#the song choices and the messages they give and the connotations are all intended!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ugly-cry-faces · 9 months

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Reconnect with Nature Beach Resorts in the Maldives

Nestled within the idyllic embrace of the Maldives' azure waters, the Reconnect with Nature Beach Resorts stand as a harmonious blend of luxury and ecological immersion. In a world where the cacophony of modern life often drowns the whisper of nature, these resorts offer a sanctuary for those seeking to rekindle their bond with the natural world. The Maldives, renowned for its breathtaking beauty, finds its quintessence distilled in these havens of tranquility. Here, guests are not mere spectators, but integral participants in the delicate symphony of the island's ecosystems. Each resort is meticulously designed to coexist symbiotically with its surroundings, employing sustainable practices that tread lightly upon the delicate balance of marine and terrestrial life. With private villas that open onto powdery white beaches and crystal-clear lagoons, the Reconnect with Nature Beach Resorts invite you to rediscover the rhythms of the Earth while indulging in the lavish comforts that define Maldivian hospitality. Whether you seek solace in the coral gardens, adventure on the open sea, or simply the therapeutic melody of lapping waves, these resorts promise an unforgettable sojourn, guiding you back to nature in splendid luxury.

The Power of Words Straightward

Underneath the seemingly straightforward veneer, titles hold immense power to influence perception and provoke emotions. The choice of Maldives beaches resort words, their arrangement, and the interplay of linguistic elements all contribute to the impact a title has on the reader or viewer. Words can be wielded to evoke excitement, curiosity, nostalgia, or even a sense of urgency. A title's ability to set the tone for the content it represents is akin to the opening notes of a symphony, signaling what's to come and priming our minds to receive the intended message.

Crafting a Connection on the Delicate

The art of crafting titles rests on the delicate balance between intrigue and clarity. A title must be intriguing enough to catch attention but also clear enough to give the audience a sense of what they can expect. A title that promises too much and underdelivers might lead to disappointment, while one that undersells the content can result in missed opportunities for engagement. A successful title taps into the desires, interests, and emotions of the target audience, creating an instant connection that invites them to delve deeper into the content.

Varieties of Titles Come in Various

Titles come in various forms, each serving a specific purpose within their respective domains. In the realm of literature, book titles often embody the central theme or concept of the narrative, hinting at the journey readers are about to embark upon. Academic paper titles provide a glimpse into the research's focus, methods, and findings, helping fellow researchers navigate a vast academic landscape. In the world of entertainment, movie and song titles can offer glimpses of the narrative or emotions conveyed within, leaving room for interpretation and anticipation.

Digital Age and Attention Economy

In the digital age, where information bombards us from all directions, the importance of titles has escalated. With limited time and attention, people often decide whether to click on an article, watch a video, or read an email based solely on the title. This phenomenon has led to the emergence of "clickbait" titles that use sensationalism to lure audiences. Balancing the need for attention-grabbing with ethical and accurate representation of content is a challenge that content creators constantly face.

Cultural and Linguistic Nuances

Titles are not only tools of communication but also mirrors reflecting cultural and linguistic subtleties. Translating titles from one language to another requires more than just linguistic proficiency; it demands an understanding of the cultural connotations and emotional resonances associated with specific words. A title that works perfectly in one language might lose its charm or even cause unintended offense when translated directly. Therefore, crafting cross-cultural titles demands a delicate dance between linguistic accuracy and cultural sensitivity.

The Intrigue of Reconnect with Nature: Beach Resorts in the Maldives

Nestled amidst the cerulean expanse of the Indian Ocean, the Maldives stands as an enchanting canvas painted with powdery white sands, crystalline waters, and vibrant coral reefs. A destination synonymous with luxury and tranquility, the allure of the Maldives lies not only in its picturesque beauty but also in its ability to offer a profound reconnection with nature. At the heart of this allure are the mesmerizing beach resorts that dot the islands, each promising an escape into a world where time slows, and the senses are awakened by the symphony of waves and the rustling of palm fronds the Intrigue of reconnecting with Nature

Embracing Tranquility: A Journey to Maldives' Beach Resorts

In a world brimming with fast-paced routines and digital distractions, the allure of Maldives' beach resorts lies in their ability to help us rediscover the soothing embrace of nature. Amidst the azure waters and soft, powdery sands, these resorts beckon travelers to step away from the chaos of modern life and reconnect with the primal essence of the Earth. As guests arrive at these tropical havens, they are welcomed not only by luxurious accommodations but also by the gentle lullaby of waves, the rustling of palm trees, and the breathtaking beauty of the oceanic panorama.

Conclusion

In a world overflowing with information and media, titles act as gatekeepers, determining which content we engage with and which we disregard. They are the first impression, the initial connection, and the invitation to explore further. The art of crafting titles lies in capturing the essence of content while sparking curiosity, all within a few well-chosen words. As we navigate the evolving landscape of communication, understanding the intricacies of titles will continue to be a valuable skill in bridging the gap between creators and their audiences.

#Maldives beaches resort

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darthtimon · 1 year

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Writing Prompts: Old Kids Shows vs New Kids Shows

This is a 'self-made' prompt, as it were. I made it myself! I was thinking about how the kids of today find the childhood programs of my era to be weird. The cartoons of the 80s and 90s certainly have some unique qualities, but then again, to me, the cartoons of today's era have some quirks all their own.

Yes, Bananaman was real. A boy eats a banana and becomes a superhero. The not-so-subtle message is 'eat your fruit and veg to be big and strong'. Not a bad message, but it was delivered in a terrifying way. There is something profoundly strange at how Bananaman looks. He is very unnatural. His transformation was faintly disturbing. Somehow, this was allowed on air.

Button Moon was quite a sweet, gentle show, aimed at small children.

Now this was a show I loved. It was called Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles here, due to negative connotations with the term ninja. The show, about four teenage, erm, mutant turtles, named after famous Renaissance artists, became a huge global success, and I remember the immense excitement of waiting to see the live-action movie. The TV series was formulaic; the evil pair of Shredder and Krang would attack, the turtles would thwart them, they'd escape and try again. On rare occasions, there's be a two-parter, but each episode was usually standalone.

Darkwing Duck, like TMNT, was largely around standalone episodes. It was fun, it was pretty daft in places, and as with nearly all cartoons of the early 90s, actions and consequences of one episode did not carry over into the next. All that would begin to change with...

Gargoyles could have been called a 'TNG' reunion. Several cast members from Star Trek: The Next Generation had recurring roles, including Jonathan Frakes as the self-centred Xanatos, and Marina Sirtis as the villainous Demona. Brent Spiner turned up as a couple of characters, and other Star Trek alumni appeared too (David Warner, Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks and Michael Dorn all starred, as did Nichelle Nichols. Gargoyles also broke the mould. Here was a darker, more serious show, that was still intended for children, but older children, and teens. It did not dumb things down. Actions had consequences. Characters made bad choices. There were story arcs lasting several episodes. It was a masterpiece, and it is a crime that Disney have not revisited this show. Modern cartoons now tend to have long-running threads, married to standalone episodes that might weave a thread into them. Kids are treated with respect, with a lot of 'kids' shows being quite sophisticated. Take for example, My Little Pony, which despite being aimed at small children, garnered a lot of respect for its storytelling and style. Sometimes kids TV can be very preachy (there was a Stargate show, Stargate Infinity, that was painfully over the top for this), and this can be be very off-putting. Some modern cartoons for older kids are, to me, surreal (then again, Bananaman is surreal to today's generation).

This is an insane show. It is filled with deliberately different forms of animation, and features some crazily different characters, in an eclectic world. It is bright and colourful on the surface, but some of the stories stray into grim territory! There is a wry sense of humour that underpins the slapstick element, and one of the characters - Richard - can give Homer Simpson a run for his money in the stupid dad stakes. I have laughed out loud several times at this show. It is quite brilliant.

Star vs the Forces of Evil is a show I myself sorely underestimated when I first saw it. Underneath the bubbly, zippy façade is a deep, cultivated show, with lore and history and creativity. There are long-running arcs, romances, themes of discrimination and oppression, and it's one of the most sophisticated shows out there.

The original DuckTales was an entertaining show with a catchy theme song. I enjoyed it. DuckTales 2017 is an absolutely superb show, a champion of gorgeous animation, great characters, and so many different ways of entertaining the audience. There is not a bad episode of this show, which both pays homage to the original show, whilst updating the characters and setting. I love this show so much that I have a tattoo of Scrooge McDuck on my arm, and I lamented its early demise in a lengthy post last year. Read the full article

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vialism · 6 years

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Vialism is About Social Media

I have a lot to say on this topic, so try to stick with me here. I know some of this is stuff we have already acknowledged and agreed upon, but I’m trying to get it all in one place so it forms a cohesive theory! Just as a disclaimer, this is obviously just my interpretation and you’re more than welcome to see it differently. Please don’t repost this theory anywhere unless you directly link my tumblr, and I’d prefer if you got my permission if it’s anywhere other than twitter.

When you look at all the lore and get to the heart of what Vialism really is, there are a few very basic things that we can conclude. The vials are presented as artificial light, different and separate from sunlight or fire. They are used like lamps in Dema, but Clancy describes them as having a lifeless, artificial, and almost brainwashing effect, it seems. They are omnipresent, and they are necessary in the darkness. They are placed in central locations in Dema where they are impossible to ignore, and the inhabitants are inexplicably drawn to them, forced to worship them, and perform strange rituals around them.

We know from the NATN music video that the vials are made of glass, and then the bishops form them into shapes and fill them with this artificial light. Some fans have already connected this kind of addictive, artificial, empty glow, housed in glass vessels, with the idea of phones and electronics. I think that there is significant evidence in both the lyrics and the Clancy letters to back this theory up. In this essay I will… okay no but seriously, I have a lot of points to make, so saddle up.

The Vialism statues have a unique and specific posture, in which the figure has their head tilted up to their joined hands, which, crucially, are positioned slightly apart with the thumbs out.

This is the exact position someone’s hands would be in if they were holding a phone and looking up at it. Furthermore, as some have already noticed, the posture of the statue looks strikingly similar to people standing in the pit at a show with their phones held aloft. When the statue is featured in the live graphics for Leave the City, you can even see the way the space between the statue’s hand is casting a glow on the statue’s face.

The statue is also positioned in a very rigid, pious, and devout stance, and is clearly intended as a symbol or even effigy for the Vialists. If it is indeed intended to depict someone looking to their phone in worship, that supports the theory that we should understand Vialism as the systematic worship of electronic devices (and perhaps, more specifically, the social internet).

If the light of the vials and the structure of Dema as a place in which artificial electronic light is worshipped is intended to be seen as a prison, it makes perfect sense that the rising of the sun, and the return of natural light, would provide an opportunity for escape. Many have already interpreted “east is up” to be an announcement of the sunrise, but this would be particularly resonant if the sun - as it is posited repeatedly in Vessel - is considered a return to reality after the prison of darkness, especially if that darkness carries with it the entrancing, constant, and inescapable glow of the online world.

Next, there is abundant evidence to suggest that the vultures, or the watchers, as they are described in Clancy’s letters, are intended as an allegory for our culture’s anonymous and constant social media presence. For one thing, the vultures (and their related manifestations as the Goner/Leave the City birds) can be read as parallel reimaginings of the twitter bird icon. Furthermore, in addition to the fact that the vulture eye itself opened and closed the hiatus via twitter, the boys have alluded to the culture of constant and rabid surveillance many times since their return: in interviews, by Clancy in his letters, in the live show (through humor in Josh’s introduction) and in multiple lyrics on the album (surrounded/hounded… etc).

Vultures, as birds of prey, hold a lot of symbolic relevance to online call-out culture, the volatility of the public masses and their willingness to attack at the first sign of a problem (or to “smirk at fresh blood / circle above” waiting for someone to make a mistake). This fits well with Tyler telling us that “cowards only come through when the hour’s late and everyone’s asleep,” since he has already connected the night hours to the time when we are most vulnerable to the effects of the artificial entrancing light, and more comfortable acting like someone we don’t like, someone who is more willing to attack and “curse” someone when we are hiding behind the shadows of our online personas.

However, Tyler suggests in Levitate that we are also both drawn and addicted to that kind of interaction - “a curse from you is all that I would need right now.” In this vein, “don’t feed me to the vultures” - in addition to its literal connotation to Zoroastrian excarnation rituals - becomes a plea not to be exposed to the attacks of online “watchers.” It is probably not an accident that the map of Dema just looks like one big eyeball - and it’s certainly not an accident that, when the eye closed upon the hiatus, the text inside of it was reversed: we were on the inside, looking out. We were the watchers. When the eye opened, we were looking at the vultures from the outside, watching their story unfold from a new perspective.

Before diving into more individual songs and lyrics, I’d like to reintroduce my earlier theory that the Bishops in the NATN music video are forging Tyler’s “neon gravestone” out of vials. As we know, the NATN music video shows the Bishops assembling an upside down |-/ symbol out of glass vials that they create.

From the live show graphics for Leave the City, it is clear that the upside down vial logos are supposed to be a gravestone, because the graphics show hundreds of them arranged in rows like a graveyard, and they are shaped relatively like headstones.

The way that they are arranged (in rows or concentric circles) suggests that these neon gravestones form the basis of the “necropolis” section of Dema, surrounding the interior city.

It’s reasonable to assume that the bishops are specifically forging Tyler’s neon gravestone in NATN, not just because that video trilogy focuses on his escape narrative, but because these live graphics occur when he’s saying the lyrics “they know that when it goes out / it’s a glorious gone,” referring to his own surrender to the bishops.

This brings a new layer of significance to Neon Gravestones as a song, and connects it to the idea that Vialism refers to the culture of the social internet. First of all, the live graphics for Neon Gravestones at B stage involves a literal cage of vial lights descending on Tyler and Josh, directly connecting the vials to the neon gravestones themselves. This is also evidenced in the line in Bandito reading “like neon inside the glass, they form my brain.” If the vial light is the light of electronic devices, then the electronic devices themselves are the basis of the neon gravestones that Tyler describes in the song - that is, the glorified, empty, and exaggerated online memorials that we assign to celebrities after (and only after) they take their own lives. Tyler directly problematizes this kind of memorial in Neon Gravestones - they are artificial. They are a heatless fire, built from the light/the empty glass vessels of our phones.

This also clarifies that the “assemblage of glorified” that Clancy talks about (and that is presumably depicted in NATN when the bishops gather to make the vials) centers on the creation of Neon Gravestones for individual inhabitants of Dema. To “become glorified,” in Dema, is to surrender yourself to a Neon Gravestone. (We glorify those even more when they…). If he “loses to himself” in his escape from Dema, the cycle ends, and he will be artificially glorified in the neon glow of the social internet.

Furthermore, the choice of the word “bones” in the refrain of the song does not seem coincidental considering what we know about the origins of Dema, and particularly, the role of the vultures. It isn’t just a poetic way of saying he’s tempted towards this kind of glorified death; as we know, the Zoroastrian towers of silence are excarnation death rituals: bodies are left exposed to the elements until vultures pick them clean of their flesh. Neon gravestones call specifically for his bones because if he loses to the bishops, if he gets fed to the vultures, they will glorify his bones (all that is left after he’s been excarnated in Dema) with a gravestone of Vials in the necropolis. Why are the graves formed from the upside down logo? Maybe because if he did lose to himself, the band’s message, their meaning, would “get twisted” and warped, turned on its head; the original intention would be lost if it was exposed to a broader audience of strangers. The message of the music would be threatened by those who don’t know what it means - those outside the few, the proud, and the emotional. Tyler is threatened by how many people, after his death, would only know his name (think Message Man, here).

This gives new meaning to the opening lines, “follow me down to the bottom underneath the insane asylum.” A trip underneath Dema would be a tunnel below the Neon Gravestones - which is exactly the path the Banditos follow when they escape: they are walking under their own future graves. The fact that “we are banditos,” backwards, sounds like “so did they bury you,” may be less of a coincidence than we thought.

Perhaps this points to part of the reason why the towers of silence were so fascinating to Tyler as a symbolic framework: one is literally elevated in death, buried above ground, exposed to the elements and the circling vultures. Just as we glorify and aggrandize public figures until after their deaths to the point where they become recognizable, bodies in Dema are placed on a pedestal and then reduced to bones.

A few readings of individual songs/lyrics that I think provide more evidence that Vialism is connected to the social internet:

In Levitate, the line “this is not what you thought / no no we are not just graffiti on a passing train” suggests that the band is not as fleeting or as easily read/understood as the social internet allows them to seem to outsiders.

In Morph, Tyler is threatened by Nico’s suggestion that he is a copy, and social media profiles are essentially individual copies of our real selves. Tyler is threatened by the notion that he exists only or primarily in that form. He also alludes to electronics in the “lights they blink to me / transmitting things to me / ones and zeroes” section. The internet, and everything we consider “real” about it, is truly just made up out of ones and zeroes. The lights blinking at him could refer to notifications lighting up his phone, just as the “poisonous vibrations” in Chlorine could refer to the tempting, constant, and addictive vibrations of an electronic device. Finally, existing in the space of social media can often feel like speaking into an empty void, prompting you to question whether there is “anybody listening” - a direct contrast to when he “hears these words bounce off of you” in the real world of live shows.

On the surface, My Blood is clearly about family - but it also establishes a differentiation between the transience of online comradery, and the permanence of unconditional love (although that’s not to say that they’re mutually exclusive of course)! The image of blood makes the connection tangible and physical. When the rest of it falls away, when the media spotlight inevitably dims, Tyler can be absolutely certain that his family will stay; when the time comes, he can take his light - even the glow of his phone - and go with them instead. Also, “calling for your head” and the image of a “lion’s den” both seem fairly accurate descriptions of twitter.

Chlorine is replete with references to social media. Aside the aforementioned “poisonous vibrations,” the introductory words “so where are you? It’s been a little while” could gesture directly to the band’s lack of internet presence during the hiatus. Chlorine is clearly about an entity (widely assumed to be Blurryface, even the music industry) with which Tyler has a love/hate, almost addictive relationship. But what do you keep in your coat pocket? Your phone, for one thing. And as the vials suggest, our phones are something that we can’t quite seem to part with despite its ill effects. The “different lives he leads” could refer to the different personas he dons in real life and on social media.

Tyler makes a point to note that the lines “the different lives I lead, my body lives on lead” cannot be understood until heard out loud - that is, encountering them just as text limits our understanding of the meaning. When we see online social text bytes in 140 characters or less, it is impossible to accurately infer meaning, tone, intention. It’s the same kind of online misunderstanding, twisting, and disproportionate aggrandizing that he problematizes in Neon Gravestones. Finally, he apologizes for forgetting us: he hasn’t been engaging with us online for some time, so he wants to catch us up.

The Hype is simple enough to read - they need to let the way that they are glorified in the virtual world roll of their shoulders, because it is not as real as what they encounter offline. It’s worth noting, in regard to the bridge, that if you turn off your phone in the dark - and choose not to rely on the artificial light - you can’t see which way you’re going. You’ll have to hear your way around.

Nico and the Niners and Cut my Lip both contain some clues that tie in well with our theory. There is a focus on “forgetting” in Dema: “they want to make you forget” / “I’m so sorry I forgot you” / being forced to drink from a cup that sends you right back to where you started. Tyler has talked before (particularly in “What’s Your Story” about how easy it is to forget who you are when you are online, and indeed, even “morph to someone else.” Furthermore, Cut My Lip is clearly about an addictive practice, the same way that Chlorine is - and it’s no secret that many of us rely heavily on social media to feel whole, even if we don’t feel good about it. At the end of Cut My Lip, he admits that although it’s painful, this cycle of addiction he’s in has a silver lining: although the social internet is poisonous, we are there. He loves us, and he watches us, and he leans on us - his pride.

We’ve already discusses the significance of several lines in Bandito - his spirit is contained in the city because the social internet is simultaneously infinite and confining. You can never express your full self there, and yet there are an infinite number of places in which to express it. The “neon inside the glass” connects the vials to our glowing glass phone screens, ultimately empty vessels filled with ones and zeroes - but also something from which we derive and onto which we assign meaning. Also, the “nicknames” the bishops “give themselves to uninspire” are reminiscent of the identity-less twitter handles and usernames that we hide behind in order to “uninspire” - that is, to tear public figures down, to become vessels for empty hate, to say the things we wouldn’t say if we didn’t have these pseudonyms, these ghost-like personas. That fits quite well with what we know about Nico/Bourbaki being a fictional amalgamation behind which multiple people hid - the same way that Blurryface is a faceless and hateful amalgamation of insecurities.

A few final lyric notes. “Showing my faces in just enough places” could refer to attempting to gain some control over when and on what terms Tyler dons his various identities, on and off social media. “My house is the one where the vultures are perched on the roof” is a harrowing acknowledgement that wherever Tyler is, even at home (since we know that there was a major invasion of his privacy last year), he is at the mercy of the watchers, under surveillance, in the public eye.

Legend discusses death in a way that is opposite in every sense from the kind of death that is problematized in Neon Gravestones. He talks about his grandpa traveling around the sun - the opposite of the artificial neon vials; Tyler makes sure that he is immortalized for who he really is, not distorted by the public eye. He is a legend in Tyler’s own life, his real life. He is the source for Tyler’s real middle name, Robert. Not a “nickname to uninspire.” Legend is the alternative Tyler offers to Neon Gravestones, that he introduces in the final lines of that song.

In Leave the City, the line “the burning is so low it’s concerning / cause they know that when it goes out it’s a glorious gone” reminds us that when his fire goes out, that is the moment at which his Neon Gravestone will be lit up - when he will be artificially glorified by the vials, and online. But in contrast to the faceless people on the broader social media audience, those who would become more interested, or only interested, if he took his own life - the faces facing him know what he means. We know him for who he really is, not the larger than life figure who would become memorialized by the media. We come to their shows, and we look at him, and he looks back at our faces, and his words bounce off of us, and we know what he means, really truly. Leaving the City is at least in part synonymous with finding an escape from the prison of our social media selves, and Trench, by extension, is the liminal space in between that strange virtual world, and whatever indeterminate space we are supposed to define as “real life.” That in-between ground is the space in which we know him, and in which he knows us. He’s not alone there.

A few notes on Clancy to hammer this all home. This story - all of it - was initially brought to us by online means, through Clancy. The initial gif was online, our introduction to Dema itself was coded in the language of the internet: a 404 error. Our access to the online information about dema, itself, was a violation and a threat to the bishops. It was a breach in their system.

The way Clancy speaks about Dema could be coded to reflect at least part of Tyler’s sentiments about the world of the social internet. He used to view it as orderly, a home; used to view it with wonder, before realizing that it was a trap. He spent 9 years thinking of it this way - the same amount of time that twenty one pilots has had an online presence. He mentions that the Vialists’ blind worship (of the virtual world) “reversed the hope that many of us arrived with”: social media is supposed to be a positive place, but even now, we have become so accustomed to its dangers that we can’t even see it. When Clancy he escapes Dema - and becomes free of the influence of the vial light - his letters go from being typed to handwritten.

All in all, Clancy is someone who only exists to us - possibly only exists at all - online. Appropriately, when he left Dema, we stopped hearing from him on online platforms. When Clancy “stepped through” (a phrase used by Clancy of his perimeter breach, as well as regarding the noise of internet glorification in “The Hype,”) that is when the boys returned to the real world.

Regarding his escape, Clancy said of the watchers - that is, those who are constantly watching and ready to swerve, but who don’t understand the way that the ones on the outside (the banditos) do - that “we’ll divert the attention of the watchers and finally take the step through.” This letter was followed, on July 11th, by the band’s return: on the morning that Jumpsuit and NATN were released, the band literally diverted the attention of more casual fans, or those who are only in it for the sake of and because of the media hype, towards radio stations, causing them to focus their attention away from the action - which, ultimately, happened right at home on their youtube channel. By emailing us hints, by dropping the video in an unlikely place, the boys were breaking the rigid norms of the social internet, “stepping through,” and breaking the Vialist order that Clancy describes as simultaneously comforting and disconcerting in his first letter.

As they began to return, the band effectively built a bridge between the virtual and real worlds, created a space between two places; “this isn’t about in here,” Clancy said, around the same time that the image of yellow tape went up over their mailing-list sign up, symbolically preventing fans from encountering their content only through online means; “this is about there,” Clancy said, around the same time that actual physical billboards went up all around the world, announcing their return through the color yellow: the antithesis of the heatless, neon, virtual vials that keep us up at night, and that, until the sun rises and we try again, are the only reality that we can see.

“Wake up,” Tyler tells us at the beginning of Jumpsuit, the first words we heard from him after a year of silence. “We’ve been here the whole time,” he assures us, and we might have noticed, if only we were able renounce the idea that life is synonymous with media omnipresence, that being visible, being present, being here, is synonymous with ones and zeroes on the glow of a screen.

i hope this was at all helpful and/or enjoyable. If you made it through this you literally deserve Jenna’s brownies.

#trench theories #dema theory #vialism theory #vialism #trench #twenty one pilots theory #tøp theory #ugh #idk what else to say #thanks to anyone who reads this #i know it's a fucking monster #hope it makes sense

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frost-pink · 6 years

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Make My Wish Come True

(working on this list of prompts for the advent - Read it on AO3!!!!!)

It was the beginning of December and Christmas markets had been set up and running for a week now, selling kitsch and mulled wine all over the city. It had even already snowed, but all that was left of it around the mansion was ice, and what resembled clumpy white cement. In London the snow had quickly turned into slush, and then melted away, the constant traffic a strong opponent against the picture of a snow-covered city landscape.

But for the Kingsman this time of year also meant that Eggsy would soon send them his Christmas playlist.

It started with Roxy borrowing his iPod one day to go down to the gym, hers having been confiscated by R&D after a mission, as it doubled as a listening device. Scrolling through his music, she noticed at least 120 different playlists, all named and sorted by different themes. There was Daisy’s favourite lullabies, Parkour 1 through 16, Winding Down, and even Salsa for Cooking.

He created a playlist at least once a month, always under a different motto and sometimes on request. What started out as him sharing his favourites with Roxy, turned into a Kingsman wide phenomenon and soon the entire staff started following him on Spotify, his new releases highly anticipated.

Roxy was a big fan of the Outside Running playlist and Meditation after 4pm tracks could be heard regularly when one walked into Percival’s office. There were even bets going around as to what theme he would cover or whose request for a playlist would be catered to next. Such bets were currently rather limited, as everybody agreed that Christmas was really the only viable choice for this month’s upcoming playlist.

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Harry Hart was by no means a religious man. He couldn’t even remember the last time he attended a service in a church. And now, after Kentucky, he doubted he would ever voluntarily enter one again. Luckily, as he was now Arthur, and only rarely went out into the field, he got to choose where he went himself.

Still, some traditions he would uphold. Decorations and a tree for Christmas being one of them. Not because of any spiritual connotations they supposedly had, but just to remember the holidays he spent with his family as a child, when he viewed the world with innocent eyes and believed in wonders and miracles. Having lived life as a Kingsman he knew how precious such a view of the world was. Having a tree and a wreath reminded him of what it was that he was protecting.

If anyone should ever ask, this is the reason he’d give them. The fact of the matter was, that Harry Hart liked pretty things, and if they sparkled, then all the better.

It was now around 4pm on the first Sunday of Advent and as it was starting to get dark outside, he grabbed a box of matches and lit the first candle of the advent wreath, the candles all crimson this year instead of the traditional purple and pink.

When he sat back down he saw a notification blinking on his computer - Eggsy’s new playlist had finally arrived. He clicked the link and was redirected to Eggsy’s profile on Spotify. It looked different than before but Harry attributed that to the change in season and didn’t spare it any more thoughts. He clicked Play, without checking the list of songs. He preferred to be surprised by Eggsy’s creation, waiting to see if he would get more traditional carols, newer interpretations of classic songs, or a mix of the two. The first notes already clued him in as to what song was the first on the list. All I Want For Christmas Is You was a classic song of the season, at this point, and it held a special place in Harry’s heart, as it came out the same year that Harry was appointed as Galahad to the table.

As it played, Harry continued to go over his paperwork. The song ended. Only to begin again. Harry thought it was odd, but maybe Eggsy had accidentally selected the song to be in his playlist twice. A minor oversight.

He became confused, when, after the second time the song ended, it didn’t change to a different piece of music, but repeated once more.

He checked to see the entire list of songs, only to find it was almost exclusively Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You with one It’s Not Unusual by Tom Jones thrown in as track eight, before it showed another thirteen plays of All I Want For Christmas Is You.

This had to be highly irregular. Who would ever intentionally select the same piece of music this many times in a row? But then Eggsy was a trained spy, attention to detail not so much a habit as second nature to him. Maybe he was playing a prank on the staff with this playlist?

Harry decided to go down to the break room and make himself some tea, the issue of the playlist preoccupying his mind much more than it should. He just couldn’t make sense of it. Why that song in particular?

“Good afternoon, sir.” Roxanne appeared next to him, reaching for a plate and stacking a pile of brownies on it. Gawain’s wife ran a bakery in Chelsea and her brownies were loved by all. Grabbing as many as you could without seeming greedy before they were all gone was the general approach among the knights.

Harry, in his confused state, hadn’t even noticed the tray. “Good afternoon, Roxanne. Stocking up on baked goods for your upcoming mission, I see.”

“I accidentally broke R&D’s prototype for a hair-clasp containing sleeping gas, so I intend to bribe them with the brownies before I’m off. At least the flight to Baku is long enough to get through Eggsy’s new playlist. It has all my favourites on it.” She smiled at Harry, then checked her watch. “I have to get going, if I intend to make it down to Merlin’s lair before my flight. Have a good day, sir!”

“Good luck, Lancelot.” Harry watched Roxy leave with more than half the chocolate bakes, staring after her bemusedly. ‘All of her favourites’ when there were only two songs, and one of them wasn’t even Christmas themed?

Harry finished preparing his tea and made his way back to his office.

“Ah, Harry, I was just coming to see you.” Harry turned to see Merlin come down the corridor to meet him. “There’s a situation in Oslo that you should be aware of, it might be necessary to send someone to make sure it doesn’t escalate into another Valentine-esque fiasco.”

“Of course, let’s go to my office.” Harry and Merlin continued down the corridor, Merlin starting to explain what exactly was happening, or at least appearing to happen, in Norway. Harry was listening, but in the back of his mind he was still thinking about that stupid playlist. How could it possibly take up so many of his thoughts, it was only a list of songs!

“Harry?” Of course Merlin noticed his lack of attention and called him out on it. “Did you hear anything I just said to you?”

“Yes, yes, Scandinavian maniac trying to send subliminal messages through twitter, I heard you.”

“Right.” Merlin didn’t appear to be entirely convinced. After all, 25 years of friendship meant that the two men knew each other as well as two people possibly could. “Is there something on your mind?”

“It’s nothing, really. Have you taken a look at Eggsy’s new playlist for Christmas?”

Merlin obviously hadn’t expected this line of inquiry. “Aye, the lads down at R&D put it on the speakers, why?”

“What is the first song on it?”

“Some carol, O Holy Night, I think.”

“So not the Mariah Carey song?”

“I expect it to be in there somewhere. Harry, are you alright?” Merlin had stopped walking and with a hand to Harry’s arm, stopped the other man. He was starting to get concerned. Harry experienced regular migraines and Merlin was still monitoring him closely. While it was a miracle in and of itself, that Harry survived getting shot in the head with as little lasting damage as he had, he wasn’t willing to take any chances on their Arthur’s health.

“I’m fine, Merlin. Hand me the dossier and I’ll look it over now. Whom did you intend to send? Is Bedivere back from Italy yet?”

Merlin handed over the file he was carrying. “Bedivere’s mission is still ongoing, Percival and Tristan could be dispatched.”

“Alright, talk to them and then decide who’s going. Let’s all meet in my office in two hours. Anything else?” Harry’s tone of voice made it clear that he was done talking about anything not work-related.

“No, sir. I’ll be by your office at 6.30.” With that, Merlin walked back down the way they had just come and pressed the button to call the lift.

------

It was 9pm, Tristan preparing for his new mission, and most of the support staff had gone home. Harry was still in his office, handling paperwork. He was glad that he could still be involved in the proceedings of Kingsman, after months of physical therapy and regular sessions with a psychotherapist. Many would have retired after experiencing what he had, but Kingsman was his life and even obscene amounts of paperwork were better than spending too much time in an empty house, just in the company of his butterflies and Mr. Pickle.

A knock on the door interrupted whatever Harry had been thinking about R&D’s new lab equipment. He knew that Merlin only sent him the requisition forms pro forma and therefore wasn’t too invested in the details. Better to let Merlin have free reign regarding his department. “Come in.”

The door opened and Eggsy walked in with a tray, carrying a tea set and a plate full of brownies. “Evening, Harry. Thought I might still find you here.” He placed the tray on Harry’s desk, made himself a cup and then sat down in one of the chairs next to the window.

“Thank you, Eggsy. I see you’re still sitting down in other people’s chairs without prompting.” The words were more teasing than chiding, Harry knowing perfectly well that Eggsy knew how to portray the perfect gentleman when he felt it as needed.

“Baby-steps, Harry. I knocked. You want both, you’re just greedy.” Eggsy’s smile still took Harry’s breath away.

After he’d come back to England he was more than glad to see that Eggsy had survived what was now known as V-Day. The fact that his protégé stopped the world from destroying itself filled him with immense pride. It was a fairly emotional reunion, both apologising for the words they had said before Harry left for Kentucky.

Looking over at where Eggsy was sitting and nibbling on a brownie, he thought to have caught a wistful look on the younger man’s face.

“Is everything alright?” The only answer he got was some mumbling around a mouthful of chocolate, before Eggsy looked out of the window. In the dark he would only see his reflection, but Harry didn’t draw attention to that fact. Trying to change to subject he asked, “Shouldn’t you be in Stockholm?”

“There’s nothing for me in Stockholm.” Eggsy placed his cup on a nearby table.

Harry was confused. He knew that the Swedish Royal family had planned a party for this weekend, Eggsy telling him about it the week before. “I thought…”

“Tilde and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.” Eggsy interrupted him.

This surprised Harry. “I’m sorry to hear that. She seemed to be a lovely woman.”

“She is. But there’s no point in us being together when I can’t give her what she deserves. Not fair to her, when I’m in love with someone else. Doesn’t portray the idea of a gentleman, does it? So no. There’s nothing for me in Stockholm. Not when you are right here.”

Harry didn’t know what to say. He knew what he wanted those words to mean, but he wouldn’t dare to dream. He preferred to be ignorant of the possibilities rather than to get his hopes up and be disappointed.

“Harry, didn’t you listen to the playlist I sent you?” Eggsy stood up and crossed the office and around the desk, stopping right in front of Harry. He almost sounded sad at the idea.

“It’s playing right now, Eggsy.” It was the playlist that everyone else got. As it turned out, the link he had been sent was to a different profile Eggsy had created, only containing the one playlist full of Mariah Carey. Harry had spent quite some time over-analysing the meaning behind this, before deciding for himself, that it was just a prank on Eggsy’s part.

“That’s the regular one, yes. Didn’t you get the one I sent you directly?”

“I did. Although I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It seems you sent me a different one compared to everyone else.” Harry was making himself busy looking at anything other than Eggsy.

“You didn’t know what to make of a custom playlist made up of 20 tracks of All I Want For Christmas Is You? Didn’t you hear what I just said? Why Tilde and I broke it off? She knew. She knew before even I did. Didn’t want to admit to it. How could I ever be good enough for you?”

Harry whipped his head around to look at Eggsy. “Don’t! Don’t ever think so little of you! You are…” Eggsy’s words had finally caught up with Harry. The need to reprimand Eggsy for disparaging himself like this evaporating as he saw the look in Eggsy’s eyes. There was so much hope and love there, the picture matching the one Harry had often thought about and dreamed of when no-one else could see.

He could have this. They could have this.

There was a lot riding on this moment. Their entire future relationship would be decided on whatever happened in the next minute.

“What about the Tom Jones song?” Harry wasn’t entirely sure he meant to say that.

Eggsy smirked for a moment. “Inside Joke. I’ll explain it later.” He lifted his hand to Harry’s cheek, stroking his thumb just underneath the eye-patch. “Harry.” His voice almost sounded as if he was in pain. “Please?”

Harry didn’t dare breathe. This was a moment to be preserved for the ages.

“I…” He didn’t know what to say. There were no words good enough to articulate how he felt in that moment. All he could do was give a subtle nod, barely even visible.

But Eggsy had been waiting for it. For any kind of sign that he wasn’t alone in this. That Harry reciprocated his feelings. He moved his other hand to rest on Harry’s neck, leaned down and moved closer towards him until they were barely a breath away, lips almost touching. “May I?”

“Yes.” Harry replied and closed the distance.

What started as a soft press of lips soon turned into a passionate kiss, tongues fighting for dominance, hands gripping at hips and ruffling hair. When they broke away from the kiss, they kept close, both breathing heavily.

“That was better than I ever thought it would be.” Eggsy smiled and pressed another kiss to the corner of Harry’s mouth.

“Indeed it was. You taste of chocolate.”

Eggsy started laughing at the statement, Harry soon joining in. Their eyes met and they could read their own happiness in each other’s faces.

Eggsy leaned in again, stopping just a hair’s breath away, like he had before. “May I?”

“Always.”

#kingsman #fanfiction #hartwin #fanfic #fic rec #harry hart #eggsy unwin #eggsy #merlin #roxy morton #my writing #meins

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callumpugh-advertisingediti-blog · 5 years

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Advertisement Analysis: Sport

Sport commercials will fall into one of two categories. Advertisement for a brand/ product and advertisement for a sporting event. Both have similarities and differences.

Sport brand/product Ads

These kinds of adds are made to promote a brand name such as ‘Adidas’ or ‘Nike’ and to show off their range of sports wear. Some adverts that fall into this group can be of brands that arn’t necessarily sporting brands but are heavily associated with sport due to past marketing.

youtube

Pro:Direct Soccer. (2017). Nike | Play Ice. [Online Video]. 17 November 2017. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnMhH7z5Tf0.

This Nike advert above is promoting a sale of sports wear suited to winter weather, at ‘Pro: Direct Soccer’. The advert was created to promote both the new Nike product and the sale at Pro: Direct Soccer. This example of synergy at play is an interesting factor, as both companies are helping to promote each other in a beneficiary collaboration that helps to spread as much publicity as possible.

The Advert contains footage of a football game that is taking place in the winter. The footage of the game has been edited in a montage like style. This is a common editing style of sport marketing, due to the how the film series ‘Rocky’ has made the montage popular and synonymous with visualising scenes of action or sport.

The montage is accompanied by a rapidly paced rock song that connotes a sense of momentum and intensity. The montage footage itself is rhythmically cut to match the pace of the music. This allows the fast intense music to compliment the past paced editing of the montage.

In terms of colour and lighting, the footage features a desaturated look to the background, whilst the players wearing the Indigo and black kit have have become more saturated. The desaturated look to the surroundings creates a cold and potent tone, which represents the winter environment. The players have had the saturation increased to make the colour of the kit pop and to focus on screen attention to audience, as the advert is promoting this kit.

There appears to be an absence of much graphics or typography in this advert. This is because sports promotion focuses more on action rather than words. Therefore, graphics and typography only come in at the end so that the audiences attention is placed on the action of the footage.

youtube

SocialTechHD™. (2012). O2 Priority Sports - Powered by Nike+. [Online Video]. 29 October 2012. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1apa3BaMNdU.

This advertisement is an another example of synergy between two companies to help promote themselves. O2 are advertising their phone service whilst Nike advertise their deals you get with choosing O2.

Similar to the previous Nike advert, it uses a montage of clips that show the subjects constantly exercising in some manner. This connotes the idea of continuous momentum , which is intended to motivate the audience to take up exercise by using their services and deals.

The backing Track ‘Run Boy Run’ by ‘Woodkid’ is all about defying obstacles in one’s life by literally running forward. The audio visual relation in this video really stands out, as the choice of orchestral music and the message of defying the odds feels similar to how the audio visuals are used in film trailers. Therefore, the visuals literally illustrate the vocals through constant subject movement. The cutting of the editing is in sync with the rhythm of the percussion. This provides the advert with a punchy tone and makes the audience want to physically move to the beat of the music.

Sport event ads

Promotions for sport events focus more on marketing that has more in common with trailers promoting a film at the cinema. They are all about communicating excitement and grandeur in the same way that film trailers appeal to the casual audience through how they sell an epic story.

youtube

BBC. (2016). Rio 2016 Olympic Games: Trailer - BBC Sport. [Online Video]. 10 July 2016. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKcEySuuUuE.

This advert for the Rio Olympics is an example of how they market sport similar to a film. The concept behind this is that the animals of Rio show off their athletic like skills to the rest of the world.

The fact that it is an animation featuring animals suggests that one purpose of this ad is encourage young children to take up athletics. This is because animals and animation appeal to this age range, as it shares the same animation feel to it such as common children media outlets like Disney.

The ad also features a pop song that has been remixed with orchestral instruments to give it this epic and intense tone to it. Contemporary films trailers often follow this trend of using modern pop songs with an orchestral flare. A trending modern song adapted in this way grabs the attention of a broad audience because it is likely that the song will be known by many.

The use of a orchestrated pop song and an animalisitc representation of the Rio athletes is ultimately meant to draw in the attention of the general populace that would not usually watch sport. This is because the Olympics is seen as the biggest sporting event on the planet and they marketing is supposed to get as many people watching it as possible.

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hayleycarolinethomson · 6 years

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Evaluation

For this module, we were briefed to create our own fantasy festival. We had the freedom to chose whatever type of festival we wanted, what we wanted to happen there and how we went about designing and creating our vision. This was an interesting brief, as it allowed for complete design freedom, allowing us to take it whatever way we wanted to. This module was successful in letting me practise my software skills, and delve into new skills such as animated GIFs.

If I was to look at my finished project on a whole, I am pleased with the volume of work I produced, as I wasn’t afraid to make mistakes, learn from them, and show how I adapted my previous ideas to improve what I had a keep working towards the final goal. This is evident in both my sketchbook and my software design work as I realised that I no longer liked the font and visual work I was doing, and changed it to producer a clear and cooler message for my Festival. Despite having a slow start, I managed to finish everything on time and to a great level of quality for my skill range. When comparing my first set of work to my finished set of work, it is clear to see that I started making better decisions to capture the right identity to my chosen audience profile. This was more original and truer to the genre of music I had chosen.

The genre of my music festival is Hip Hop, R&B / Afro-swing type music. This is my personal preference and there is a huge following for this taste of music. These genres hold great cultural backgrounds, meaning I could have creative freedom, using whatever colours and imagery I saw fit. I am pleased with my choice of music and my execution of my ideas as I feel it worked well and gave the impression I had intended. The fist thing I looked at was my logo, and how I wanted to give my brand an identity. The name ‘Master Blaster’ take inspiration from Stevie Wonder, and his album ‘Hotter Than July’. This summer vision is exactly what I want at my festival, hence the line up I have chosen and the date of my festival to give this feel. I then played around with images of Stevie, to make the connotation clear. I then felt I wanted to take a slightly simple route for the logo, as this would have to appear on a lot of the design work I was doing. This lead me to chose a Boom Box, as this relates to when this type of music was becoming popular, and people were using Boom box’s to listen to it. I saved the Stevie imagery for my Animated GIF I created to help advertise the festival. This showed my target audience exactly what type of feel my festival was going to have, in just under 5 seconds. Unlike my competitors, as I have not seen a GIF from festivals like Wireless, to give the public a taser of whats to come. I was please with how this came out, considering it was my first time making a GIF.

I also designed wearables for the attenders of the festival, of which I tried a few different designs to see what would work best, using the logo I had made of the boombox, and even collaging photos from the era of 80’s old school hip hop as these were the times that influence modern day music from this genre. I also made tote bags using the same designs. I mocked up tickets for both days, both maintaining mu brand identity. I did this by ensuring I was only using two fonts ‘Alba’ for my logo, and ‘DIN Alternate’ for any other text on the screen. I think I was successful in painting clear brand identity. I made way findings and a festival map, again using the same text to show how all these items are linked and are all a part of Master Blaster.

The location and audience of my festival was based on how big of a culture there is for this type of music. I did some background research into the demographics of this genre, and a lot of it spoke about how youth culture has adapted Hip Hop-esc music as a way of life. I wanted to touch upon this passion and resonate it with my brand. This is why I chose two audiences, one of a younger generation of 16-26 years olds are these are the people following the newer take on this genre, and would be interested in seeing their favourite artist, and also an older generation, as they came from the ear where this music was first coming to the UK, and how quickly it picked up and formed some of the 80’s culture we see today. I also researched into how Hip Hop was introduced to the UK, and where it started, and how its progressed into what its become now. The location had to be in London, as this has to be the biggest city for this genre of music. Contrastingly, I chose Manchester to b alliance the festival over the UK effectively.

I tried to look into more practitioners for this project. Some took my interested by their use of brand identity, and how they have design and shaped a brand to make them what they are today. This was something I wanted to recreate in my own work.

We were also given a mini task during this module, which was creating a piece of art work for a song, from an album on the Secret 7 website. This was intact a competition, so this showed me what it felt like to be given a live brief, responding to a song from a personal viewpoint, and reflecting these thoughts and opinions graphically.

Overall, I am pleased with how my festival came out. I think I effectively gave the image and feel that I wanted to create. If I were to re-do this project, I wold have given myself more time to focus on all aspects of the design work, as once I got a solid idea, I was limited with what I could do with it in the space of time I had left. I will be able to learn from this mistake for next time and apply all of this is have learnt for future projects.

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firstumcschenectady · 6 years

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“A (Very) Young Mother To Be” based on Luke 1:26-45

The Christmas stories function as gospels in miniature: establishing themes, offering foreshadowing, and even telling parts of the story in smaller but parallel ways.1 One of the little connections I first noticed this year is that in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus travels several times between the seat of his ministry in Galilee and the seat of Jewish power in Judea. This text has his mother Mary traveling from Galilee, to Judea, back to Galilee, and then BACK to Judea all while pregnant!

Luke's themes – in both the Gospel as a whole and in the Christmas story - include a value of women, a focus on the marginalized, and attention to the Holy Spirit. Luke chapter 1 spends a lot of time on Zechariah, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist. Luke is the only gospel to claim that Elizabeth and Mary are kin, as well as the only one to focus on the experiences of Elizabeth and Mary. Scholars have pointed out that Luke is intentionality setting up a rather enormous proposition.

Namely, Elizabeth's pregnancy story sounds like a common Hebrew Bible story. According to Genesis none of the patriarchs and matriarchs were about to procreate without an exceptionally long wait and Divine intervention. Elizabeth and Zechariah are an older couple, without children, who have gone past childbearing age. Elizabeth and Zechariah's story sounds most like Abraham and Sarah's, although it also connotes the birth of Samuel. God intervenes, and the VERY unexpected happen, or at least it would be VERY unexpected if it weren't so common in the Bible.

Mary's pregnancy story, on the other hand, is novel in the Bible. It hasn't been told before. The ancient Greeks and Romans may have hand virgin birth stories as commonly as we have superhero movies, but this wasn't part of the Jewish tradition.

Elizabeth is an old woman, thought to be barren, who has a child because of Divine intervention. Her story resounds with Hebrew Bible echoes. Mary is a young woman, thought to be pre-pubescent, who is ALSO said to have a child because of Divine intervention. Her story has an entirely new tune and tone.

Scholars think that Luke is intending for Elizabeth's son, John the Baptist, to represent the end of an age; while Mary's son, Jesus, represents the beginning of another age.2 In that case, having the two pregnant mothers residing in the same home in the Judean hills for three months, having Mary present for Elizabeth's birth, having Elizabeth's pregnancy function as proof for Mary's experience, and having the women related to each other and spending time sharing their experiences, is potent with meaning.

Now, it does turn out that the idea of one age ending and another beginning with the births (and deaths) of those men does have some truth to it. After all, a miscalculation of the date of the Birth of Christ was the original premise of our Western Calendar. Time has been calculated since that moment. And, since Luke was writing about 60 years after the death of Jesus3, but the time these stories were written down, the sense of an era ending another beginning was presumably felt deeply. Setting up these two main characters as the icons of change indicates how important the early Christian community thought their lives were.

Now, there is a reasonably high level of certainty that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist AND that there were people who had wondered if John the Baptist was the Messiah. This means that the followers of Jesus – both during his life and after his death – had to explain why they thought THEIR guy was THE guy, and the OTHER guy wasn't. I suspect some of the reason for the story we read today is to clarify that stance. It also serves acknowledge how closely tied their lives were and how closely tied their message were. Today, I think it functions well to remind us that the “end of an era” and the “beginning of an era” still operated in continuity – with a shared understanding of God and of God's vision for the world.

Luke 1 is a chapter of waiting. It runs for 80 verses, and yet it isn't until chapter 2 that Jesus arrives. Luke 1 is a little bit of Advent and of Christmas Eve – the waiting and the not-yet. Luke 1 gets us ready and hungry, and anticipating the arrival of the Christ-child. It makes us wait from the annunciation, through travels and songs of praise, through John the Baptist's birth and circumcision, through the faith struggles of his father, and even through the start of John the Baptist's ministry before the chapter ends and we get to turn to the birth of Jesus.

It feels a bit like we are waiting with Mary, aware of the changes that are about to happen, seeing the changes in her body, wondering about the impact (she's said to ponder a lot), but without yet holding the baby nor forming him in his faith. Luke sets up Mary to be the sort of woman you can believe could raise a son like Jesus. She is named for Miriam, a wise and faithful leader, the sister of Moses.

(Mary is the Greek-i-fied version of the Hebrew Miriam. It isn't clear to me if she would have been called Miriam, but it was written down in Greek as Mary or if the Greek influence was strong enough that she lived in that tension of being named for a Hebrew heroine, but with the itself Greek-i-fied. By the way, the word for that is “grecized” but I didn't think we all knew that. Or, rather, I didn't previously know that.)

Mary is also BRAVE and FIERCE. If you remember a later story of Jesus, the one with the woman who had been accused on adultery, the one they wanted to stone – because that was the prescribed punishment for such an act – then you may note why an engaged woman agreeing to a pregnancy from not-her-fiance was so brave!! An engaged woman was seen as fully the “property” of her husband, and adultery was defined as someone sleeping with someone else's property, and a pregnancy when the couple hadn't engaged in procreative activities would generally serve as good proof of adultery. Yet, in Luke, this isn't a problem!!! For Luke, Mary speaks and is believed, and there isn't any issue at all. I like Luke. He trusts women, and he gives them voice!

In many ways this presentation of Mary becoming pregnant by God reflects the Greek and Roman influence over that region as much as her name does. This was a fairly common story in Greek and Roman myths, although, I gotta give it to Luke, this is the only story in which the woman is asked for CONSENT before getting pregnant.

Mary DOES give consent. She knows what it could cost, but she is willing. As the story goes on, she sings God's praises for being willing to lift her up by giving her this task (#tomorrowsSermon)

Now, much later in the Gospel, Jesus will be put to death because of his faithfulness to God's message and the building of God's kindom. However, in this very early passage in Luke 1, we see that his mother was also willing to take those risks in order to serve God and build the kindom. She was likely very young (on the cusp of puberty), very poor, and rather profoundly disempowered, but she is given a choice about her life and she chooses to take a risk for God's sake.

Elizabeth is also named for a Hebrew heroine, Aaron's wife (Aaron was brother to Moses and Miriam), whose Hebrew name has been translated into Greek. I choose to interpret from this story that Elizabeth was a mentor figure to Mary, a safe place Mary could go and ponder. It has already been said in Luke 1 that John the Baptist was going to be gifted with the Holy Spirit, and in this scene it is clear that the gift is so strong as to move his mother too! Elizabeth is presented as speaking a truth that much of the world will never see, and it is presented as if God's own wisdom is able to move through her.

Elizabeth praises Mary BOTH for the wonder of having Jesus in her womb AND for faithfulness in believing God when she was told what would happen. I appreciate that this praise comes in two parts, too much of Christianity has only praised Mary for being the mother of Jesus, and missed that the story presents her as one of his teachers and mentors as well. Elizabeth expresses shock that she could receive the gift of a visit from such an important woman, and that the baby in her womb recognized the wonder of what was happening.

Luke 1 reminds us why the birth itself even matters! Luke 1 sets us up to notice that when God is up to something, God doesn't tend to pick the already powerful and noteworthy figures to do the work! Luke notes that God works with and through women, and the marginalized, through that unable to be controlled Holy Spirit. Luke sets us up to notice that something BIG is about to happen and it will change the world.

Which perhaps leaves us with a very important question: how has the birth of Christ changed the world FOR US, and how are our lives and actions different because of it? The era we live in has been formed by these stories, and they are ours to ponder. Are we ready, like Mary, to answer the call for radical change with “let it be with me according to your word.”? May we be. Amen

1John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg point this out in The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus' Birth (USA: HarperOne, 2007)

2Fred B. Craddock, Luke in the series Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990) p. 29. This is one of several times this theory has been written, but he said it in a particularly accessible way.

3I'm taking this from the estimate that Luke was written in about 85 CE, while Jesus was born in about 5 BCE, and lived about 31 years. The “mid eighties” guess comes from R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press: 1995) p. 8.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

#Merry Christmas #FUMC Schenectady #UMC #Schenectady #Thinking Church #Marcus Borg #John Dominic Crossan #Luke is a feminist #Passes the Bechdel Test #Mary #Elizabeth #Greek Influenced Hebrew Culture #Rev Sara E Baron #Advent 4 #Christmas Eve #We laugh #Luke 1 #Consent

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s0021845a2film-blog · 7 years

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2. A. Initial Ideas.

Macro concepts in relation to my short film

Editing

Editing will play a key part in the making of the film, I shall edit my footage in a way that it is in-sync with the music and cut certain sections into montages, particularly that of wide location shots, which is a reoccurring technique used in Betty Blue and Amelie. In my short film, editing will help juxtapose themes of death and crime with romance and beauty.

Dissolves and clear cuts in scenes are used efficiently and successfully in Betty Blue and I will use fades when changing between acts and clear cuts through the majority of it as it is a fairly serious action film.

When cutting I’ll be using shot/reverse shot, eye-line match, jump cut, and cross-cutting. I’ll especially be using wide two shots to indicate the closeness of the two characters when they interact to reiterate that there is an ambiguous intensity between the two.

Cinematography

My film will heavily be inspired by the Cinema Du Look movement. I’ll include lots of wide shots and shot framing to accentuate the personality of the characters and the action of the scenes. There will be binary opposites of blue and red in my film as it something that is prominent in Betty Blue and I would like my female protagonist to embody red, as it has connotations of love but also danger which is fitting as she too is an assassin and imposes a threat to my male protagonist.

I will use natural lighting throughout the majority of the film, apart from moments in which I want to accentuate the personalities of my characters, in which blue or red lighting will feature or at least tint the footage.

Mise en Scene

The setting and the mise en scene will be very prolific in my short film as Cinema Du Look is dependent on the character’s style. Hence my lead protagonists will be using costumes that feature the primary colours of red and blue, which establishes a link to my primary text research of Betty Blue.

The actress playing Natalie will be wearing a red dress and Matheus will be wearing dark colours and circular sunglasses showing a link to Betty Blue and Leon’s costume in Leon the Professional. Therefore, costume will help attribute characteristics to my protagonist and her love interest.The teen bedroom I’ll be filming in will include posters and a record player and a messy set up to suggest it is just a typical teenage bedroom. I shall also be using a key prop of sunflowers to capture the saturation of colour and happiness that appear the early stages of the characters’ relationship.

Sound

As I intend to use only two lines of dialogue in my short film, the soundtrack will be incredibly important in order to establish the mood. Hence I want to use a song with a strong drum and bass beat to keep the viewing audience engaged. However, if that is unavailable I will use a score to accentuate action, dialogue and emotion instead.Hence demonstrating an ability to use sound to speak the character’s emotions and build tension. The sound will essentially be in sync with the on screen visuals too and this will give the short film a more aesthetic appeal.

Diegetic and non-diegetic sound has been used effectively in my textual analysis films and I will be using a lot of non diegetic sound in my film, especially scores like the saxophone score from Betty Blue and then save the diegetic sound for the conversations between characters.

I won’t be using an sound effects but neither films in my textual analysis used it a lot so instead I will incorporate a soundtrack or score. I could use sound perspective when one of the characters plays a song on a record player.

The micro technical elements in relation to my short film and my textual analysis sequences:

My short film will be shot quite stylistically. It will start off with a cold, blue tint as it reflects the male protagonist but will grow warmer as he is touched by the kindness of his next hit. It will take a cinema du look style so costume in particular will be vital in capturing the aesthetic in which the movement is so concerned with. The costumes will be inspired by Betty’s attire in Betty Blue and Leon’s attire in Leon: The Professional.

Narrative:

My short film will focus primarily on the disquilibrium stage of Todorov’s equilibrium theory, due to my film being approximately 2 minutes long. Therefore there isn’t time to progress a single stage. My narrative will be linear as my focal films are linear and thus my own film will be less confusing to the viewer. I have also incorporated Barthes’ Hermeneutic Code which discusses an element of the story that is left a mystery, as the reason why she has a hit on her isn’t revealed to the very end - it was a mere test of his strength as an assassin.

In my textual analysis my male protagonist starts the film in the equilibrium stage but when he develops feelings for the person he is meant to kill he is launched into the disequilibrium stage of Todorov’s equilibrium theory and then the film goes onto establish a new equilibrium for the characters. Prop character types featuring in my short film include:

The Hero (Mathias)

The False Hero/The Princess (Lisa)

My narrative will be a linear narrative like my primary texts. I will be featuring a music score/song as it can heighten dramatic effect as well as being more convenient and leave more space of noisy filming in which I can just cut out the sound and insert a score.

Themes: Are you going to explore any key themes such as: coming of age, man vs. society, man vs. himself, man vs. technology, redemption, revenge?

A key theme in my short film is primarily loneliness. There is an element of loneliness in each of my chosen films, Amelie, Leon and Zorg all experience feelings of loneliness which I look to explore in my own male protagonist which essentially weakens him to the point his own life is lost.

I will also be exploring key themes of romance and man vs. himself. The last two themes have also been explored in my chosen focal films Leon:The Professional and Betty Blue as both male protagonists doubt whether to continue with their love interest.

For example man vs. himself could be visually represented through the shots of Leon (Leon: The Professional) and Zorg (Betty Blue) looking at their own reflection and debating on whether to continue alongside the female protagonists of the films. I will reflect this theme as my male protagonist forces himself to put aside his affection for his target I shall to complete the job only for it to be too late as she kills him first.

Representation: Will your short film conform to / challenge any stereotypical representations? E.g. stereotypes of gender, disability, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, or age?

My short film will challenge stereotypical representations of sexuality and gender. My creative investigation is based on the representation of women in particular and I have chosen to use a strong female character in my own film - however she is initially portrayed as quiet and soft-spoken but this is to manipulate the audience into misjudging her thus when she turns out to be a killer herself, there is an element of shock. I have chosen to do this as it challenges the representation of women, which arguably is characteristic of the movement I am studying.

Messages & Values: What message do you want your audience to take away from your film?

I want my film to view women in a different way, that they are more than two-dimensional and can hold are darker side too. I want to follow the style of Leon the Professional and portray a woman as ‘badass’ as well as in Betty Blue where Betty is portrayed as confident in her own sexuality.

Style: Will your short film be influenced by a particular film movement e.g. British New Wave Social Realism, Film Noir, French New Wave, German Expressionism

As my film will be inspired by the Cinema du Look movement, the style, themes and messages of my film will be influenced by that of my primary texts.

Authorship: How will you be influenced by the ‘auteur’ features of one of your textual analysis films? Or, are you going to be influenced by one of the other authors of the film e.g. the cinematographer, sound engineer etc.

My film will be influenced by the auteur features of the genre/movement of cinema du look itself. I will adopt a similar stylistic approach to my film in terms of cinematography and narrative -drawing inspiration from cinematographer Thierry Arbogast’s work in Leon: The Professional. His impeccable attention to lighting and shadow help soften scenes and place emphasis on emotion. Authorship will also be influenced by Luc Besson’s as I would like to write my own script and expressive monologue to impose my own choices and thoughts into the film.I used the change from colour to black and white serves as a hyperbole for the gap a broken down relationship can leave in our lives. I shall also include a similar ‘indie’ soundtrack to my film like Leon: The Professional to help consummate the stylistic gangsta thriller genre. However, if I am unable to find a suitable, royalty free song I will resort to using a score like the piano one in Amelie.

Write about your plans for each aspect of mise en scene in terms of your film.

location - very naturalistic- several outdoor settings. set design - casual and interesting - photographs and diagrams and several pieces of paper. costume - intriguing and individual to each character - reiterate the binary opposites of red and blue. make-up - I will be applying the makeup for the protagonist and use Jean Luc Godard female protagonists for my inspiration. props - music orientated, several posters, primary coloured clothes. colour design - primary colours used, and sunset/sunrise lighting used. casting - two characters

How has my creative investigation inspired my film?

I have mainly taken inspiration from Leon the professional, but incorporated the doomed romance aspect from Betty Blue, I shall also pick a aesthetically pleasing female actress for the female role in the film, whose clothes will reflect the primary coloured mise en scene found in Betty Blue.

However the film will also have a green gradient to it with it implying darker themes as well as a reference to the colour gradient used in my final chosen film Amelie.

A character profile for my protagonist?

Natalie

brunette, early 20s

big eyes

quiet

always listening to music

deadly calm

black turtleneck

wears red often, particularly red lipstick

small

Andrew:

tall and lean, mid 20s

circle black glasses

long coat

dark, short hair

piercing blue eyes

carries around a slick black gun

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s0022415asfilm · 7 years

Text

Evaluation.

WHAT WERE THE AIMS OF THE ARTEFACT?

The main aim of the artefact was to create a short, 2-minute film based on my textual analysis films. For my personal film, I wanted to show clear inspiration from my short films and also approach the idea of gender and relationships, and the way they intertwine and affect each other. In my Post A. The Brief, I wrote that at the moment I didn’t have a specific idea for what I wanted to do for my film, but that I know that it will revolve around a lonely male protagonist and a fictional love interest.

From my textual analysis, I hoped to discover more about my own short film through research and thorough studying of the films. I chose Her and Ruby Sparks because they are similar in that the female love interest is fictional and they suit my macro concept of representation. I also hoped to achieve a thorough understanding of my macro concept, which I believe I did because I was then able to plan a film that suited and approached the concept well.

The main aim of my artefact in terms of the audience and its message was to display a relationship and possibly heighten the stereotypes of modern society. By creating a world where women’s faces are blurred until a man ‘finds his face’, exaggerates the world we live in where a woman either controls herself or is controlled by a man, for the benefit of a man. Also, by including a dating website designed to overcome this problem of ‘finding your face’, I feel like I can really increase the verisimilitude of my film and make it more obvious to the viewer that it is not simply a love story but is a comment on our society and it’s workings.

WHAT CODES AND CONVENTIONS IDENTIFIED IN THE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS WERE USED IN THE ARTEFACT?

I chose to work in the same genre as my textual analysis texts (TA texts). Both of my TA texts were examples of the romantic subgenre of the drama genre. Through research of the drama genre, I discovered that their narratives usually revolve around real life situations with realistic characters, and intend to emotionally move the audience. Key themes of the genre include current issues, societal ills, attitudes towards women and relationship problems. So, I knew it was the perfect choice of genre to direct my film towards because of its attention to perception of women and relationships. Key iconography includes crying, teenager’s bedrooms and their personal belongings. In my short film, I included the protagonist’s personal bedroom and his laptop on a dating website, to make it obvious to the viewer that he was lonely and looking for a partner.

In terms of cinematography, I have been greatly influenced by Her and Ruby Sparks, my TA films. I included lots of wide establishing shots, close-ups and eye line matches to reflect the shots in my TA films. As you can see from the following screenshots of my TA films side by side with my short film, I have tried to incorporate Her and Ruby Sparks’ cinematography into my film. I specifically wanted to replicate the colours shown in my TA films, so I increased the warmth in my camera as I was shooting and I decreased the exposure, to get a dark and warm shot.

An example of a wide shot in Her:

An example of a wide shot in Find Your Face:

An example of a wide shot in Ruby Sparks:

These three shots are significant because of what they represent and at what point the shots occur in the films. In Her, this shot of Theodore walking around his city with his coat in his hand comes after an argument with his ‘girlfriend’ Samantha, after she leaves in an emotional state and has left him alone. He is walking around contemplating his loneliness. Usually, when we see Theodore walking around like this in Her, he has Samantha in his pocket, constantly in his ear talking about the world and sharing it with him, and vice versa. So, the contrast of this scene where he is alone and Samantha’s voice is not there with him makes his loneliness even more obvious and allows us to somewhat feel what Theodore is feeling. In Ruby Sparks, this shot comes after Ruby leaves after a huge argument much like Her. Calvin is shown at his desk, contemplating what just happened and what he should do next. In my film, Charlie, the protagonist, is walking around an empty city at night, holding his coat in his hand exactly as Theodore is doing. He is also in a similar state of mind; he is incredibly lonely and is contemplating his life. I decided to replicate these shots in my film because I thought that having the protagonist alone in the shot, surrounded by dark, warm light was a really effective way of showing their loneliness.

I also tried to replicate lighting in my cinematography, as well as colour. Here in all 3 films’ medium close-ups, where the lighting is similar and the colours are all warm.

An example of medium close up in Her:

An example of medium close up in Find Your Face:

An example of medium close up in Ruby Sparks:

There are particular shots like the ones above that I really wanted to include in my short film for a number of reasons. Firstly, these shots in my TA films represent something quite similar to my short film. In Her, for example, this shot comes just after Theodore’s ‘girlfriend’ Samantha (the OS), decides to leave him for a while after an argument. So, Theodore is lonely in this shot and is contemplating what his next move should be. This is significant because of the way that Theodore feels in this moment; he is helpless and lonely; he cannot control the fact that Samantha has left him because it was her conscious choice - a move more human than robot. It is a very real moment for him and is very representative of normal human to human relationships, where emotion can get the best of a person and cause them to leave. In Ruby Sparks, the shot comes after Calvin and Ruby also have a huge argument and Ruby is left devastated on the floor, not moving or talking to Calvin, representing a different kind of emotional exhaustion. She is so overwhelmed by the emotion of the argument that she is left physically tired. So, she is removed from the situation like Samantha removes herself, however, she is still physically there. In my short film, this shot is used at a point where the protagonist, Charlie, is looking through a dating site and deciding what to do. He is at a crossroads; he doesn’t want to give into this patriarchal society where a woman’s identity is controlled by her relationship status, and he certainly doesn’t want to contribute by joining a seemingly misogynistic dating website. However, he is extremely lonely, and he spends his days in solitude, much like Theodore at the start of Her. So, Charlie feels an overwhelming need to do something about it. Like in Her, when Theodore creates the OS to become his companion or in Ruby Sparks when Calvin writes about his ideal girlfriend and she comes to life. All Charlie wants is a girl to share his life with; he is finally coming to terms with the fact that the only way for him to find his partner may be through this website. I decided to show this emotion with a medium close up because it gives the audience a good chance to really look at Charlie’s face and see his emotion - they can see that he is thinking about what to do next. By placing this shot after an eye-line match (shown below) I am making it obvious to the viewer what he is thinking about.

eye-line match in Find Your Face:

In terms of editing, I used mainly cuts and jump cuts, since that is what is used in my TA films. However, I also included a few fade to black screens and fade to red screens. I used these because I wanted to represent my character’s emotion and also represent a change in location. The first fade to red is symbolic because my character is emotional; red symbolises love but also anger and passion, so I wanted to essentially bathe my character in this colour to hint to the audience that he is feeling strong emotion. After this, I included a shot of the website to again hint that this is where his emotion was directed.

I also used a cut to black to show a change in location, and a fade to red in the final sequence to allow the title to come up.

In terms of mise en scene, I focused on the costume to replicate Theodore’s signature costume from Her; a red shirt.

Theodore in his red shirt:

Charlie in his red shirt:

I purposefully made sure to include this as an homage to Her and also because of the way the use of red affects an audience. I included red a fair amount in my film because of its connotations of love and passion, and also because it gives a warm tone to the film.

I also used bright city lights at night to replicate Her.

bright city lights in Her:

and:

bright city lights in Find Your Face:

and:

In terms of sound, I focused on only using a soundtrack. I used a song written and recorded by my brother to ensure there were no copyright violations, and I also feel like the song really suits the film. I planned to use a voiceover, however, I didn’t feel there was an appropriate moment in the film without re-editing entire sequences so I made the decision not to include it.

HOW WERE THE PLANNING MATERIALS USED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ARTEFACT?

Initially, I knew I wanted Her by Spike Jonze to be one of my TA films because it has always been one of my favourite films and I am forever fascinated by its cinematography, narrative, representation and it’s history (in terms of reflecting Spike Jonze’s personal life and being a rumoured sister film to Lost In Translation - another favourite of mine). However, I was at first lost on how I was going to incorporate Her into my TA since I didn’t know what macro feature I should focus on and which other film I should study. Then I realised that perhaps one of the most intriguing things about Her is the way that Samantha and Theodore’s relationship is represented, and I knew that I wanted to focus on that. Especially in terms of gender because the entire film is centred around Samantha - the title; ‘Her’, Theodore’s life becoming increasingly better the more Samantha became involved, the fact that it was possible to create a female OS system exactly to your liking and engage in a relationship with them. I also realised that Theodore as a man is represented in a more emotional way than most Hollywood leading men; he is sensitive and loving and longing for companionship, which I find refreshing, and I knew I wanted to include that in my short film. I decided to include Ruby Sparks because of the similarities in characters; both involve a lonely male protagonist on the search for his perfect girlfriend and ends up creating them instead.

This is the primary idea that led to my film. I took this idea of a lonely male protagonist and created my protagonist, Charlie. Then I took the idea of being able to control a woman to a point where she can become a product of you and I created the concept of ‘Find Your Face’ - a world where women’s faces depend on which men they are loved by.

I think my three most integral parts of the planning process were my initial ideas, my shot list, and the creation of my fictional dating website, primarily because of the fact that they allowed me to envision my film and create an idea in my head. More than simply writing a shot list and script and calling it a day, I wanted to really create this world in my head; this alternate universe where women’s stereotypes and gender roles are heightened; a world where the patriarchy is exaggerated. I did this by creating the Find Your Face dating website and spending days creating fake profiles for women. I really hoped to increase the verisimilitude of my film by doing this.

a screenshot of the fake profiles on the Find Your Face website:

an example of the Find Your Face website in my film:

I’m really satisfied with the amount of planning I did for my short film because I believe that I did the right amount to create a natural film that isn’t too strictly shot or edited, and I feel like that came across in my film.

In reflection, my film has turned out slightly different than I had planned, which I think is primarily down to the fact that I never had a solid plan to begin with. As I’ve said, I wanted to create this fictional world and allow a film to flow from that rather than just strictly plan a film. Overall I am very happy with my result.

HOW SUCCESSFUL WAS THE ARTEFACT IN ACHIEVING THE AIMS?

I believe that I achieved what I set out to do in both my TA and my short film. In my TA, I accurately and fairly tackled the macro concept of representation of gender and relationships and I gained a large amount of knowledge and inspiration from it. Without doing the appropriate amount of research into my TA films I wouldn’t have been able to create my short film as it is. In terms of my short film, I think it successfully approaches the macro concept of representation and I think it’ s biggest success is possibly the way that it reflects my TA films so well. I purposefully paid homage to one of my favourite films by taking inspiration from the mise en scene, cinematography and editing. I also believe that my film gains more stability in its role as a comment on women’s place in society since I am a woman myself, I know the different ways that stereotypes - especially around appearance - can have on a young woman. I wanted this world to reflect that and I am confident that it did.

If I had a chance to do a different edit I would only try to find a suitable moment in the film to add a voiceover. If I had the chance to start again completely, I would film different shots and gather a larger volume of varied shots so that I had more freedom when it came to editing, and if I needed to, I’d be able to re-edit so that there was a more appropriate moment for a voiceover to be used. Overall I am very happy with the work that I have done.

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