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docilepillow · 1 month

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MARCH 2024 MEDIA DIARY 2

I ran out of embed space on the first post i had slotted in for this!!! So i'm making two posts!!!!!!! They belong together!!!! Okay!!!!!!! PIZZA TOWER < this game is soggy goop >

Even though I cleared a good portion of this game nigh a year ago now, i still feel compelled to put it on my media diary now, as i've only just got around to finishing the game properly! I believe the point i dropped off the game before was at Pig City, which, i think , is kinda understandable given how big that level is, but, was probably a real bummer for the whole of my friend group who were super into the game when it was new and i probably missed out on talking about it alot with them... POOP!!!! just because this game is popular enough to actually warrant talking about it with my friends later, instead of saying stuff like how i enjoyed the silly cartoony art stlye and the games general charm, im just going to post a level tier list i made the second i beat the game at like near midnight kinda hazy-minded without thinking on it too hard without thinking too deeply in a way thatll be completely inflamitory bc im mostly satisfied with the experience i had and dont really feel the urge to P rank anything --

The stats are saying my total hours round up to 6 hours 50 and pepinno is pointing at me Aughh

My , , Errr, " CRITISISM " of this game is that the funny pizza man is a little, erm, STICKY? Kinda gross. a little weird. Partially my fault. I'm sowwy. I'm not very good at this game but i absolutely respect everyone's opinion on it . Go watch my friend @shoppncart's speedrun, by the way, it's cool :

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Speedy! THE MARIO MOVIE < the bario boooby geheheheheheheh >

this is probably a tired opinion but since i was subjected to this movie for the fifth time in a voice call my take is thaat this is probably more enjoyablel then the safeass illumination film. like. yea. that films probably objectively better but. id rather watch something thats an actual adaptation. like this movie. where basically nothing mario happens outside names . Aw. i honestly think this movie has intrigue to it genuinely maybe im saying this bc its one of the movies ive actually watched repeatedly before, like roger rabbit, but i think the history behind this movie and the old anamocity turned-endearment are what make it worth watching. that and its a little goopy You Guys Wanna See Some MM2 Proggys? not a new piece of media technically but ive been playing a fuckton of MM2 recently still as of the end of the month and its absolutely dominating my time as of late, and i kinda wanna show off a small amount of the progress ive made on it, as much as the world map, at least --

It's a media diary. it exists to document MY gaming life. Deal. anyway in regards to it i'm almost finished with the world 4 castle, which is crazy, because before i hadn't even finished world 2, but now i got all of this creative energy in me... If i finish this soon enough, i'd be able to upload it on NSO, so keep your tumpler eyes peeled, mutrals :J I personally like it because theres a theme of aescending on the world map. The space theme in this looks the best, i think.. THE ALCHEMY OF US - HOW HUMANS AND MATTER TRANSFORMED ONE ANOTHER < what the fuck ????? a book ??????? >

yea thats right im reading books this ones actually pretty good apparently a 2020 bestseller though im not in the habit of reading those often so i'll just have to take their word for it on that aspect. i think lifes all about trying new things so around halfway through the month i picked up this cool book i found at my library and got a library card. After reading through it all, i think anecdotally that this book is a very neat read. theres a few sentences that're a little offputting to my young mind but overall the book is filled with alot of cool insight i reccomend checking out if youre the boooky type of person! i think its very good and im glad i picked it out :) i donnu how many of these will be going onto my media diary in the future or anything , but maybe i will if i end up reading more! I'll have to make it up to a friendd for waiting till now to put up something i read here first before that thing she likes. oops.

Volp. OUTSIDE of the traditional media format again, also, are things i largely started on this month but don't think i'll be making all too much more progress in, or if i'm unsure i'll finish what i was doing all in one month- CASTLEVANIA THE ADVENTURE- REBIRTH

POINT OF DROP OFF - STAGE 4 END BOSS REASON BEING - UMMM SORRY I GOT DISTRACTED AND DIED TOO MUCH

castlevania rebirth is a really really cool game. its really cool and im not typing this as fresh as everything else because it was something i picked up for one big sitting earlier in the month. i probably couldve finished it at any point during the week, but simply was too distracted and wanted to do other stuff. It's very cool though, i love the vector sprite art, and there ARE silly stock sound effects everywhere, which is always a big positive for me . I mostly just like how snug the wii classic controller is , and this is a cool game to play it with considering its one of the only non virtual console or old game collection style games available for wii in this exact style ( Not counting the good handful of games that choose to use the wiimote on its side instead. )

over all ill probably sit down and finish this someday soon i just gotta like find time for it whenever next my wii u is plugged in ( it fights for an hdmi slot with my switch and ps4 all the time...! ), and ill probably end up trying to play punch out wii at the same time, given one doesnt dominate my attention over the other. From my understanding they're both short, though, so it shouldnt be too big a deal or obstacle no matter how long i put this off. RANDOM TERRARIA PLAYTHROUGH terraria playthru 1million

ii just really want to see the new terraria update Waaaah... i stopped having fun because i self imposed myself to not use setbonus armor sets at the part of the game where that stops being acceptable anymore so im stopping i think i did get to make another terraria pet though that makes me happy POINT OF DROP OFF - the mechanical bosses

also the most recent thing is

i got too tense and needed to excuse myself after like an hour 30 i cant take too much tension in movies i was really uncomfortable and had to leave to take a breather bc the main character gets put in a really really shitty situation and it was getting hard to watch for my autistic ass

thats enough i think thanks for coming see you next month lol

#Youtube

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orcelito · 9 months

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I'm interested in Trigun after seeing your posts/reblogs and I'm wondering: what is the best way to consume such media and where could a person go about finding it? 🥰

oh FUCK yea

TLDR answer: trigun 98 -> badlands rumble -> trigun manga -> trigun stampede. going into why below. (under readmore bc this accidentally got long. again.)

ok well. common consensus is to watch the original anime (referred to as trigun 98 by much of the fandom) bc it has a slower start & lets you get to know the characters a lot more than the new anime (assisted by the 26 episodes length, as opposed to 12). it preserves the Mystery of what Vash's deal is for much longer, & is in general pretty entertaining to watch if you don't know wtf is going on. it's Legally on uh. crunchyroll? i think? tho i watched it here: https://aniwatch.to/trigun-266. just like. normal sketchy site safety, adblock is ur best friend, don't click on things. etc. if this site doesnt work for u then u could always google another.

there's a movie, Badlands Rumble, which is based off the trigun 98 canon, so probably a good place to watch it is right after that. just uh. be mindful that Vash's behavior is a Lil... obnoxious at points lol. but it's still a fun movie overall with plenty of good shit in it, so it's worth watching still. i watched it w/ a friend streaming it so i dont have a link onhand, but u could probs find it thru that same site if u search for it.

NEXT UP is my personal favorite, the manga. theres trigun original and trigun maximum, which is the direct continuation of the original (there was an issue with the publishers and licensing so upon continuing the manga w/ a different publisher, Nightow had to rebrand it. it's otherwise the same manga). i recommend this one next bc it's the most whole of story & goes deeper into things than the original anime, but it's also what the new anime is based on (aka why i recommend this one first). it can get FUCKED UP (they all can really, but trimax Especially) so probably look up a triggers list if u think u might need it. it's SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking good tho. genuinely owns my soul. i was a different person after reading it (not rly better or worse, mostly just more insane). there r a few translations online - an old fan translation (DO NOT TOUCH, full of horrid translations and insertions of bigotry that arent in the original), the official Dark Horse translation (an... ok translation, though it has plenty of errors and confusing translations. it's what i first read so it's Okay, but not the best), AND the trigun manga Overhaul project, which u can find on tumblr. this one's the best one bc it's lovingly translated and a LOT more accurately done. i swear things that were so confusing at first are So Clear reading this one. u can find the masterpost Here: https://trigun-manga-overhaul.tumblr.com/post/701392615591034880/trigun-ultimate-overhaul-masterpost-heres-all-the. or just go to their blog @/trigun-manga-overhaul. just trust me on this it's where U wanna read.

an offshoot of it (and what ive been reading today) is an anthology sort of manga, Trigun Multiple Bullets, which is also in that post. it was released as part of the BLR movie release, & the first part is kinda After It? but overall it's just a standalone piece with some side stories. where is this in the manga canon timeline? Who Fuckin Knows. just read it and have fun lol

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST is the most recent anime, Trigun Stampede. this is a CGI remake that aired at the start of this year & caused the trigun renaissance. now a lot of people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to hearing it's CGI, but trust me, this is basically THE BEST application of CGI in anime i've ever really seen. absolutely beautiful. fucking gorgeous. plus with really cool action sequences, and OF COURSE the music is literally one of my favorite anime soundtracks Ever. it's gotten critiques for its pacing, which can be pretty rushed, but they were trying to fit a lot more story in a lot less episodes than the original anime (again, it only has 12 episodes), so keep that in mind. it's not a remake in the traditional sense of redoing the exact same story, so there are changes in the timeline and characters from what's in the original anime or even the manga. one of the biggest things people were unhappy about is the absence of a main character, Milly, who is seemingly replaced by a random man that's not in the other versions, Roberto. Milly will be in season 2 though, as was revealed with the final episode. all in all, it's Kind Of a prequel, though also a remix/reimagining based largely off of the manga's canon over trigun 98. so long as you go into it not expecting it to be Just Like the other versions, it's a really wonderful story in and of itself. it's available on Crunchyroll, which you SHOULD watch there if u have it bc that would give them more money for a season 2 (which is in development). if ur like me tho n dont wanna pay for crunchyroll (it's Specifically a premium-only anime :p), u can watch it where i watched, aka here: https://aniwatch.to/trigun-stampede-18281.

all in all, each version has its strengths and weaknesses, but i've found the best way to go about enjoying All of them is to treat them as their own things. it can be fun to compare them, especially when it comes to things made Different plot or character-wise, but they are separate things. a lot of people who hate one or the other r coming from the angle of expecting one to be just like the other, & are then disappointed (trigun 98 being a Lot sillier at first than trigun stampede, which is a lot more serious sci-fi western in tone).

And Overall. i love them all. so i hope you do too!

#speculation nation #anonymous #ask #im gonna main tag this since i put some time into typing this out skldjfsldjf #trigun #so if any1 else is interested in getting into the rest of the series. this is a good general guide. from my pov of it #*personally* i went tristamp -> manga -> 98 -> BLR -> multiple bullets #bc tristamp was the shiny new thing that caught my interest. and the manga is what made me Stay.#the manga is what made me Severely mentally ill in fact. i cannot stress enough how good it is.#i am also someone who really doesnt care about spoilers. so tristamp giving away Big Plot Things in the very first episode didnt bother me #but especially for ppl who like a lil mystery to it. 98 is a good way to go #plus it's entertaining to watch vash be fucking Mental & not knowing wtf is actually going on #like 'we're doing This now? ok. ok ok ok sure i guess. this might as well just happen.'#but yea. i hope this helped :')

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leporellian · 2 years

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this is sort of a silly question but what are some good opera recordings for someone who’s never watched opera before…. im VERY interested in the drama and stories and everything u talk about and have been wanting to watch some lately..

ehehehe (rubbing my hands together)... these will be video productions and not audio bc i find introductions work best with the videos

MY FAVORITE RECORDINGS OF MY BIG 4 FAVORITE OPERAS THAT I WILL NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT:

- don giovanni: salzburg festival 1987 owns so much. it's a very simple production (no 'gimmicks', set in original setting, kinda nothing special costumewise or setwise) but the acting and general flow is really good and gets across Exactly what don giovanni, as a piece of media, is. i think the met 1990 one is also good and is also good at getting across don g. but it's like... too glitzy sometimes and isn't as... idk... accurate. (i have a copy of the 1987 salzburg w/ subtitles so dm me about it, but i know both of these exist online but without subtitles.)

- the rake's progress: glyndebourne 2010 just GETS it. rake's is an opera that needs to be set in its original setting of like, a funhouse mirror version of the 18th century, and the hockney production (which this is) gets it like no other production. also the singers are good and have been nice to me on twitter dot com. there's other rakes that can be found online but they take the opera like... too seriously as an arthouse piece and not a funhouse one. (again i have a copy of this so dm me. it's in english but you probably will need to reference the (also online) libretto bc english opera sounds strange if you aren't used to it)

the marriage of figaro: oooh this one is hard. the other 3 here i can kinda point to like one thing or the other and be like 'thats it thats the one' but there's no production of marriage of figaro that sticks with me as The one. generally as long as it has subtitles and doesn't have the aforementioned arthouse feel youre fine LOL there's like 50 good ones on youtube

rigoletto: i like the 1982 ponnelle movie sue me. tbh this is less bc i particularly have a thing for the ponnelle movie as much as it is... like... sorry but nobody comprehends rigoletto in the same shrimp colors way i do so there's no production i've seen where i stop and go "yes this is IT" (mostly this is because directors do not know that the title character is disabled despite that being like the core of the entire show) but the 1982 movie is good. it is on youtube but i believe it does not have subtitles so you'd have to have a libretto on hand (thankfully that is also online)

other starter operas and their best productions-

the barber of seville: my mutuals would kill me and bury me in a roadside ditch if i didn't say the 2007 met opera one (which i have a link to but i would have to check for subtitles). the royal opera house one from 2009 (iirc? its the one where joyce didonato broke her leg) is also baller too tho but i'd have to search for it bc i haven't ripped my blu-ray of that yet

carmen: shit man the best carmen i've ever seen was a live show so this one is hard for me. the met one from... 2009? is good but now that ive seen a carmen that's like genuinely bone-chilling it's hard to find anything that compares

la boheme and la traviata: i'm putting these together because they're both 'girl gets tuberculosis and mcfucking dies' but in like different ways. and also bc i am not the expert on either of them so i'd have to do research (read: consult my mutuals and discord until someone reaches a conclusion) so put a pin in this one

il trovatore: trovatore is not usually considered a starter opera but its so integral to this blog as the Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy Opera that it needs to be mentioned. again nobody gets trovatore like i and da mutuals do so there's no trovatore that like, Has the emotional impact i think it should have so uh. watch either the met 2013 or 2015 one (which ik i have around somewhere but i'd have to track for subtitles) and then watch the hawkfrost 3rd planet pmv right after so you can Understand the Gravitas etc

others: ask me personally bc i talk about many more operas than just that and they are all insane.

#opera tag

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the-bau-quinjet · 3 years

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Breakable Heaven

Chapter 11 of In Breakable Heaven! We’re getting to the part that inspired the whole idea for this series, so I’m pretty excited!

Summary: Reader deals with the repercussions of being abducted.

Warnings: hospital recovery (I don’t know if that needed a warning but just in case), nothing else I can think of

Word Count: ~2100

You were wheeled out of the classroom on a stretcher, not fully conscious but not completely out of it either. Spencer stood frozen in the corner, watching as the medics loaded you onto the stretcher and wheeled you out of the room. You wanted nothing more than to be able to tell him you were okay, but you couldn’t form the words.

Waking up in the hospital was confusing. It took a lot of effort to open your eyes, but once you did you were instantly alert. The overhead lights put you on edge. The whole experience reminded you of how it felt when the trunk opened in the parking lot.

Your heartrate spiked, alerting the nurses to your anxious state. They rushed in the room, taking your vitals and administering medicine through your IV to calm you down, effectively putting you back to sleep.

Unsurprisingly, Penelope was first in the room the second visitors were allowed. You could tell it was her from the sound of her shoes clicking against the tile floor of the hospital.

“Hey Pen.” You smiled at her, glad to see someone you recognize after waking up this time around.

“You’re up! That’s good! Are you okay? How are you feeling? Do you need anything? I can go get the doctor! Or a nurse!” She turned around, ready to get anything you might need.

“Pen! It’s fine. Just sit with me, please?” You shifted slightly, grimacing.

“Of course. Of course! Anything.” She moves farther into the room, settling down into the chair next to your bed.

“How’s um…” You want to ask about Spencer, but you don’t know how without outing your relationship, something you’re not sure Spencer wants at the moment. “How’s everyone doing?”

“Oh, sweetie, they’re great! We didn’t have any new cases, so they’re all stuck doing paperwork.” She’s all smiles, unknowingly confusing you. If he isn’t on a case, why isn’t Spencer visiting you?

“Oh, good. I’m glad they’re getting a break. They deserve it.” Your smile is weak, but thankfully Penelope assumes it’s from the pain.

The two of you keep talking, Penelope showing you videos of cute animals to help cheer you up, for a few hours before she has to leave. Just as she’s standing up to go, JJ walks into the room.

“Hi, Y/N.” You laugh at the timing.

“Hi JJ. Fancy seeing you here as soon as Pen is leaving.” Your first genuine smile of the day graces your lips.

“Why, you didn’t think I’d leave you all alone did you? We’re taking turns. I’ll be back!” With a wave and a smile, she’s out the door. JJ takes her spot in the chair, leading you through the same conversation as earlier.

The next few days repeat like that until you’ve healed enough to leave the hospital. Every member of the team took a turn visiting you except for one. The one you wanted to see more than anyone else.

Penelope drove you back to your apartment, offering to walk you all the way up.

“It’s okay, Pen. I can handle it. I just want to get back to normal.” You leant over the middle console to hug her before getting out of the car.

“Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

“I never asked before, but I’ve been wondering...” Penelope trailed off, not knowing how to word her question.

“What is it?” Her show of nerves was putting you on edge.

“What was the phone call about? The one right before you were taken. You just looked so happy in the footage, I thought maybe if you remembered it you might have something to smile about.” She sounded so genuine, you didn’t know how to tell her it would only hurt more.

“Oh, ya know… I- uh, I don’t remember.” You stuttered through your response. “Thank you though. I know you’re worried about me, but you don’t need to be. I’ll be okay.” You smiled, turning around before she could see the tears welling up in your eyes.

The walk up to your apartment was the first time you had a moment to yourself since everything happened. It gave you a chance to really think about why Spencer wouldn’t have come to visit you. Unfortunately, you could only think of one reason that actually sounded plausible.

You shake your head in an attempt to clear your thoughts as you pull out your keys. You walk into your apartment, the darkness forcing you to realize how alone you felt.

You don’t remember falling asleep, but an insistent knocking on your front door wakes you up.

You shuffle towards the door from your place on the couch, sparing a second to glance through the peephole. You open the door without a greeting, simply leaving it open and returning to the couch.

Spencer walks in, closing the door behind him. He stares at you in silence, unsure how to begin this conversation.

“Y/N…” He expected you to turn towards him when he spoke, but you remained face down on the couch. You knew what was coming and you couldn’t deal with it. “How are you?”

That surprised you. You mostly expected him to break up with you and run, not check up on you first. Maybe you were wrong to expect the worst. Maybe he just didn’t want to out your relationship, but him not visiting you left a sour taste in your mouth. Especially because you know he was in Quantico with the rest of the team.

“Funny, you would know if you bothered to visit. What? You didn’t want the team to figure it out that bad? Hell, Hotch visited me and I barely know the man!” You started mumbling into the couch, but your emotion intensified as you spoke. You rolled over, sitting up to look at him.

“No, that’s not why… I didn’t want to visit you because I… I didn’t want to...” He looked physically pained by the words he was trying to say. “I didn’t want to break up with you in the hospital.” He finished the sentence, not even looking at you.

“You what?” Your voice broke on the two word sentence. His words were like a slap in the face, surprising you after his gentle opening of the conversation.

“I think we should break up.” He said it with more resolve this time, as if he had practiced saying it with no emotion.

You could feel your breathing speeding up, trying to push back the tears you knew were coming. “But why? What happened? We were going to get dinner? I thought you were happy? I thought we were happy?” Your words were rushed in an attempt to make sense of the situation unfolding in front of you.

“We can’t be happy together. It just won’t work.” Spencer’s words felt so cold. He stood in front of you emotionless while you felt as though the world was crumbling around you.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Spence, where is this coming from? This is so different from the last time we talked, a complete 180- No. 540 because we’ve gone all the way around and then kept spinning!” You were more confused than anything, unable to understand why he was saying these things.

“It’s just how it has to be. Goodbye.” He turned and left without another word, leaving you to piece together where it all went wrong.

You sat on the couch, staring at the door as if he would walk back in and say it was all a dream, that he was happy with you, and everything would be fine as long as you were together.

You stared, unmoving, until the beginnings of daylight began to filter into your apartment through the curtains. The sounds of people getting ready for their days began to filter through your apartment building as you drifted off to sleep.

When you woke up later that night, everything felt like a dream, the only reminder being the dried tears on your face. You spent the next few days trying to figure out what went wrong, but every single time you came up empty.

Penelope came by to visit you every chance she got, but you never told her about you and Spencer. Even when she told you how he has been acting off.

“How’s the rest of the team doing?” You asked in an attempt to learn about Spencer.

“Oh, they’re fine. Wrapped up another case yesterday. Apparently Spencer was acting a bit off though, nobody can get him to talk about it. I think Hotch and Rossi have an idea about it, but they wouldn’t budge when I asked.” She supplied you with the information you were craving.

“Off? What do you mean?” You tried your best to sound nonchalant as you prodded for more information.

“He just seems a little sad, but whenever anybody asks him what’s wrong he gets defensive. It’s typical Spencer behavior. Someone will get through to him eventually, and he’ll open up. Derek and I were theorizing, and he thinks it has to do with his secret girlfriend. Speaking of opening up though, have you considered therapy? I know you said you don’t want to talk about what happened, but I think it could be good for you to get it off your chest! I mean, you’re not even listening to music anymore! I just want you to be happy again, and I know it’ll take some time because you went through a trauma, but talking about it helped me when I was shot, and I know everybody deals with things differently, so don’t feel like you have to go talk to someone, I just want to help in any way I can, even if that means-”

“Pen, I actually scheduled an appointment for tomorrow.” You smiled at your friend, cutting off her rambling. Dealing with the breakup on your own has actually been more difficult than dealing with the kidnapping. At least you could talk to Penelope about your feelings regarding being kidnapped and tortured, but bottling everything else up inside was not healthy.

“That’s good. I’m really glad you’re taking the necessary steps to move on and heal.” She replied, smiling again.

“Thanks Pen.” You couldn’t help but wonder what she would say if she knew the whole truth.

After a week off, you went back to work at the bookstore. You just wanted things to be as normal as possible. That was kind of hard with the media circus surrounding your kidnapping, but you did your best.

You were actually unprepared for the media involvement. From your perspective, the case was over before it really began. You were only “missing” for about 5 hours, but it’s difficult to keep a case quiet when the suspect was shot and killed in a public high school. It’s one of the things you worked through in your therapy appointments.

After your first appointment, you scheduled another for later in the week. You decided to go twice a week for a month while things were still so fresh, and then you decreased it to once a week.

After about a month of therapy, you decided to do another cover show. Your therapist helped you work through the emotions enough that you could once again turn to music to heal. After scheduling the show, you called Penelope to invite her and the rest of the team.

“Hey Pen! Are you busy this Saturday?” You surprised yourself with how happy you sounded.

“Not unless a case pops up, but right now everything looks clear. What did you have in mind?”

Penelope wasn’t oblivious to your happy attitude, but ultimately she decided not to mention it for fear of putting a damper on things.

“I’m actually going to do a mini-show, just three songs, but I wanted to invite you and the team! I think it will be really cathartic for me to get all of this out in the open.” You planned the three songs with your therapist. It would be a way for you to tell Spencer everything you were feeling. He wouldn’t answer your calls or texts, and he might not even come to the show, but you decided you needed to get your feelings out there even if he wasn’t there to hear them.

“That’s wonderful! I’ll make sure everyone is there!” Penelope couldn’t hold in her joy as she squealed in delight.

“Thanks Pen, but don’t force anyone. Only if they want to come!” Your words were playful, but you didn’t want Spencer to feel like you were forcing him to come through Penelope.

“Okay, fine. But I’m still going to pester!”

The two of you hung up the phone, eagerly awaiting Saturday.

tag list:

@mac99martin @goldeng1rl8 @eevee0722 @l0ve-0f-my-life @haylaansmi @dinonuggets1967 @laurakirsten0502 @green-intervention @burnin-passion @takeyourleap-of-faith @secretpickleprofessordean @awkwardnesshabitat @loveheathens @fan-girl-97 @enamouravecleslivresetlechocolat @akuri-shinsou @prongsyy @panhoeofmanyfandoms

#spencer reid angst #spencer reid #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #criminal minds x reader #Criminal Minds

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ankhisms · 2 years

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dont rb this bc i dont want ppl who liked the movie to argue with me about how the ending is fine or good or talk about why they liked it bc its so deeply upsetting to me on a genuinely personal level but anyway spoilers 4 the new oo.o movie under the cut. sorry it got long i have a lot of feelings about it all

of course ppl are entitled to their personal opinions on pieces of media and as a disclaimer i am not against tragedies/tragic endings to stories or just sad endings in general, i enjoy a good tragedy and there are well done tragic endings to stories that feel fitting and like theres actual meaning in them that work well with the characters and overall story. however. i do not at all think that is the case with the new ooo movie. i said this when i first found out about it but ill say it again: truly what is the fucking point of everything if eiji just dies in the end.

i know the people who like the ending/movie are saying "well its the natural thing to happen with how self sacrificial eiji is" but literally the entire point of eijis character arc in the show is that through his relationships with the other characters ankh and hina especially he realizes that his life has value and that he needs to care about himself the way he cares for others and in the end of the show we see him allowing himself to reach out to others for the help he needs AND we see him allowing himself to want things such as wanting ankh.

by the end of the show we are already seeing eiji growing, healing, and changing for the better and like. thats the entire point of eijis journey as a character, to realize that his life is worth living and has value. and to throw away that character growth is such a slap in the face. to me personally as someone who really relates to eijis trauma and state of mind in the show, it feels so awful to be basically told "this traumatized characters only option is to die." like what the fuck, that was absolutely not necessary or the only option for his character. weve continued to see eiji talk about "the future with BOTH of us in it" about him and ankh so it makes zero sense for him to sacrifice himself to bring ankh back. and ive already said it before but ankh would not want a life without eiji in it, thats also part of the pivitol point of ankhs arc where he can not bring himself to kill eiji because a life without eiji wouldnt really feel like living at all.

in ten years it makes no sense for eiji to have not moved forward and grown and changed more especially when again. we were already seeing him heal by the end of the show

and really i just do not get how theres people who like the end of the movie or are saying its a good and satisfying ending.. i know that most of the people ive seen and talked with all agree about hating the ending and just feeling like its cruel and awful but its still baffling to me that theres people who watched it and went yeah this is good.

even more baffling to have people saying that it fits the tone of ooo as a show overall??? which makes no sense because part of the reason why ooo means so much to me is because its so full of hope and the ending of the show is not tragic but instead bittersweet. its not goodbye forever, its i love you and ill see you someday somehow in the future. and some people are saying that eiji dying is supposed to make hina and ankh learn "life goes on" but thats fucking bullshit frankly. hina already learned that before when ankh died the first time, they dont need to learn that lesson.

i know im rambling by now but really having eiji die just truly feels pointless and cruel, he didnt have to die, it feels like a slap in the face to everyone including the cast who all have voiced having a hard time accepting it and i feel so bad for them like you get everyone back together for the movie and then you do this? and the way it was advertised as it being a happy reunion really just rubs salt in the wound tbh.

it SHOULD have been a happy reunion. there truly was no reason for it to end up like this and i just dont understand how people look at such a cruel ending to a character who has already suffered so much and go "yeah this makes sense im happy with it" like what the fuck. it doesnt make sense on so many levels including as a narrative and a character level and it just is not fulfilling or in the spirit of hope for the future that the show had.

the end of kamen rider ooo was about how despite all the hardships weve been through life is still worth living and its worth it to love each other and reach out to one another and that theres always hope for us. and the movie just takes that and throws it in the trash. anyway enough ranting the movie isnt canon to me beyond ankh being alive and also the tajador rainbow suit. also date and gotou are married and have been for ten years

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marveloustommy · 3 years

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Faith chapter 1

Alright guys - this is the first time i’ve written pretty much anything so dont expect it to be that great. Im mostly writing to get my mind off stuff so if you have any requests, feel free to send them in :) like ive said - i havent really written much so please be nice lol. Im writing this slowly but im also putting it on my wattpad Pounce500, so if it looks familiar thats why! Anyways enjoy the story

Rosie Atwood woke up to the sun shining right into her window. She could hear the movement of her family downstairs as her body fully started to wake. Rosie stretched out and heard the satisfying cracking of her joints, rolling onto her back. Dark brown hair scattered over the pillows while Rosie floundered around in her bed. Rosie’s blaring blue eyes slowly adjusted to the light as she turned to grab her phone. 9:23am April 12, 2016. Rosie unlocked her phone and went about the daily routine of a teen and checked her social media.

At 19 years old, Rosie was still living at home with her parents. She found not paying rent while trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life to be the best option, and one she didn’t necessarily mind. Her family consisted of Rosie, her mother, Patty, her father, Derek, and her 2 twin 15 year old brothers, Jace and Matt. Jace was the older of the 2 by a 15 minute delay and would never hesitate to remind his younger brother of the fact. Rosie got along with her family quite well and was always willing to help with her brothers. Ever since Rosie was a kid, she was always like a parental figure to her younger brothers. She loved them dearly.

“ROSIE” she heard Jace yell up the stairs. Damn kid was too lazy to walk up the stairs like a normal person to even see if she was awake. Matty was always the kinder one (and the least lazy). Rosie groaned as she pulled herself out of bed. She could smell breakfast being cooked, her stomach rumbled, thinking of the food she would be eating. Rosie through on a hoodie over her sleep shirt and slowly wandered to the kitchen, where she saw her brothers fighting over a piece of bacon. Reaching in between them, she took it from the twins’ joint grasp and took a bite off the end.

“Rosie, what the hell?” Jace yelled as he watched his older sister easily grab the piece of bacon between 2 fingers and raise her eyebrows at the boys.

“Jace! Language please!” Patty chastised her oldest son before turning back to the stove. Rosie looked around the room in search of her father. For 9:30am on a Tuesday morning – the kids father would be sitting in his seat in the living room watching some rerun of a sports game while sipping a coffee. She took a seat at the table next to Matt.

“Where’s dad?” Rosie turned to her mother, turning herself in her chair to face the women at the stove.

“He got called in to work a little bit today – they’ve been understaffed, and he could always use the overtime hours” Her mother stated. Rosie sighed, this happened often. Her mother used that lie around the twins, but Rosie knew the reason. Her parents never had the greatest relationship, being married young after finding out they were expecting. All to keep Rosie’s grandparents happy. Ever since then, her father has been “working” often in order to get away from the stress of having children that young. Rosie’s parents were high school sweethearts and found out at only 20 years old that they were expecting. Being raised in a religious home caused Derek to marry Patty at only 21. He didn’t regret it – Derek loved his kids, but at only 39, he got easily stressed and would take it out in yelling matches against his wife. The two fought over nothing and everything, and while her parents did a good job raising the kids, a lot of responsibility fell to Rosie.

“Dad was supposed to take us to the new Captain America movie today mom.” Matt stated. The twins had gotten into the Marvel universe after their father had showed them some comics he had found from when he was a kid. The boys had been overjoyed when they found out their father would be taking them to see, hopefully, one of the greatest marvel movies made. Patty looked apologetically to her sons, knowing how bad they had wanted to go.

“How about I take you guys?” Rosie questioned the boys after seeing how genuinely upset they had become at the knowledge of their father’s absence from the day’s events. Rosie didn’t necessarily hate the movies – she just never got invested enough to call herself a fan. Sure, she had seen all the movies once, due to having obsessed younger brothers, but she never fully paid attention to care a lot about the plot. Both her brothers heads shot up to look at her after she popped the question.

“Who wants their sister to take them to a movie?” Jace replied looking somewhat offended at the question. Rosie scrunched her nose up at the boy.

“Do you want to see the movie or not?” She replied to the stubborn kid.

“Could you just maybe……. not sit with us?” Jace came up with a compromise, really wanting to see the movie, but not wanting to be caught with his older sister. Rosie rolled her eyes but agreed, which made the boy jump up out of their seats to cheer. Rosie looked to her mother who was smiling at her daughter. Rosie and the boys excused themselves to get ready for the great day ahead of them.

Rosie took her time getting ready. It was only 10am, and the movie didn’t start until 3pm. She had plenty of time to get her self ready and looking presentable. A knock sounded through her room and Rosie walked towards it.

“We need to leave by 12:30 to make sure we can get tickets and get good seats, Rose” Matt spoke quickly when she opened her door.

“Why do we need to leave that early? I’m sure the tickets won’t be gone that fast, right?” Rosie asked in confusion. It was just a movie? Why would it be sold out nearly 3 hours before the showtime. Despite her confusion, she agreed to the curly haired 15 year old before rushing to the shower. She now only had about 2 hours before they needed to leave. Once Rosie was done in the shower, she threw on a pair of ripped jeans and a clean hoodie before starting on her makeup. She filled her eyebrows, added a little mascara and a nice wing of eyeliner to either eye before sliding on her glasses and fixing her hair. Both Rosie and Matt had been cursed with her father’s thick curly hair, where Jace got the straight thin hair of their mother. She applied some curl cream before adding a bit of gel to hold her curls in place as the day went on. She ran downstairs and threw on her black VANS before grabbing her purse and the $30 her mother gave her to get into the theatre. She yelled at the boys before saying goodbye to her mother and pushed the twins out the door. The drive to the theater wasn’t bad – but parking was another story. She drove around the block 3 times before finding a space and quickly parking the car. The 3 Atwood siblings made their way to the theater, heading inside to get tickets and seats.

“Hi, 1 adult and 2 teens for Civil War please?” Rosie smiled at the older man behind the counter. He nodded and rang the siblings through. Once she paid the man he swiveled the screen towards her to pick their seats. The 2 boys immediately picked seats as close to the middle of the theater, while the older girl picked a seat up in the top row of the theater.

“You’ll be in cinema number 2, up on the right there” The man smiled as the 3 set off to watch the newest movie in the marvel universe.

#tomholland #tomhollandxreader #mcucastfanfiction #tomhollandfanfic #spiderman #Marvel #mcu

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reylorabbittrail · 4 years

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Long, Barely Coherent Thoughts about The Rise of Skywalker

Since some of you wanted to hear my thoughts about “The Rise of Skywalker”, I’ve taken some time to write them up and provide context for why I responded the way I did.

A small preamble: I didn’t hate it. Hate is a strong word. And there were moments that I liked. Some that I even loved. However, the aggregate feeling for the movie overall was disappointment. For certain elements, it went beyond that into something genuinely painful and I don’t think that will make sense unless I also go into why I loved the previous two installments of this trilogy.

Also, if you loved this movie, I’m very happy for you. This is about my personal response to a piece of media and I make no judgements on those who enjoyed what you saw. I wish I could join you.

Finally, I will be talking about some sensitive subjects, including child loss and abuse. Please be aware of that before reading further.

Okay, so what was my overall impression of The Rise of Skywalker?

Soulless. Cowardly. Incoherent. Badly paced.

I spent large portions of the movie unable to get into the action because the pacing was so breakneck. There was no time to breathe. Consequently, there was never enough time to recover from one rush before another started. If everything is exciting, nothing is.

I think that this was a deliberate choice to cover up the lack of sense behind the exposition. Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron looks dead inside as he temporarily takes up the mantle of Basil Exposition to explain that somehow or other, Emperor Palpatine has returned and there’s a hard time limit on destroying his fleet.

This is a fine example of a running problem throughout the movie. Whereas both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi used visual storytelling to move the story forward, things in TROS were explained through dialogue time and again. And the dialogue was incredibly clunky.

But back to the story. We are given a paper thin explanation of the Emperor’s return, and immediately are thrown into a fetch quest to find the Big Bad. I’m sure it will make an exciting video game adaptation.

The thing though is that the fetch quest makes no sense. One of the wayfinders is found in the first two minutes of the movie. Yes, it’s in the hands of the bad guys. But does the audience not remember that our heroine is bound to the villain? Why couldn’t she try to use that bond to get at the directions? Why does the Resistance not try to use that bond? Has she hidden from them her connection to Kylo Ren? Either she’s built up a wall of mistrust between her found family and herself by keeping the bond a secret, or she’s revealed all and no one thinks to try to use that bond to their advantage. It’s just conveniently overlooked.

Oh, a sidenote. Wayfinder. Why? There is an in-universe word for such objects already. It’s a holocron. Why not use holocron? We throw Star Wars-isms at the audience all the time. It would be an Easter Egg to the diehards while not bothering the general audience one iota.

Back to our fetch quest. We head to the desert planet of Pasaana. There’s a festival going on. A festival about family. Rey looks longingly at children and infants. A child gives her a fertility necklace. And then suddenly she’s connected by her bondmate through the force.

Now it’s no secret that the Rey and Kylo dynamic is one of the reasons I loved the first two movies in the trilogy. The actors have great chemistry. More importantly, the characters have interesting conflict. And yet that conflict seems off in this movie. TLJ left them complicated enemies. But they feel out of character. I don’t understand what each is trying to get out of their encounters. I have to do massive amounts of work to understand their actions and the dialogue doesn’t help. Because it doesn’t ring true.

Setting such details aside, Kylo rips off the necklace in a moment worthy of the Phantom of the Opera and for once it’s an action that makes sense, having both the subtext of obsessive love and jealousy, and the text of offering a clue for analysis to Rey’s location. Bravo. The writers did something right.

Meanwhile, we get a clunky reintroduction of Lando Calrissian. Has he been stuck on this desert for over 7 years? Longer? We just don’t know and he doesn’t tell us. Our heroes hitch a ride and then we get a fun speeder chase.

Okay, a couple more questions. There’s some good stuff here. The omnipresence of the First Order helps convey how thorough their control is. But why doesn’t Rey hotwire the speeder? It was established two movies ago that she’s a good mechanic. And on Jakku that kind of skill makes sense. Why hand that off to Poe? And why this Trio stuff. It’s fanon. We have just been assuming that Finn’s best friends would form the new Han, Luke, and Leia. Because reasons. None of them textual. It was a failure of TFA to not establish this dynamic if this was an essential element of Star Wars that had to be there from the start.

Which gets to the heart the problem in fandom which is that Star Wars is different for every fan. What is essential to the series is subjective. For me, Star Wars is light sabers, hyperspace, the Force, epic battles, strange world with one biome only per world. So I’ve never felt like something was missing. But if an essential element was a very particular character dynamic (like a good guy Trio), then I can see why some fans felt let down. As if all the pieces were there but never got put together.

Back to Pasaana. We have a brief descent into the underworld in which Rey has a moment of true Jedi compassion and is rewarded when her compassion for the monster leads to an exit from said underworld. Nice. Mythically coherent. And hey, we also get one of the MacGuffins we’ve been searching for, so, bonus.

Now we get the arrival of Kylo and his backup band. What was the point of these dudes? I mean, they look cool and I can’t wait to edit videos of them to classic NKOTB. But narratively, why are they there? Why did Kylo reforge the mask? Why all these questions in the third act when we should be in the process of tying up loose ends.

Rey, in a moment reminiscent of bull leaping from Crete, goes out to stall them? I guess? And then ends up in a battle of wills with Kylo that leads to her inadvertent use of Force Lightning.

Okay, another side trip. Are they trying to make out that Dark Side Powers are genetic? Because that’s all I can figure. Really, it’s kind of gross because it suggests that darkness isn’t a human trait that we all carry and must confront, but rather that Rey’s specific problem is a dark legacy. Which, that’s Kylo’s story. He’s the one grappling with the legacy of Vader and how that led his family to fear his darkness rather than aid him in confronting it.

Anyway, we have Rey briefly thinking she’s killed Chewie and that sets our heroes off to our next quest location and another set of problems: Why did we make the Latino man a drug runner and car thief? No, this isn’t just putting an unneeded real world spin on the universe. This is about narrative consistency. Because in a bid to make Poe Dameron an ersatz Han Solo, they broke his actual in-universe back story that had been established in comics and novels. That Poe Dameron was a pilot in the New Republic Navy, the child of war heroes Kes Dameron and Shara Bey. He grew up on Yavin IV. When did he have time to be a smuggler? He’s only a few years older that Ben Solo.

See Lucasfilm has a Story Group that is supposed to help keep narrative consistency between the various media released. And I can’t help shake the feeling that the Story Group was ignored or stonewalled. To please who? The fans? Which fans? Because I would be under the impression that the fans who read the novels and the comics, who dig the trivia aspects of the universe, would be the first to desire the universe to remain coherent.

The Kijimi stuff is fun. Babu Frik is adorable. C3PO is touching. There’s good moments. There really are.

We now go to the infiltration of the Star Destroyer (Does it have a name? Nerds, help me out here. Usually I know this sort of thing.) Again, good moments. I like the implication that Rey’s Force Powers disturb Poe, but it’s never brought up again. One of dozens of Chekhov’s guns left unfired. This is incredibly sloppy in the plotting. Hux is the mole!?! Fun. Yet, again, wasted. And out of character, but I’m sure that’s not going to bother the general audience. Rey gets caught sneaking around in Kylo’s bedroom? Priceless, and some good imagery (smashing the altar to Vader) combined with incredibly clunky dialogue and some more serious questions that never get answered.

The whole time Kylo thought Vader was talking to him it was Palpatine? Why the hell does he still have that mask on a pedestal? He just couldn’t bear to get rid of a collectible? He hadn’t had time to konmari yet? And just what does smashing the pedestal symbolize? Is this the start of Kylo breaking free? We’ll probably never know.

Rey escapes on the Falcon. After getting the worst character reveal in the Saga. I’m sorry. Rey Palapatine is just dumb. I liked that she was a nobody. It allowed her to be the Forces solution to the manipulation and abuse heaped upon the Skywalkers. She was brought into the story and bound to the last scion of House Skywalker as a corrective. She wasn’t overpowered. (No really. She executed a few very basic Jedi skills in the first two movies, none of them exceptional.) And her skill level makes sense the moment you understand that she is bound to Ben Solo. She is literally downloading his training. She can do what he can do. Even her fighting style mirrors his. Fun fact: if you watch the scene in The Last Jedi where she’s practicing sword forms on Ach-to, and compare them to Kylo in his duel with Luke, they’re identical. To a move. Rey is powerful because the Force chooses its vessels. No one was asking who Mace Windu’s parents were. Or Ki-Adi Mundi’s. But Rey is skilled because a very clear in universe device means she has access to Ben Solo’s mind and that included every skill he ever learned.

Alrighty, so now our team is on to the next step in the quest, the ocean moon of Kef Bir, one of the many moons in the Endor system. (No, it’s not the Forest or Sanctuary Moon with the Ewoks.) We meet Jannah, another wasted character. She is pretty and could have been cool. But she exists for us to realize that Finn is probably Force Sensitive and that he broke conditioning not due to innate morality but because he’s not a Muggle.

Which brings me to my gripe with how Finn’s character was treated. He spent the whole movie running around shouting Rey. That’s it. That’s his arc. I don’t mind that he can feel the Force. But I feel like his development was regressed. He had a clear character arc in the first two movies. From a man running away from responsibility to one willing to fight for a friend, to a man willing to commit to cause. This movie should have had him building on that, and perhaps like Moses returning to free the rest of the Stormtroopers who are canonically child soldiers brainwashed into fighting for the bad guys.

Back to the plot. Rey takes off for the Death Star, searches the haunted house and yet again has her moment in the cave, this time confronting a dark vision of herself. Dang that was cool. Would have liked to see more of that. Anyway, she confronts Kylo and he smashes the holocron. Emphasizing for us how pointless this fetch quest has been. Girl could have hopped a ride in his TIE at any point and dealt with the fallout after they dealt with the emperor.

They fight. It wasn’t a bad fight. Just not my favorite. It did emphasize though that Kylo is never ever fighting on the offensive with her. Never in three movies has he ever taken an advantage of an opening for a killing blow, and never was it more obvious than in this fight. Kylo gets distracted, Rey stabs him mortally, and this act seems to wake her up from whatever possessed her in the throne room. She heals him and runs away.

This brings up another thing that bothers me. I know the filmmakers were working with some severe challenges with their footage of Carrie. I don’t think it was badly used for the most part. But I was left baffled at what exactly was going on here.

I was not baffled at Kylo/Ben’s confrontation with Han. This was the high point of the movie for me. It was pitch perfect in tone, and touched on the one an only sin Ben ever committed that wasn’t connected to a war objective, the murder of his father. And it made clear that the prodigal was loved and wanted and it wasn’t too late to come home. The heart of Ben’s problem has been the conviction that he has done too much wrong to come home, and while it is only a memory, it is a true memory of the man who loved Ben enough to walk straight into Hell though he knew it would probably be the death of him. I can forgive this scene for throwing the lightsaber into the ocean. I realize that most of the audience doesn’t know that you can heal kyber crystals. Yes, the saber was a metaphor for Ben’s damaged and unstable soul, and yes, it would have been poetic (and badass) for him to show up later with a healed lightsaber, stable and blue and looking like something an angel would fight with. But I’ll forgive that for the poetry of what happens on Exegol.

And then we go to my low point. I’ll set my costumer’s beef with Luke Skywalker’s wig aside. It looked cheap and that’s all I’ll say. It was more the deliberate middle finger to TLJ in the lines while ignoring that Luke’s most iconic and Jedi-like moment in the original trilogy was casting aside his lightsaber in an act of compassion. Yes, Rey was burning her ship and throwing away her weapon for the wrong reason. And it was a deliberate echo of Luke who also was appalled when his fear was twisted by the Dark into an attack on his nephew. She is overcome with the same shame and fear of self. Luke can speak to this in a real way. With better dialogue, it might have worked for me. Alas, it didn’t. Instead we got more exposition to provide us with an extra lightsaber. And more questions about why everyone in this family gave up on Ben Solo.

Here’s the thing. If Leia remains untrained, lots of things make sense: her instinctive but infrequent use of the Force; her fear for her son and sense of inadequacy in dealing with he struggles with darkness, her unresolved issues with her father which lead her to hide her parentage not only from the galaxy but also from her own son. All of this is undone by the training reveal and makes us wonder why everyone was willing to help a descendent of Palpatine but not their own flesh and blood. And in a movie that used dialogue to explain nearly everything, these lacunae stand out more than they would in a film that trusted the audience more. See you could have had Luke say “We messed up. We gave in to fear. And we didn’t want to make the same mistake with you. Rey. I’m the son of Darth Vader. I know more than any man that we are more than our bloodline. And forgetting that with Ben was the worst mistake of my life.” But he didn’t. Which in a movie which tells as much as or more than it shows seems like a deliberate choice.

Have you noticed that I’m ignoring the space battles? That’s because they’re forgettable. I just didn’t care about them. Especially since the galactic conflict remained essentially unresolved. Back to the Force Plot, the only plot that matters.

Rey confronts Palpatine. Yawn. At this point I just don’t care. For most of the movie, she hasn’t seemed like my Rey. I couldn’t relate and by this point I’ve lost interest so I’m more wondering where did all these people come from. Are there concessions? How much does a hot dog and Coke cost on Exegol? Does this stadium have bathrooms? Nice to see that it’s built like the AT&T one down the street with the sliding roof panels. And then my boy Ben Solo arrives and the film is good again. Without a word of dialogue (besides “ow”) Adam Driver delivers the best performance of the movie, showing that the Han Solo of the trilogy was there the whole time in his son. Was there ever a more Han Solo thing than running into a Dark Side temple in your pajamas, armed only with a blaster? And then Rey passes him Anakin’s saber. OMG. Brilliance. The best part of the movie. For a moment I thought that they would at least wrap it up well. And for a moment they’re side by side and all is right in the world. And then Palpatine throws Ben in a pit.

I hate this. I don’t hate this movie but I hate this moment. For three movies we’ve set up that Rey and Ben (He’s Ben now; don’t’ @ me.) are equals in the Force. They have a Yin/Yang dynamic that made this work. The natural conclusion here should have been that they take out Palpatine together. Because both have a beef with him. This is the man responsible for ruining the lives of four generations of Skywalkers. And while Ben is at the bottom of a pit, Rey stands alone, calling on the Jedi to help her.

The Jedi that are ignoring the Skywalker at the bottom of the pit.

Including Ben’s grandfather that he’s been begging for years to help him.

Including his uncle who promised to always be with him. (We were robbed of Ghost Luke trolling Kylo. Robbed I tell you. Mark Hamill would have nailed that.)

Ben is at the bottom of a pit being ignored while the Jedi transform Rey into their sacrificial lamb for Girl Power points.

So, yeah, I hated how Rey defeated Palpatine. It was wrong. It wasn’t in union with her bondmate. It wasn’t through the power of love and compassion. It was Space Wonder Woman meets Harry Potter. And then she dies. Because the Jedi only ever viewed people as tools in their grand battle with the Sith.

But Ben. Oh, Ben loves Rey for who she is. And he climbs out of the pit without a lick of help from anyone and cradles her lifeless form in the most heartbreaking Pieta, and you can see on his face the moment he make his decision and gives everything of himself to bring her back. It was beautiful, and they share the most pure, the most perfect kiss.

And then he dies.

And that’s where the movie breaks me. Because he didn’t have to die. It doesn’t make sense. Why does Leia hold on until this moment? Why does Maz seem satisfied? Where did Ben go? Why does he go unmourned? Where is his Force ghost? This movie just leaves us with more questions.

And the very end kills me. Rey is on Tatooine. A dead world that holds no importance to her (or Leia, I might add). She buries the Skywalker sabers. A funeral. She sees the ghosts of Luke and Leia bless her as she takes on the Skywalker name. A name that she could have taken in a life-affirming way through marriage, but that appears as scavenged from the dead that she has surrounded herself with as she ends the movie an eternal child, side by side with a stolen droid.

It makes no sense.

But whence my nerd rage? Why do I care? Why have I devoted over 3K words to this?

Because the first two movies in this trilogy made me care about these characters.

When I first saw The Force Awakens, I connected immediately with her loneliness. Loneliness is something I get viscerally. I have always been socially awkward and had difficulty making friends. I rarely felt known or understood and I understood that deep longing to belong. When Rey was being interrogated by Kylo Ren, that was what struck me. He notices her loneliness.

And you realize that Kylo is projecting. That he is seeing in her a kindred spirit. He too is lonely, and trapped by fear into being stuck in a place that he knows in his heart of hearts is a dead world. He too is trapped by relics of the past.

So, you see, Rey and Kylo were both me. I had lived that loneliness. I had experienced profound isolation and the sense that no one truly understood me. I desperately wanted them to find their belonging and heal their wounds. And that’s certainly the story that TLJ picked up on and continued.

But there was more. I became fascinated with the question of how the son of Han and Leia fell, and I could see the possibilities in the pattern of their characters: Leia, the woman driven by duty, trying to build the New Republic to make a better galaxy for her son, and leaving her son vulnerable to predation in the process; Han, a man who had only just stopped running from responsibility, and who’s own lack of father figures left him feeling inadequate as a father. Throw in a villain who can groom and psychically abuse their son and you have the ingredients for a tragedy.

And because I identified with Leia, Ben became, in a way, an additional child. A parent’s greatest fear is that in trying to do the right thing for your child you inadvertently make things worse. Poor Leia. She needed a mother to tell her child mattered more than a bill in the Senate. That the galaxy could wait. But Palpatine killed her mother. Both her mothers, because he was as complicit in the death of Breha Organa as he was in the death of Padme Amidala Naberrie.

So when Ben Solo died, it was like losing a child. And anyone who knows me personally knows that I do not choose that phrasing lightly. And being a mother, there is always a sense of survivor’s guilt. The sense that if you had done the right thing, it wouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t matter if that isn’t the truth. It’s how it feels.

I have met so many people online who identify with Ben Solo because they were abused as children. Who like him processed their trauma in unhealthy ways. It’s not where I come from, but I have the capacity to empathize and hear the message they’re inadvertently being told: that if you do bad things because you’ve been groomed and manipulated and brainwashed, you can’t come back. Even if you turn your life around, it won’t matter. You’ll only find peace in death and you will die unremembered as punishment for your sins. And your family will replace you with someone nicer and easier to live with.

But I can hear you saying: It’s not that deep. It’s fake and in space. It’s just a story.

Well, here’s the problem:

1) The brain does not distinguish real people from fictional characters. The part of the brain that produces serotonin and dopamine can’t distinguish fact from fiction. This is actually why art has the power to heal. The catharsis experienced in a work of art can help us process trauma because we relate to the characters in the story. But the flip side is that stories can cause genuine trauma. If we related to characters in a story and they are treated unjustly, we feel that injustice and it hurts as badly as if it were real.

2) Ben Solo was written to be sympathetic. He is the child of beloved characters. His backstory is one filled with pain. He was failed by every family member who should have protected him. He was abused physically and mentally for years. Recently published materials exonerate him from the destruction of the Jedi temple. It was all part of a plot to push him to the Dark. All Ben ever wanted was to be loved for who he was. And that was snatched away from him.

3) I can’t turn off my brain. I can’t stop asking questions and trying to make sense of things. I can help but see the Chekhov’s guns and the symbols and the messages, however inadvertent.

4) It is a grand failure of a movie if it only works on a surface level and not when you start digging deeper. Every other Star Wars movie, including The Phantom Menace, rewards the person who can’t turn off their brain. This was the first one that falls apart so completely the second you start asking questions.

I wish I could like this movie. I was prepared to like it if not love it. And while I got Ben’s redemption and the Rey and Kylo romance that I wanted, I feel like I got nothing. Like they don’t matter at all.

I am planning to start new hobbies in the new year. I got some war gaming miniatures painting sets for Christmas and I’m glad I have a new special interest to pour myself into. I have enjoyed sharing my love of Star Wars trivia with my kids but it just hurts too much at the moment to spend time thinking about a franchise that has been so badly mangled. I’m probably in the bargaining stage of grief at the moment. I wholly buy the theory that there was happy ending filmed and someone blinked in the game of chicken, leaving us the mess that we were handed.

I’m also planning to get back to writing. If even Disney can’t tell a fairy tale properly anymore, it’s time for a new batch of writers to get out there and tell the stories I want to hear. I am sick of grimdark fantasies and cynicism masquerading as sophistication. I may write a fanfic or two to fix the story in my mind, but I think that ultimately I need to be creating original works. I know that there are children eager to believe in happy endings, plenty of women who believe that Byronic heroes can be redeemed, and not a few men who will buy both if the story is well told.

#tros spoilers #negativity #cw:child loss #cw: abuse

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iveonlyeverseenliketwoanimes · 5 years

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How Horikoshi treats his female characters (Feat. How his ‘Fans’ treat him): A Rant

Something that has recently been popping up a lot in the BNHA tags, for me at least, is this idea that Hori is a “Lazy/Bad Writer”. It’s a topic that’s genuinely interesting to me and I would love to discuss it! After the reaction i got to my last post on discussing the fandom, i feel like this is a really fun topic for me to look into and i love having an open discussion with people. So just to let you know before we start, everything here is my opinion - feel free to respond with your own thoughts and i’d happily have a conversation with you about anything and everything! If you disagree with me then that's fine, if you agree with me then that's fine too! I'm just a person with a keyboard and an opinion and so are you! :)

So today i would love to discuss how people treat Hori in regards to his female characters and i hope you enjoy this 1500 word essay/ramble i did. (PS if you came from my last lil essay then this one is a lot less sarcastic because its a more serious topic and i don’t want to come across as too rude also i actually got sleep today)

Now, this was actually the first topic I came across when looking into the Hori tags. At first, I was on board with the general theme of what was happening. I saw some lovely artwork of Momo where people had redesigned her costume, they were very creative in how they did it and overall, I had no complaints – if the whole topic of this tag was about how people wanted to be creative and redraw characters in their own design then I’d 100% support it, but the more you look into it, the more…. Nasty is gets.

So, the overall theme of what I gathered from this little tag is that idea that Hori is some sort of [Word I really don’t want to type out but im sure you can guess what it is] because of how he draws his females, most of which are underage. So if you, as a consumer, are, well, consuming something, such as a TV show, film, anime, Manga etc. and you see something that makes you go “This is disgusting – I need to write a Tumblr post about this to warn other people about what's happening here” then I fully support you – please keep on doing what you’re doing.

However, this isn’t what I see, what I see are posts going “F*CK HORI HE’S A [Nasty word] AND I HOPE HE D*ES – HERE EVERYONE I MADE AN ANTI FLAG, SHARE IT EVERYWHERE AND LET ME KNOW WHERE I CAN SEND MY D*ATH THR*AT TO” Meanwhile, when you go on this same persons page it’s all reposts of the characters and screenshots of the show, posts of them saying “Yo did you guys see the new BNHA episode last night?!?” and overall just very fandom-y stuff. I truly cannot comprehend this type of behaviour – you are so set in this belief that Hori is a [Nasty Word] and yet here you are, on the very same blog you use to slander his name, actively supporting him! Listen, if one of you Anti’s were to sit there and say “I wholeheartedly think Hori is a [Nasty word] and therefore I am no longer going to participate in this fandom or with supporting his creations” then, while I don’t agree with you, I support you in your decision as you have made a clear stance on something with both your words and your actions and I can truly respect that, and hell you would actually get my attention and I might read into what it is you’re talking about. I’m not, however, going to waste my time reading a piece of material written by someone who does all that nasty stuff I previously mentioned and take any of what they say seriously. Let me put it this way; you think Hori is a [Nasty word], you are supporting the show, you are therefore supporting a [nasty word], so why should I take anything you say seriously? I don’t want to see any more of this ‘One minute we love him, one minute we hate him’ attitude because when you hate him the things you are saying are some of the worst things you could possibly say to another person and its childish, disgusting and you’re giving this fandom a bad name.

Now back to the girls, I personally do find certain characters outfits a little distasteful, especially with how they’re done in the anime and how they zoom in on certain body parts, i also dislike how it’s ‘funny’ for characters like Mineta to get away with such disgusting behaviour. I do think that’s the biggest flaw I can find in this show – I don’t however 100% blame Hori for this. Now obviously at the end of the day, it is down to Hori what happens in his show, but can we all stop pretending that it’s just him that does this? When I think of anime the first thing that comes to mind is anime girls and their… attributes. It’s an industry issue and Hori is one of many people that partakes in it – so im not saying he’s not to blame, im just saying some of you are a little dramatic and need to realise if you truly want this behaviour to stop then you need to go after the industry and not just one guy.

Now this next point I want to make is something im sure might be a little confusing for most of you and something I can 100% see the other side of better than some other points ive made. It’s also kinda hard for me to put into words so please bear with me here.

I don’t think its necessary for Hori to develop his female characters as much as their male counterparts – now im sure that’s an odd concept but let me explain. As a child growing up in the age of great TV shows such as Hannah Montana, iCarly, Wizards of Waverly Place etc. I think ive spent a fair amount of time watching TV, my personal favourites as a child were Winx Club, BRATZ and W.I.T.C.H (Im from the UK so apologies if you have no idea what they are). Now all of these shows were ‘for girls’, they all revolve around a group of girls and their adventures in their respective worlds, they learn things along the way, because, even if you don’t realise it, these kids shows have hidden messages in them that are like ‘we should be kind’ ‘we should treat others with respect’ and all that jazz you need to know to be a decent human being. However, the one thing that these shows always lacked was any form of male presence. Now im not saying these shows had no males in them, that would be weird, but what I am saying is that the males in these shows were very one dimensional and they were always the love interest of one of the characters, or you might get the odd parental figure that would show up for one episode to be a motivation for a character. However with BNHA, a show that is specifically aimed at teenage boys, I don’t feel like they do such a disservice to females (AKA the ‘men’ equivalent of my other shows), sure they’re not treated great in certain aspects that I've already discussed, but look at their actual characters, Uraraka is the main girl, sure she very much has the same role as many of the men did in my childhood shows of the ‘love interest’ but her character is more than that and we see it in the sports festival as well as some of the more recent chapters (213-215 to be specific). Her character isn't just some airhead and neither are the other girls, Momo is literally top of the class in terms of written ability and she had her own little mini-arc around gaining confidence (which is still ongoing because guess what – people don’t change overnight), Mina has had some spotlight on her and is seen to be a very confident and skilled fighter, Tsu was literally described as the ‘perfect student with no flaws’ and is shown to be a badass on multiple occasions, Midoriya’s mum is even a character that’s had some form of arc with her learning to believe in her son and she's not some faceless character we hear about every so often when they need a plot device.

Now im not saying the female representation is perfect and it’s certainly not 100% equal to that of the men, but im saying it doesn’t need to be. This is a show for boys, sure girls can watch and enjoy it, but its made for boys in the same way my shows were made for girls, and the average boy isn’t going to want to watch a bunch of fairy princesses run around saving their fluffy little pets like I did (im sure a some of them will – and good for them, in the same way that some girls might want to watch superhero films, it’s not something im saying is bad, its just most people raise children into predetermined stereotypes of what gender roles they should fill and the media caters to that).

So what im saying is that taking a show aimed at boys and comparing it to shows aimed at girls and how each handles the opposite sex (we’re not going into gender here, that’s a whole other topic of diversity), I don’t think BNHA is all that bad. I guess if I want to be a little harsher in my approach, why is it okay to have a near-all female cast and not a near-all male cast? I understand a need for diversity, truly I do, but sometimes having a token character for each ‘type’ of person takes away from what the show is actually trying to convey – and in BNHAs case I think its trying to teach young boys that it’s okay to be emotional or vulnerable when you’re in situations that other shows teach you to ‘man up’ in. Not every show can solve racism, sexism and homophobia, I’m sorry to break it to you, but some shows are a little more basic in their approach to what it is they want to show and I think BNHA is a perfect example of that, it’s showing boys that you can cry, you can go through struggles in life, you can even come back from being a terrible person through growth and development, and I think that’s something boys need. A lot of people in this day and age want men to change (and I agree that there are a lot of things all groups of people can work on) and BNHA is showing boys how to grow up in a way that’s not this ‘tough guy that has no feelings’ and at the end of the day isn’t that something we want?

I do believe there are areas that BNHA really needs to improve in when it comes to it’s female cast, but can we stop with this awful hate? This fandom had such potential to be an amazing community of people who are skilled with art, writing, storytelling, cosplay, etc. but it seems like half of you just want to tear each other down and it’s sad to see such potential wasted because you can’t handle someone having a different opinion or view to you.

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frigfridge · 5 years

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just finished rewatching toy story 1 thru 3 over the past few days, wanted to share my thoughts:

i love these movies a whole lot. the first 2 hold a bunch of nostalgia for me because i was A Baby when 2 came out and when i was also A Baby i would just watch our VHS copy of toy story 1 over and over again. this also makes me the exact age group to be emotionally destroyed by toy story 3, which came out just as i was entering high school and hit really close to home

individual thoughts:

toy story: the first thing i noticed was it still looks really nice even watching in 2019!! which i think is kind of spectacular for the first feature-length computer-animated film. it no doubt helps that the plot is mostly focused on little plastic dolls without realistic hair or clothing to animate but the semi-”cartoon” art direction means the human characters also look pretty nice without going too far into the uncanny valley.

also, the plot is WAY darker than i remember?? not because of sid and all the body horror toys, but because for like half of the movie woodys friends think hes an actual (toy) murderer carrying around the severed arm of his victim (!!) like, its hilarious, but also wow theres a LONG way to go between there and the climax of toy story 3.

the soundtrack is probably my favorite of the bunch. part of that is probably nostalgia but i just really like the consistency of having randy newman singing every song. it sort of elevates him to part of the story, like an omniscient narrator singing woodys (and later buzzs) inner monologue. 2 (and especially 3) didnt have as many musical numbers, which i can understand with a shift to a larger-scale approach to storytelling, but i really like the feeling it gives number 1. “you got a friend in me” is an obvious classic thats been remixed and brought back in just about every piece of toy story media im aware of, but “strange things” and “i will go sailing no more” deserve just as much recognition and praise. there just isnt a weak number among them

toy story 2: heres where the story started getting bigger and more existential, which basically becomes the new direction of the series. which makes sense! this one released 4 years after the first, and while theres no real timeskip in the story (maybe 6 months?) it had been a little while since we last saw woody and the gang. everybody in the real world had gotten older, and with the turn of the millennium approaching, the theme of impermanence loomed large in the collective unconscious. well, maybe not in my unconscious, because i was 2. but its really interesting as kind of a “time capsule” to what people were thinking about as the 90s came to a close.

so toy story 2 was a little more grounded, a little more focus on the human world, but it was also more fantastical in its presentation. the opening “video game” sequence (which still looks amazing!!) and woodys nightmare (”i dont wanna play with you anymore...”) show the animators at pixar really found their groove and started getting experimental. and to great result!! the fantasy sequences are a lot of fun and help 2 really stand out.

i would be remiss not to mention jessies flashback song here. its something else they hadnt really done in the first film and i think it really works. jessie in this film unfortunately doesnt get to do much other than fight with woody about whether he should stay or go (except for when she saves him in the end) but this song makes her character work. it also helps that it destroys me every time

also i think this is the movie that gave me an appreciation for the acting of kelsey grammer. i dont really agree with his politics (i also dont know specifically what they are) but he is a damn fine actor and gives the prospector a very genuinely intimidating edge after his heel turn. the casting really makes the character here, but thats nothing new for toy story-- every voice works. if i were the casting director, i probably wouldnt have pulled erudite kelsey grammer for a character named “stinky pete,” but as it is now i couldnt imagine him voiced by anyone else.

the last thing about toy story 2 is it feels like there were a lot more pop culture references? at least as far as i noticed. there are apparently even more than i noticed but i caught on to the “also sprach zarathustra” riff in the opening, and the jurassic park rearview mirror gag. and of course the extended star wars reference with zurg vs. utility belt buzz (and i guess zurg in general.) the references are cute and mostly unobtrusive but really i could take or leave them.

oh yeah also al is hilarious. just this rude, neurotic businessman whos incredibly self-important for the owner of a minor(?) toy store chain. hes such a puffed-up jerk, every time hes on-screen is a delight

toy story 3: this one kills me to death. i always get misty-eyed during “when somebody loved me” but the ending of 3 where andy introduces his toys to bonnie and plays with them one last time made me sob the first time i watched it. and it still does! thats the long game right there, thats the payoff of over 10 years loving these characters. its an emotional ketchup bomb, everything gets all messy and soggy and sweet. hopefully 4 can follow up, but im not really worried about that-- ive heard some good things. damn, its been 9 years since this movie came out, though! it really doesnt feel all that long, but i guess i havent been doing all that much

i actually dont know if i have much else to say about 3. the opening with the re-imagining of the previous films openings (woody versus one-eyed bart, buzz and woody vs. the evil dr. porkchop) is a highlight, although theres a conspicuous lack of bo peep. ive heard she has a big part in 4, but it was kind of weird to see a lot of toys missing and their absence (mostly) glossed over after the first few minutes. i miss r.c. and lenny, but i get they wanted to narrow down the cast so all of them could get in on the plot.

speaking of which, the escape scene is great too. its kind of a crystallizing moment of how close these characters are, and how well they work together. it reminds me a lot of the escape from sids house in the first movie, but there woody was working with sids body-horror toys and seemed to strike up a rapport with them bizarrely quickly. (speaking of which, i miss those toys! their designs were super cool, but i cant imagine they got much merchandise, especially babyface with the sharp, metal spider legs.) here, though, woody and the gang cooperate the best they ever have, and it really paints a picture of how close theyve become over the years, and justifies the emotional climax in the landfill. this is what i was talking about when i said i was surprised how dark toy story 1 got! these toys all hated woodys guts back then for what they thought he did to buzz. they kicked him out of a moving truck! its just weird to think about that conflict between them when you know how long they end up sticking together. but thats, like, neat, so its ok. it feels earned, its just kind of crazy in hindsight.

toy story 3 was also obviously made long after the first two-- by comparison, the lighting is way more sophisticated, the humans are a lot more detailed. theres just a lot more detail In General. the main cast is, like, super dirty for the middle 90% of the film, and it feels like, yeah, We Have This Technology Now. we can render so many individual glitter sprinkles suck to hamms ass and they will be in every single scene. the “fur tech” on lotso and buster is also an obvious clue, especially in the flashback to lotso trudging through the rain back to his owners house. its like “look! we can make this teddy bear SO wet!” and wow! yeah! you did! so wet!

lotso himself is also an interesting villain in terms of sheer bastardness. he is just a huge jerk. he could have hit that button so easily! and he was so mean to the baby! but at the same time hes a great character in how he slowly “changes” throughout the movie. he is kind of an obvious “pixar ‘twist’ villain” but again, the amazing performance by ned beatty really saves him. also he does get a nice comeuppance at the end, which was necessary because hes really the biggest villain in the series so far. hes knowingly malicious and doesnt have any greater motive, hes just an embittered megalomaniac who (apparently) has sent other toys to be broken, thrown away, and incinerated at the landfill. he honestly deserves worse than being strapped to the front of a truck but it works for a family movie.

i have a couple more thoughts on 3 (i guess i did have a fair amount of stuff to say about it) but im getting tired of writing. the music is good as usual, but the vocal stuff being entirely back-loaded (in the credits) is a bit disappointing since ive always been a fan of the songs, but i get that they were going for something different. the jokes about ken being, uh, ‘flamboyant’ felt out of place, mostly the one at the end (”uh, buzz? barbie didnt write this”) because it comes from one of the gang and not unnamed lotso goon #3, but i guess its pretty tame in the scheme of things.

overall im really looking forward to seeing what 4 does with the series. whew!

#hopefully ill see 4 this weekend #personal essay #got pretty honkin long. click at your own risk

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seanpatricklittlewriter · 3 years

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The Movie Post

Greetings and salutations, true believers. I haven’t posted anything in a while other than shameless book promotion stuff for #FourthAndWrong, and for that I apologize. I always say I’d let you know if anything good happened immediately, but nothing good has happened. The new book is out. A few people who have read it told me they liked it. It’s not selling well. Lack of sales means a lack of reviews, which only helps it not sell faster. It’s all a vicious cycle. At a certain point, you have to remember that you’re only writing books because some tiny voice in your head won’t let you stop, and you just throw your hands up and let everything else fall as it may. For the first time, I’ve actually bothered to try real advertising. I’m giving advertising on the Kindle lock screens a go. I’ll let you know if actually works.

In the meantime, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts while puttering around the house, going for walks, and ignoring the gym. (I gotta stop ignoring the gym…) If you haven’t watched “Ted Lasso” on AppleTV yet, I HIGHLY recommend it. It’s one of the best shows I’ve watched in a long time. Great writing. Great characters. Great story. Very uplifting and wonderful. One of the show’s writers, creators, and stars, the wonderful Brett Goldstein (who plays the gruff Roy Kent on the show), has a podcast called “Films to Buried With.”

I started listening to his podcast because I enjoy him on the show so much, and I’ve found out that I enjoy his podcast as much as the show. He’s a genuinely sweet man, and he gets comedian and actor friends to guest on his podcast. The show’s conceit is that Brett invites guests on, tells them they have died, and then gets them to relive their life through the films that meant something to them. It’s a fun little chat show, and a solid way to waste an hour while you’re getting through doing the dishes or mowing the lawn.

It’s precisely the sort of podcast I would love to be on. I’ve always said you can judge your level of success by what people invite you to do. I always said I’d know if I “made it” if I could ever get invited to be on one of the podcasts I enjoy, rather than trying to wrangle my way into someone else’s podcast or blog. So far— this has not happened. That should tell you what level of success I’m stuck at. I don’t get invited to the movies by my imaginary friends. But Brett encourages people to share their ideas and opinions on social media, anyhow. It’s a fun way to play along at home, tell other people about the podcast, and start conversations around your favorite movies. Stories bind us together. They give us common ground and build bridges toward strengthening relationships. If you meet someone new, you can tell if you’ll get along with them by what films they enjoy. So in that spirit, I’d like to answer the questions Brett asks his guests by discussing a few of my favorite films. If you’d like to play along in the comments, please do. I always love reading about what other people think about movies, books, or music. I won’t bother going through the death/afterlife conceit he uses, but I recommend listening to a few of his podcasts if you enjoy this sort of thing. It’s a fun little premise he uses to generate the episodes.

--What’s the first film you remember seeing?

I remember bits and pieces of several films from my childhood. I remember the Muppet Movie in the theater. I remember seeing The Black Hole. I remember a lot of little chunks of a lot of Disney animated films. But the movie that sticks out in my head is “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It was 1981. I was six. I remember going to see it on a Sunday matinee with my family. I remember it was packed. People were literally sitting on the floor in the aisles. We got three seats someplace, but I remember my dad having to sit in the row in front of us. I don’t remember a ton about the movie the first time I saw it other than being scared of the pit of snakes and the melting Nazi faces. However, I remember the iconic moment when Harrison Ford pulled the gun on the swordsman and shot him. I remember the audience reaction and thinking, “That’s a hero.” I’ve long been a Harrison Ford fan. Between Han Solo and Indiana Jones, he played two of the most iconic heroes of my childhood. When I wrote the TeslaCon novels, I made no secret that my protagonist, Nicodemus Clarke, was just a shallow rip-off of Indiana Jones. It’s funny, but to this day, in my head, if you ask me what a hero looks like, it’s always going to be Harrison Ford.

--What’s the scariest film you’ve ever seen?

The scariest film I’ve ever seen is Kevin Smith’s “Red State.” It’s a movie about a religious cult that’s very reminiscent of the Westboro Baptist Church, David Koresh/Waco compound, or any of the other extremely far-right Christian separatist movements. It’s scary because there are many, many of these gun-hoarding compounds, and the movie, while extreme, is not too far off from possibility. Michael Parks plays the leader of the family at the heart of the film, and his performance was award worthy. He was truly terrifying. As an aside, prior to Red State, I always told people the movie that scared me the most was the original “The Amityville Horror.” Basically, I saw the scene where the poltergeist made the drop-sash window fall on the kid’s fingers and nearly sever them, and that was it. I had the same drop-sash windows in my bedroom, and I was scared of them from then on. I’d like to say that I outgrew my fear of drop-sash windows, but I’m 46 and they still skeeze me out when I see them. A movie I saw 40 years ago warped me forever.

--What’s the movie that made you cry the most?

I used to not be someone who cried at movies. However, years of thyroid issues and depression have messed with my response to emotional moments, so I do get teary nowadays at movies. Emotionally speaking, it’s not sad movies that get to me. It’s movies where someone overcomes something difficult. Especially sports movies. The ones that get me the most teary-eyed now are movies like the first “Rocky,” “Hoosiers,” “Miracle,” and “Rudy.” I also get teary-eyed at points of bravery to the point of stupidity. The best example of that is the climax and denouement of “How to Train Your Dragon.” Strangely enough, when a movie does something that is supposed to be a tear-jerker moment to the point that it panders to the audience, I don’t cry— I actually get angry. Anything Nicolas Sparks has ever had his name attached to, for instance. It’s maudlin, and it doesn’t deserve our respect.

--What the film that made you laugh the most?

This is not going to be a popular answer. If I was a little more erudite, I’d say something like “Airplane” or “Blazing Saddles” or “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” However, I didn’t see any of those in the theater originally. I was home, watching them on video. While they were funny and some of my favorite movies, I did not really do a ton of laughing while I saw them. I went to see “BASEketball” with my sister, and the theater was packed. Something about seeing a movie in a crowded theater heightens the emotional impact of jokes, and for whatever reason, that movie put me on the floor a couple of times. It’s a silly movie full of cheap laughs, but I remember hurting as I was leaving the theater. My sides and cheeks were sore. Second on that list was the movie “Bridesmaids.” I don’t think I’ve laughed harder at any movie than the scene where they all get diarrhea in the bridal shop. Especially Melissa McCarthy: “LOOK AWAY!”

--What is the sexist film you’ve seen?

For me, I will never forget seeing “Bachelor Party” on HBO at a friend’s house. Monique Gabrielle’s scene is probably the first time I saw full-frontal female nudity in a film. It burned itself into my brain. I probably have a thing for redheads to this day because of that scene. The rest of the movie is very wild and funny. It was one of the launching blocks for Tom Hanks’s ridiculously amazing career. But that one moment stands out as one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.

--What film did you used to love, but now it’s not that great?

Pretty much anything with “Rocky” in the title and a number following it. I still enjoy them, but Rocky III and IV, especially— not that good. I used to love them. I used to watch them whenever they hit TV, but now I only need to watch the first “Rocky,” and maybe the final fight in “Rocky II.” Anything else, I can leave out. They just feel a little overclocked at this point in my life.

--What’s a film that people and critics panned, but you enjoyed?

“Goon.” It’s a hockey film written by Jay Baruchel and starring Seann William Scott. It didn’t get wide release—almost straight-to-video. It didn’t get great reviews. I think Metacritic has it around 60%. But something about that movie hit me, and I love it. I suggest it to people all the time. It’s got great performances. It’s a solid flick. It’s not going to overwhelm you. It’s now one of my comfort films. When I’m bored and need something on in the background, I will often choose “Goon” or its sequel, “Goon: Last of the Enforcers.” The sequel was not as good as the original, but it’s still worth a watch. Kurt Russell’s son Wyatt is the villain in the sequel. He’s extremely good.

--What’s a film that people love, but you hate?

Hands down: “Avatar” or “Titanic.” Something about a lot of James Cameron films just don’t work with me. I think it’s because they’re too grandiose. They try too hard. Also, the scripts are just there to get him to the big, visual set-pieces. They’re thin on both character and plot. I can’t stand either of them.

--What’s a film that means a lot to you, but it’s not because of the quality of the movie (i.e. you saw it with someone and it’s special, or it has importance to people around you, etc…)?

Easily, “The Man From Snowy River.” This is a family favorite. I grew up watching this flick, and I made my daughter watch it when she was younger. I will never get tired of it. I probably watch it maybe three or four times a year. There’s just something about the cinematography of the climax when Jim goes down the mountainside on Denny’s back. It’s always breath-taking. Also, if you watch “The Man From Snowy River,” you see what my dad always wanted his life to be. Most boys’ fathers want their sons to be doctor or lawyers. My dad wanted me to be a cowboy.

--What film do you relate to the most?

“Clerks.” I saw “Clerks” when I was a senior in high school. Rented it from a local video store. I saw two dudes who were outliers in their social group working crappy jobs and dealing with the mundane nothingness of life. It hit me right in the gut. I resolved to do something better than that. So far, I’ve failed to do so, but I keep trying.

--Empirically speaking, what is the best film? (Not necessarily favorite film— but what film do you think is the best film ever made?)

I have to say it was “Lawrence of Arabia.” The casting was amazing. The cinematography was incredible, unrivaled, really. The story was excellent. And the ordeal of the entire filming process was without peer. What they went through to make that movie, hands down, makes it the best film ever made. The scope of the film alone is mind-boggling. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a close second, but that’s technically three films, so I went with Lawrence of Arabia.

--What film have you seen the most?

I have watched “The Muppet Movie” a ton. I still love the movie “Roxanne.” I have also seen “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and “The Quiet Man” more than any single person probably should. If I had to think about it and pick one film I’ve seen more than other…it’s probably “Meatballs.” Growing up, my sister and I watched that flick a thousand times. I can probably recite it from memory. It’s also one of the films that cemented an undying loyalty to Bill Murray.

--And finally: You die and go to heaven. And in heaven, they ask you to pick one film that summarizes your life, one film that makes people understand you, or a film you want people to watch to help them know you better. What is that film?

Nothing has had more influence on my life than the movie “Ghostbusters.” It defined me in several ways: my love for comedy, my love for the paranormal, and my love for snark and snappy comebacks. I loved Ghostbusters so much that I watched it on a weekly basis. I ran the audio cables from our VCR to a tape deck and recorded an audio copy of the film to play on my Walkman while I road the bus to school every day. I still have the film memorized word-for-word. I will often let my eyes go a little weird and turn to my daughter and say, “Then, during the Third Reconciliation of the Last of the Meketrex Supplicants, they chose a new form for him, that of a giant Sloar! Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!” To know me is to understand Ghostbusters on a molecular level. I owe that movie a lot.

Anyhow, this was a fun way to waste my night. I encourage you to play along. Answer some or all of the questions Brett asks his guests. I highly recommend listening to a few episodes of “Films to Be Buried With” on your favorite podcatcher app. And if anyone out there knows Brett Goldstein, please let him know I’m available to guest on his podcast. Until next time—Thanks for reading.

--Sean

#FourthAndWrong #filmstobeburiedwith #brett goldstein #movies #films

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lit--bitch · 4 years

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Current-Reads (20/04/2020 - 26/04/2020) 🍓🐢

(Disclosure: I don’t know anybody I’ve been currently reading this week. 😊)

Adding the preface again here: every Sunday without fail I throw up the freshest literature and photography I’ve read over the week, sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a piece I saw in a magazine or an online zine, sometimes it’s something I saw on social media, etc. Sometimes I add ‘RECOMMEND’ next to a few of the titles, but that’s not to say I don’t recommend all of them, I just love some pieces more than others. Not everything will be everybody’s cup of tea, yanno, c’est la vie. And any titles that you see in bold are hyperlinked so if you click or tap them they’ll direct you straight to the source… or shopping basket.

This week I’m gonna throw in a red herring and tell you about something I’ve been watching as well as what I’ve been reading, because I think it’s really cool and definitely appropriate for the age we’re living in at the moment.

So I’ve been reading: Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) which was edited by her son, David. I also read an interview on Granta from March between Rachel Long and Morgan Parker. I’ve also tucked into a couple pieces on Fence, Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’ and Anthony Michael Morena’s ‘The Whale’. I also saw Cecelia Knapp’s poem in Bath Magg Issue Three (but the whole issue is an absolute smacker, it’s great). Last but not least, I’m up to episode 5 of a brand new thing called The Midnight Gospel. It is crazy good. And it’s on Netflix right now.

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Cecilia Knapp, ‘I Used To Eat KFC Zingers Without Hating Myself’, Bath Magg Issue #3: I really loved the whole of Issue Three, I guess I was quite struck by this particular poem for its “staccato-ness”. This poem is buttered with present-day references. But they’re not necessarily about creating a familiar environment. Rather the object of familiarity is found within the assemblage of places, snacks and thoughts, all of which compound the grief ‘I’ is experiencing. The ‘I’ ruminates on life’s banality and their personal insecurities in living banality: ‘I need a thigh gap. I use emojis / to avoid conflict. Worry I’m a gentrifier. Watch docs about murdered women’. The vapidity is funny. The pain is not. The insecurities deepen. Your body, your life, continues the ache of day-to-day routine, and finds no resolution in the things which may or may not stand to comfort oneself when ravaged by loss. The poem feels quite loose, and disinterested. It’s a sore poem, but its array of references make it colourful. It sort of reminded me of Édouard Levé’s work a little bit? But if Édouard Levé had been a pop culture fanatic chewing HubbaBubba bubblegum on the London Overground. Bath Magg is a pretty exciting new magazine, (been around just under a year I think?) and they’ve published a lot of great writers, many of whom are emerging and I’ve spotted some quite established peple in there too. Kudos to their rubber ducky logo. It’s run by Mariah Whelan and Joe Carrick-Varty.

In Conversation with Morgan Parker and Rachel Long, Granta Magazine: I deeply love Morgan Parker’s work, she’s, in my opinion, the master of titles. I can’t think of anybody who titles their work as well as Morgan Parker does. And I love the depth of honesty and charisma in this interview. Like yeah, it appears to be a generic Q/A but, it genuinely feels like a conversation, and it’s welcoming and unpretentious. Rachel Long asks some penetrating questions, and Morgan’s answers are so detailed and self-aware. Most of the discussion revolves around the action of writing poetry in general and where does that impulse arise from, but they do discuss Morgan’s latest collection Magical Negro which came out February last year. It’s a narrative on black womanhood, on micro-aggressions and reoccuring violence, it’s about breaking down white perceptions of blackness, and dissolving those projections. What I love about Morgan Parker is she’s tackling this fucking idiot thing where (mostly) white people think she’s attempting to represent all black women in her writing, which is, by Morgan’s own admission, impossible. Her work is a duty to herself, to the background she’s lived and lives, and to unpack that discourse in her own way. And if it resonates, then great! I felt all this was inherent in the interview and only adds to my respect for her, and to Rachel for being such an attentive interviewer. BTW Rachel Long has a debut collection coming out this July, My Darling from the Lions.

Anthony Michael Morena, ‘The Whale’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): I can’t tell you how much I adored this beautiful mass of whale and word. It’s an essay which references the American Natural History Museum’s Blue Whale model. The writing is thick with feeling and fat with concern. It blends monologue, memoir. It’s non-fiction and documentary. It’s elusive, enigmatic, fragmented. It’s like broken biscuits and blubber. To me it felt like a note on the offences of climate change, the emotional response and grief as we bystand erosion and corrosion, the loss of life, and the urge to merge something back together as it dissolves and fragments before our eyes. It’s as personal as it is public. A gorgeous and complex piece.

Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) (RECOMMEND): I felt so afflicted reading Susan Sontag’s diaries, because y’know, it’s the equivalent of invading an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. Like, leave people alone. At the same like, this woman. These diaries are still shaping me, and each section leaves you with the weirdest aftertaste. Her personality permeates through every detail, every line-break, every reference and articulation of feeling. You learn so much, you gain so much from her perceptions and observations. How do I contain Susan Sontag? How do I describe these diaries? Not at all. Just buy it.

Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): My eyes locked onto this piece and just didn’t really stop reading. Lexi’s voice is enamouring and hypnotic. It’s so violent too. You’re lunged into friction burns and sports injuries, time and progression, the tensions between collectivity and individuality, family and sexuality, or as Fence put it, ‘lesbian eros’. This piece felt acidic. At times you can’t tell if the ‘I’ is indifferent or hurting to the point of numbness. It straddles so many different thematics, and breaks down a lot of conventions pertaining to the “ideal experience” of family relationships and team work. The resolution seems to be that in spite of people, our collectivity is defined by our collective solitude. This essay kicked me around a football field. It takes a good few repeated reads to appreciate its kaleidoscopic shifting, but it’s definitely one of my favourites.

The Midnight Gospel, from Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell, Netflix: (RECOMMEND) So the other day my friend Ben linked this to me and I had seen the trailer ages back and thought “Oh yeah I really wanna watch that”, but just forgot. After his reminder, I started watching it and ever since I’ve been saying to loads of other friends “Have you watched ‘The Midnight Gospel’ on Netflix?” because I’m d y i n g to talk about it with everybody.

I literally can’t categorise this “TV show” to you. It’s like if animation had a baby with a philosophy podcast and then put that baby onto an IV drip of psychedelics. It’s this swarm of different stimuli which you kind have to zone in on and absorb individually and yet somehow collectively.

So like, “Clancy” is a spacecaster who sets up “spacecasts” (podcasts) with creatures from other simulated worlds and he interviews them. But when Clancy transports himself into these worlds, it’s not like they’re sat down on some cream sofa with two glasses of water like it’s animated Oprah. No, his interviewees are like in the middle of fighting off a zombie apocalypse or meditating on a mountain or trying to find and save their lost lover. And Clancy just joins them on the journey and interviews them about their “specialism”. These are real people that are being interviewed like, the first episode is with Dr. Drew Pinker. And when you’re watching it, you think that the animation is totally separate to the conversation exchange the characters are having, but that’s not true. They have intersections, they have meaning. It only becomes obvious that it has meaning right at the end of each episode, but if you lock on you’ll see it’s all relevant throughout.

One of my friends was like “Oh I might stick that on tonight and have a joint” and I was like, don’t fucking get high when you’re watching this because it’s already intense enough as it is, like you know that Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell have felt some real shit to create this absolute rare jewel. In my opinion, you don’t need cannabis to appreciate these discussions. But if you wanna do it, then hey it’s a “free country”. And it’s not as though there’s a serious, central core plot like there is with Rick & Morty, I mean there is a kind of overarching plot but it’s not always integral. Like ultimately we’re invested in Clancy’s story but also all the stories of all the other people that come his way. There’s multiple plots, there’s multiple dimensions and ways of seeing. It’s a programme which delivers on multiplicity, which manifests itself in everything and everyone we see and know and touch and hear, etc, etc.

This production articulates some of the revelations that psychedelics can give you. Psychedelics don’t make you see the world literally like these animations do, but the sensations of the animation are reminiscent of an acid trip’s oscillating moods and sensitivities. It’s really cool, and it’s very poignant, and it’s my new favourite show to watch. And what’s so great about it is that, it requires multiple watches in order to really absorb everything in its entirety, so it’s a series you can just keep going back to even after you’ve seen them all. It’s re-watchable. Just fundamental goodness all round. Best way to indulge in it is with ice cream. 🍨

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So that’s it for this week, next Friday’s review is Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story translated by Alison L. Strayer, published with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Stay safe and well as always, my little caramels. 💁🏽

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getanattitude · 4 years

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The Ultimate Glossary of Terms About best beginner keyboard

“The greater you dig into a bit of Ives, the more enjoyment you get from it,” the pianist Jeremy Denk mentioned not long ago, sitting in a piano in a rehearsal space on the Juilliard College. “It’s like solving a puzzle.”

Then he enthusiastically deconstructed Ives’s “Concord” Sonata, untangling and conveying the themes and motifs embedded during the intricate textures of the intriguing score.

Mr. Denk is going to launch a disc, “Jeremy Denk Plays Ives” (Feel Denk Media), showcasing two piano sonatas, an esoteric decision of repertory for any debut solo album. But then, there is nothing generic relating to this adventurous musician. His vivacious intellect is manifest the two in his playing and on his site, Feel Denk, an outlet for astute musical observations and witty musings, whether or not a lament about inedible meatballs or possibly a spoof job interview with Sarah Palin.

Mr. Denk will exhibit his much more mainstream credentials when he performs Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. one with Charles Dutoit as well as Philadelphia Orchestra commencing on Thursday with the Kimmel Heart in Philadelphia and on Oct. 12 at Carnegie Corridor.

Mr. Denk argues which the Ives sonatas, composed early from the twentieth century, are mistakenly classified as avant-garde works instead of “epic Intimate sonatas with Lisztian thematic transformations.” For the relaxed listener, the audio that Mr. Denk describes in the CD booklet as “good, creative, tender, edgy, wild, first, witty, haunting” can unquestionably sound avant-garde. Ives, who created his living in the insurance enterprise, included jazz, riffs on Beethoven and American hymns, marches and folk tunes into his daringly experimental piano sonatas, rich in polytonality, thematic layering and rhythmic complexity.

“It’s so splendidly in-your-confront,” Mr. Denk reported, demonstrating a very maniacal passage inside the “Concord” Sonata. “It’s also fairly amazingly unattractive. There is one thing maddening about his sense of humor. Ives is repeatedly thumbing his nose at you in a method.”

But Mr. Denk implies that Ives’s tenderness, which he illuminates beautifully On this recording, is underappreciated. “Ives is commonly about things recalled,” he reported, “or Recollections or visions fetched out of some tricky area.”

He performed the harmonically misty passages in the next movement on the “Concord,” exactly where Ives directs that a piece of Wooden be pressed about the higher keys to make a cluster chord. “It doesn’t really feel gimmicky in the least to me,” Mr. Denk said. “It’s all blues in The underside. Ives understood tips on how to use those tiny clichéd bits of Americana in a way that all of a sudden will get your gut. You may’t believe how touching it truly is.”

Mr. Denk, 40, has long been enthusiastic about Ives because his undergraduate days at Oberlin in Ohio, the place he carried a double significant in piano overall performance and chemistry. “My full double diploma expertise was considerably of the continual freakout of 1 kind of A different,” he explained.

He had been a “genuinely nerdy highschool student” that has a constrained social existence, he reported. “Ever considering the fact that I used to be A child I desired to check out Oberlin and preferred the liberal arts. Of course I really get intensive pleasure from drawing connections involving pieces and poems and literature and concepts.”

Mr. Denk described himself as being a “observe maniac,” but his horizons have prolonged far beyond the follow area since Oberlin. Though nibbling a massive bit of chocolate product pie at an Higher West Side diner near the condominium he has rented considering the fact that about 1999, Mr. Denk referred to his site, calling it “an surprisingly superior outlet to release tensions of 1 variety or A further.” He claimed it had drawn new listeners to his concert events. An avid reader of liberal political blogs, Mr. Denk goals of crafting a classical tunes Model of Wonkette, he claimed, but that could be tough to do with out offending persons. And he tries to steer clear of offending men and women, he added, even though he did a short while ago submit a rant about plan notes.

Mr. Denk, who phone calls himself “a real Francophile,” is delicate-spoken but extreme, his discussion peppered with references to varied “obsessions”: coffee, Ives, Bach, Proust, Baudelaire and Emerson.

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He went off on “a Balzac mania” a several years in the past, he mentioned.

“That was a unsafe time, and every thing in everyday life seemed drawn out of a Balzac novel,” he additional. “I shed about a few decades of my life to Proust. I’m positive it modified every little thing, which include my enjoying.

“One day my manager was like, ‘Dude, You need to center on your vocation and finding your stuff jointly.’ ” At that time, Mr. Denk reported, “I used to be bringing Proust to meetings.” He additional: “I’m not sure I really experienced a profession route. I was just carrying out my Bizarre issue, which possibly seemed like a disastrous nonroute to most of the folks who have been watching above me. I keep in mind some exasperated meetings with my administration, but they ended up very individual and devoted, which I’m insanely grateful for.”

Mr. Denk grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., one among two brothers, a son of tunes-loving nonmusician mother and father. His father, that has a doctorate in chemistry, continues to be (at distinct situations) a Roman Catholic monk as well as a director of Computer system science at New Mexico Condition College.

Mr. Denk stays hooked on the chili peppers of Las Cruces, he stated, seemingly only half joking: “The red and the green and The complete spirituality of chili peppers. It’s nevertheless a huge Component of my life. Once i go household I drop by this actual dive and obsess in excess of their green meat burrito.”

When not on tour, Mr. Denk spends time together with his boyfriend, Patrick Posey, a saxophonist as well as the director of orchestral routines and setting up at Juilliard, wherever Mr. Denk obtained his doctorate, finding out with Herbert Stessin. Mr. Stessin recollects owning been impressed by “the maturity and intensity” of Mr. Denk’s actively playing and remembers him as “a rare scholar who absorbed items very speedily.”

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Mr. Denk explained he “was in school forever” until eventually “at some point I chose to trust my own instincts.” Now he teaches double-degree undergraduates for the Bard Faculty Conservatory of Music. The pianist Allegra Chapman, who analyzed with him, mentioned he was “concerned with a great deal greater than the notes around the web site, always citing literary and historical references.”

“Now I endeavor to tactic songs within a additional holistic standpoint,” she extra. “He is quite passionate. He used to soar across the room and bounce about and wave his arms. It was actually entertaining. He tried to get me to consider the new music having a humorousness.”

This combination of enthusiasm, humor and intellect, so vivid in both equally Mr. Denk’s taking part in and his crafting, is what distinguishes him, based on the violinist Joshua Bell. The two have already been typical duo associates due to the fact 2004, whenever they carried out on the Spoleto Pageant United states of america.

“You obtain the intellectual musicians or individuals who don their coronary heart on their sleeve and not using a lots of musical thought,” Mr. Bell explained, “but Jeremy manages to carry out both of those, Which’s ideal. Now we have lots of arguments in rehearsal, which can be the fun section at the same time. The actual fact we don’t normally see eye to eye retains things fresh and would make me query every little thing I do.”

Mr. Bell, whose selections of repertory are typically more common than Those people of his a lot more adventurous colleague, stated he wasn’t always an Ives fan: “Which has a great deal of recent music I’m somewhat cautious. Despite Ives, right up until I listened to Jeremy. He just delivers it alive. He has this sort of a great creativeness, and nothing is done randomly.”

Ives’s piano sonatas, Mr. Denk explained, “are in a method like animals that don’t want to be tamed.”

“Just about every efficiency needs to be so diverse,” he included, just one purpose he was at first hesitant to file them. Like Bach, he mentioned, Ives leaves lots to the performer’s creativeness.

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A great interpretation of your “Goldberg” Variations at Symphony Room in 2008 disclosed Mr. Denk’s profound affinity with Bach. Mr. Denk will carry out the operate and Books 1 and a pair of of Ligeti’s Études at Zankel Hall on Feb. sixteen.

To keep the “Goldberg” Variants refreshing, Mr. Denk is incorporating new fingerings, he claimed, “to reactivate the link concerning my brain and my fingers After i’m taking part in it.”

“I believe it’s an actual magical position when you have the muscle memory,” he included, “although the brain is ahead of your fingers.”

Transforming the fingerings is one way to stay clear of program, he said. “I get actual enjoyment from creating in a very superior fingering. It truly is like relearning the piece, and it will make you not choose any Take note without any consideration.”

The musical philosophy Mr. Denk relates to Bach, Ives and various repertory is probably finest summed up in that site put up on program notes: “I’ve by no means been an enormous enthusiast in the ‘Envision how groundbreaking this piece was when it was penned’ faculty of inspiration. For my revenue, it ought to be innovative now. (And it's.) No matter what else the composer may need intended, she or he didn’t want you to Assume, ‘Boy, that must are already great again then.’ The most elementary compositional intent, absolutely the ur-intent, is that you Participate in it now, you make it transpire now.”

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sidwellxcen384-blog · 4 years

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Grand Theft Auto PC Download gtadownload.org: What No One Is Talking About

Grand Theft Auto V Review Game

For me, GTA V ’s extraordinary range is summed winning inside two favourite moments. Individual becomes from the mid-game mission where I rushed a flat in a different plane, attacked the folks, hijacked the thing, and then parachuted ready and inspected it crash in the ocean to escape death for the supply of pay military fighter aircraft. One more occasion, whilst travel around in the off-road buggy, I got distracted in something looks like a means up among the San Andreas mountains. Turns out it was a avenue, after that I finished 15 minutes respect on the meeting, wherever I nearly ran over the faction of hikers. “Typical!” one of them yelled by everyone, as though he practically gets run over by a rogue ATV together with a mountain every time he goes on the hike.

I could go on this way for ages. GTA V has an plenty of like moments, deep with tiny, that make San Andreas – the location of Los Santos and surrounding areas – feel like a living earth in which anything can take place. It both gives you tremendous freedom to investigate an amazingly well-realised world and orders a story that’s gripping, exciting, and darkly comic. It is a step advance into narrative style for the lines, with there’s no physical component of the gameplay that hasn’t been strengthened over Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s immediately obvious the insurance routine is far more dependable and the auto-aim less touchy. The cars feel less like their tires are made of butter with shove better to the road, although the exaggerated handling still leaves plenty of place for spectacular wipeouts. Also on long past, Rockstar has completely killed among their most persistent demons, mission checkpointing, making sure that you never have to do a long, tedious take six when you repeatedly fail a mission ever again.

GTA V is also an intellectual, wickedly comic, and bitingly relevant commentary about contemporary, post-economic crisis America. All about it drips satire: it flies into the Millennial generation, celebrities, the much exactly, the widely effect, the core school, the media... Nothing is safe from Rockstar’s sharp tongue, including modern video games. One prominent supporting character spends mainly of the moment wearing their bedroom shouting sexual threats in public on the headset whilst showing a first-person shooter called Righteous Slaughter (“Rated PG – pretty much the same as the last game.”) It is not precisely subtle – he practically has the word “Entitled” tattooed in the throat, plus the in-game radio and Television outright piss-takes don’t put much for the imagination – but it is often extremely weird, and a bit provocative with it. Grand Theft Auto’s San Andreas is a fantasy, but the issues this satirises – greed, corruption, hypocrisy, the hurt of right – become many very real. If GTA IV happened a targeted killing of the American dream, GTA V takes point in the new American reality. The attention to factor that assumes making the world feel lively with believable is also what makes the satire so biting.

Grand Theft Auto V ’s plot happily works in the boundaries of plausibility, sending people away to drive dirt bikes along the highest of schools, hijack military plane, and engage in absurd shootouts with tally of policemen, yet it is three main figures become what keep it relatable level at it is many severe. The well-written and worked interplay between them provides the biggest laughs and most affecting times, with the way to their associations with just one another polished with my opinion of them changed throughout the history produced the plot their right. They think that people – albeit extraordinarily f***ed-up people.

Michael is a retired con work into his 40s, block out across the heart like he drinks beside the band now his Vinewood mansion with a layabout son, air-headed daughter, serially unfaithful wife, and very expensive therapist – most of who hate him. Franklin is a son from downtown Los Santos who laments the gang-banger stereotype even as he’s reluctantly seduced by the prospect of an better score. And then there’s Trevor, a hazardous career criminal that days from the wilderness selling drugs and murdering rednecks; a psychopath whose bloodthirsty lunacy is fuelled with a arrangement of methamphetamine along with a genuinely messed-up childhood.

The objective flit among their own original tale then a good overarching plotline which means all three, and a glory to GTA V’s versatility and universal quality that each person cover his bit of standout vision. When the arcs developed I sense very differently on both ones by different ages – they’re not exclusively the archetypes that they are.

This three-character structure causes for excellent rate and extreme form in the storyline, it also allows Rockstar to compartmentalise different aspects of Grand Theft Auto’s personality. In doing this, it sidesteps some of the troubling disconnect that appeared when Niko Bellic abruptly changed between anti-violent philosophising and sociopathic killing sprees in GTA IV. Here, many of Michael’s missions revolve covering their ancestors with the past, Franklin is usually on demand vehicular disorder, with severe murderous charges are permit to Trevor. Each state a unique ability matched to help their talents – Franklin could to help slow time while taking, for example – that ends them a unique touch. Narratively, it’s powerful – even off-mission I found myself playing with nature, acting like a mid-life-crisis gentleman with frustration issues because Jordan, a thrill-seeker as Franklin, and a maniac as Trevor. The first thing I did as Franklin finally do some good cash was believe him a great amazing car, since I touch like that’s exactly what he’d want.

Trevor considers a like a tiny get-out-of-jail-free license for Rockstar, presenting an outlet for all the preposterous actions and deadly behavior which otherwise might not fit in with GTA V’s narrative ambitions. I found his violent insanity a minute overblown and boring at first. Because get-out clauses go, even though, their pretty successful, with Trevor’s over-the-top missions are most of GTA V’s action-packed highlights. It’s a successful way of fixing a quandary that’s prevalent in open-world games: the tension between report the writers want to request, then the tale you develop yourself in their structure and its world. Grand Theft Auto V accommodates both, masterfully, allowing not to challenge the other.

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The actual pretense of moving between them also provides a window in personal days with problems, fleshing off their personalities in a way that feels usual and story. Collect a atmosphere and the video camera moves out in the San Andreas map, closing back happening upon where they happen to be. Michael can occur at home watching TV when you release here on him, or race beside the motorway blasting ‘80s attacks, or using a cigarette on the golf club; Franklin can live moving away from a strip club, munching a case of snacks at home, or arguing with his ex-girlfriend; there’s a good prospect to Trevor could be tossed out half naked on the beach surrounded with over groups or, one memorable occasion, down in a stolen police helicopter.

It could be nearly everything, because there is a bewildering variety of details to do in the original San Andreas – tennis, yoga, hiking, people on sea then about ground, flying planes, golfing, cycling, diving, hunting, and more. The vision are a great intelligent leader to both San Andreas’ locations and its activities, visit people about the map and whetting the appetite for free exploration of it all. How that we’re established to San Andreas never feels artificial – the plan is fully open in the opening, for example – which says to the notion to the a real place, where you can get to know. If GTA IV’s Liberty City feels like a living city, San Andreas feels like a living world. I get people going their pet alongside the sand in the country so I jet-skied past, arguing for the street outside a cinema with Los Santos, and camped – with covering then anything – overnight in Support Chiliad, before packing positive with lasting a backpack in the morning. The astounding.

The ambience changes dramatically counting in where you are, also. Trevor’s dusty trailer out in the middle of nowhere in Blaine County feels like another earth through downtown Los Santos or Vespucci Beach. It wasn’t until the first time I take off a jet from the capital with on the mountains I became cycling around a few hours or that the total range of it became obvious. It shoves the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 more than it has any fine near, and it looks incredible. The biggest spring in property as Grand Theft Auto IV is the character animation, but the world can be much more expansive, detailed, and crowded. The price we buy of which is rare framerate drops and texture pop-in, that i found became more prominent the longer I played, but certainly not significantly taken away through my personal feel. For like a colossal and variable world it is also remarkably bug-free – I met just three minor problems from the 35 hours I spent on the primary playthrough, none that affected everyone to go down a quest.

San Andreas’s extraordinary intelligence of house is heightened by the fact that so much of it isn’t on GTA Full Game the place. There’s so much taking which it is simple find things organically, rather than waste your own lifestyle following a mission marker. I when take a passenger jet from the airport for the hell of it, then parachuted onto the top of the tallest building in Los Santos. (I then accidentally jumped off the highest and reduction toward my death, forgetting to I’d currently employed the parachute, however I normally put that piece off.) Out driving in the country, I fell across a man to a phone rod with womens’ underwear. I tracked down criminals who randomly swipe purses on the lane, with went off across gunbattles between police and other miscreants, incident to give a feel that world isn’t completely uneventful if I wasn’t below to interrupt normalcy. I believed an exclusive mountain cycle with cycled around in the hills, enjoying the sight. These small moments can be got about your own telephone camera – which, brilliantly, can also use selfies. I have some shouts of Trevor completing his unhinged account of a laugh within his underpants on top of a hill.

The rumor to GTA V tells during their missions takes full advantage of all this kind beyond getting with killing (while the maneuver with direct is supremely enjoyable). It’s cause a lot of good times. This included us racing Michael’s lazy blob of a boy across Vespucci Beach in one of many misguided attempts on father-son bonding, utilizing a thermal scope to look for someone from a helicopter before chasing them along the city on the ground, torching a meth lab, towing cars for Franklin’s crack-addict uncle to thwart him through shed the profession, getting into a facility on the beach in a wetsuit and flippers, piloting a marine, impersonating a structure worker, doing yoga, escaping on plane skis, failing multiple generations to earth a jet burdened with drugs at a hangar shown from the wilderness… it goes by with by. The days of a repetitive collections of “get now, find this gentleman, shoot that guy” stay after us. Still missions that would usually be set are filled with novelty with excitement by the capability to compete them by a few different views – in a shootout, Trevor can be exciting RPGs from a rooftop what Jordan and Franklin flank the rival on the ground.

It is the heists – multi-stage, huge-scale experience that help as the story’s climactic peaks – which demonstrate Grand Theft Auto V at their most dedicated and obtained. Usually there’s a choice between a more involved, stealthier option that will (hopefully) attract less boil, along with a great all-out option that will be less tense yet more explosively chaotic – with what exactly crew to take along with you on the job. All of GTA V’s missions are replayable at any time, allowing you relive favourite seconds before look at out a different method. They also have optional objectives in the vein of Assassin’s Creed’s synchronisation challenges, but crucially, these are invisible once people play a quest, therefore they don’t distract a person from performing things your way.

Sometimes your way won’t are the means that this designers require you to do something, with although GTA 5 is usually very good at bending close to people as you do, here were a few situation wherever that wasn’t train for our personal name of chaos. Overtake a car you’re not meant to overtake and it may close in pad of travel as if with secret. Despite the opening of different stealth mechanics, enemies will miraculously make sure you when the mission dictates they should. Kill someone or you’re supposed to, and that’s sometimes Mission Failed. Most of the time the drafting is suitable to be invisible, but as it is not, you really discover this – if only because most of the time it’s so seamless.

As always, some of the wittiest record shows through to the in-game radio to shows behind all of the search and confusion. “There’s nothing other effective, more masculine, new American than a big lump of coins,” blasts one of the in-game ads. “We learn times are tough, but they don’t have to be tough for you. Still cause several liquidity in your home? Are you insane?” The tune selection is also typically excellent, leading to most of those serendipitous moments where you’re driving combined with the right music happens by. During a heist, when the radio isn’t blaring the background, a vibrant soundtrack seriously builds tension.

The satire is improved with integration of advanced life in the game world. Every individual turns around their smartphone – it’s used to trade stocks, call up friends to meet in place then launch emails. There’s a great Facebook spoof, Life Invader, on the in-game Interne, with the slogan “Where Your own Personal Data Becomes A Marketplace Page (Which We Can Go)”. You’ll hear adverts for preposterous parodic TV shows that you can actually watch with your TELEVISION at home, optionally whilst enjoying a toke. It might not be realistic, but it certainly feels authentic.

It’s significance mentioning that when this extends to sexual, drugs, with assault, GTA V pushes boundaries much more than at any time or. If the morality authorities were concerned with Hot Chocolate, there’s a lot here that will provoke moral hysteria. It’s deliciously subversive, and safely tongue in cheek... but after before twice, this shoves the borders of experience, too. There’s one instance scene, a personal world in which you have no alternative bar to help actively participate, i gotten so troubling that we took problems playing this; yet couched in obvious assessment in the US government’s choice to torture post 9/11, it’s a surprising moment that will attract justified controversy. It brings to mind Label of Function: Modern Warfare 2’s No Russian mission, except worse, and without the selection to omit over this. Another stuff, like the ever-present prostitution with extensive strip-club minigames, feels like it’s present even if this may be rather than as it gives anything to say.

There is nothing in San Andreas, though, that doesn’t serve Rockstar’s resolution with creating a exaggerated projection of The usa that’s suffused with crime, assault and sleaze. There are no nice gentlemen in GTA V. All you know is a sociopath, narcissist, criminal, lunatic, sadist, cheat, liar, layabout, or about combination of these. A good guy which gives good funds to help shoot Los Santos’ worst examples of corporate greed is playing the stock exchange to help the help whilst he does it. In the world like this, it’s not tough to escort why violence is often the first option. All the pieces fit.

Verdict

Grand Theft Auto V is not only a preposterously enjoyable video game, but also an intellectual and sharp-tongued satire of contemporary America. It signifies a elegance of the lot to GTA IV gotten to the record five years ago. It’s technically more accomplished in every conceivable system, yet it’s also tremendously committed into a right. No extra earth into record games comes near that now magnitude or scope, and there is strong brains behind the logic of humour and surprise for mayhem. This shows a compelling, unpredictable, and provocative story without actually letting this get in the way of your self-directed journey through San Andreas. It is one of the very best movie games yet produced. Write: That journal exclusively involves the single-player section of GTA 5 , since it launched without any multiplayer mode.

#GTA #Grand Theft Auto Download #Grand Theft Auto Review

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scarletrebel · 7 years

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a thing about rw.by

this is a whatever. not a meta or a theory or really a well-thought out critique. if anything I guess im just voicing my frustrations. if you like rw.by, please, please dont read this. you wont like what i have to say and i am in no way looking to upset rw.by fans, i just need a good old fashioned shout into the void. theres some things i liked in here too that actually came out whilst writing aha, so its not all my bullshit.

my main gripe with rw.by at the moment is the lack of character development for ruby rose. you know, the main character? which i think is the reason why my heart breaks a little that i dont love it as much as i used to. i identified so much with ruby. a little girl with a heart too big for her brain, who just wants to protect and help, having to come to terms with the fact that the real world doesnt make noble goals like that easy? thats my childhood right there.

the latter is something that hasnt been touched on as far as ruby rose’s character development goes until this season, and even then it hasnt really been touched, or lightly brushed, its been mentioned. ruby thought saving the world wouldnt take that long, that the world wasnt as big as it is; she apologises to jaune for dragging jnpr along with her. all INCREDIBLE MOMENTS I was really happy about, but they werent expanded upon. it was like the writers wanted to hit a checklist of ‘make sure the audience knows ruby is naive and sad but hopeful’ rather than making it more engaging to learn about as aspects of her character, which is just lazy storytelling.

show, dont tell. they’ve done that with juane. they’ve shown that he’s upset about phyrra’s death, they’ve shown him get mad at the situation and with qrow. he’s never outright voiced these things about his character like ruby has about herself, and we all knew she was a little naive. season one, weiss accusing ruby of being a bad leader and them showing the audience ruby trying to get better was so much better than just having her be like ‘im a little naive but ill fight for the greater good!’ like she has so blatantly been this series.

like, why would she not get mad at her own uncle for keeping her in the dark about someone wanting to kill her?? ruby’s what, 16 at this point? 15 at the least? would she not at least be a little bit annoyed, and would that not show some character growth on her part if she was? my naivety ended, personally, when i stopped trying to be so dang optimistic, (this can become more complicated to explain, as obviously you still have to have hope in the world while keeping a level head and ruby is still young, but, thats another conversation) and if that moment hasnt happened for ruby after 1. penny dying 2. phyrra dying 3. her uncle keeping important information from her 4. her sister having her arm sliced off 5. her friends being split up from her 6. nearly dying to a foe way more powerful than she is, even with her silver eyes -- then when?!

and lets just get it out of the way -- i dont fucking hate juane. i really, really like him as a character but i just fucking wish he got less of a spotlight because so much more attention is being payed to him and his journey and how everything affects him over ruby. it just is, and it sucks. i like theorising about his semblance, im pretty certain he’s really fucking powerful just like ruby is, but if he unlocks and masters his thing before ruby does i will be so pissed, and the only reason i say that is because it feels like thats the way its headed.

juane is a lovely character. he’s heroic, he’s actually quite brave and smart, and he’s a good fucking friend. he’s a brilliant support character. but for the love of all that is holy, focus more on ruby when they’re in the same scene. about how he’s helping her on her journey, why could they not have had one conversation about phyrra on screen is my question. they did it really, really well it season one, and i was very loud about the fact that no, juane doesnt get more screen time or attention, but during season four it feels like he -- like everyone that isnt ruby or the other three titular characters -- has over ruby.

just, please, rwby season five -- give ruby rose more character development. prove me fucking wrong and reveal that you were playing the long game, please.

also; i havent watched the last two episodes, but if it turns out the ‘’’cure’’’ to yangs ptsd is a new arm. fuck, man. please no. but i cant really comment on that yet so, we’ll see. i actually, up until seeing the preview for her spraying her arm and all that, really liked yangs journey. and taiyang is such a sweetheart i adore him. he was so patient and gentle and loving with yang, a few moments had me cringing but overall, an enjoyable part of the season. i hope yang gets to punch adam in the face.

blake’s journey is one ive enjoyed also. and tbh, i think sun following her and thinking she was on a personal mission to take down the white fang is a very sun thing to do, and i think blake surprising us all by saying no im not gonna do that is a very blake thing as well. sun is spontaneous, carefree to a point and very dedicated to taking down bad guys. projecting that onto blake was his mistake, and im really glad that blake is the one to voice the audiences frustrations at how annoying it is that he follows and harrasses her into taking action (even when a part of us knows that she should -- a really, really well written aspect of blakes journey actually, i really liked it) (sun really needs to have a ‘okay im being a creep im really sorry’ moment but i dont see it happening. again; prove me wrong, guys.)

blake so, so needed to see her family. im glad she could see that and im not surprised that she wanted to run under the guise of ‘resting’ like. come on blake, we all know you’re scared shitless. her characterisation was on point, probably the most out of the four girls. blake was a+ in this season and im really happy about that, come to think of it aha. i hope she gets to punch adam too.

weiss im satisfied with too, although i really wish that ironwood and her got to talking. he didnt necesarily need to save the day for her, i would think that a guy fighting her own battles -- even if it is a ‘good one’ like ironwood -- would irk her, so it wouldve been nice for them to talk. (im still fucking salty about juanes ‘you can have her’ to neptune like lmao fuck off you fucking dudebros THAT WAS SO ANNOYING anyway) weiss being able to call off the thing she summoned before it hurt the lady would be a sign that yeah she’s getting strong but she’s learning control, so. shrug.

papa schnee is an asshole, where is mama schnee?? and i FUCKING LOVED THE PLOT POINT THAT HER DAD MARRIED INTO THE FAMILY. please let this be an opening for a badass but subdued for Reasons mama schnee (although my hope is not that high)

my main, number one, OVERALL problem with rwby since the end of s3 to s4 is that they dont give the characters that need and deserve the most time and attention just that. i know its a small crew, i know that what they do and the time they do it in is amazing and admirable, and i do admire it and applaud it, they work so fucking hard and deserve praise for that. but they dont use their time wisely when it comes to assigning it in the narrative. and thats more of a writing issue, anyway.

and another fucking thing. the majority of the interesting characters that arent the main four and are alive and have been developed or made mysterious enough to warrant interest from the audience are fucking men. and yeah, no duh jade, welcome to every piece of media for fucking ever. qrow is an asshole that everyone loves, raven is probably going to turn out to be a bitch -- the majority of salem’s ‘court’ or whatever are dudes. ironwood. ren got backstory over nora. blakes dad. adam taurus. for all that i love him, fucking juane. did we learn anything about phyrra that wasnt her explicitly telling us her backstory? no. we felt sad that she died because of her connections with other people, but, lets face it, mostly juane. im still adamant that she didnt die just for him, that she knew there was a bigger picture and genuinely loved him, but from a narrative pov him and his reactions was a bigger focus point especially in the aftermath with season 4.

(ruby fucking unlocked an ANCIENT POWER BECAUSE SHE SAW PHYRRA DIE AND SHE DOESNT GET TO HAVE THE SAME EMOTIONAL SCENE ABOUT IT THAT JUANE GOT??? PLS LAST TWO EPISODES. GIVE HER THAT AT LEAST. PROVE ME WRONG.)

i remember at a rwby panel at rtx one year, when asked about making a series that has four female protaganists, the guys said that they didnt see it that way, that they were just writing a story about a bunch of kids and yeah, i get that. but its not.

its a story about four strong, tested, young women and they need to stop being oblivious to that because the narrative is fucking suffering.

end rant/

#dead dove do not eat #jadeisranting.txt #please PLEASE #DONT READ THIS IS YOU LOVE RWBY #ill probably just upset or anger you and theres no point so please dont #im just frustrated and wanting to vent its really not worth reading if you know you might not like what you read #i really dont think putting dots in rw.by is going to help but imma try #sorry in advance

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seanmeverett · 7 years

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The Mission Acquires Humanizing Tech

Combining forces to push the human race forward

I. Setting the Stage

Over the last few years, I’ve taken Humanizing Tech more seriously after writing about the random thoughts crossing my brain for the last 10 years or so. Because of that, I’ve made a number of new friends and business opportunities as a result of it.

As I often tell people, building Humanizing Tech has been one of the most beneficial things I’ve done for my career over the last few years. This world is about people and after so many years building products deep in the CRUD of software, both consumer and enterprise, it’s been a nice change of pace to give some of that knowledge back and connect with other people doing cool things. Give it a thought as something you might want to do for your own career.

Today, we have some exciting news about the next chapter on this journey of love.

The Mission has acquired Humanizing Tech.

II. The Origin Story

Chad Grills and I met almost a year ago to the day, here within the walls of Medium. I originally reached out to him after hearing good things about The Mission, and about how open and intelligent the chap was from a mutual friend doing some work for Google. I wanted to see if he was interested in a few of my analyses/stories.

He was and off to the races we went. Which, by the way, we’re looking for new thoughts and perspectives so if you’re looking to get a few of your stories out to a massive audience of millions every month, shoot me an email.

I remember sitting in a little beach house the wife and I had rented for a few months in Laguna Beach when we had our first face to face Skype call (he and his wife had just moved to the Valley from DC).

As is often the case with these things, we found we were fast friends, interested in the same things, with the same vision for humanity. Namely, build something positive and of value to help pull us all forward.

While I was building products deep in the world of emerging tech (biologic intelligence) and video streaming, he was quickly building one of the fastest growing media startups of the last decade.

Humanizing Tech had maybe a few thousand subscribers and The Mission maybe 50K or 60K.

Cut to a year later and we have 12,000 subs while The Mission has over 300,000 subs. Both of our publications together reach millions of eyeballs every month and represent two of the largest websites in the world. We’ve produced a daily email newsletter and high quality content that many people have paid to get called The Fountainhead Movement. Almost 200 unique analyses over the last 6 months plus another 700-ish free stories over the last few years.

Interestingly, Humanizing Tech experienced less growth because we turned on a private, trusted, and paid channel. That’s unfortunate because while we love our trusted, small group of emerging tech enthusiasts, we feel that much of the world is missing out on this new way of thinking.

So, part of the rationale for combining these two high growth media properties is to reach as many people as possible with a better programming language, both in terms of content but also tech.

We want to be better than the negativity of news, and produce something that’s more positive and uplifting. We want to show you the way to build something novel and valuable so you can take control of your own financial future.

Essentially, manifestation. Just getting exposed to something and knowing it’s possible is the first step. The next is doing it. But taken together, it makes for a powerful, almost magical force. All it takes is a little imagination.

Finally, I would give Chad the highest compliments that I could give anyone professionally. Which is, I would give him the source code to Biologic Intelligence and trust him fully that he would protect it as well as we have.

Everytime I’ve been in the Valley over the last year, I made it a point to sit down with him because regardless of everything else, he’s just a great, solid dude. The wife and I spent some time with his wife and him at the Google campus as well. I can vouch for two of the most genuine, highest quality, and trustworthy people I’ve ever met.

So, to say we’re aligning ourselves with The Mission isn’t some strange leap or new world that we haven’t experienced before. Truth is, we’ve already been operating in this capacity, working together, since nearly the day we met a year ago. And it goes much further than just business. Dare to say, a friendship.

This just formalizes it.

III. What’s Next

At this point you might be wondering what happens next with Humanizing Tech, all our content, the newsletters, how to continue accessing it, and what’s happening with the paid fountainhead channel.

Chad and I have talked at length about the best way to benefit the readers, contributors, and our own brands when combining the two properties, and so we’re flexible enough to make changes if we don’t like how anything plays out. But this is what we’re doing for now:

Humanizing Tech’s content will continue to exist on the same domain: http://humanizing.tech.

We’re working with Medium to unlock the fountainhead channel and making almost 200 stories free. If you’ve been curious about what’s behind that curtain, now’s your chance.

Head on over to https://themission.co and click the subscribe button at the top of the page if you haven’t already (this way you make sure you’ll get our new content).

I’m going to be the Entrepreneur In Residence over at The Mission, as well as helping with the sponsored stories and branded content. Additionally, I’ll be on the lookout for the highest quality content and writers.

Current contributors to Humanizing Tech should shoot me an email if you’d like to be a contributor to The Mission as well. You’ll get about 50x the reach with new content you submit. Remember: quality is more important than quantity.

I will still send out my weekly Diary of a Madman roundup through the Humanizing Tech email list, but will now be including more awesome content from The Mission where we haven’t before. So, it’s like a bonus of curation for you without you having to do anything.

The Mission is part creative agency as they’re gearing up some major branded content videos and live streams / podcasts from the biggest tech companies you know and love. Give me a shout if you want to see what’s up or their work. Coupled with PROME’s next gen AI software and our global 200-person tech team (more to come on that), we can not only consult but also build and distribute the biggest, baddest stuff to a world of like-minded people.

It’s going to be an exciting back half of 2017 and an even better 2018. Hop on board now, it’s gonna be a wild ride, y’all.

IV. What We Offer You Today

A way to read, watch, and listen to high quality, positive content you can’t get anywhere else in the world.

A way to reach millions of people every month.

A way to make compelling videos to help drive awareness or sales of your own projects.

A way to use off-the-shelf, but also next generation Artificial Intelligence, to do things you never thought possible.

A way to build any technology product you want.

A media business. A tech business. There’s only one piece left to complete the triangle, but that will take more time.

— Sean

The Mission Acquires Humanizing Tech was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Stories by Sean Everett on Medium http://ift.tt/2seVPT3

#Stories by Sean Everett on Medium

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