#I was just thinking about mental wikis and message boards

[decolonize-the-left]

god yeah about the exclusionism post and asking the queer community to hold itself accountable...

like, i'm young. im only 18. so i wasn't super around for the vast majority of the height of aphobic bigotry in this community.... but i've been around for most of the anti-bilesbian, anti-xenogender, anti-mogai stuff, and it has hurt so so much.

im a xenogender, genderqueer aroace bi lesbian. all of these things mean so so much to me. because they taught me to know and love all parts of myself, which has taught me my love of radical love and kindness. the queer community is what has transformed me into being a radical, queer-anarchist, anti-racist, anti-bigotry, and those things are so fucking critical to who i am. i wouldn't be who i am without the queer community and what its members have taught me about equity and compassion... and yet, it has also traumatized me to the point that it's hard to think about getting involved in irl queer events which breaks my heart.

in 2021, 11,000 people signed a petition telling me specifically to end my life for being part of the campaign that had the lgbta wiki support bi lesbians. i had a message board on there, and everytime i went on there, there were 10 new messages with different descriptions of how i should end my life. it got so bad that i couldn't sleep. i was shaking and crying ALL THE TIME. and despite that wiki being the one place i could be open about my queerness, i was forced off of it because if i stayed, i would be continually threatened and my mental health couldn't take it.

as a result, i lost contact with most of my online queer friends. i was so fucking angry all the time. everytime i saw any form of exclusionist rhetoric, i would become so anxious that i would spiral. i've been baited, threatened, relentlessly bullied, forced out of a queer 'safe' space, and treated like absolute fucking shit. all because i put the words 'bi' and 'lesbian' next to each other in a bio about me.

i can't put words to describe the kind of shit this has done to my mental health. i already had personality disorders from Emotional Trauma that made anger hard to deal with- so getting involved on Tumblr after the wiki went away, where exclusionism was sadly rampant, was hard because I felt like I had to choose- be an online part of the community that has made me who i am, but suffer bullying and self hatred in the process, or give up that community entirely. i don't think people truly comprehend how traumatizing it is for anyone, but especially a TEENAGER, to have to make a decision like that.

it's been almost two years now, and still, everytime i see exclusionism, everytime i get a death threat (sadly still a somewhat frequent occurrence), i spiral because it takes me right back to the height of my harassment two years ago. and part of my brain still genuinely believes i deserved it.

that's just me. that's just one person influenced by this. and yet it's not just me. the same stuff that's happened to me, has happened to thousands. and thousands more. and i don't think people truly understand that, just because it's online stuff and didn't really happen irl, doesn't mean it's some small little thing that we should stop complaining about because there's REAL problems for REAL queer people to worry about.

so, very long story short, coming from someone who has been hugely impacted by exclusionism, and i may be unique in this position, but every person who was once an exclusionist like that and has grown and apologized, seriously means the world to me. because i know that there's no excuse for it, and yet i understand the reasons why so many people struggle with it. out of all the self hatred exclusionism has caued me, how can i turn around and blame the exclusionists who were acting out of the same exact insecurities i was?

there is no excuse for bigotry. but you are not a bad person. thank you for growing. seeing your post actually gave me so much hope because i've had several people come to me personally and say that me being open about my identity has helped them grow out of their exclusionist mindsets and grown as a person, so seeing people grow like this just warms my heart because we all have the capacity for both good and bad- taking the opportunity to learn to be better is a prime example of the good and it fills me with hope that other people can learn too.

i also wanted to comment on something else from your post. you were talking about the generational trauma you've experienced, and how you perceived the concept of 'aphobia' as disrespectful to the victims of horrible systemic oppression irl, and while yes, that is not what aphobia as a concept is, you don't need to apologize for being angry because yes, you perceived something the incorrect way in that moment, but your anger was 100% justified. as a white queer person, i fully believe that inclusionism still needs room to acknowledge intersecting oppressions and that comparing intracommunity exclusionism to centuries of genocidal colonialism, is absolutely appalling. your actions were unjustified- your anger was not. i want you to know that you do not need to feel guilty for being angry like that. anger is an important emotion, so i hope you can truly internalize that you had every right to be angry, even if your actions were wrong.

again, thank you for being awesome and making that post. i'm very sorry if my super long ramble was unsolicited, and if you don't want to respond i completely understand! please please take care and have a wonderful time zone <3

🖤🖤🖤

#asked #answered #i dont have anything to say but i still felt like others should see this too

[saint-starflicker]

On Internet Aesthetics

The YouTube algorithm recommended me Lily Alexandre's video essay about how internet Aesthetics hurt art. I personally enjoy the aesthetics wiki, and I was interested in an opposing viewpoint (haven't watched any of Alexandre's other vids).

I thought some points were fair, for example the collaborative knowledge of internet teenagers misattributing the contributions from people of color to more hegemonic demographics (claiming that the Afrofuturism aesthetic began with Gene Roddenberry), or Lily Alexandre's concern that aesthetics can be used as lifestyle branding that gets people—influencers, content creators, and consumers alike—more concerned with the appearance of a thing rather than the philosophies or power struggles that make a real life real.

Others I thought were off the mark, for example how a third of contributions to the Aesthetics Wiki make no sense. This doesn't bother me, because I think there's something democratic about that: just pop in something like Night Luxe...which I think can be more like a folkloric being, "beware the Night Luxe"...or Coastal Granny, or the one Alexandre was complaining about that had a photo of a model in unripped skinny jeans "grunge" beside a plate of sushi and just Make It Make Sense(!!) why and how does that earn its own separate Aesthetic page on this Wiki??

Nay, I say it doesn't have to make sense, it's primordial information, pop it into the internet cauldron and find out if it sticks, what that means for it to stick, and what it's doing.

If this overall pattern of Aestheticization is a product of post-quarantine culture, scrolling through our smartphones in isolation, making a suffix -core or a collection of media "my whole personality", losing our souls to how organizational hashtags are used by marketers—as Alexandre argues—then, yeah, that can be a thing to ponder.

But I also don't find, even after watching that 40-minute video essay, that Aestheticization is really a new, different and more harmful thing.

If the message was, "Big Corporations have always done this harmful thing that is adapting in the context of Namecore so beware and here's the plan" then I wouldn't be so disagreeable.

But, for example, Steampunk was a genre before it was an aesthetic, and maybe it was even an aesthetic genre in how some people like stimmy tech and corsets paired with boots. There wasn't some Steampunk Manifesto (that I knew of) that told everybody "The Purpose of Steampunk is to take historical aesthetics to actively criticize the impact of Victorian-era colonialism, sexism, discrimination against mentally ill people, and the exploitation of laborers with the growth of factories at the time...and how nothing has changed in those aspects of society in the past two hundred years, so that's bad, and we're rubbing in how bad and outdated are those unexamined attitudes today, and we're doing that by dressing like people did two hundred years ago".

But that nonexistent manifesto was the purpose and meaning that I found in (or made of) Steampunk.

For somebody else Steampunk is nothing more than Goths that discovered the color brown. I'm not being snobbish, I'm saying I love that angle too and I fully accept that that's also Steampunk.

There are thinkpieces out there about how Dark Academia heralds the accessibility of the markers of class that its aesthetic predecessor of Prepsters used to easily conserve/gatekeep ("What’s Dark about Dark Academia?" article by Ana Quiring), and I personally find themes in Dark Academia media that speak more to the hypocrisy of being classically-educated and "civilized" as in image or reputation...but truly hiding a soul-crushing if not outright fatal violence in the prestigious boarding school gilded cage (abusive father in Dead Poets Society, predatory teacher in The Moth Diaries, and I heard The Secret History has a murder mystery set at a prep school so I think there's an appropriate irony there in how violent the heavily-controlled and image-conscious echelon of society can truly get.)

On the other hand, an art movement like Surrealism historically had a manifesto and a community. Salvador Dali with the melting clocks paintings got kicked out of the club for being an antisemitic fascist, while Jean Cocteau with the special effects black-and-white movies possibly got kicked out of the same club for being definitely gay. But both Dali and Cocteau are still considered surrealists by laypeople such as myself. Because of the similar aesthetic.

I'm into Art Nouveau lately. I don't know what philosophy or power struggles underlie it, I might look into it but right now I just think it looks pretty.

When I write about characters in the 1950s, or think about doing art for 1990s characters, then I think about how the aesthetics shows characterization as well as what they had access to. Lily Alexandre described good old days of culture being localized and image being bought at a local store...but I don't find that there's much difference between those good ol' days versus today with Internet Aesthetics in how young people (really, any people, but these characters are mostly young enough to still depend on their parents) engage with self-definition and self-expression. I might not have been alive in the 1950s, but I can believe a tendency towards a full-on prepster look would have communicated something that an imitation of rockabillies or greasers would not.

I don't find the high school clique tropes from the 1980s through the 2000s to be true to life, either, but there was plenty of (age-appropriate, so I was told) angst and prejudice back in the day based on whether you presented as Emo or BoHo or Prep or Hipster.

I disagree with Alexandre's assertion that those subculture-dividing personal limitations were less harmful only because of it also being limited in scope, because of the limitations of technology at the time. Again, I find that Internet Aesthetics are as democratic as internet access, and I find it for free, I contribute to it for free, so I cannot reason that it's more vulnerable to becoming Namecore Capitalism than aesthetics, subcultures, and genre trends always were.

I was recently years old when I read the sentence "90's grunge is not a fashion style, it's a philosophy" and I thought that was the most pretentious awful sentence—but after a little surface-scratching of the ground, it's true. Grunge was a protest against consumerism. I only remember what it looked like on glossy magazine pages when I was a kid in the 90s.

It's not new, maybe some sides of it is tired (Grunge on fashion magazines) or didn't follow through with its best potential (Steampunk as protest), but I'm not quite at "Grr kids these days with their Namecore and their Dark Nautical Luxe Granny Coastal Wave" or more condescendingly "Kids these days don't know they're being exploited" ... I don't know that there's more marketing exploitation in category hashtags than back in the day that we didn't have those. We still had Aesthetics of varying depth and dilution of meaning, but we just didn't call it Aesthetics. So what's really so bad about it now that somehow wasn't so bad back then?

#poe.txtwall

[thethoughtsfromthreeam]

Sunshine

Pairing: Maxwell Lord x OC (Evelyn “Evie” Blaker)

Warnings: Smut (male masturbation)

A/N: The block that’s been sitting on me for this story is easing back and I feel pretty good about it!  Think we’re gonna top out around 7 or 8 parts, which is killing me y’all, cause this was suppose to be a smutty one shot.  Lordy gee.

Reminder:  I ain’t ever seen Pedro Pascal in FUCK ALL, I’m just coming up with this as I go along, using imdb.com, wiki, and 84,000 tabs I got open to plan out this shit.  I also write soft versions of his characters so if you’re craving asshole vibes, I ain’t got any but my own to offer.

Tags:  @zeldasayer , @romanticgumchewer, @beskars​ , @coolmaybelateruniverse , @the-feckless-wonder, @lavenderl3mons , @pascalisthepunkest , @mandoandyodito​ , @randomness501 , @fioccodineveautunnale  

[PART 1]  [PART 2]  [PART 3]

Part 4 

Small Steps Towards New Beginnings

The mid-afternoon sun brightened Evie’s office, giving her a bit of an energy bump as she sat hunched in her chair, eyes focused on the computer screen in front of her.  She was lost in her work until her phone buzzed.  Again.  For the fifth time in half an hour.  

She sighed but remained focused on the accounting chart in front of her.  If these damn numbers didn’t add up. . .  As she wrote down some questions and numbers, her desk phone rang.  She grabbed it and Sarah, her assistant, was on the other line.

“You have a call on line one.” Sarah’s monotone voice came through the receiver.

“I said to hold calls for the next three hours, Sarah.”  Evie’s voice was calm, but mentally she was pounding her head into a desk.  This was too important to be interrupted by a phone call.  Her request had been a simple one and yet here she was.

“Call on line one.”  Sarah hung up and Evie closed her eyes and sighed deeply.  Five minutes, whoever it was is getting five minutes.  And then they better leave her the hell alone.

“Do you ever answer your phone?”  The rich timber of Maxwell’s voice sent a shiver up her spine, but she didn’t miss what sounded like a petulant tone to his voice.

“Not when I’m in the middle of reviewing accounts.  Are you the one blowing up my phone?”

“I’m hardly blowing up anything.”  Oh, yeah, he was sounding petulant.  Evie’s mouth lifted into a lopsided grin as she reached for her phone and unlocked it.

“That’s funny because it says I have received five rather lengthy messages from one Maxwell Lord in the last thirty minutes.  Are you not Maxwell Lord?  Or has another Maxwell Lord invaded my world without me knowing?”  His grunt on the other end of the line made her smile a little wickedly.  If he wanted to childish, then she’d treat him like one.

“If you’d just answer your messages. . .”  Evie put down her cell and went back to her columns, letting Maxwell’s voice drone in the background.  She was only half listening when he said the word tonight.

“Wait, what?  Tonight what?”

“You’re not even listening to me.” He sounded disappointed.

“Not really.  I told you I’m reviewing accounts.  And now you can’t accuse me of not being honest with you.”

“I said, there is a gala tonight, I want you to come with me.”

“I can’t.”  On his end of the line Maxwell looked shocked, he fully expected her to say yes.

“What do you mean?  Of course, you can.”  The look of incredulousness on Evie’s face would have made anyone watching her bust out in hearty laughter.  Was the man serious?  He was serious.  She bowed her head and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Max.”  Her voice was soft, and he unconsciously leaned into the phone as if to be caressed by it. “I will be pulling long hours today and for at least the next day or so.  The financial reporting protocols put in after Don came on board are super detailed. It’s a lot of work and I must be the one reviewing it all.

“Plus, I don’t have a gown for a gala, and I don’t have the time to go get one, plus the time to get ready.  It’s already three and the train takes almost two hours to get down to the city, plus the drive to the venue.  It just isn’t feasible.”

“Complete your reports on the train, I’ll have a gown waiting for you when you arrive, and you can get ready in the car.  You’ve done it before.”  He wasn’t begging he told himself, he wasn’t.  She sighed.

“That’s true, but that’s not the point.  I just can’t.”

“Evie.”  His tone had an undercurrent of want that he tried to hide, but she knew.  She wanted him, too, and a small part of her wished she lived closer so she could see him whenever she wanted.  But life wasn’t a romance novel and she was a working girl determined to keep the company she loved alive and thriving.

“I’m sorry Max.  I really am. But I have got to get back to these numbers.  I’ll call you tonight if it’s not too late.”

“I don’t care if its late.  I want to hear your voice.”  She smiled softly.

“If it’s not too late.  Good-bye Max.”  He grunted on the other end and hung up.  It wasn’t as if Maxwell had expected her to come running every time he called, but he supposed he did since he was so used to getting his way.  He wanted to see her whenever he wanted to, and a small part of his brain kept insisting that wasn’t realistic.  The rest of his brain, however, seemed to have taken up residence in his pants, becoming more demanding as each day passed.

---***---

The morning after they slept together, Maxwell woke up feeling better than he had in a long time and was nearly giddy when he rolled over and saw Evie sleeping peacefully next to him.  She was curled under the covers, a hand under her cheek and lips open slightly. He could see her hair spread across the pillow and his fingers itched to touch it.  He was surprised how her lying next to him felt so natural.

Most women he bedded left not long after they were done and the few that made it to morning were quickly ushered out of the house.  He had only dated a handful of times over the last few years and each one fizzled out as soon as he lost interest, or they got tired of being one more thing in his life that he controlled.

Evie shuffled around in her sleep, mumbling a bit, before she felt herself bump up against Maxwell.  She settled in and her breathing continued to be even and deep.  Taking a chance, he slid his arm under her head and pulled her closer. He was rewarded when she laid her hand on his chest.  He brushed the top of her head with his lips in a soft kiss and laid his cheek down.  

Mornings were a practical affair for him – getting up, preparing for the day, grabbing whatever breakfast his cook made for him, and then out the door into the office.  He glanced at the clock and saw that it was after eight and he smiled.  He never stayed in bed after five during the week and yet he felt no hurry to get up and chase the day.  Maybe he should take an early start to the weekend and spend it in bed with Evie.

He found himself wondering, again, what it was about her that had him in such knots.  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t encountered women like her before – happy-go-lucky women with an easy laugh on their lips and a twinkle in their eye.  And yet the very thought of her turned him on and he felt like a horny teenager again – a simple brush of her skin on his, the smell of her hair, or even just listening to her honeyed voice made him hard as hell.

Stop questioning it, idiot, this small voice inside him cried out. You’ve got something good, go with it.

---***---

Evie groaned as she flopped onto her bed.  What should have taken two days took five and the long hours that went with it were killing her.  She lost her whole weekend to the mess that was still their finances and now she felt like she was going to die of exhaustion.  She thought they were done with the nonsense and yet here she was, once again sprinting a marathon.  Adding this on top of everything else for the last year and Evie buried her face into the blanket and screamed until her voice gave out.

Feeling marginally better, she kicked off her shoes and curled up with a pillow.  The Catskills twilight blanketed her room as she drew her phone out of her pocket and pulled up her messages.  Maxwell had texted her earlier, hoping she was getting better sleep now that everything was done and that he missed her.  Her heart constricted in her chest at the message.  This man.

It had been almost a month since their date in the city and while she hadn’t had a chance to see him again nor him her, they had been in near constant communication with texts, calls, and even a few video chats.  He worked long hours and on occasion, so did she, but they made it work for now.  Her body craved his and she found herself waking to dreams of him, left wanting so terribly that she had to touch herself to find relief.  

He hadn’t been necessarily pushy, but sometimes he got unrealistic in his requests or chats.  But, after their conversation about the gala, Maxwell seemed to step back and throughout the week he sent supportive texts during the day, nothing that required an immediate response but gave her the little boosts she needed as things went from tough to worse.  

She also came to work to find fresh flowers on her desk and lunch delivered to her daily from her favorite café near the office.  He didn’t stop there, he also made sure dinner was delivered and she had to admit that if he hadn’t sent anything, she’d probably would have spent the last five days living off ginger ale and antacids as she had in past accounting binges.  She though wryly of the thirty pounds she stress-lost after Grant bounced out of the company, taking his stolen funds with him.

She had heard rumors that Maxwell liked to buy the affections of women he was attracted to, but she was certain what he had done this week was not the same.  It’s not that she thought she was particularly different than other women he dated (were they dating, her brain asked), but something about the behavior seemed genuine and she felt as if she could become lost in him if he kept this all up.  

Her thumb hovered over the call button as she yawned.  She was tired, but she really needed to hear his voice. That deep cadence that always sent shivers to the most intimate parts of her and wove throughout her dreams.  She still hadn’t figured out why she was so attracted to him so viscerally, but she was mollified with the idea that he seemed just as deep.  

She hit the button.  He picked up on the second ring.

“Evie.”  She could see his smile in her head, it matched the one growing on her own face.

“Max.”

“You know, no one ever calls me that.”

“Would you prefer Maxwell?”

“Only when you come for me.”  His voice deepened even more, and she shivered at the thought. 

“You are a bad man.”

“Of course, how do you think I got where I’m at?”

“Your parents.”  She deadpanned her comment and he barked out a harsh laugh.  She wasn’t wrong.  She giggled as his laughs got harder.  They were both a little slap-happy and it was showing in their conversation.

“Touché, Evie.”  The laughter died down and his toned changed.  “How are you holding up?  It’s been a long week for you.”

“It has.”  She sighed as she rubbed her eyes.  She wasn’t sure how much longer she was going to be able to stay awake.  “Thank you for everything.  It made the week go by that much faster.”

“Good.  I’m glad. You sound terrible, almost like you’ve been screaming.”

“I was earlier.”  She paused and dropped her voice, a tone of uncertainty lacing through it.  “Was your invitation to come for a visit real?  I’m due for some time off and I could really use it.”

“Yes.”  She barely got the words out when he answered her.  She breathed a sigh of relief and they continued to talk a little longer about her coming to visit as soon as she could before she became so drowsy that she was forced to hang up.  As she stumbled through her evening routine, she couldn’t help but feel a tinge of excitement about a week in the city with Maxwell all to herself.

As she hit the covers and fell into a dreamless sleep, hours south of her, Maxwell sat in his study, cell phone resting against his chin while lost in thought. He had been staring of into space, thinking about Evie and his blood hummed at the idea that he would soon have a whole week of her to himself.  

Finally, he thought. He set down his phone on the desk preparing to get up, but as he kept thinking about her, his cock began to stir.  He remained sitting in his chair as his thoughts wandered to the first night they slept together, and he could feel himself start to harden at the memory of her sighs and moans as he pleasured her.  

He loosened his tie and took it off, undoing the top buttons of his shirt, hoping for relief from the sudden heat that coursed through him.  A couple of times their conversations over the last few weeks delved into more intimate territory and he recalled one of those chats where he could hear how wet she was over the phone.  It was a beautiful sound and his mouth watered at the memory, his tongue wanting so badly to dip into her core and taste her.

His breath began to quicken as he unbuttoned the cuff of his sleeves and rolled them up.  He just couldn’t seem to cool down any, it was as if he was under the unrelenting blaze of a desert sun.  Then his mind took another turn and he was inundated with the memory of her riding atop him and Maxwell was as hard a rock instantaneously, almost painful in its swiftness.

He never had a lover demand so much of him in bed and he was surprised to find he liked it.  It wasn’t as if he gave up control, it was as Evie said – they were equals.  And something about that ignited a fire in his blood and again he found himself in awe at the woman who was doing what no other lover had done before her.  He unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and yanked his undershirt from the waistband of his pants.  He was so damn hot.

He shifted in his chair to relieve the pressure in his pants and accidentally brushed his hand across the bulge there.  He hissed at the pleasure that unfurled in his gut and he shuttered. He tried to gain control again, but the specter of Evie Blaker was wrapping itself around him and her ghostly lips whispered carnal things in his ear.  

He groaned as he could feel her ghostly hands draw their fingers down his neck, to his chest, and across his erection.  His whole body felt like it was on fire, the pleasure so overwhelming he could feel the sweat beading along his hairline.

As if possessed, Maxwell’s hand dropped back to his crotch and he rubbed his hand over himself, groaning loudly. The soft cotton of his boxers touched the most sensitive parts of his cock and he gritted his teeth as he legs began to shake. He unconsciously shifted his hips forward into his palm, chasing the pleasure he wanted.  

He felt hard and hot under his own hand and for a moment he imagined that hand to be Evie’s.  To stop the shakiness of his legs, he planted his feet firmly on the ground, forcing his body to shift forward and slightly recline.  His eyes dropped to his bulge, his precum creating a dark stain.  He knew it was his, but his carnal brain imagined it was Evie who left it on him, soaking him as she came in his hand like she did that first night.

He threw his head back, and a flush of pleasure crept up his chest and into his face, making his eyes sparkle darker in the soft light of his desk lamp. Evie’s voice sounded in his ear again, a soft, whispery moan of his name.  No one ever called him Max, only her and through the haze of his lust, he felt as if her use of the nickname was a brand on him – marking him as hers.

His hair fell into his eyes as his head lolled forward and he brushed it away absentmindedly.  He couldn’t handle the fabric rubbing against him anymore and he unzipped his pants to draw out his cock.  It was hard and covered in precum.  

He ran a finger up the length of his erection, and he hissed at the sensation.  Spitting into his hand, he fully grabbed himself and began to jerk his hand, gripping himself harder at the head as Evie had done when she rode him.  His body shook harder and his left leg bounced without stopping as he got closer to his orgasm.

Maxwell grabbed the arm of his chair with his free hand as he began to work faster.  He was so close and yet he didn’t want it to end so soon, hoping to draw out the fantasy before it was gone.  But the ghostly Evie wrapped its fingers around his heart and his hand, whispering for him to let go.  The orgasm that tore through him ripped a primal yell from his throat that almost hurt, and he could feel his toes curl.  He dropped back in his chair, covered in his own cum and his cock pulsing with the aftershocks of his climax.  His chest heaved at the exertion and he was certain he looked a mess.  But, after a beat he began to laugh.  This woman of his.

#maxwell lord #maxwell lord x oc #maxwell lord x reader #maxwell lord smut #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal smut #ww1984 #Wonder Woman 1984

[theanimeview]

Anime Expo Lite Day 1 Experience! by @rainstormfes

Friday July 3rd, 2020

Program: Warner Bros. Japan Presents “Stay Connected with Anime”

Anime Expo held an event called Anime Expo Lite where they accommodated for the Covid-19 pandemic and put the whole con experience online. This particular program had many seiyuu and Japanese anime studio staffs as guests where they talked about three anime and their experiences with them.

The program started out with talking about Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka III (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? III) with guests Matsuoka Yoshitsugu (voiced Bell Cranel) , Minase Inori (voiced Hestia) , Osawa Nobuhiro (from EGG FIRM, an anime production company), and Matsukura Yuji (producer from J.C. Staff, an animation studio). The beginning was just each guest answering questions that fans from all over the world submitted:

The author was asked if he was ever inspired by the voice acting of Matsuoka and Minase-san to which he answered yes and the program proceeded to show two specific scenes where Matsuoka’s and Minase-san’s voice acting inspired him (Minase-san was also asked to perform a small line live which was really cute)

They prepared a teaser image for the third season and for the big reveal Matsuoka had to tear a curtain off of a huge poster board while saying an attack name but the curtain got caught on the corner which almost made it fall 😂😂

This is the teaser image:

Matsuoka was asked if there were any difficulties when recording season 3 so he talked about how Bell had gone through lots of growth throughout the 2 seasons and how he had to think about how to properly act out just how mature Bell was now compared to before, considering he’s now leader of the Hestia Familia

Minase-san answered the same question. She talked about how she made sure to try and keep in mind how close all of the characters involved are plus Hestia’s mental and social growth within the group

There was a video message from Iguchi Yuka (voiced Chigusa) since she sings the opening! There was also an announcement that sajou no hana would be performing the ending song! Both messages were very nice and cute (they spoke English x3) and both artists just talked about how they were looking forward to everyone’s reactions to their songs and to look forward to the anime.

Airing of DanMachi 3 will begin in October!🎉🎉 

The next anime that they talked about was Shokugeki no Soma: Gou no Sara (Food Wars: The Fifth Plate) with guests: Matsuoka Yoshitsugu (voiced Yukihira Soma) and Yonetani Yoshitomo (animation director) 

Yonetani-san was asked about how he felt about the anime and what he thought about when working on its animation. He said he wanted to express how amazing the cooking process/food was as well as wanted to excite (oh b o y 😳) the audience

Matsuoka-san was asked the same question. He talked about how since he’s been following Soma since day one he has to think a lot about his growth in Totsuki when voice acting for him. He talked about how he kinda thinks about his own high school days as well

Matsuoka Yoshitsugu, Fukuyama Jun (voiced Saiba Asahi), and Takahashi Minami (voiced Tadokoro Megumi) pre-recorded an irl shokugeki which was shown on the program!!

Matsuoka and Jun had to make a tonkatsu sauce for Takamina. Matsuoka ended up winning because Jun was chaotic asf when he made his xD (he put dried fish and squid along with peanut butter and nutella so there were just tons of flavors trying to be the main thing)

Matsuoka was asked which lines were more memorable for him, other than Soma’s: he talked about how whenever he had to record the monologues when dishes are being made and when they’re being presented was difficult since it would be hard to express a good portrayal of Soma’s energy if he didn’t even know what he was talking about (so on the side he had to keep using wiki to understand what Soma was even talking about lol)

Question about the production of the anime: Yonetani-san talked about how there were lots of complicated words they had to use; there were lots of cuts in certain scenes (like when presenting the dishes) made to try and portray the energy that they wanted in the anime

Someone asked about where the producers get ideas about the ending theme sequences: Yonetani-san’s used the songs as inspiration for the backgrounds used for the ending themes and also tried to relate to all of the cooking and the theme of high schoolers just going through life etc

The next and last anime talked about was JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. It starts out with a video made where Ono Kensho (voiced Giorno Giorvanna) and two producers from David Production (Kasama) and Warner Bros Japan (Omori Hiroyuki) are questioned.

Apparently during production they actually count how many ‘ora’s and ‘muda’s etc when they do stand cries! But when OnoKen went to Koyasu Takehito (voiced Dio Brando) to ask about counting his ‘muda’s but never needed to, he just synced with the animation which surprised OnoKen xD

Next, they talked about the anime-only scene of Giorno giving gelato to a kid. The staffs wanted to show how kind Giorno was despite eventually becoming a gang-star. The story itself if also personal to Kasama-san since he had actually went to Italy and had experienced intense heat there and went to a gelato stand so he wanted to preserve that memory to animation

They mentioned how they purposely put characters that are later properly introduced in the anime within frames earlier on so that manga readers are even more hyped up and anime-only people could go back and see those little easter eggs for themselves and appreciate the little hints given which I absolutely love. AND they specifically mentioned that they wanted Giorno to do the famous Dio pose, saying they felt that they needed to live up to fans’ expectations so considering how dedicated of a fan base Jojo has, they decided to put that little nod toward Dio’s pose with Giorno doing it too

They talked about how the second theme for Golden Wind was hard to make since they needed to match or one up the first theme (Fighting Gold). It took a while to produce the second theme’s music and ideas presented were rejected three times before finally being accepted. And they had already decided to make an alternate animation for it as well, which made the process to make the music even harder.

The man himself that produced it (as well as the entire soundtrack for Golden Wind), Kanno Yugo, was a guest for the live broadcast! He talked about how, considering his experience with parts 3 and 4 with their opening themes, he felt he needed to try and one up himself for part 5′s

He compared making music for Jojo felt like competing in the Olympics since its a difficult job to one up yourself every time there’s a new season for the anime. Since he started working with Jojo since part 3 and made such iconic main character themes since then, needing to make something as amazing as those themes was tough but he definitely delivered in the end

Overall an amazing experience! 😊

I loved every moment of the program! So glad to finally see seiyuu live at events, considering what’s been going on in the world recently. Definitely made my day!

#anime expo #ax #anime expo lite #anime expo 2020 #ax lite #ax 2020 #notes #submission #thank you @rainstormfes! #source: rainstormfes

[bondsmagii]

last of the cult stuff under the cut: just a few asks and questions that haven’t been asked yet! pretty intense discussion of some nasty stuff (no gory details, but a decent overview of examples of every type of abuse) just as a warning.

no problem! I honestly didn’t think more than like, five people would read it lmao. but I’m glad it’s out there, because yeesh. hope you have a good day too!

man, I’m glad that the post gave you some kind of clarity, then. I understand how difficult it must be to sort out worry and paranoia from actual cause for alarm, but I think in this case you’re definitely not mistaken and are right to feel uncomfortable. I’m not a cult survivor myself, but even I feel uncomfortable seeing the way people get on over there, and I’ve felt that way for years. the fact that you’re not the only cult survivor who’s told me that you’ve spotted certain behaviours/agree with the analysis is... very terrifying, if I’m honest.

from my experience, it’s wiki-specific. there are hundreds, if not thousands of casual fans out there, and to my knowledge nobody who’s casually involved has found themselves in trouble/having a mental breakdown/whatever else goes on over on the wiki. the off-wiki fandom (known sometimes as the satellite fandom) has had some weirdos, but it’s in the same way as every fandom has weirdos. not great, but nothing beyond what you’d find in other communities of a similar size. the only major drama I’ve seen is when staff has been a dick to people for RPing characters “wrong” or whatever. 

you’re likely fine if you’re just chilling offsite and just reading the SCPs and stuff. things tend to only get wild when you actively join the wiki. however, I would recommend being careful, if SCP stuff is a kind of comfort thing for you. everyone I’ve known who’s had mental breakdowns/bad experiences with this shit has been in a bad mental place and relied too heavily on the universe for escapism, and there’s a lot of creepy people lurking around who are not good for you when you’re in that state of mind. enjoy yourself, read the SCPs, look at cool fanart, but make sure there’s room for other interests in your life and stay away from joining the wiki (and everyone who’s prominent on it), is my advice.

I truly have no idea. I can think of several things off the top of my head, and that’s just what I know about. if there are things you know about, there’s bound to be things you don’t.

severity ranges, but it’s all been nasty, abusive shit. there have been incidents where a member of site staff has been constantly excused despite absolutely abhorrent behaviour -- guilt tripping, tantrums, verbal abuse, threats, being nasty to newbies, accusing people of all kinds of things, playing the victim, just general emotional/psychological abuse -- because they’ve been liked by other staff members, or because they’ve been useful to the site. I recall one person actually actively scaring some members of staff before, but because higher ranking staff liked them, they were allowed to remain for much longer than they should have.

then you get shit like the stuff going on with a certain ex-staff member who’s been confirmed by multiple sources to be physically and sexually abusive, and who has openly admitted to using the SCP wiki as a way to find sexual partners. they have been overly sexual in spaces with minors and have even attempted to make plans of a sexual nature with at least one minor. they are also severely emotionally and psychologically abusive, and have been the abusive partner in several relationships (everything from sexual assault to emotional abuse to physically beating one of their partners). this person was banned, but the reasons were kept vague, and they still have friends on staff who shelter them and vouch for them. I believe this person is, or at least was, a moderator on a very popular SCP Discord server. (if you wish to know who this person is, message me privately and I’ll let you know. this person needs to be avoided, but as they accuse their past victims of spreading slander every time their name comes up, I’d rather keep the heat off of innocent people.)

there was also the case where a literal pedophile was allowed to remain on the site for an undisclosed amount of time. they were finally banned, but the reasons were kept very vague, and the lack of information and transparency makes me suspicious that some staff members knew something was up and turned a blind eye to it, though I have no idea how many of them (if any) knew the severity of it. I mean this guy was an actual, honest-to-god pedophile, so like. yeah. staff’s cover-ups cover the entire board of shitty behaviour. considering the close nature of staff on that site, I would say that even if they’re not all guilty of actively covering up, they are absolutely all complicit. 

he’ll likely be fine! as I said in one of the above asks, it’s generally only the wiki that does this shit, and people who are casual fans tend to be normal about it. if he just watches the videos and reads the articles, but doesn’t get involved with the wiki community, he probably won’t see any of this nonsense. everything I’ve observed has been over ten years of watching -- for obvious reasons, staff behaviour is often subtle and undeniable. it’s also not an intentional cult, so it’s not like they’re going to be out there recruiting. as I’ve said before, it’s not that it’s a real-life cult, but it has cult-like behaviour. he should be fine so long as he keeps his distance, and uses the list of staff as a People To Avoid list lmao.

#scp shenanigans #long post

[klaudiafmp]

War of the Worlds

“Ray Ferrier is estranged from his children: 10-year-old daughter Rachel, and teenage son Robbie. Ray's ex-wife, Mary Ann, drops them off at his house in Bayonne, New Jersey, on her way to visit her parents in Boston.”

“Later, a strange storm occurs during which lightning strikes multiple times into the middle of a local intersection, disrupting all electricity. Ray joins the crowd at the scene of the impacts, where a massive "tripod" war machine emerges from the ground and uses powerful energy weapons to destroy the area, disintegrating most of the witnesses into a grey dust. Ray collects his children, steals a van that had just been repaired, and drives to Mary Ann's empty home in suburban New Jersey to take refuge. That night, they take shelter in the basement, but they soon hear a strange roaring noise followed by an explosion, which destroys the house. The next morning, Ray discovers that a Boeing 747 had crashed into the neighborhood. A news team scavenging for food explains to him that there are multiple tripods that have attacked major cities around the world. The tripods have force shields to protect them from human weapons, and the tripods' pilots traveled to Earth within the lightning storms as a way to enter their machines, which are assumed to have been buried underground for millions of years.”

“Ray decides to drive the kids to Boston to be with their mother, but a desperate mob swarm their vehicle and they are forced to abandon it. They eventually board a ferry to cross the Hudson River only to be surrounded by several tripods, who begin massacring and abducting many of the refugees, but Ray's family manages to escape. They then witness U.S. Marines engaging in a futile battle with some tripods; Ray tries to stop Robbie from joining the fight, but is reluctantly forced to release him so that he can take Rachel to safety. Ray and Rachel flee as the machines annihilate the soldiers, and are offered shelter in a farmhouse basement by a deranged man named Harlan Ogilvy.

The three remain undetected for several days, even as a probe and a group of tripod aliens explore the basement. They soon discover that the aliens are cultivating a red-colored vegetation across the landscape that is quickly spreading; the group deduces the aliens are modifying Earth to make it more like their home planet. The next morning, Ogilvy suffers a mental breakdown upon witnessing the tripods harvesting human blood and tissue to fertilize the alien vegetation. Convinced that Ogilvy's mad shouting will alert the aliens to their location, Ray reluctantly kills him. A second tripod probe catches the Ferriers sleeping; Rachel flees and is abducted by a nearby tripod, and Ray joins her after picking up a belt of grenades. Ray uses the grenades to destroy the tripod from within, freeing all the abductees.

Ray and Rachel arrive in Boston, where they find the alien vegetation withering and the tripods inexplicably collapsing. When an active tripod appears, Ray notices birds landing on it, indicating its shields are offline. Ray alerts the soldiers escorting the fleeing crowd, who shoot it down with anti-tank missiles. As the soldiers advance on the downed tripod, a hatch opens and a sickly alien struggles halfway out before dying. Ray and Rachel finally reach Mary Ann's parents' house, where they are reunited with Mary Ann and Robbie.

A closing narration explains that the aliens' immune systems could not handle the countless billions of microbes that inhabit the Earth, and that humanity has "earned" the right to the planet by virtue of naturally coexisting with the rest of its biosphere.”

I feel it’s very interesting that this story that was adapted to be a ‘modern day’ movie back in 2005 when the original book that it was adapted from was written all the way back in 1898. I never read the original book but I’m going to have to judge it by it’s cover and say that the artworks for the book even the ones made before this movie came out all depicted very high tech futuristinc looking ‘tripods’ and it got me thinking about how did somebody come up with this more than 100 years ago. The fact that this story could’ve been set in the late Victorian era but the movie depicts it in the modern world just shows how timeless the book really is. It’s adaptable and the concept that Wells came up with for the aliens doesn’t have a time stamp on it. And that is further proven by how in the movie the aliens or specifically their tripods came from the underground. It in a way shows that we never know when they would attack it could be 1898 or very much so 2005, and that is what amazes me about this story because hear me out the actual plot is really boring and inconsistent. 

This guy gets stuck with his kids after their mum decides to visit her parents and doesn’t want to take them for some reason but ok. Then aliens attack and the dad instead of going into hiding or doing anything smart comes up with the brilliant idea of ‘you’re going back to your mum I ain’t dealing with this’ and then the entire story is just him trying to give the kids back to their mother and on the way his son has to be a stereotypical rebellious teenager and decides to run away to fight the aliens, then Ray destroy one tripod and figures out how to destroy them all by the end of the movie because plot. And happy ending the kids end up with their mum how nice.

But the concept of an alien attack that dates so far back is just so suprising. You wouldn’t think that sci fi from more than 100 years ago would still hold up to how we view some of the modern science fiction movies and books.

I also just want to mention one scene from this movie that really stuck with me because of how terrifying but cool it was. I remember seeing just one scene from this movie as a little kid and that was the scene of the little girl turning around to see three tripods slowly walk towards them from the forest. I must have been like 5 or 6 seeing that I remember it was at my old house back in Poland and I never got to see the full movie till much later but that one scene really defined this movie for me. Even back when I haven’t actually fully watched it whenever somebody would mention it, I would think of this one scene. It amazed me when I got to see it in context how helpless these people were. They are trying to run from these tripods jumping and crawling onto the boats, stacking on one another others helping people crawl onto the ships or throwing their children on it so at least they have a chance of survival only to get cornered by these 3 tripods from the distance. And when they were finally on open water thinking they are safe for now two more tripods emerged from under the water. I want my story in the comic to feel somewhat like this, very hopeless. My story will include an adavnced alien race getting destroyed and run over by yet another alien species and sending a warning message to our solar system, I want the message and what is going on in the alien world that’s getting taken over to feel kind of like this one scene. As in there is no hope left and all they can do now is warn others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film)

[sophiebramley2001]

Being human evaluation and project proposal for ‘Radical’

Being human final evaluation: For my being human project, I decided to focus on the theme of schizophrenia and using portraits and manipulation to visually portray this idea. I used the artists Miles Johnston and Monica Loya for artist research which clearly linked to my experiments and ideas however I could have used a few more artists to make the context more obvious and show a clearer link, therefore will improve this in the next project. The artists I did use were integrated well in my sketchbook with annotation as to what I liked and wanted to incorporate into my own work. I explored a range of relevant processes like photo manipulation on an editing software using my own photoshoot of faces with a variety of emotions I could link to schizophrenia. I researched into schizophrenia and made notes of context information mainly in my journal to further develop ideas and create an accurate representation of what a person feels like during a schizophrenic episode. I have evidenced ideas and experiments in my sketchbook and journal of my thought process and specific media I wanted to use for which experiments as well as planning, however I could have explored more than one idea such as mental health as a whole and researched into anxiety, personality disorder, depression and others as well as just schizophrenia as just one idea for the whole project. I directed my work independently and used a range of medias and techniques within my work and my evaluation in my journal has moved my ideas forward. My work is presently well so others can understand it as it is in order of development and includes annotations of brief context and description of what I was trying to achieve. If I was to do the project again I could improve by adding more relevant artists, being more expressive in my experiments or working on a bigger scale to emphasise it and possibly adding more of the scientific context within the work such as chemical changes in the brain that causes schizophrenia.

Project proposal:

Throughout the project I have learnt that I like to work detailed, neat and realistically both drawing and painting. I think that my strengths include thinking of interesting ideas and compositions that relate to my theme and focusing on detail and tones within my work, also my weaknesses include working very expressively and abstract because I prefer working realistically and trying out a range of medias apart from drawing and painting material. I have developed some more thoughts on composition and laying it out in a way that links to the theme well and tried out different techniques to develop my skill. Since my review at the end of part 1 I have kept up to date on my sketchbook a lot more and included more annotations to explain briefly the context and description of the artwork.

The theme radical in the context of art and design means to me exaggerating through colour such as changing the colour scheme, making something look more dramatic or emphasizing a focal point, using the size of paper to further convey a message, contradiction within artwork by doing the opposite of the theme, focusing on specific details, zoom in’s, working on different surfaces and using a variety of different materials. I visited the Royal Academy of Arts and I was inspired by the eco-visionary’s gallery as it focuses on environmental issues such as extinction, climate change pollution and adaptation. I was inspired by the thought of what the world will be like in the future if issues continue at the rate they are going if we don’t improve ecosystems and potential damage that are caused by a variety of issues and specifically want to focus of cause and effect. I was also inspired by the Dora Maar gallery in the Tate Modern as she takes photographs of dramatic angles, surrealism, refuses constraints of modern society and during the war years and takes a radical stance against society. I am mainly inspired by the eco-visionary’s gallery and would like to focus on the theme of recent environmental issues, create a series composition, focus on animals and nature in the project, using materials in my artwork that potentially harm the environment like plastic packaging and the effects on the planet and wildlife. I will research more into current or recent issues such as the Australian bush fires, plastic pollution, animal extinction and the melting of polar ice caps to gain more information and context on the issues as well as help develop my ideas and add more context and help portray the message to the audience more about what my artwork represents. I could investigate organizations that help reduce the amount of harmful effects on the planet or activist groups that spread awareness and help develop the planet in a positive way.

Initially, I have considered making a series such as gradual decomposition and visually showing the negative effects on the world, using a variety of plastic materials to create a sea life piece to show the negative effects on marine life caused by plastic pollution, a drawing of an endangered animal species combined with their natural habitat wasting away and really explore the amount of materials I can use by creating mixed media pieces. I want to try and branch out of my comfort zone more by potentially trying something 3D, more mixed media based, and using a variety of materials and surface patterns. I will mainly evidence my planning and critical evaluation in my journal as well as any initial thoughts, development ideas and new context information or statistics I can include as well as explanations for any specific ideas and planning out what experiments I would like to do. To also evidence this in my sketchbook I will add some brief annotations and artist research relevant to the theme as well as mood boards for inspiration and to visually see the issues I want to explore and printing out factual information and research for context about individual environmental issues and how we are dealing with these to help reduce to prevent more in the future. This research and planning will hugely help with development of ideas and evidence any problem solving if I become stuck for ideas by changing topic or approach to the theme by changing techniques within making experiments.

Bibliography: BBC News. (2020). A visual guide to Australia's bushfire crisis. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-50951043 [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Nytimes.com. (2020). What to Read on Australia’s Bushfire Crisis. [online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/australia/bushfire.html [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Earthava. (2019). 10 Current Environmental Issues to Look Out For In 2019 - Earthava. [online] Available at: https://www.earthava.com/current-environmental-issues/ [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Cox, L. (2020). A billion animals: some of the species most at risk from Australia's bushfire crisis. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/14/a-billion-animals-the-australian-species-most-at-risk-from-the-bushfire-crisis [Accessed 13 Jan. 2020]. Council, C. (2019). The facts about bushfires and climate change - Climate Council. [online] Climate Council. Available at: https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/not-normal-climate-change-bushfire-web/ [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. En.wikipedia.org. (2020). 2019–20 Australian bushfire season. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Australian_bushfire_season [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Oskin, B. (2013). Wildfires expected to double by 2050 as West warms up. [online] NBC News. Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/wildfires-expected-double-2050-west-warms-8C11122981 [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Condor Ferries. (2019). 100+ Plastic in the Ocean Statistics & Facts (2020). [online] Available at: https://www.condorferries.co.uk/plastic-in-the-ocean-statistics [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. World Wildlife Fund. (2019). Plastic Plan. [online] Available at: https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/fall-2019/articles/plastic-in-the-ocean [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Le Guern, C. (2019). Plastic Pollution. [online] Plastic-pollution.org. Available at: https://plastic-pollution.org [Accessed 13 Nov. 2019]. The Ocean Cleanup. (2020). The Ocean Cleanup. [online] Available at: https://theoceancleanup.com [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Kitamori, K. (2019). OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences of Inaction - Key Facts and Figures - OECD. [online] Oecd.org. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/env/indicators-modelling-outlooks/oecdenvironmentaloutlookto2050theconsequencesofinaction-keyfactsandfigures.htm [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Hornak, L. (2016). Will there be more fish or plastic in the sea in 2050?. [online] BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35562253 [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020]. Parker, L. (2019). We Made Plastic. We Depend on It. Now We’re Drowning in It.. [online] National Geographic. Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/2018/05/we-made-plastic-we-depend-it-now-were-drowning-it [Accessed 13 Feb. 2020].

[icefir-windbreaker]

All-Stars -Story Mode- [CHAPTER 4] Pt.1

As promised, I had re-edited the chapter with a few more detail. I still like to thank @sampoststuff​ and @gulliblepineapples​ for giving me new thinking on the chapter and edited it. I must warn you guys, this chapter is long but I hope you’ll like it.

[EDITED]

Pt.2

                                                     -Chapter 4-

                                         -Flashback, 48 hours ago…-

“*Groan* Ugh…. Mein head….”

Medic awoke with a splitting headache and found himself on his own desk in his operation room and in his white shirt with the red tie and a vest, he looked around the room and things looked the same as before. ‘’Vhat happened?’’ he thought, ‘’Did anyzhing happened vhile I vas out?’’ the thought continued as he got out of his chair and walked over to the locker while he continued to think.

He turns the dial-lock on the locker and got it opened, revealing the long doctor’s coat, red rubber gloves and the device from before. He first put on the coat then put the rubber gloves with a snap and puts on the backpack-like-device like it was backpack as he gets out a bonesaw and syringe gun.

(From Team Fortress 2 Wiki)

He had no idea what is happening but he does know that it’s not right about this, he pushed the doors opened and looked around in the waiting room, one or two of his teammates are usually here but now it’s empty and gone silent as Medic looked around.

‘’Vhere is everyone?’’ He whispered to himself as he readied the syringe gun slowly while he scanned the area when a smell hit his nose, the smell he is oh so familiar with; a smell of death.

He looked around the corner and found a corpse with someone on top of it, he appeared to be eating the corpse, he couldn’t tell if this is really a person anymore judging by his skin rotting away and injures that had left untreated.

He doesn’t know if this person is even alive anymore just by looking at the glow from where their eyes were, he lowered his syringe gun just a little bit and he said in a worried yet defensive tone in his voice ‘’Hallo? Are you hurt?’’ to the hunched-over figure.

The reply he recieve was a groan from the man as he slowly got up from the corpse and Medic got a better look at him; he appeared be wearing a nazi uniform and had a buzzed-cut hair, his face turned to face Medic and he looked like he had lost a fight to a bear.

Medic gasped in alarm as the man- no, whatever he is now, screeched at his direction that cause the doctor to open fire at the undead nazi with syringes.

Most of them dug into it’s chest but to Medic’s surprise, this thing didn’t feel anything but did screeched in pain a little.

‘’Uh… Alright… Zhis is very bad.’’ Medic thought as he continued fire on the creature as the zombified nazi stumbles towards him slowly till Medic aimed for the head and opened fire at it as the zombie screeched then it fell to its knees as it’s glowing eyes began to dim and gone completely black as it falls down. Dead. Again.

Medic looked at the corpse that had came back to life only to die again with facistion in his eyes, this zombie seemed to have came from the second World War. He had always thought of Nazis had been crazy but did they go to THIS level of crazy?

‘’Ooh…’’ Medic said he looked closer at the body until he jumped out of his skin as the alarm begins to sound off.

                 Alert! Alert! Prepare for the first wave of hell!

The wave of hell? Medic knew what this meant as he reload the gun then ran through the hallway in search for the exit, he stopped at one room with the two windows boarded up, it’s strange because he didn’t remember boarding up the windows of the fortress till he saw 4 familiar glowing eyes from the outside.

Medic’s eyes widen as he recognized the familiar groaning from the zombies the next hall beside him, he ran for the door, he shuts the doors and blocked the door with the nearby vending machine after he made it tipped over as he heard the broads being ripped off the wall.

He darted through the hallway as the alarms continued to go off with a sirens, he encountered other zombies along the way even a crawler along the way as he opened to fire on the incoming zombies in his way.

He ran until he ran into another doorway that leads another hallway of the fortress winch he had happened to use as a medical location just in case of BLU Team would injure one or two of his teammates who would need him. He quickly closes the double way door and then pushes the nearby desk to the door in order to barricade it. He yelled “Verrotte in der Hölle, du untote Monster!” in his native tongue while he heard the groans of zombies on the other side of the door.

He slowly backs away from it as the dead are trying to claw their way in with their bare hands, he kept his eyes on the barricaded door before finally take a look around of the area he’s in and noticed that the fortress… wasn’t it as it was when he and Heavy had found it yesterday.

The hallway of the building was normal based on the time period that Medic is familiar off but it had looked like it had been mixed with the 1940’s Mental Asylum after it had meet 1970’s medical building, there are locked-off rooms for mental patients, some of posters of old 1960’s and 70’s Reliable Excavation Demolition as well with Mann. Co on the wall to wall. Medic was intrigued when he saw this and the building had felt different as well, more than different as it seemed.

He jumped a little when a zombie in a straight jacket in a locked padded room, trying to free it’s arms as well banging it’s own head against the rear window of the door. The German felt a deep pity for the restrained zombie as he put on a cocky smile, “Sorry, Untoten but I have to leave you here.” he said before walking away from the door and continued on the way.

He continued to look around but had trouble seeing through the hallway as darkness had tripped in when Medic had walked. He had noticed a small pit of light just a further away in the dark halls, he decided to proceed further when he heard familiar groaning of zombies far from where he is as he reach his hands out just in case he happened to run into a wall or a zombie in the dark.

He had began to wonder if these undead creatures had the ability to see through the dark like a bat with those blood-orange glowing eyes when the radius of the light is coming closer and closer that made the Field Medic realize that ball of light is a lantern left on, he looked at the lantern and it had appeared to be from 1940’s as well.

“I hope you be useful to me vhen I had find mein comrades.” he said to the lantern as he picked it up by the handle then proceeding on his way but make sure to see anything with glowing eyes. He had read messages written in blood, mostly gibberish and some of them are in English for him to read:

“Ascend from Darkness,” “We are dead again,” “Dead flowers are still growing despite death,” “Dead end,” “Break the mirror and make it clearer,” “Were we blinded by fear?” and one word that was supposed to be “Help” but it appeared that someone who was dying didn’t have time to finish so instead, it read “Hell.”

He was blinded a little by fluorescent light from above his head as he see corpses, not just corpses but corpses of zombies that had died recently. Medic leaned down to see what had caused this and see bullet holes in each of their heads. He had put down the lantern on the floor and then held the head of the killed zombie in his rubber gloved hands to examine it more closer but being cautious because if some type of virus would be able to turn a human into a zombie then he must keep his face away from its face.

He looked over to the window that was a bit far from where he was and it’s broken with streak of blood on the sharp edges of broken glass pieces on the floor, something or someone had fallen onto the broken glass and cut him/herself by accident or unintentionally. Maybe them both.

Medic was looking around the room he’s in until he heard gunfire, at first he thought it was someone he knew on his team since he had been to war games long time before this then he heard a german but it’s not his BLU counterpart, it’s a different German voice that said ‘’I am not villing OR ready to die!’’

The voice came on the left hallway as Medic turned to face the direction where the the voice came from and ran towards it. He remained cautious in case there are any zombies after they found their way inside the fortress till he reached the entrance lobby, there the first unknown person. He’s a man that Medic had never seen before, his name is Dr. Edward Richtofen.

Richtofen had an injury on his forearm that made Medic slowly go up to him as he realized that he’s armed with an AK-47 assault rifle but this one gets the better of him as he said

‘’Hallo?’’

‘’Was?!’’ Richtofen said as he aimed an assault rifle at the doctor who raised his hands up, looking as surprised as him. ‘’Vait! Don’t shoot!’’ Medic pleaded as Richtofen realizes that he’s not one of them. That made lower the gun a little bit but still cautious.

‘’You’re not one of zhem?’’ Edward asked, Medic answered ‘’One of vho? Vho are you-’’, ‘’The living dead, I thought zhis place vas abandoned… u-und ve had thought zhat ve’re zhe only ones here…’’ Richtofen explained.

Medic looked at Richtofen in confusion, thoughts in his mind raced with a wonder of he knows the walking dead better than him. He does know what to do, right?

Medic is out of curiosity so he asked ‘’Have you encountered zhem before?’’ ‘’Of course I have, is zhis zhe-?’’

‘’Ja, it’s the second time zhat Soldier had once again angered zhe wizard.’’ Medic said, Richtofen looked at him confused ‘’Zhe second time?’’ he said.

‘’It’s a long story for later, but you said ‘’ve’’, is zhere anyone vith you?’’ Medic questioned.

‘’Yes, zhere vere 4 of us, me, Dempsey, Nikolai und Takeo. Ve vere on a mission zhen… a portal of zomekind but I knew zhat vasn’t zhe artifact that’s doing zhis und... ‘’ he said as places his hand on his forehead as if he was trying to remember something.

‘’Und vhat happened after zhat?’’ Medic asked again to Richtofen to winch he answered ‘’I… I can’t seem to remember anyzhing elze after, only brief moments before everyzhing vent dark zhen I woke up in zhe voods und on zhe path that lead me und presumely mein fri- comrades to this place. Do you live here?’’

‘’Of course but it’s a fortress zhat you und your friends had trespassed, as you can see, ve are-’’

‘’Mercenaries?’’ Richtofen asked, ‘’Ja,’’ Medic replied ‘’But how did you know?’’

‘’I can already tell just by looking at you being a field medic und by that you are wearing a strange backpack on your back. Vhat is zhat?’’ Richtofen asked with further curiosity.

‘’Vhat? Oh! Zhis?’’ Medic chirped as he looked over to the device on his back, he then gets out a gun-like dispenser that looked like a modified fire hose nozzle wrapped in black tape and outfitted with a bottom handle that is connected to the backpack by a hose as Richtofen looked down at it, ‘’Zhis is my invention, Zhe Medi Gun.’’ Medic introduced his gun to Richtofen.

Richtofen looked at the Medi Gun with quite interest and curiosity ‘’Zhis is interesting but vhat does it do?’’ he said, he just couldn’t help but ask that question to the doctor who grinned with excitement.

‘’Vhat does it do? Vhat does it do? Hehe…’’ Medic begin to say as he aimed the gun at Richtofen who stood with caution, ‘’Zhat’s quite nice of you to ask zhat… I now believed zhat zhe demonstration is now in order.’’

Richtofen was prepared to fight if necessary then Medic stated ‘’Hold still, zhis could only be for a moment.’’ then activate the Medi Gun on Richtofen with glowing red beam with exude similar colored cross symbols.

Richtofen didn’t feel any pain from this but does feel a warm feeling coming from the inside as the beam swirls around him with the crosses, Richtofen then looked at his arm and in shock to see his injury he had is disappearing as he’s being healed by Medic.

Soon, the injury on his forearm disappeared like it’d never happened, like it never existed in the first place as he placed his hand on his hand to feel. No aged scar, no mark and no trace of the injury.

Richtofen looked back at him and said ‘’How am I being healed?’’ with eyes that filled with surprise and curiosity. Medic smiled as he said next ”More or less I vas expecting a “zhank you”.” while he crossed his arms together, ‘’I had discovered zhis medicine a vhile ago, it’s fascinating, isn’t it?’’

‘’Ja, it is but vhere did you find zhis?’’ Richtofen asked.

‘’Not ‘find’, but ‘accidentally made’. Vhen you are a field medic, doing no harm is not zhe usual...’’ Medic said as he tells his story of the discovery as he remembers in the medical ward, trying to treat his teammates injures the best he can as war is going nuts out there.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

the blood bag Medic was using for his injured friend was shot down, he turned to look at the BLU Spy who ran off in the hallway.

‘’In fact I had often found zhe best medicine, vinch vas prevented.’’ He continued.

Medic kneed to Heavy as if he was going to assure him that he is going to be fine until he gotten the feeling, the urge to ‘’Look behind you’’ and he done that just in time to caught the BLU Spy in the act, as he held him by the arm and raised the bonesaw high in the air and brought it down on the Frenchman’s neck with full force, decapitated him completely and Heavy unknowingly caught the head in the palm of his hand.

Medic, who been a doctor as long as he can remember, shoved the enemy spy onto the wall and shoved the IV down into the neck that’s gushing out blood so he can use the body as blood resource to save his friend as he uses his foot on the corpse’s chest to pump the blood and into Heavy’s bloodstream. He didn’t care what blood type Spy is but he is willing to save his patients as more are coming in with more injures.

‘’Zhe issue vas time and in time again it’d took to save one patient, a hundred more took his place!’’

Medic kept doing that till he heard the flatlines gone dead, that made him surprised and turned to look at Heavy whose chest had just exploded with a stream of blood pouring out of it.

He kneed down at his failure in disbelief as he tried to relieve him but failed.

‘’I had almost given up, it could’ve been my darkest moment…’’

Medic and others heard a rocket been shooting through the air at the wall and explodes upon impact, causing Medic to be over Heavy’s legs and hit the ground. Still conscious, he looked up with a cut on his cheek bleeding down his face along as groan escaped from his lips as Demoman screamed in pain when he realized his face is on fire from the explosion.

He tried to put it out but tripped in the process, his back landed on the metal shelf and causing it to go over, Jarate, sandvich and a Medkit fell onto the floor, creating a mess but as electrical wire from a destroyed flatline landed on the puddle as well with Medic watched.

‘’It was then… Inspiration struck.’’ Medic said this as he recalls that moment.

He then heard Scout screaming in pain as blood launched out towards the puddle and landed in it. Medic gasped as he saw a small beam with two crosses go up and healed a cut on his cheek. His smile of fascination began to form with curiosity as he got back on his feet.

First thing he grabbed is IV that was in Heavy’s arm and pumped the blood from the body and onto the puddle, creating more healing beams in the process as Medic’s smile grew wider when he realized he had just made a discovery.

To Medic’s surprise, the healing beams had healed the wound on Heavy’s chest that killed him as well repaired the damaged of his clothing like they were never meant to exist again. Medic places his hand on the Russian’s shoulder as he looked at him with further curiosity…

*Gasp!*

Heavy came back to life like it was magic! A miracle even, he looked at Medic who smiling with joy to see his friend had been saved but it was short-lived quickly as BLU Spy’s head was glowing blue with electricity coming off of it as his eyelids fluttered a little bit before being closed again.

Then… Out of nowhere, the head screamed

‘’KILL ME!!’’

Shocked, Medic screamed at this sudden surprise as Spy’s head screamed at Medic again ‘’Kill me!!’’, to winch Medic grabbed a revolver and shoots at the head, but not putting a hole in it but only to send it flying off of Heavy’s hand as the bullet deflects off of Spy while he lands on the floor.

In fear that he is still a living head, he yelled again ‘’Kill me!’’, to winch the doctor fired 3 more bullets at the head but that still didn’t work.

In both fear and frustration he screamed again ‘’Kill Me!!!’’ with his eyes bloodshot, Medic kept firing at the Spy head while he spoke ‘’I’m trying! But you are invincible…’’ then he stopped firing bullets upon this secondly new discovery, he did fire a bullet at him one more time this time with interest towards it as the head groaned in pain.

‘’Now, I have to get to zhe battlefield vhere it is needed zhe most.’’

Medic then very quickly grabbed everything, including the living decapitated head and ran for the operation room to do further research and inventing with the Spy’s head being a good help for Medic by holding his pens, pencils with his mouth and even a lightbulb because of the electricity that was plumbed into him. There’s been an error in the process but still, he had completed his greatest invention that heal everyone in the Gravel War.

‘’Vith my breakthrough, I could do in seconds vhat vould take other doctors months! I could take men to the peak of health, und beyond! I could make GODS!’’

Richtofen was astonished to say the least when Medic his story of his discovery but there’s one thing left that he needs to ask. ‘’Quite a discovery zhere herr doctor but zhere’s one zhing left: Can it heal zhe sick?’’

‘’Nein it can’t but one day I vould look into it if I had time for it. You are a very curious man you are, are you a doctor?’’ Medic answered.

‘’Yes I am, my name is Doctor Edward Richtofen.’’ Edward introduced himself to the field medic, ‘’Vell, Doctor Richtofen, it’s nice to meet you, I am Dr. Ludwig but just call me ‘’Medic’’.’’ Medic said.

‘’Fine to meet you,’’ Richtofen said ‘’You know, I had a friend with that same name as you.’’ ‘’Really now? Quite a conscience!’’ Medic exclaimed with interest, to winch Richtofen chuckled to his response.

#Pt.1 #All-Stars Battle Royale #All-Stars -Story Mode- #Team Fortress 2 #Call of Duty Zombies #Tank Dempsey #Takeo Masaki #Edward Richtofen #Nikolai Belinski #Scout #Soldier #Pyro #Demoman #Heavy #Engineer #Sniper #Medic #Spy #I had to spit up the forth chapter into parts #I'll figure out a way to post the full version

[wintermutal]

mild scp discourse under cut

Back when I was 15, the SCP Foundation was my life. I was in a bad place in my mental health and felt like I had little to hang on to otherwise; I often felt like the SCP Foundation was a better life then the one I was living. I wasn’t happy, I was terribly stressed otherwise. It was a coping mechanism. It was fine. 

I remember also when I was 15, my parents and little brother and I were on vacation in a conservative state when the supreme court ruled gay marriage legal across the USA. I remember that my (liberal, accepting) family had the radio on in our van as we were driving, and all these super right-wing conservative pastors were on saying how terrible it was, how bad being gay was, how the US was a shithole because of this. I remember asking them to turn it off, and I expressed my pride through what mattered most to me, through a place I knew I would be accepted ‘in-universe’- by pulling out my shitty gaming laptop and making a poster of gay pride in the SCP Foundation. Was it good? Eh, not really. 

Did it matter to me? Yes. 

It has 655 notes as of today, which astonished me. At the time, I thought I was bisexual, but was uncomfortable with that identity. It felt validating that my so many people agreed that my favorite thing in the world, the universe I spent most of my time in, would be so accepting. 

Fast forward almost four years. 

I’m in college, 18 years old, and a butch lesbian much more stable in her identity. Being gay is a part of myself, but not all of myself; this is the same with my feelings about the Foundation. My mental health has improved considerably, especially after two months earlier in the year where I swore off SCP altogether and decided to prove to myself that I could live without my closest and longest-lived coping mechanism. I made new stories that were all of my own. I found new ways to live without it. I learned more than I ever had about myself and why I wrote for the wiki; I learned that I had become too closely bound to it, too sensitive, too attached. I was anxious about writing because I was too afraid of what someone might think, and too concerned about the upvotes and downvotes, what people on the wiki thought of me, how popular I was. I learned to care less about the wiki as my mental health allowed. It was incredibly freeing. 

Pride month rolls around. I think you all know where I’m going with this. 

So, there have been some pride posters. Some pride posters for the SCP Foundation that are way, way better than the one I made when I was 15. I didn’t expect to react the way I did when I saw them, but something about them made me feel...strange. I didn’t like them. They even made me slightly uncomfortable, which is especially strange because I tend to be a more laid back person in terms of what really, genuinely brushes me the wrong way. I’m not brushed the wrong way enough to send hate messages to this person, and I’m not going to, but I understand the hate that came with those posters. I understand where they’re coming from. The same person made a post about how ‘the foundation knows and accepts’ people who are in the closet, which also brushed some LGTB+ members the wrong way (as I’ve been out for a long time, I felt less so; but again, I can see where they’re coming from). 

I’ve been thinking about this. Why was it that I, a gay person, and other gay and trans people in the fandom I talked to privately about this, was made uncomfortable by these posters? Why was I uncomfortable about these posters, and not made uncomfortable by my own that I made when I was a depressed high schooler? Why these posters, and why can no one I talk to, including myself, pin down exactly what about them makes it...strange and off-putting? Here’s my theory: 

Op is in a process of growth. 

Right now, the Foundation means a lot to a lot of people. And just like in any fandom, there are users who use the Foundation as a way to vent, breathe, and cope. These are deeply personal works of art, more personal then the normal fanart, because they are Op expressing expressing their identity through both themselves and the extensions of themselves. We find it off-putting because of how the Foundation is portrayed as a strangely all-encompassing or even militaristic organization, which are the same characteristics that give op comfort and a feeling of being part of something bigger. 

Many people may also say that although the Foundation in-universe is a progressive organization that would do things such as op is describing- cover trans medical costs and promote being inclusive- it feels strange that they might do something like put up posters. Op defends saying that the SCP Foundation is no different than other large corporations who would do something similar, but would they really? I think this is the part that makes people uncomfortable- if you walked into target and saw a poster like that with a trans target employee, talking about how target accepted their being trans, saying that target is inclusive across all boards and with everything, wouldn’t that cause the same feeling of strange discomfort? Like a large corporation is panhandling, picking out their LGTB employees and explicitly putting them on a pedestal to show how ‘progressive’ they are? Like they’re more than just normal people who happen to be LGTB? Op also defends saying that this describes the moral greyness of the Foundation, which...would work, I think. I’ll give them credit for that. 

In conclusion: Why does it come across as strange to some people and not to others? It depends upon where you are in your life, how close you are to the wiki and the universe, how personal the site is to you. For some people, it’s comforting to have that clear, in-universe connection, and to others it isn’t. Does op have the right to post those posters without getting hate? Well, yes, and because of the plasticity of the canon, why not? This is about interpretations of the Foundation as well as interpretations about what it means to be LGTB, how important one’s identity is, and what brings comfort to the viewer. 

When I was 15, these posters would have been incredibly comforting to me. Now, they are less so. Different art strikes people differently in different times of their life. When it comes down to it, it’s art, which is personal and controversial at it’s core. 

So it makes me uncomfortable, because to me, it feels like its portraying the Foundation as seeing my being LGTB as something special that should be pointed out to others, when at my current point in my life, I feel no different than another person because I’ve gotten comfortable with my identity over time. Op is just finishing transition, so it makes sense that it might be produced in the process of settlement with a new identity; maybe they’ll continue to think this way about the Foundation, and maybe not, but in the grand scheme of things? 

It brings comfort to other people. I’m okay with letting it be.

#i rarely get caught up in The Discourse but heres my Thoughts(tm) #discourse

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 (5 of 6)

Moving on with the episode reviews for Star Trek: The Next Generation, I present a fifth instalment from the show’s sixth season, beginning with the episode that finally gave some in-continuity reasoning for Trek’s alien races being almost all humanoid…

Episode 20: The Chase

Plot (as given by me):

Captain Picard is visited by his former archaeology teacher Professor Galen, who has recently made a ‘profound discovery’. However, he will only share information on this with his former pupil if Picard agrees to join him on an expedition that could last anything up to a year. Picard is tempted, but ultimately chooses his duty to command the Enterprise over his desire to join Galen, much to the Professor’s anger and disappointment. Rather than wait aboard the Enterprise, Galen opts to leave in his shuttle. Later, the shuttle comes under attack from the Yridians. The Enterprise manages to reach the shuttle in time to stop the Yridians attacking by accidentally destroying their vessel, but Galen has been fatally wounded, and apologises to Picard for being so harsh about his rejection before dying.

 Determined not to let his mentor’s death be in vain, Picard orders the Enterprise to go off-mission, ignoring their assigned task of mediating a conference on Altalia VII to find out why Galen was killed. A series of number blocks found in the computer of the professor’s shuttle are ultimately revealed to be mathematical representations of certain DNA fragments. The fragments have been found on planets across the quadrant from multiple species, and are revealed to be pieces of some kind of algorithm. As the investigation continues, the Enterprise finds others are pursuing the same genetic puzzle, as they encounter Cardassian and Klingon ships in orbit of a planet Galen had visited prior to his visit to Picard.

 Picard convinces the Klingon and Cardassian officers to combine their efforts with his, as they all have pieces of the puzzle. They agree, and the Enterprise crew is able to extrapolate where to find the final piece of the puzzle. When the location is learned, Gul Ocett of the Cardassians attempts to double-cross the others and attacks the Federation and Klingon ships. Luckily, Lt. Commander La Forge discovered Ocett’s attempt to sabotage the Enterprise’s systems beforehand, and their damage from the attack is faked along with the co-ordinates Ocett took. The Enterprise proceeds to the real location, the Klingon captain Nu’Daq accompanying them as a guest since his own craft failed to be prepared for the Cardassian betrayal.

 The Enterprise travels to Vilmor II, where the final DNA sequence is to be found in a partially fossilised seabed. Picard beams down with Dr Crusher, Lt Worf and Nu’Daq, where they are then joined by not only the Cardassians, but also a group of Romulans that had been shadowing the Enterprise under cloak since the attack on Galen’s shuttle. While Worf and Nu’Daq engage in the stand-off with the other two factions, Picard and Crusher scan the final genetic fragment to complete the algorithm. Their tricorder then runs a holographic message formed from the completed program; an alien from a humanoid race explains that they seeded many worlds across the galaxy with elements of their genetic coding. As a result, all humanoid life is effectively linked by a shared ancestry, but when the hologram ends, both the Cardassians and Nu’Daq are disgusted by the idea they have a common ancestry and refuse to believe what they’ve been told.

 On board the Enterprise, Picard laments to Dr Crusher that the message Galen had sought did not find a receptive audience, but later he is contacted by the Romulan commander, who implies that not all ears who heard the message were deaf after all.

Review:

This is about our third Picard episode on the trot, so for me that spoils it somewhat because the show isn’t mixing things up enough in terms of alternating which characters are getting episodes focused on them.  That said, it’s only Picard’s episode until his mentor dies and the crew learns what Galen was looking for.  After that, the episode goes from character piece to plot-driven mystery, and then when the solution is revealed, we get a little bit of issue exploration, as we find out that the humanoid races of Trek are all linked.  The different reactions we get to this is not unlike getting together people from different national and racial backgrounds, pointing that they all have a common ancestry, and having them all call you mad while one privately lets you know they agree with you.

 The problem, however, is that because the episode changes what it is so much, it ends up spoiling itself.  It should have committed itself to one thing; the character piece (in which case Galen should have spent longer on screen and the Enterprise should have had helping him as its mission), the plot-driven mystery (in which case we should have got to that sooner and had less or no Picard-centric plot) or the issue exploration (for that to work, we should have seen the hologram early on and spent the episode wrestling with what having a common ancestry would mean for all these different species).  Instead, it’s a total mangle that only just about works.

 Also, according to Memory Alpha, producer Rick Berman wasn’t wild about the episode’s concept of a humanoid race pre-dating our own, but then again that’s no surprise; much of what I’ve read on the Trek wiki suggests Berman was a mainstream TV producer with little to no understanding of what Trek is.  To my mind, this isn’t an issue at all.  If anything, I think it’s cool to have sci-fi come up with the idea that maybe the odd alien race or two pre-dates our own.  As a species we’ve often taken a very ego-centric view of ourselves and our place within existence, and if we’re not willing to entertain the idea that intelligent alien life doesn’t have to be largely humanoid, I think we should be willing to accept that we’re not the first humanoid form of life in the universe. If we can’t do that, how can we ever hope to even approach a Trek-like utopian future one day?

 So, in summation this is a decent episode, but it suffers from trying to be more than it needs to be.  As such, I’m only inclined to give it 7 out of 10.

Episode 21: Frame of Mind:

Plot (as given by me):

Commander Riker rehearses for a theatre play called “Frame of Mind”, in which he plays a man who is locked up in a psychiatric hospital, told he is insane and tortured under the guise of being ‘treated’. At the same time, he is preparing for an undercover away mission to Tilonus IV; a Federation science team on the planet had been on the planet during the collapse of the planetary government, and Commander Riker will have to go down posing as a merchant to make contact with them. During preparation for the mission, Riker is accidentally wounded on the side of his face by Lt. Worf. Riker has the wound healed by Dr Crusher, but thinks it still hurts. Regardless, he proceeds to perform in the play before the mission, but during the audience applause, Riker suddenly finds himself in a hospital for the mentally ill that looks just like the stage set.

 Riker begins to slip back and forth between being in the hospital and on board the Enterprise, and due to images from the hospital imposing themselves on the other reality but not vice versa, he begins to believe he really is a mentally ill patient. Eventually, Riker begins rejecting the idea that the Enterprise was ever real, going so far as to try and resist rescue by Worf and Lt. Commander Data. Back on the Enterprise, Dr Crusher heals a wound on Riker’s head in the same position where Worf cut him earlier. When the wound instantly reappears, Riker knows he is in an illusion, and turns a phaser on himself to end the illusion.

 Riker then finds himself back in a hospital room, but still holding the phaser, suggesting he hasn’t yet come back to reality.  A wide-beam shot with the phaser at high power turns the hospital room into the stage set on the Enterprise, and pounding on the set finally shatters the last illusion. Riker awakens on an examination table on Tilonus IV, a probe inserted into the point on his head that was apparently wounded in his illusions. Fighting his way to the concealed communicator Worf gave him, Riker requests an emergency beam-out. Back on the Enterprise, Dr Crusher repairs the damage to Riker’s long-term memory, and Captain Picard explains how Riker was abducted by one of the factions on the planet in hopes of gaining strategic information. However, Riker’s mind created a defence for him by combining his play performance with what was going on. Riker is urged to rest, but instead goes to take down the stage set for his own peace of mind first.

Review:

This episode is better than some that try to challenge the ‘reality’ of a show too late into its run; normally, I think if a TV show isn’t going to do that from the start and all the way through, it should never even try.  Every show has its own reality, whatever that may be, and once it is established it can never be altered, nor should it be.  However, this episode isn’t about altering reality but about wreaking havoc on one character’s perception, and perception is not the same as reality at all. Reality is finite and dictated by scientific laws and truths that cannot be affected by anyone, whereas perception is far less certain and more prone to be deceived.

 However, the episode wastes the effort by failing to address any real mental health issues or explore Riker’s character through the mania he is exposed to.  Really, it’s just a plot-driven mystery as we just wait for him to wake up to reality and work out when his altered perceptions took over from reality.  In its way that’s a cool concept, but frankly not enough to make this a truly decent Trek episode.  Not surprising, considering this episode was written in a late-season crunch from a very bare bones concept, so I think that rush to create an ok story prevented the writers from making this into true Trek.  End score for this, a mere 6 out of 10.

Episode 22: Suspicions

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Guinan visits Dr Beverly Crusher in her quarters, complaining of "tennis elbow". Dr Crusher breaks the news that she is no longer a doctor on the Enterprise and will be facing a court martial. She tells Guinan the whole story.

 A Ferengi scientist, Dr Reyga, had created a metaphasic shielding technique, but species profiling and his unorthodox methods had left most scientists in the field ignoring his work. Dr Crusher decided to play the role of a "scientific diplomat" and invite other scientists versed in the field to come to the Enterprise and view a demonstration of the doctor's prototype. As they were all sceptical, they decided that someone other than the Ferengi should pilot the shuttle outfitted with the shielding. Jo'Bril, a Takaran, volunteered.

 At the test flight, they all watched from the bridge as Jo'Bril entered the star. Everything seemed to be going as planned until suddenly Jo'Bril became short of breath, and barely piloted the shuttle out of the star before dying. Everyone considered Reyga a failure, but he couldn’t accept that something went wrong. No one could find any trouble with the shuttlecraft, and Dr Crusher couldn’t determine the cause of Jo'Bril's death. In fact, she couldn’t understand his physiology at all, especially why his cells seemed to be decaying at such a slow rate. However, he was judged dead. Reyga pleaded with the other scientists to allow him a second test. Dr Crusher reluctantly refused, but he seemed determined to prove himself. A few hours later, he was found dead due to an apparent plasma discharge. It is judged a suicide by Security Chief Lt. Worf, but Dr Crusher intuitively knows it was neither a suicide nor an accident.

 Dr Crusher discussed how unusual this seems with Captain Picard. She wanted to perform an autopsy, but the captain informed her that it was out of the question, as the family insisted the body not be desecrated before they could perform the Ferengi death ritual. Frustrated, Dr Crusher decided to perform an investigation. She confronted Christopher and T'Pan; the former became incensed at first, but eventually mentioned overhearing the Klingon scientist Kurak having a fiery argument with Reyga. Dr Crusher then confronted Kurak, much to her own peril. As she determined Kurak also did not murder Reyga, she found herself stumped and her confidence faltering. Knowing she would be disobeying a direct order, she performed an autopsy on Reyga, and found nothing. She informed Picard who was forced to relieve her of duty.

 In the present, Guinan encourages her to continue her investigation, as she has nothing left to lose. Dr Crusher then proceeds with further investigation as suggested, enlisting the assistance of Lt. Commander Data and Nurse Ogawa in turn. Commander Riker warns her not to do anything "foolish". Despite this, and suspecting sabotage was the result of the initial test flight failing, Crusher takes the shuttle with Dr Reyga's shielding into the star herself. Picard urges her to come back, but to no avail. In the shuttle, Jo'Bril emerges alive. He reveals his species can fake death. He also plans to fake the destruction of the shuttle and take it back to his homeworld. He plans to profit from the new shielding, turning it into a weapon. Jo'Bril attacks Dr Crusher, but she fights back and is forced to completely vaporize him.

 Dr Crusher returns the ship, relieved to have vindicated Reyga, and returns to active duty. She also replicates a specially designed tennis racket for Guinan so she would never get tennis elbow again, but Guinan admits she has never played tennis; she was merely trying to figure out what was wrong with Crusher.

Review:

For our second episode on the go, we get plot-driven plot in a series that’s meant to explore issues through metaphor or develop characters.  This episode does neither, only serving as a Trek attempt to do ‘Quincey in space’. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember if this show’s final season was this ‘experimental’, but I really hope it wasn’t.  It seems like in trying to do new things, The Next Generation was forgetting what it was supposed to be.  I give this episode only 5 out of 10.

Episode 23: Rightful Heir

Plot (as given by me):

When Lt. Worf is late to report for duty on the bridge, Commander Riker investigates and finds him in his quarters in a trance-like state. The incident is brought to the attention of Captain Picard, who goes to speak with Worf. Apparently ever since encountering the Klingon children in the Romulan prison in the Carraya system, Worf has felt empty; the fervour with which those young Klingons took to their true heritage has made Worf’s own faith seem weak and hollow by comparison, and his efforts to summon a vision of Kahless are now interfering with his duties. Picard asks if Worf needs to go somewhere to more fully explore his beliefs, and agrees to place him on leave so he can visit the Klingon temple on Boreth, provided that he returns to full duty when he returns.

 After ten days on Boreth and receiving neither visions nor insight, Worf becomes frustrated and prepares to leave, but is convinced by the high priest Korath to remain. Later, Kahless appears to Worf, but to his amazement, the being is no vision or phantom, but a real flesh-and-blood Klingon who looks like the Kahless of legend and claims to be him. Worf is sceptical, and neither tricorder scans nor challenging Kahless to combat yields conclusive results, though many at the temple believe this Kahless to be the real one on whom Klingon legend is based. Farther afield, Gowron learns of the situation and asks for the Enterprise to relay Kahless, Korath and another member of the temple to him, suspecting Kahless to be some kind of fake. The temple clerics have long opposed Gowron, and he suspects this to all be a ploy on their part.

 On board the Enterprise, the blood of the new Kahless is compared against the fossilised blood of the original, and when both are genetically identical, Worf finally accepts the new Kahless as the original. However, evidence then begins mounting to contradict this view; Kahless doesn’t recognise the difference between a replicated Klingon drink and the real stuff, he claims to have no memories of the Klingon afterlife or of Kahless’ life beyond sacred texts, and when challenged to combat by Gowron, he is easily bested in honest combat. It turns out the new Kahless is a clone that was programmed with certain knowledge so he would appear to be the real Kahless. This had been done by the clerics to put an end to the decadence and corruption destroying the Klingon empire from within.

 When Worf learns two of Gowron’s men have remained aboard the Enterprise in hopes of seeing Kahless, he realises many will not care about the nature of the new Kahless and make a ‘leap of faith’. He reveals the truth of this Kahless to Gowron and convinces him to accept a compromise. The new Kahless will be installed as Emperor, but will only be a political figurehead and spiritual leader; all political and legislative power would remain with Gowron as leader of the High Council. Faced with the possibility of civil war if he does not comply, Gowron grudgingly accepts. As Kahless leaves, Worf finds he is back to the original crisis of faith he had before, but Kahless points out that his progenitor left them a philosophy of life and being that is more important than whether or not he would return, and that the spirit of Kahless lives in all true Klingons.

Review:

It’s often interesting to see Trek take on matters of spirituality because it always involves having to go to your non-human characters to do so, meaning it can be a lot more allegorical and less literal than some Trek issue exploration.  This isn’t something Next Generation did a lot of, though, because for much of its run the series creator Gene Roddenberry was alive and producing the show, and Roddenberry’s vision of humanity’s future was highly secularist.  On the one hand I do agree with this, as a large amount of conflict within humanity is based of organised religions fighting each other rather than being friends or at least peaceful competitors, but on the other hand it makes exploring how religion can affect us in real life far harder to do.

 Much of the episode keeps the focus on how spirituality plays out within this era of Trek, and as such you’re really getting a Worf character episode more than an issue-oriented one.  However, the episode does make some interesting points around spirituality, the first being when someone comes along and claims to be holy, or even divine, how the heck do you measure that?  Every character Kahless encounters has their own metric that for them proves or disproves Kahless’ claims, and this kind of lacking consistency and ability to apply empirical testing and proving to the issue is why I personally steer clear of it.  To my mind, if something can’t be proved or disproved, I’m not going to take much real-life interest in it except as literary fodder.

 The second point is whether the details matter more than whoever wrote them.  Since the details tend to out-last whoever first made them, I’d say yes, they do matter more than whoever came up with the details.  That being said, I also think that the details need to change with the times, because some of the details are very much of a specific time in history and make no sense in modern times.  There are a few times in the West Wing that this has been flagged up with regards to the bible, and the Kevin Smith film Dogma makes similar points, and all point inescapably to the fact that unlike secular laws, religious lore has a tendency to remain fixed even when it is no longer adhered to, and is often misinterpreted to support prejudice and hate when a system of regular amendments with the times would probably close such loopholes.

 For me, this was a good episode and earns 10 out of 10; it would have been 9, but Data admitting to making a ‘leap of faith’ regarding the very nature of his existence helps to support the almost-perfect spiritual examination of the Klingons and take the whole thing to full marks.

Episode 24: Second Chances

Plot (as given by me):

The Enterprise arrives at Nervala IV to retrieve scientific data from a Starfleet outpost on the planet that had to be evacuated eight years earlier. The evacuation was led by Commander Riker when he was serving as a lieutenant on the Potemkin, and he remembers almost being left behind during beam-out. A distortion field around the planet prevents transport beams working except once every eight years when the planet passes close enough to its sun to disrupt the field and allow a few transport windows. When a transport window opens early, the commander leads an away team down, but finds the research station is tidier than when he left it. It soon turns out this is because someone has been there; another William T Riker.

 An investigation reveals that during the evacuation, the transporter chief on the Potemkin had activated a second transport beam to try and get Riker through the distortion field, but this had been an unnecessary action. As a result, the cancelled second beam materialised one copy of Riker’s transport pattern back on the surface while the first beam materialised another copy on the Potemkin. The returned Riker subsequently gained rapid promotion that resulted in him prioritising his career over his romantic relationship with Deanna Troi, while the abandoned Riker had to make do surviving on the abandoned research station.  Captain Picard asks Commander Riker to enlist his double in efforts to retrieve the information from the research station, as the double has made numerous improvised changes to the equipment to keep himself alive.

 The mission’s success is hampered as the commander and his subordinate double clash; Data later theorises that this is because neither man likes the notion of no longer being unique, while Worf speculates that each Riker is uncomfortable seeing their own flaws in the other. At the same time, Lt. Riker tries to regain the romance with Troi that Commander Riker abandoned. Troi is initially reluctant, but begins to entertain the idea until Commander Riker notes that his double might make the same decision to put his career first further down the line. Realising this is probably true, Troi begins to express a note of caution, which further frustrates Lt. Riker.

 During a final attempt to secure the scientific data, Lt. Riker almost falls to his death in a chasm beneath the research station, but Commander Riker saves his double despite the risk of being pulled in himself. With the information retrieved, the Enterprise travels to rendezvous with the Ghandi, Captain Picard having arranged a posting on that ship for Lt. Riker. Troi opts to remain on board the Enterprise, but suggests she remains open to getting involved with Lt. Riker someday. Commander Riker gives his trombone to his double, who in turn reveals that he’s decided to use their middle name of Thomas to distinguish himself from the commander. Will notes that this must mean they are different people, as he apparently never cared for his middle name.

Review:

There are a few reasons to make note of this episode. For one, it’s the directorial debut of cast member LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge, to use his character’s name); Burton would go on to direct Trek episodes not only in TNG, but also across the spin-offs DS9 and Voyager, and the prequel series Enterprise.  The episode also features a cameo by Dr Mae Jemison, the first female African-American astronaut in space, which in turn resulted in a set visit by Nichelle Nicholls, better known to Trek fans as the original Uhura from the original Trek TV show and films.

 However, the main reason to remember it is that it’s the episode where Commander Riker turns out to have been duplicated, which would later result in a fun episode on Deep Space Nine.  Unfortunately, the episode concept was almost rejected until it was decided that it would be used to examine the Riker-Troi romance. Granted, that would later pay dividends in the TNG films, when the restrictions of episodic television allowed for more daring forays into things the show had restrained itself on, but for me that’s the wrong focus.  The right focus would have been to use the double to effectively define/confirm what Riker’s character was, or to use it as a way to question cloning science without actually using cloning in the story.

 As it is, we just two Rikers bickering like overgrown children, and since it starts before the one who eventually names himself Thomas starts trying to seduce Deanna, it’s not like the love triangle angle explains this.  Granted, I’m as overjoyed as anyone to see Trek abandon Roddenberry’s stupid idea about avoiding interpersonal conflict, but it’s stupider still to make two characters argue without a clear, present, explicit basis for said conflict.  Why are Will and Tom Riker having a go at each other?  Don’t just have Data and Worf try to guess in one scene; tell us straight out.  Show it, explore it, make the show about that. You had a great concept here, and you choked.  For me, this episode only ends up earning 6 out of 10.

[newmayhem]

Kendra’s Line

Disclaimer: None of this is mine, everything was collected from Amelia Atwater-Rhodes’ old websites, the wiki, and the old message boards. Anything written in the first person is a direct quote from Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. For all the entries in the The Den of Shadows Reference series, check the tag or this page.

Kendra is Siete's fifth fledgling and her line has a reputation for being artists. Unlike either Katama's line or Silver's line, Kendra's line has never attempted to rule other vampires or the myriad other creatures of Nyeusigrube, but their support has been a major factor in who does rule in any given period. Currently, they're allied with New Midnight and have New York City as their territory.

Members of Kendra's line have appeared in:

Shattered Mirror

Midnight Predator 

Persistence of Memory 

All Just Glass

Promises to Keep (unpublished)

Background

Siete created Kendra because they had an enemy in common- actually, this is again a continuation of the Silver/Renaei/Siete triangle, only now it brings in Silver's relationship with a shapeshifter named Mongeska and her brother Kalmanu who enslaved Kendra - but anyway, it all makes sense in a great many more pages than are here, and the moral is that Siete changed Kendra primarily for purposes of revenge. Which she achieved quite messily, and while Kendra liberated a land from a tyrant, who demanded blood-sacrifice and conquest, and in whose name thousands had been killed, I think few would call her a hero. In retrospect, Siete regrets Kendra's creation, but he'll still protect her if she's threatened.

Social Traits

Kendra was an artist, and as such she always had a weakness for other artists, and preferred them when choosing her fledglings (she's also quite possessive, but fickle, and tends to cling to what's hers until it bores her, from when on she couldn't care less). Unfortunately, she's also always been a little insane, with the results that most of her fledglings and descendants have had a leaning towards some kind of insanity themselves. This doesn't mean that all of Kendra's line are raving lunatics, but it does mean that they're almost always bound to have some mental quirk that sets them apart, whether it be extreme possessiveness, a preference for a certain color over all others, OCDs, or darker things like sadism or preferring blood with a taste of fear in it. In some cases, this is because Kendra and her offspring choose the eccentric artists who already have some kind of "insanity", or because they're drawn to those weak-minded enough to develop such a trait during the traumatic experience of becoming a vampire -- sometimes toying with them to make it even more traumatic.

Kendra's line is one of the most prolific, and even Kendra herself had more fledglings that are on the tree, but that she simply doesn't care enough about to actively acknowledge these days. They're also generally very variable, in that they can either choose to affiliate with either Midnight or Mayhem or remain relatively free from both.

Special talents

Vampires of Kendra's line might not be as strong physically as some other lines -- artists in general tend not to be as strong as for example warriors, so it's no big wonder -- but they have the mental strength to compensate for it. They can quite easily "roll" a mortal mind, imposing their will on them, but they tend to lack the finesse that (for example) Katama's line has. If they do have that finesse, it's because their personality demands it of them.

Family Tree

Kendra

Katherine

Kaleo Sonyar

Lady Brina di'Birgetta

Lord Daryl di'Birgetta

Jerome

Lila Light

Nissa Ravena

Nikolas Ravena

Kristopher Ravena

Sarah Vida

Karak

Rhok

Tizoc Theron

Shevaun

Eric Marinitch

#Reference

[krixwell-liveblogs]

According to the wiki entry, her powers manifested when she was fourteen, followed almost immediately by her demolishing the foster home she had been living in, injuring her foster mother and two other foster children in the process.

What a good start.

This was followed by a two year series of skirmishes and retreats across Maine as various heroes and teams tried to apprehend her, and she either defeated them or successfully evaded capture.

More evidence towards the dogs making Bitch the arguably toughest member of the Mozart Gang, as far as we've seen. Then again, Regent is at least named like he has some pretty strong powers.

She had no powers that would have made her any stronger or faster than the average Jane, but she was apparently able to turn ordinary dogs into the creatures I had seen on the rooftop. Monsters the size of a car, all muscle, bone, fang and claw.

Called it!

A red box near the bottom of the page read, “Rachel Lindt has a public identity, but is known to be particularly hostile, antisocial and violent. If recognized, do not approach or provoke. Leave the area and notify authorities as to her last known location.”

Yeah, it's becoming really clear that Bitch is not to be messed with. And that's probably exactly how she likes it.

At the very bottom of the page was a list of links that were related to her: two fansites and a news article relating to her early activities.

Naturally, even the villains are going to have fans, especially those who are as Edgy™ as Bitch is. I mean, look at what we know of her - she's antisocial and violent, clearly has problems with authority, and can turn dogs into awesome and grotesque beasts. Of course a lot of people are going to think she's super cool!

A search of the message boards turned up too many results, leaving me unable to sift through the crap, the arguments, the speculation and the villain worship to find any genuine morsels of information. If nothing else, she was notorious.

"Villain worship" is a good term for what I was just talking about, yeah.

I sighed and moved on, making a mental note to do more investigation when I had the time.

Time for some Regent development, I presume?

#Worm #Krixwell liveblogs #Arc 2 #Chapter 2.2

[imjustmejca1971]

Yep, I’m a Comic Book Geek

It all began in April of 1978. I was a little shy of my 7thbirthday. We were out shopping in one of those pre-Sam’s Club, pre-Costco warehouse stores in east Wichita, KS. I think it was called David’s. At the checkout line, there was a 3-pack of comics about Superman. The stories were “Laser War Over Metropolis,” “The Man with the Self-Destruct Mind” and “Beware the Eyes that Paralyze- Titano the Super Ape!” I was hooked. There was something about reading words with pictures that made reading so much more fun.

From that point forward every time we went to any grocery store or pharmacy, I asked for a comic book. I went from Superman to Action Comics to Wonder Woman. Then onto Flash and anthology series like World’s Finest, Superman Family and Batman Family. Finally, getting the best of all worlds..the Justice League.

My first Marvel comic was a few months later, Amazing Spider-Man #188. From there, I went on to Hulk, Iron Man and my first Marvel group book, The Avengers. I remember being in the plastic bubble (it was a 1970’s thing) in my elementary school library reading Avengers vol 1 #187.

 The fun part was seeing how all of these characters connected. Was Wonder Woman related to Wonder Man? No. Wonder Woman to Wonder Girl? Yes. The Thing to Swamp Thing? No.  Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel? Kind of. There was a Marvel Comics’ Captain Marvel, which she was connected to. There was also a DC Captain Marvel (more commonly known as Shazam) that had nothing to do to that character. Eventually I figured out the difference between DC and Marvel universes.

These were all serialized storylines. Marvel’s books had started in the early 1960’s. DC’s had gone back as far as the late 1930’s. Even though there were jumping on points, there were always references to other stories. That was great for me. Anytime I went to a comic store, I looked for the issue I didn’t have that connected the previous story. Sometimes flea markets and garage sales would yield amazing finds, dirt cheap.

As someone with a vivid imagination, I just soaked all this up. I even invented my own alter ego at 9 years old. “Superkid.” I know, not that creative...but the adventures I had in my head were awe inspiring for a child that wasn’t easily able to connect to other people.

The first real-life versions of my favorite superheroes came onto tv and the movies in the late 70’s. Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman in the tv show was amazing. To this day, she’s probably one of the only celebrities I would be a blubbering mess to meet. The other was Christopher Reeve’s Superman. I still get tears in my eyes every time the theme from the movie starts. To me, he was Superman as he nailed the buffoonery of Clark Kent and the humanity of Superman.

I also learned so much from reading comic books. Any time Reed Richards or the Vision used a word I didn’t understand, I looked it up. Reading a comic book expanded my vocabulary nearly every time. When I first learned Wonder Woman and Shazam were based in Graeco/Roman mythologies, I wanted to learn more. Who was Aphrodite? Who was Hermes? Who was Zeus? How did he relate to Jupiter? Wait, didn’t we have a planet named Jupiter?

Who were Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Venus, etc.? It opened up yet another world of astronomy including planets, solar systems, stars, galaxies, quasars, pulsars, wormholes and black holes.

Many of the heroes had extrasensory perceptions. Could those be real? Did people in real life have telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, or clairvoyance? What did those mean? Could anyone get them by using the full potential of the mind? Could you learn to see things others couldn’t? Were ghosts real? Could you get to the astral plane? It opened up another new plane..this time of the paranormal.

So many worlds to explore..all opened up by comic book stories. Here’s a whole list of things I as a pre-teen kid through young adulthood gained exposure to through comic books:

Always do the right thing and help others whenever possible-  Superman

Put love first, but kick ass when you need to-  Wonder Woman

Artificial intelligence- Vision; Red Tornado; Ultron

You can be anything you put your mind to- Batman (granted with $$ and really good trainers)

Life is a series of ups and downs- Spider-Man

With great power comes great responsibility- Spider-Man

Manage your anger properly- Hulk

Multiverse concepts- Flash; Justice League/Justice Society

People can dislike you for just being different- X-Men

Love is more than physical appearance: Vision and the Scarlet Witch

Remaking your own reality/retroactive continuity- Crisis on Infinite Earths

Addiction- Iron Man

Sacrifice- Flash; Supergirl

Mental health issues- Hank Pym

The world isn’t black and white- Magneto

Don’t judge people on how they look- Nightcrawler (X-Men)

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Love wins.- Phoenix

Astronomy- Fantastic Four

The United States of America is the people, not the government- Captain America

More to life than what we see- Dr. Strange; Dr. Fate

And so much more.

The great news is most of the stories are now accessible digitally. Marvel has a subscription service for $10 a month where you have access to decades of stories of nearly 20,000 titles. DC is supposed to follow suit next year. We also have the wonder of the internet. Want to know the story where Jean Grey first became Phoenix? When Superman and Lois got married? When Iceman came out? You’re just a google away to find the source.

There are tv shows, movies, comic conventions, message boards, wikis and so many ways to connect to these characters and the people who love them. My only wish list is for the stories I grew up with as a kid and young adult to be adapted into a new medium in its original content.  Most tv shows and movies pay homage to the source materials, but create their own spin. I’d love to see the original stories brought to life.

When new comic books are published every Wednesday, whether digitally or available at a local comic book store, I get to have a few minutes that are just mine to let my mind soar again. You can be seven. You can be 47. Comics are for everyone.

[dwebbfmp]

Status Update 23/03

I have re-read the brief and realised that this blog has been mostly used as a collection of links, videos and articles, but it lacks analysis and reflection.

So far I have done quite an impressive research on the topic of cognitive biases.

I have read full versions or abstracts/summaries of several 

Books, including:

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself by David McRaney

Self anchoring in conversation: Why language users do not do what they "should". (2002) by Keysar, B., & Barr, D. J.  

Wiki articles:

Cognitive biases

Bounded rationality 

Rational ignorance

Thematic sources on the internet:

http://rationality.org

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com

https://www.lesserwrong.com

Podcasts

https://youarenotsosmart.com/podcast/

Watched numerous 

TED talks on 

magic tricks

attention control

game theory

behavioural economics 

History of graphics in computer games

Mobile app games

Monument Valley

Evo Explores

Other clones (Ghost of memories, Mekorama)

The Last Night

Sword and Sworcery

Alto’s Odyssey

Other beautiful Apps:

Headspace

Peak

Tools and tutorials:

IOS developer course

UX/UI course

XCode

Sketch

Sigma

Visual research & aesthetics:

Schuka projects

Pinterest board -  architectural illustration

Optical illusions

Video presentations of a prototype - how to

In the beginning of the project my main concern was that I will be unable to program a working application on my own, learning to code in 3 months. I was facing a danger of falling too deep into the technical aspect of this application and therefore not paying enough attention to the conceptual or visual part. 

I was aware that my grade will mostly depend on the visual part of the outcome, and if it won’t be professionally executed, my project will receive a low mark. 

However, there is absolutely no point in making an application, which looks good, but doesn’t work, or has a tangled logic, or is not clear, or is not usable. 

Once deciding to work on an app, I set myself a goal to formulate a problem and find a solution. It was the conceptual part exactly which was the most difficult and the most important. It is a keystone of my project.

Let’s say I’ve learnt a lot about cognitive bias and rational thinking and I understood how important it is to apply the latter to our daily basis decisions. 

What’s next? Why is it an application? What does it communicate?

How do I convince people to look at the application? How do I grab their attention so they actually want to interact with it? How do I keep them entertained and focused but yet convey a message?

How do I illustrate the concept of cognitive bias? Which examples do I pick? How does the user make the choice? How do I make him look for examples in his decision making process?

When watching Dan Ariely TED talk I realised that he did a great job finding clear and simple examples or cases to illustrate his point. 

I faced a similar problem. At some point, after some theoretical research has already been done, I realised that it is very difficult for me to pitch the idea. 

People listened to my explanation, and I could see the confusion approaching their face. Some would say “Sounds very smart, but I didn’t get anything”.

It’s important to remember that my goal is not to impress the viewer/user, not to show how smart I am, not to educate myself - 

it is to show and interest and quickly explain.

Funnily enough, this is exactly what Eliezer Yudkowsky starts his book with:

“It was a mistake that I didn’t write my two years of blog posts with the intention of helping people do better in their everyday lives. I wrote it with the intention of helping people solve big, difficult, important problems, and I chose impressive-sounding, abstract problems as my examples. In retrospect, this was the second-largest mistake in my approach. It ties in to the first-largest mistake in my writing, which was that I didn’t realize that the big problem in learning this valuable way of thinking was figuring out how to practice it, not knowing the theory. I didn’t realize that part was the priority; and regarding this I can only say “Oops” and “Duh.”Excerpt From: Eliezer Yudkowsky. “Rationality: From AI to Zombies.” iBooks.

Why does it have to be an application? 

Because application, unlike a video, allows interaction with the user. This means that user can make a choice. This is an important part of training process. UI elements can be a helpful tool and UX knowledge and tactics can let you manipulate user’s behaviour - therefore showing how irrational he or she can be.

Who is this user? 

There are 2 very different types of potential users:

a) exhibition visitors

b) those who deliberately found my app

And the strategy actually differs a lot for these two types. The latter doesn’t have to be attracted - he’s already more than just a random мимопроходил. 

[rollandw1074-blog]

Research Online On Entrepreneurship Grip The Skills To Taste Results By Harry Martin.

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"Shauny's very sad...": A momentary glance into the life of Shaun Hathaway.

About a year ago, I had found myself stumbling upon what would be my partner label, Cavern Brew Records. Of the many oddities that was the label's discography, few truly stood out to me more than Shaun Hathaway. With bassy, underlying drones, harrowing, dark sampling, and loose, yet oddly intricate orchestration, Shaun is one small dark ambient artist, bound to make big leaps in the near future. The following is an interview between the two of us.

What made you want to become a musician, and make ambient music? Have you considered experimenting in other genres?

Well, when I was a kid I used to draw a lot and write stories/small books, then when I was beginning to become a pre-teen I used to act in plays and write scripts for plays and even came in second place in a playwriting contest in 6th grade, then when I was a teenager (high school age) I used to make short films and sketches with my friend at the time, and then after I was about to turn 17 I was starting to write, near-feverishly, lyrics down into various notebooks and I probably have about 4 or so notebooks filled with bars I wrote. My ex-girlfriend actually gave me my first "official" notebook that I used to write rhymes in because I was so convinced that I was going to rap and she was the only person at the time that actually believed in me, so I wanted to make her proud. Soon after I dropped out of high school and we broke up, I recorded a few songs with my close friend and I kind of sort of really cringe looking back at it because it could be a lot better. Don't bother looking for them, though, because I made sure they were taken off of soundcloud. Anyways, the continuation in the storyline I am trying to create is that I was fascinated by how my friend could produce his beats so fast while still being funky as hell. So, he used to try to show me how to use FL Studio and every time I would try to create something, I ended up accidentally creating something hellish so I eventually decided that there was clearly something to it. I think it was a culmination of all of the noise music I was listening to and my generally manic state I was constantly in at that time period, but I very specifically remember hunching over my laptop and making my very first full-length song "Adjustment" in a non-stop 6 to 9 hour production "marathon" and immediately uploaded it to SoundCloud. After I made that song, I was incredibly proud of myself for what I had created and decided to continue making more and more of it and eventually released my first EP "Shaun's Dark Place EP" and was almost immediately contacted by the founder of what became Cavern Brew Records who asked me to release stuff on his new net-label and I said yes. As for the second part of the question, yes, I have considered and have already experimented in hip-hop primarily. I very much plan on creating more and more hip-hop frequently and my end goal to my musical career would be to create experimental R&B and hip-hop, along the lines of artists like FLANCH, JPEGMAFIA, and basically everything Arca has had a hand in producing.

Who are your influences? Or people who you frequently listen to?

My influences for my dark ambient and noise music would definitely be Kylie Minoise first, he has probably had the most direct and notable influence on my harsh noise releases, and others would be Jason Crumer (mainly just Ottoman Black), The Gerogerigegege, and Sissy Spacek, so decently entry level stuff, however I should give a salute/shout out to PURGIST. The people I frequently listen to would most notably be LIL UGLY MANE who is my ultimate production and generally musical idol, Death Grips, Clipping., JPEGMAFIA, Danny Brown, Arca, SOPHIE, another huge production idol of mine, Ratking (and Wiki's solo career too), Machine Girl (mainly just WLFGRL, not gonna lie), ANTWON, Watkin Tudor Jones and his various projects, I know they only have one album, but I fucking love FLANCH so far, Memphis Hip-Hop as a whole has been a huge musical awakening/love for me, especially albums like The World Of A Psycho by Maniac and Demons Takin' Over Me by Nigga Creep, and the whole DJ Sound and Frayser Clique sound, not to downplay Three Six Mafia at all, Giles Corey, and fucking fight me, but I love Spooky Black/Lil Spook/Corbin. I've also really been getting into Xiu Xiu lately.

What are you listening to right now? What would you personally recommend?

I personally try not to listen to music while doing most things except driving and, well obviously, listening to new music because I feel like I'm not giving it my fullest attention and that it deserves better than that. However, I will admit that I will play the albums BBNG by BADBADNOTGOOD, ABSENCE OF SHITPERSON by LIL UGLY MANE, Swing Rocket by Swing Rocket (good friends of mine), and Fashion Week by Death Grips while I am driving in the car with new people or just people I am musically incompatible with, like my mother, most of my friends, or my 7 year old niece. People I HIGHLY recommend would be literally any of the artists I mentioned for the last question, but severely underrated people or projects I would really like to double down my love for would be FLANCH, ANTWON, and JPEGMAFIA. FLANCH for the reasons being that they managed to essentially bring to life a lot of hazy-ish/ballparked ideas I have had in my head for things I would love to both create and hear in a very clear, but by all means strange vision and it is absolutely phenomenal. FLANCH is easily one of my favorite albums of the year. ANTWON being another huge recommendation because of his always incredibly entertaining lyrics, energy, voice, flow, ability to do his thing on just about any beat he is handed, no matter how strange, and his very clear love for punk and black metal which heavily translates into both his aesthetic and lyricism on darker songs. Him and Wiki also put on a 10/10 concert when I saw them both live. And finally, JPEGMAFIA is everything that both music and politics need at this time. He is the best provocateur, both musically and personality wise, of 2016. He has openly admitted to being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian because he believes people should be pushed in the way he pushes him. His albums BLACK BEN CARSON and his collaborative EP The 2nd Amendment with artist Freaky should both be immediate listens for anybody reading this. He is a genuinely amazing glitch-hop, industrial-hop, and just generalized experimental hip-hop artist. Easily one of my favorite newer artists by far.

You chose your real name as a moniker, and many of your albums give a slight description of your personal life in of itself. Do you feel this transparency is a key factor to what makes your music interesting?

I absolutely believe transparency is very key for my releases under my real name, however I would very much like to believe that people would find the music itself entertaining or interesting regardless of personal backstories connected to the albums.

And what possesses you to put out your own personal life? Contextual reasons or catharsis or?

I think it just has to go hand in hand with the transparency I offer by using my real name. I have multiple songs under probably around 20 different aliases out that have no real need for my name to be attached to them, so I leave them segregated from the message, sound, emotion, or point across I am trying to make to people, unlike with my "main" musical releases. But yes, catharsis is very much a great deal to do with it. Like how I used a text message my ex sent me as I was boarding a bus in Boston after we broke up as one of the cassette covers for the album Suicidal Ideation. I am also using the same text message picture to press onto some shirts that should be going on sale relatively soon/before the year is over. My good friend MC 469 and I both are currently the only owners of said shirts. It just works as a grieving method where if I include my personal life into my artistic ventures I just look at it as a part of my art now. Like that text message picture, I barely even look at it and want to cry anymore, I usually just immediately connect it to the aesthetic that I have been trying to hone since I started releasing my dark ambient music rather than the incredibly upsetting amount of personal turmoil it would usually stir up.

Say I’m a new listener. I want to know a short summary of the context that leads you to create these albums. What would you say?

Shaun's Dark Place / thesunshinedieswithoutme: At the time I had just been released after spending a 10 day stay at a mental hospital in Brattleboro, Vermont after being placed in a psychiatric ward for 6 days because I was put on suicide watch for the second time that year (2015), and I had a lot of emotions, feelings, and anxiety to release somehow and the medicine I was on made me feel slightly numb and I was scared of becoming, I guess, normal, so I discovered during that 6 to 9 hour production marathon of the song "Adjustment" was that what I was doing was incredibly therapeutic and I had just discovered a new way to voice my anxieties. Return to Shaun (split album with artist Return to Sender): I had discovered that as helpful as it was to express very morose emotions, it also gave me a pathway to be able to create "fun" harsh noise and just to enjoy myself while still giving my small fanbase what they asked for. Suicidal Ideation: This album began production a little after the previous two projects and I was experimenting in doing much longer, dronier, and more entrancing soundscapes when everything took a really sharp turn for the worst at that time in my life. To sum it all up, I broke up with my current girlfriend at the time because of the multiple unresolved problems and emotions I never settled with my ex, so I went into a full-blown mental breakdown which lasted for about 4 days until my ex, the one I was missing very much at the time, called the police and told them that I was probably going to kill myself that night, which I guess I never thought I would admit it publicly, but I was. I was planning on pulling over somewhere isolated after talking to my ex one last time and just letting the car exhaust fumes kill me. So, the police apparently showed up at my mom's door, while I wasn't home, basically saying "Where is your son?" "He's a danger to himself" "He might have killed himself" and horrible shit like that so I had to stop at the local police station to tell them to stop harassing my mom until they eventually led me under false pretenses and put me on suicide watch for the third fucking time that year where I was held against my will in a psychiatric ward for about 36 hours. In a manic state, I tried to call my ex who called the cops on me and the last words she said to me were "You belong in a mental hospital" and I still haven't been able to contact her since considering she blocked me from her entire life after that, but do not get me wrong, she was entirely within the right to do what she did, I just kind of wish it was perhaps done a little less harshly, but I cannot pinpoint her as "the bad guy". One last "fun fact" about that album was that the song September 22nd was actually made for my mom for her birthday because at the time I couldn't afford to buy her one, so I thought I would try to "make something happy for once" as she would always try to tell me. Cold (single for Stocking Stuffer): I wanted to create an ambient piece that gave the listener a very unsettled and distant feeling of an icy and strangely familiar, but foreign state of mind and or mood. they found him in the forest: I accidentally stumbled upon footage of my father walking through various job sites (he was a forester/logger) and I thought to myself how heartbreaking this was that all the video and audio recordings I had left of my dead father were some 5 to 30 second snippets of him walking through leaves and occasionally mumbling under his breath. October: It's a very self-explanatory project once fully listened to and is easily my most directly personal, and possibly horrifying, album/project to date. It's kind of a hard listen because of the subject matter itself, but I would like to think that it is a very essential listen for any fans of mine who are interested in learning more about my own "backstory". Halloween Split Series 16.2 (Shaun Hathaway x Subversive Intentions): I like to describe my side of the split as a Halloween sound effects/scary stories CD or cassette found in a Goodwill or a similar thrift store, with something incredibly sinister lurking beneath the surface of it all. I'm very proud of this split because it was born out of the most absolute passion and love for my favorite holiday and the collection of old Halloween story and sound effects cassettes and CDs I "used to" listen to in abundance for almost the entire month of October.

When I had a previous had a discussion with you, you stated you would most likely have difficulty having a call as you are “in the middle of nowhere”. Do you think such adds to that isolated feel of your music?

Absolutely. Isolation and alienation are very far from foreign feelings living in New Hampshire, which, in turn, translates heavily into my music. I always had a "joke" that the only ways to die in New Hampshire are suicide, overdose or car accident. Unfortunately the "joke" becomes much more morbid when you start to live here longer and people you used to know start to die faster and younger every year.

If I wanted to show people an accurate depiction of depression through music, you would probably be the first. You do such in a primal and blunt way, something that’s often difficult for your average joe to comprehend. It’s quite an amazing thing to accomplish. I give you praise for such.

Thank you very much! I appreciate the compliment very much! I always think it's amazing when a fan or new listener sends me an email and says almost exactly that, that my music is an accurate translation of depression into music and I take the compliment very to heart because that was exactly the goal I tried to achieve the entire time. It's also kind of a sad awakening in one regard, however. I find it amazing that somebody else out there can empathize and connect with my music the same way I did while creating it, but at the same time it depresses me a lot to know somebody actually has the same feelings as I did while creating it. Nobody should ever have to feel the ways I feel and have felt in the past and it's sad, but on an upturn of it all, I hope it will at least help some people realize they aren't alone as they think they are, as cliche as that may sound.

Do you have a certain thought process to your music? Some of your own songs hit the thirty-minute mark, and it makes me wonder do you have a certain method as to how you develop your drones?

For most of my discography my thought process just consisted of trying to capture the exact feelings I was having right then and there in the most accurate way possible and which samples could really amplify which emotion and etc. However, for a fair chunk of my other stuff, especially on my new album I'm working on (which is easily becoming my favorite album yet. No I don't have a specific release date for it. Probably 2017, though.), I find a main, usually spoken word/vocal sample, that I absolutely fall in love with and I build an entire soundscape and environment around the sample to amplify it. For the second part of your question, yes, I do have some semblance of a method to my madness. As stated a few questions back, when I started working on Suicidal Ideation, I wanted to focus a lot more on the entrancing factor of drone music and in doing so I would develop main, monolithic in size usually, and try to let it seep in and then start tacking on other large and thick layers of loops and generalized ambient sounds. Another must have for me with a lot of my music if you haven't noticed, is thunderous bass lines which, in my opinion, both enhance and add a very unsettling and overpowering feeling to each track it appears on, or at least that is certainly the goal of mine.

Any specific instruments that are key/essential to you?

If vocals count, then absolutely, yes. If not, then not really. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that there is barely any actual instruments, sampled or otherwise, that are in my discography. The only real examples I can think of would be the highly manipulated samples of me playing with my keyboard that appear throughout Suicidal Ideation. However, I will reveal this much, the afformentioned possibly upcoming in 2017 album is going to change that. That is all I can really reveal about it.

I notice you like to use religious songs in your sampling. Some instances, it even sounds like they’re crying or something is bothering them as they sing. Are these personal recordings, or samples you happened to stumble upon?

Oh god, I know exactly which song you're talking about too, 'finalities' off of Suicidal Ideation. That was easily one of the most horrifying samples, in my opinion, that I have ever used. The whole song, especially that intro, was to basically replicate a panic attack I was having while making that song. Almost all of my religious samples actually all come from one place, which I refuse to identify because of how much long it took to stumble upon it and in the vain of not giving away one of my most treasured secrets. But no, none of the religious samples are of my creation, "unfortunately".

Are you yourself religious? And what kind of “weight” does this add to your song, at least in your opinion?

My father was semi-catholic, but his whole side of the family seemed to be relatively devout catholics and my mother and her side of the family all seemed to identify as "spiritual" so I mainly seemed to empathize with my father's religious side for a while when I was a kid. Eventually I just began to lose interest and faith in religion and ever since I was 11 I have been stuck with a strange feeling of loss that I have never been able to fully recover from. I feel like the "weight" that it adds to my music and art as a whole would be that it really envokes a feeling within every once-religious person that can't be fully realized or explained, but is merely a phenomenon that really seems to pique my emotions.  Essentially, the samples, themes, etc. are all just attempts to reconnect with a part of my life that has been forever lost. It's basically my equivalent of nostalgiacally looking through old scrapbooks and photos of a dead loved one where the memories you shared with them are both very vivid but also slightly hazy, but the overwhelming feelings of sadness and nostalgia are very clear and direct.

What would you say distinguishes you from other ambient/dark ambient artists?

I would probably have to say my emotional vulnerability. I feel like a lot of (specifically dark) ambient and noise artists are completely obsessed with becoming as anonymous and enigmatic as possible for their whole gimmick, which I completely can understand and respect as a fellow artist and musician, but I feel like the farther they stray from their own identities, the further they distance themselves from their emotions and humanity. In my opinion, a majority of music is created and intended to be an artform in which artists can express their emotions in a very abstract or direct way and when people try to make themselves as unrelatable as possible, it becomes more apparent that the mask they wear they feel is more interesting than themselves which I feel is just being unfair to one's self. Another thing that sort of frustrates me about it is the fact that very rarely do those types of ambient and noise producers ever have fun with it. It's the reason why artists like Death Grips and LIL UGLY MANE will always stay entertaining to me, they play heavily with the elusive act that their fanbases has essentially labeled them as and they seem to enjoy themselves very much doing so. Another thing that would probably be a distinguishable feature of my certain style of ambient/dark ambient is the lack of instrumentation, pedals, etc. and is almost entirely plunderphonics based. I know a lot of ambient artists seem to rely heavily on (albeit distorted and manipulated) synths keyboards, etc. but almost all of my music is 100% sample based. I mean some of it is definitely recorded by me, but more often than not without specific intentions for specific songs and more just recorded for the sake of possible digital mutilations. All of my stuff is just made entirely on my laptop. However, things are going to be slightly changing with that possibly 2017 album I'm working on, but don't worry, it will still be 100% Shaun.

What is the order you recommend your new listeners check out your discography?

Honestly, I don't mean to sound like "that guy", but honestly, I think that chronologically is probably the best bet, except maybe postponing the monolithic Suicidal Ideation until you've listened to everything else, but for certain, you should really start out at Shaun's Dark Place EP or Shaun's Dark Place / thesunshinedieswithoutme.

What albums do you especially recommend, or not recommend, people listen to from you?

Definitely Shaun's Dark Place / thesunshinedieswithoutme, Suicidal Ideation, and October. If listened to in that order, you will probably get a very firm understanding on what it is that I create and who I am. Especially if listened to in that order. The rest of my discography are mainly just considered side projects and experimentations to me. That doesn't mean they should be swept under the rug at all, but they definitely were made more for me to try something new or were for a split or single. However, a huge bonus one for me would be to listen to my split album with Subversive Intentions Halloween Split Series 16.2 (Shaun Hathaway x Subversive Intentions) on Halloween day or Eve or both because that was definitely a passion project that was made entirely out of love, respect, admiration, and general adoration of Halloween sound effects/stories CDs and cassettes I grew up listening to over and over again as a child well before, well after and certainly during Halloween. I was just absolutely obsessed with them and still am.

Have you considered live performances?

Absolutely. Karma Bus and I have been in on and off again serious talks with the idea of a mini CBR/Cavern Brew Records concert with as many local artists signed and or associated with the label to come down and perform at whatever local venue they allow us to book. Another possibility we have talked about is just a dual performance with just ourselves that would possibly feature performance arts and there's even been talks about "distorted reality happenings", as I would like to refer to the ideas as, occuring throughout performances. Nothing set in stone yet, though. It's also very hard to plan concerts for my sort of music because it's not exactly something you can really dance to or even really enjoy in a traditional sense.

What do you think is in store for you in the future?

Well, I am making a lot more hip-hop beats as of lately and have been trying to polish off my skills as a hip-hop producer in order for me to be able to sell my beats or even just give out a few beats for exposure's sake to my favorite active rappers or just ones that I highly enjoy. I feel like I have to be more realistic about being able to make a living off of my music and my art in general and I feel like for me, hip-hop is going to be my way in to a livable career off of my music. I am confident that I have the ability to continue to polish off and work harder on my beats to hopefully make my way into a dream of mine and hopefully meet my idols while doing it. This doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that I even plan on retiring from my dark ambient or heavily experimental music as a whole, but if I succeed, it would basically just give me more means to create it.

What is an odd quirky fact about you?

The very first album I ever bought for myself was Jackpot by Chingy when I was about 6 or 7 years old. I would probably cry out of joy if I found my copy of it.

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