves.  History and the future.  And I use them both as tools to try and see where I am right now, and to try and describe what I think it looks like.  Which is also the work of journalism.  Reportage and narrative.  See how I connect everything together and make it look like I’m smart, while also clearly making shit up.  I’ve been doing this a long time.  One day you too will be able to bullshit like me. 

But the future is where we’re all living tomorrow, and it’s down to us both to summon it and to look ahead to see what shape it may arrive in. 

Speculative fiction and new forms of art and storytelling and innovations in technology and computing are engaged in the work of mad scientists: testing future ways of living and seeing before they actually arrive.  We are the early warning system for the culture.  We see the future as a weatherfront, a vast mass of possibilities across the horizon, and since we’re not idiots and therefore will not claim to be able to predict exactly where lightning will strike – we take one or more of those possibilities and play them out in our work, to see what might happen.  Imagining them as real things and testing them in the laboratory of our practice – informed by our careful cross-contamination by many and various fields other than our own -- to see what these things do. 

To work with the nature of the future, in media and in tech and in language, is to embrace being mad scientists, and we might as well get good at it. 

—From his opening lecture at York St John University this year. I’m in awe of this man.