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#and yet I want to consume any and all resident evil media with him in it
thedragonhermit · 1 year
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As a lesbian, I am allowed 1 (one) fictional man to hyperfixate on, and that man has become Leon S. Kennedy.
That’s a joke, obviously (not the fixating on Leon part), but man, there’s just something about a character who starts off bright eyed and determined to help people/save lives/be a hero who goes through a traumatic event and comes out scowling and sarcastic and grumpy, and yet STILL is determined to help people/save lives/be a hero.
He’s been through a lot of awfulness and his one-liners have become more snarky, but deep down he’s still kindhearted and nice.
He’s also stupid enough to bring you to tears and his pretty hair gives you gender envy 😔
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novelmachine · 4 years
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Pride month has come and gone, but we are still here
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Gif credit: @bisexualdonatello
I don’t talk about it very often (mostly because I am not officially out) but I’m bisexual. I am attracted to those who identify as my own gender (female) and those who identify as an opposing gender. It has taken a few years of rationalizing and actually sitting with myself to come to accept this. In fact, very recently I had contemplated the legitimacy of my sexuality again. This is due to a few things: I have never had a relationship of any kind, I live in a conservative community, and I am still learning about the terminology and culture that comes from the LGBTQA+ community as a whole. Popular media—visual media specifically—has been a great influence in this regard. The older I got, the more access I had. The more access I had, the more I was able to learn. I grew to have a better understanding of the world around me and could explain how and why the media I consumed resonated with me personally. It took a while, but this is how I got here:
Bi Awakening (Film)
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It was the late 00′s when I saw Van Helsing for the first time. I was immediately hooked. It has all the things I loved and still love to this day: monsters, a gothic aesthetic, an anti-hero with a heart of gold, bad-ass women who are immaculately dressed and fight hard, and a tragic ending. I had always been interested in Hugh Jackman ever since I watched him play Wolverine in the X-Men films. This character was what did it for me. Van Helsing was brave yet troubled. He had a knack for fighting evil and finding good where others couldn’t see it. This is a character I would daydream about going on long adventures around the world with. After watching the movie several times, my eyes also followed Anna Valerious, played by Kate Beckinsale. She was determined and a fighter through and through. Her skills and her dedication to her family drew me in. I wanted to hug her and fight monsters by her side. Oh, and did I mention they were both highly attractive? Because they are, just look at them, oh my gosh!! I took a while, but I finally admitted to myself that I like both men and women. Despite never acting on these feelings, I felt content with the conclusion I’d come to. This went on for a few years. It wasn’t until this year that I started questioning it all again.
Bi Confusion (YouTube)
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I’ve watched my fair share of ContraPoints videos. In her video Shame, Natalie explains how she came to the conclusion that she is a lesbian. Throughout the video she explains how she was in a heterosexual relationship that, while loving and nice, was not fulfilling. She brings up the topic of compulsory heterosexuality, the feelings some women experience due to the norms of our society. I went in search of the “Am I a Lesbian” article mentioned in the video and read through the whole thing in one sitting. I came away from it feeling like I had unlocked some secret. Maybe I had been confused and conditioned all this time. Often my fantasies with women are more detailed and complex than my fantasies with men. That must mean I'd been avoiding one and embracing the other, right? And since I’ve never been in any kind of relationship, maybe I’d just been conditioned to include men in the equation from the start and couldn’t let it go? I had been entertaining a man I’d met online and had felt the relationship was forced on my end. Maybe I’m just not into men? After much consideration, I decided to give the lesbian label a try. That sounds horrible in retrospect, but I did it. I said the word to myself in private. I thought about spending my life pursuing only women. I excluding men from my fantasies. That didn’t last long. It just didn’t fit me. I learned through that exercise that my feelings for one gender don’t outweigh my feelings for another gender. The reason my fantasies vary is because of limited experience, not lack of interest. The reason I cut things off with the guy I’d been speaking with wasn’t because I was a lesbian, but because we just worked better as friends. I wasn’t a lesbian. I had just overthought my feelings. I’m attracted to people, not just their genders.
Bi Confirmation (Video Games)
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My first exposure to Resident Evil was through several LP’s on YouTube. I have managed to play through a few games myself, though. The past few years have been really good for the Resident Evil franchise, the most noteworthy additions being the remake editions of Resident Evil 2 & 3. Leon’s a bad-ass super cop who just wants to do the right thing. Claire is an amazing person who cares so much about the people closest to her. Jill’s the most OP character in Resident Evil and just wants to save the world. Carlos is a genuinely good guy who wants to help. These people are heroic, bad-ass, and hot? Excuse me, I need a minute...Basically, I want to be these characters and be with them. I can confidently say that I am bisexual. There are other fictional characters I can point to that I would say affirm my sexuality—Casey Jones and April O’Neil from TMNT, Diana Prince and Steve Trevor from Wonder Woman, Markus from Detroit: Become Human, Harley Quinn from Birds of Prey—but Resident Evil has the most characters I love in a single franchise. When I was questioning my sexuality, I looked at these video game characters I had come to like and realized there was no denying myself. It’s okay to like both. Both is good.
Bi Acceptance (TikTok)
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In conclusion, sexuality is weird. You might think you’re a young straight when all of a sudden you realize you find both a dashing monster hunter and a beautiful cursed princess attractive. Then, years later, you might watch a YouTube video that has you questioning yourself all over again, only to realize you are who you though you were after playing a game about fighting zombies. Basically, visual media helped me discover myself. But that’s not the end of it. I’ve found myself on TikTok a lot since the pandemic started. It’s nice seeing people in the LGBTQA+ community having fun and making the most of a shitty situation. I rediscovered Sarah Schauer, which was a nice surprise. Come to find out, she’s bisexual too. Seeing this community band together in times like these has been a heartening experience. So many positive vibes. There may be people out there who say you should only like one or another, or that being in a heterosexual relationship diminishes your sexuality, but those people are wrong. The bottom line is that you cannot tailor how you feel to fit the expectations of others. This post is kind of weird and out of nowhere, and a little very self centered, but I had to get this off my chest. This will likely never be read by anyone. However, if you are reading this and you have had a similarly weird experience, know that you are not alone. You may have just realized your feelings, you may have known for a long time, or you may still be trying to figure things out. That’s okay. Your feelings are valid. Your experience is valid. You are valid.
TL;DR Whenever I am questioning my sexuality I remember Resident Evil and I am at peace. Also through all this I’ve learned I have a type: bad-ass hero with a kind heart.
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crimethinc · 5 years
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Life in “Mueller Time”: The Politics of Waiting and the Spectacle of Investigation
For almost two years now, faithful Democrats have waited for special counsel Robert Mueller to file his report about collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian attempts to interfere in the US election, not to mention Trump’s involvement in obstruction of justice. Whenever Trump’s activity provokes them or a subterranean rumbling within the Justice Department emboldens them, the faithful take to the streets and social media with hand-held cardboard signs and internet memes to proclaim that Mueller Time is close at hand. Yet even if the Mueller investigation concludes with Trump’s impeachment, the spectacle of the investigation has served to immobilize millions who have a stake in systemic social change, ensuring that what comes next in the United States will be politics as usual—not liberation.
When you’ve fallen on the highway And you’re lying in the rain, And they ask you how you’re doing Of course you’ll say you can’t complain If you’re squeezed for information, That’s when you’ve got to play it dumb You just say you’re out there waiting For the miracle, for the miracle to come
-The 20th century’s greatest messianic thinker, Leonard Cohen
Within weeks of the beginning of the investigation, there were already think pieces and t-shirts proclaiming “It’s Mueller Time.” Let’s take the t-shirts at their word: maybe it’s been Mueller Time all along. Maybe Mueller Time is not a specific date that is about to arrive, but the era we’ve been experiencing these past two years.
In that case, Mueller Time is not an hour on the clock, but a way of experiencing time, a kind of time—like crunch time or quality time or go time, but the opposite of all of them. It is not a scale of time, like geologic time, or a time zone, like Eastern Standard Time—Mueller Time is more like the End Times, perpetually anticipated.
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To be precise, Mueller Time is the political suspended animation in which the Democrats have waited for a repeatedly deferred deus ex machina to deliver them from this unbearable pres(id)ent. This condition of waiting, itself, rather than any of the grievous injustices that have taken place during it, is the very essence of hell.
Dante, the Marco Polo of the Abyss, located Limbo, the residence of those who wait, in Inferno, not in Purgatory. Waiting is not transformative or redemptive—it is the sort of sin for which the punishment is the crime. “Limbo” shares a Latin root with liminal—it is homeland of those who tarry on the threshold, those who are on the fence.
If you can get people used to waiting, you can get them used to anything.
To understand Mueller Time better, we can begin with its namesake. “Miller time” is a time to take a load off, to ease our pain by drugging ourselves into oblivion. It’s a profound expression of despair—“I can only relax in this world by deadening my senses”—disguised not just as relief but as celebration. What is the glee with which Democrats invoke Mueller Time if not an admission of their own abject powerlessness and dependence? “Rejoice,” says the Democrat, “Justice will be done! And thank goodness, as usual, the FBI will take care of everything.”
Miller Time and Mueller Time are both chronotopes, to use the term popularized by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin: they are specific relationships to time. You cannot understand a group of people without understanding how they experience the passing of time. Peering between chronotopes produces strange refractions, like looking through a glass of water. How different the world appears to a person whose activism consists chiefly of waiting, in contrast to how it appears to those for whom waiting and acting are opposites! It is the difference between spectator and athlete, between the consumer and the inventor, between those who suffer history as if it were weather and those who make history as a side effect of understanding themselves as the protagonists of their time.
And Miller Time and Mueller Time are both marketed chronotopes. Miller Time is the “5 o’clock somewhere” that unites wage labor and intoxication in a mutually reinforcing false opposition—but even more importantly, it is the branded colonization of that time. Likewise, Mueller Time is not just the “he’ll get his” which all people of conscience wish for Trump, but a particular deferral of responsibility. Both are successful advertising campaigns that concentrate capital in certain hands precisely by inducing people not to take their problems into their own hands.
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“The politicians’ stubborn faith in progress, their confidence in their ‘mass basis,’ and, finally, their servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus have been three aspects of the same thing.”
-Walter Benjamin on how Social Democrats permitted the Third Reich to come to power in Germany
All this is familiar to those who were raised as Adventists, believing that the outrageous sinfulness of the prevailing world order indicates the imminence of the Resurrection and the necessity of repentance before authority. Mueller Time is the redemption, the arrival of the Millennium, when the legitimate authorities will reassert their dominion and the obedient will be rewarded for their patience. Good Christians have awaited this for two thousand years; they have made a religion out of waiting. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
To keep people waiting for salvation indefinitely, it helps to shift every once in a while from one source of dramatic tension to another. Some hoped Trump would run the country “like a business.” Now that the signature forms of evil associated with capitalism—nepotism, profiteering, corruption, race baiting, sexual harassment, misinformation—characterize the presidency, Democrats are proposing to return to the good-old-fashioned signature forms of evil previously associated with government: bureaucracy, clientelism, experts deciding the fates of millions behind closed doors. All the things that helped Trump come to office.
For the purposes of relegitimizing government, it is ideal that Robert Mueller is not just a “good” authority figure, but specifically, a white male Republican—an FBI director who first made a name for himself overseeing the killing of Vietnamese people. He is everything the average Democrat would oppose if Trump had not moved the goal posts by pursuing the same Republican agenda by potentially extra-legal means. Mueller represents the same FBI that attempted to make Martin Luther King, Jr. commit suicide, that set out to destroy the Occupy movement. Under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI determined that the number one domestic terror threat in the United States was environmental activism.
Mueller Time is a way of inhabiting the eternally renewed amnesia that is America. This is the real “deep state”—the part of each Democrat’s heart that will accept any amount of senseless violence and murder and oppression, as long as it adheres to the letter of the law.
“Definitions of basic historical concepts: Catastrophe—to have missed the opportunity. Critical moment—the status quo threatens to preserve itself. Progress—the first revolutionary measure taken.”
-Walter Benjamin
What will be the fruits of Mueller’s labors?
Rank-and-file Democrats still don’t understand how power works. Crime is not the violation of the rules, but the stigma attached to those who break rules without the power to make them. (As they say, steal $25, go to jail; steal $25 million, go to Congress.) At the height of Genghis Khan’s reign, it would have been pointless to accuse the famous tyrant of breaking the laws of the Mongol Empire; as long as Trump has enough of Washington behind him, the same goes for him. Laws don’t exist in some transcendent realm. They are simply the product of power struggles among the elite—not to mention the passivity of the governed—and they are enforced according to the prevailing balance of power. To fetishize the law is to accept that might makes right. It means abdicating the responsibility to do what is ethical regardless of what the laws happen to be.
In the struggle to control the law-making and law-enforcing apparatus of the US government, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have secured a solid majority. They remain at an impasse. The most likely explanation for Mueller’s delays is that he has been biding his time, waiting to see if the balance of power in the US government would shift enough that there could be some consequences to his report.
The wait The wait The wait The wait
The wait The wait The wait The wait
-Killing Joke, “The Wait”
Ironically, the only thing that could guarantee that Mueller’s report will have an effect would be if this impasse were disturbed by forces outside the halls of power—for example, by a real social movement utilizing direct action. If millions of people were in the streets preventing the Trump administration from accomplishing its agenda, then the power brokers in Washington would consider sacrificing Donald Trump to preserve business as usual.
In standing back and waiting, affirming the authority of the FBI and Congress to take care of matters, Mueller’s fans make it less likely that his investigation will pose a serious threat to the administration. The rank and file Democrats are left gazing at their screens, watching the bureaucratic equivalent of the spinning wheel of death.
In this case, the more you clap your hands, the less Tinkerbell exists.
I’m in the waiting room I don’t want the news—I cannot use it I don’t want the news—I won’t live by it
But I don’t sit idly by I’m planning a big surprise I’m gonna fight for what I wanna be And I won’t make the same mistakes Because I know how much time that wastes
-Fugazi “Waiting Room”
The arc of history is long, but it curves towards—death. There is no excuse to delay. Tomorrow will use you the way we use today.
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What would it mean to stop waiting?
It would mean to stop looking to others to solve our problems, no longer permitting a series of presidents, Speakers of the House, FBI directors, presidential candidates, and other bullies and hucksters to play good cop/bad cop with us.
It would mean figuring out how to deal with the catastrophes that Trump’s presidency is causing directly, rather than through the mediation of other authority figures. It would mean building up social movements powerful enough to block the construction of a border wall, to liberate children from migrant detention facilities and reunite them with their families, to feed the hungry and care for the sick without waiting for legislators to give us permission to make use of the resources that we and others like us maintain on a daily basis.
Remember when we shut down the airports immediately after Trump took office? It would mean doing more of that, and less sitting around waiting on politicians and bureaucrats. That was our proudest moment. Since then, we have only grown weaker, distracted by the array of champions competing to represent us—the various media outlets and Democratic presidential candidates—all surrogates for our own agency.
Let’s stop killing time. Or rather—let’s stop permitting it to kill us.
“We live the whole of our lives provisionally,” he said. “We think that for the time being things are bad, that for the time being we must make the best of them and adapt or humiliate ourselves, but that it’s all only provisional and that one day real life will begin. We prepare for death complaining that we have never lived. Of all the people I know, not one lives in the present. No one gets any pleasure from what he does every day. No one is in a condition to say On that day, at that moment, my life began. Believe me, even those who have power and take advantage of it are plagued with anxieties and disgusted at the dominant stupidity. They too live provisionally and spend their whole lives waiting.”
“Those who flee the country also spend their lives waiting,” Pietro said. “That’s the trouble. But one mustn’t wait, one must act. One must say Enough, from this very day.”
“But if you do not have the freedom to act?” Nunzio said.
“Freedom is not a thing you can receive as a gift,” Pietro said. “You can be free even under a dictatorship on the simple condition that you struggle against it. A person who thinks with his own mind and remains uncorrupted is free. A person who struggles for what she believes to be right is free. You might live in the most democratic country in the world, but if you are lazy, callous, and servile, you are not free—in spite of the absence of violence and coercion, you are a slave. Freedom is not a thing that can be begged from others. You must take it for yourself, in whatever share you can.”
-Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine
Further Reading
Take Your Pick: Law or Freedom
The Centrists
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nightcoremoon · 3 years
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I love horror, I just have impossibly high standards
anyway some of my favorite is the kind that is totally normal from the start, there's nothing off kilter or weird, everything is fine. it's mundane. but then maybe something strange happens and it's less mundane, maybe it's more colorful or lively. but it's not like it's scary or anything. maybe it's a little left of center but it's still fine. life goes on as normal.
but then suddenly it's not fine.
and it recontextualizes everything up until now and you realize oh my god it wasnt mundane at all, it was just pillars of foreshadowing and you realize this is the most terrifying thing you've ever encountered.
maybe it goes on with the weird scary shit and things resolve themselves later, but that gives you time to breathe and get accustomed to the horror.
maybe it just ends. maybe it's just suddenly "surprise, shit is fucked!" and then ~fin
that would be ideal. like, in the sixth sense, you find out Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, you see him making peace with his death, and then the movie ends. except without all of the overreliance on shock horror and the visually disturbing (for the 90s) shots of the entire rest of the everything.
but if the twist happens at the halfway point and things stay absolutely horrible for a while that's also good, like coraline. started off pretty normal, got a little weird, and then suddenly boom ITS HORRIFYING OUT OF NOWHERE.
a perfect example of the last line twist would be the girl with the green ribbon on her neck. aww the boy likes the mysterious girl and they fall in love and get married, really normal the entire way. and then oh surprise HER HEAD COMES OFF. simple yet effective.
I don't mind if it starts out the gate with being seven levels of fucked. dead space 2 opens up with nicole, narratively speaking just moments after she end jumpscares you in the first game, so we're already off-put. then 60 seconds in we see isaac in a straitjacket being questioned and in the background there's flashes of being on the ishimura and nicole's ghost walks up to you and slavsquats and her eyes light up and she whispers, then SUDDEN WHITE oh cool it's ok look it's franco from dead space ignition that's cool aww he's saving Isaac oh wow it's a really creepy atmosphere OH MY GOD IS HEAD IS GETTING STABBED AND HIS FACE TURNS INTO A GODDAMN ZOMBIE HOLY SHIT THEYRE EVERYWHERE RUN BITCH RUN CHAOS LOUD MUSIC BLOOD GUTS FEAR QUICK MASH THE A BUTTON OR DIE!!! oh everything is quiet now. good job you survived, now walk down the corridor to the next intense scary part. lather rinse repeat.
I like horror when it's well executed or creative and not schlocky and relying solely on savini's gore or unnecessary carnage.
friday the 13th is like, oh wow that person just got an axe in their forehead, I sure am quaking in my boots. oh wow the tall stuntman picked up a sleeping bag and slammed it into a tree, this sure is realistic. oh the scantily clad teen girl is running slowly through the forest while cain hodder slowly walks towards her, and he somehow catches up and stabs her with the machete. wow the effects sure look like foam core and wax got cut in half and is squirting ketchup everywhere. the music is sonically engineered to force my pulse to increase and I guess this is horror? oh look someone else got murdered. oh look another murder. I'm sure glad we spent the first 45 minutes of this movie getting to know the shallow garbage characters before they all get merced. wow crispin glover sure does know how to shake his head when a prosthetic attached with fake blood is on his head. oh look a dead body with arrows in it, the scream queen is piercing my eardrums, I guess this means I should be scared too. yawn. it's so fucking boring just watching people die over and over again. at least the later installments were either hilarious or batshit crazy. punching a dude's head clean off was the funniest thing I've ever seen in a movie given the context, and JASON GOES TO SPACE is the dumbest shit in any film but that's what makes it awesome. it had a stupid fucking robot fight. yet everyone hated it, so they rebooted it and surprising literally nobody it was the same shit but with more cgi so it looked even less real (not that it did in the first place). yet this franchise made hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales alone. nowadays there are people who see hockey on tv and ask "why the fuck is that guy dressed up like jason voorhees".
tell me why a free swedish gold source mod with blocky graphics and muddy textures and the worst lighting engine in 20 years and some bad questionable design choices in an almost direct ripoff homage to silent hill 2 and resident evil 2, crammed with bugs and bad collision and hard crashes if you die in a specific level while holding a flare which you literally need to always have lit because that's the mechanic the entire level was built around, by a team of like 6 people (half of whom were the voice actors and navmesh modelers), is still one of the best and well-crafted pieces of horror media I've ever consumed, while trash like the fucking craven-less elm street remake gets its dick sucked by everyone else because OH WOW ITS SO SUBVERSIVE AND EDGY AND GORY WOW COOL THIS IS REAL TRUE HORROR!
of course I'm approaching this from a purely american lens. japan's horror is phenomenal. mainly because it's not built around buckets of blood and literal pig carcasses and abusing actresses and actual rape scenes (although it's funny that people are totally okay with all of the graphic murders because killing people is okay and indulging in torture porn is fine but oh, god forbid a film shows something skin-crawlingly uncomfortable for the sake of making you feel disgusted and wanting a cold shower, no, the line is drawn there, you can stab a naked girl with a power drill or drop a chainsaw on her body and that's fine but if a snowman slams her body into a wall while his carrot nose is inside her hoohah that's when it's going too far? seriously? whatever I've beaten this dead horse). but eurocanadamerica's obsession with gore porn in horror and blumhouse's shitty jumpscare factories have reduced it to just... loud noise, stabbing, loud noise, stabbing, lather rinse repeat. this is horror now I guess.
nobody takes coraline seriously as horror. nobody takes the green ribbon seriously as horror.
the monster chasing you isn't horror. it's terror. horror is when you step on a bear trap while the monster is chasing you. the monster chase without the bear trap has no impact, it's just "watch this person fear for their life and die". yeah, if I wanted to watch a snuff film I'd look outside of mainstream markets. "oh but if it's just a movie it's not real" so says the people who suicide bait cyber bully and harass teens who ship a 17 year old with a 19 year old, or two people who work with batman, all over fictional alleged pedophilia and incest. because it's all bad unless it's violence. only sex is bad but not violence.
the violence cannot stand on its own. it needs to have narrative purpose. resident evil, all of the zombies and monsters were bioweapons being manufactured by a corporation. silent hill and cry of fear, all of the monsters are just the embodiments of the protag's inner demons. dead space, the batshit crazy religious cult wants to turn everyone into the undead since that's their idea of heaven, and you have to fight them and stay alive so you can prevent the universe from getting omnomnommed by the blood moons. f.e.a.r., a little girl with some psychic powers is studied, tortured, abused, and :/ raped (at least you don't see it) and she naturally responds by lashing out at the ones who hurt her and trying to reunite with her baby, who is... you! (spoilers).
what is the plot of friday the 13th? dumbass kids get drunk and have sex and let a little kid go missing and his mom has a psychotic break and starts killing them all, then they kill her and the kid kills more people and then he kills more people and then he dies and comes back and kills more people and then he dies so someone else starts killing people and then jason comes back again and kills more people again and he gets arrested and they try to execute him but he won't die so they cryogenically freeze him until he kills people in the future, and in a different timeline he kills people and fights freddy krueger. it's pointless. popcorn. drivel. there is no narrative purpose, it's just murder for murder's sake. and that's scary???
like I said. impossibly high standards.
I love horror. but holy shit is a lot of horror bad.
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dustyvixen · 6 years
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woah hello new followers, time to force this shitty meme on y’all to introduce myself. ily <3
I didnt read any of these questions before hand, i just stole the first one i saw, so we’re all in for a wild ride.   General Information: - Full Name: Olivia. please never call me this - Public Nicknames: Dusty or Olive - Friends-Only Nicknames: Olive oil - Age: 18/19 in November - Gender : Female - Acceptable Pronouns: she/her - Sexual/Romantic Orientation:  Pansexual  - Relationship Status: Single - Spouse/Partner: ^^^ - Date of Birth: November 22 - Zodiac: Scorpio-Sagittarius cusp  - Birthplace: Queensland  - Current Residence: The dull void known as Brisbane - Occupation(s): Freelancer -- Appearance: - Blood Type: idk lmao - Nationality: Australian - Ethnicity/Ancestry: Half kiwi, half european (Scotland n shit aye) - Height: 5'5" - Weight: idk but I am very l o r g e - Bodily Build: Big, heavy, somewhat male weight distribution (thanks hormone disorder) - Eye Colour: brown - Hair Colour: dark brown, with dark amber ends (old hair dye)  - Skin Tone: Olive-ish - Scars/Markings: a few from when i was a kid, 90% stretch marks, lots of freckles on my arms -- Personality: - General Attitude: Chill, but easily aggravated. also super depressed and anxious woop - Life’s Aspirations: To exist tbh, art, taxidermy and botany are cool too i guess - Favorite Foods: M E A T. also mangos - Religion: none. I do work with The Morrigan though. - Likes: Plants, tea, bones, crows, natural history books, floral scents, foggy winter morning smells, Honey. - Dislikes: loud noise, prosciutto, maggots, city smells (aka fuel/diesel smell), possums in my roof, heat, - Fears: Vomiting, Closed in spaces (like one way tubes or caves), Strong winds (not fear, but they make me anxious) -- Relationships: - Father: Big pushover, I like to debate with him a lot, can sometimes be a bit narrow minded. Complains about dumb things like a kid. - Mother: avoid when shes in a mood ™ , she dealt with a LOT of bad shit in her life, kiwi af, good for some banter. - Sister(s): none - Brother(s): I got 3 older bros, we all give each other shit like good siblings - Best Friend: YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE MANG - Pets: 3 Budgies (Levi, Kea, and Apollo), 1 carpet python (Aphrodite), 1 dog (Wolf), 2 rats (Hemlock and Ash), 1 cat (Zelda), and 8 Chickens  --- Anyone you admire a lot? - Confident, yet kind people  If you could go two years back in time, what would you tell yourself? - id just punch myself in the head for focusing so much on trying to get into relationships instead of SELF LOVE BITCH
When did you realize your current sexuality? - uuH i think in like grade 7 or 8?? idk it kinda just happened lmao Do you have any lesser-known talents? - Good at judging a situation/emotions, tying knots  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
What was the last verse of the song you're listening to- where the trees grow taller and the suns are smaller somehow. Ever gotten in a flame war? - nope What's the last thing you did before this meme? - scrolled through pinterest lookin up plants What is your favorite fruit? - Mangos, pomegranates, cherries and lychees What time do you usually end up going to sleep? - 12am-1am  What's your catchphrase/A word you use a lot?-  my dude, lmao, woop, uhh
What is your alignment (Lawful, neutral or chaotic matched with good, neutral or evil)? - Chaotic neutral What was your first fandom? - the warriorcats, but i never made OC’s n stuff, i just read the books How are you feeling right now? - questionable Are you good at Mario Kart? - ill woop yo ass at mario kart What do you do on an average Saturday night? - divination, sometimes drink,  HOW MANY CAPRI SUNS HAVE U DRINK IN THE LAST 48 HOUR???? - we dont drink that devil liquid here Who's your favorite OC that you own? - please dont make me choose, I have 80 of them. Are you a proactive or reactive person? - reactive How many days until your next birthday? - im too lazy to check How many blankets do you sleep with? - 2-3 in winter (a duvet, and 2 mink blankets), none in summer What are three OTPs of yours? - none What's a song you hate? - Blurred lines Art or music? - ???what???
What's a song that reminds you of your lover/crush? - obedear, by purity ring Do you have a celebrity crush? - no?? i never understood them How do you want to die? - i dunno? in my sleep i guess What's your opinion of the last person you talked to? - the best nublet of them all What are your favorite fandoms? - Avas demon, uhh im not in a lot of fandoms What do you usually draw? - Monsters and questionable things How'd you come up with your username? - The first roadkill i picked up was an old mummified vixen.  What's the weirdest thing you've done in public? - talked about murdering possums with a potato Coke or Pepsi? - n o n e How many friends do you have? - a few Using three words, how would your friends describe you - weird, uh, angery How would you describe your morality? - Im trying to improve it, but its average i suppose How emotional are you? - very Who's your favorite fictional character? - CALCIFER
What's your favorite music album? - Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
How's your social standing? - i rarely leave home so its non existent What's the worst media you have ever consumed? - consumed??what??? Any movements you make unintentionally (drumming fingers, twirling hair)? - bouncing my leg Have you ever been romantically attracted to a fictional character? - nay What social media site do you use the most? - Twitter or DeviantArt idk What's your favorite video game? - Oblivion, Spyro, MediEvil. honestly there’s a lot so i cant pick one What are some personality traits you despise? - extreme narcissism, elitism, entitlement. Ever been to a convention? - one, an alternative expo years ago, im too poor to afford conventions Cats or dogs? - dogs, but i still like cats What does your favorite shirt look like? - its my pajama shirt with a boston terrier on it Do you think Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer? - fuck this meme thing was longer than thought. all that to end on this question? shit man. of course he is the zodiac killer jeez.
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dweemeister · 6 years
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NOTE: The following contains full spoilers and the beginning (not the end) of a moral discourse that could not have been in my review to The Force Awakens.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Walt Disney Pictures is about to win the 2017 box office by releasing only nine films (in order): Beauty and the Beast (March), Born in China (April), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (April), the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean (May), Cars 3 (June), Jagga Jasoos (July; a Bollywood film), Thor: Ragnarok (October), Coco (October), and now Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This will be a record low – unimaginable in previous decades where a major studio might release a few movies per month or one per week. As Disney moves to make fewer films every year – this is code for only producing larger-budget franchise blockbusters or live-action remakes of their animated classics and sacrificing Hollywood’s traditional bread-and-butter of low- and mid-budget movies – Star Wars may be the last cinematic experience that might be described as communal. In a fractured media landscape, individual tastes are being catered to, but there is less that unites society. Movies catering to major movie franchise fans and “arthouse/indie” cinephiles (permit me this generalization) are less likely to play in the same theaters, and neither groups are likely to give the movies that the other group likes a smidge of attention. Star Wars, by sheer popularity and its callbacks to classic Hollywood, bridges this divide.
The Last Jedi is the eighth episode in the saga, immediately following the events of The Force Awakens (2015). Rey (Daisy Ridley), along with Chwebacca (Joonas Suotamo; the retired Peter Mayhew served as consultant) and R2-D2 (Jimmy Vee), is on a lush island on Ahch-To (bless you!) hoping to be trained in the ways of the Force by Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the First Order’s (a splinter of planetary systems from the dissolved Galactic Empire) decapitation of the New Republic’s government in the last film, the Resistance (distinct from the New Republic’s military; think of the Resistance as a Republic-sponsored insurgency/liberation paramilitary operating in First Order territory... thanks J.J. Abrams) is attempting to evacuate from the First Order fleet. General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher in her last screen role; none of her scenes were altered/rewritten in post-production) is in command, and underneath her are Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) and more familiar faces like Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). We are also introduced to a Resistance maintenance worker, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). Within the First Order, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is concocting a fiendish scheme as Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) wants Kylo to use Rey to kill Luke.
Other characters that appear are: droid BB-8 (puppeteers Dave Chapman and Brian Herring), protocol droid C-3PO (Anthony Daniels, who is now the only actor to have appeared in all Star Wars films with Kenny Baker’s passing), First Order General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), a codebreaker named DJ (Benicio del Toro), Resistance ally Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong’o), and the First Order’s Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie).
The Last Jedi sometimes recalls the worst impulses of The Force Awakens, which was weakened by too closely adhering to the plot outline of A New Hope (1977). We see uncomfortably close parallels yet again in The Last Jedi: the visual similarities between the Battle of Hoth (The Empire Strikes Back’s opening) with the film’s climax on Crait, thematic callbacks to Return of the Jedi (1983) when Rey is dragged into Snoke’s throne room (dark side students betraying masters; the use of red here made me think I was watching a Vincente Minnelli musical for a moment), and small portions of Rey’s training with Luke (such as another trippy cave filled with dark side vibes; otherwise, the Rey-Luke scenes were fine). But The Last Jedi is more committed than its predecessor to developing its epic themes and attempting to critique/reconfigure Star Wars’ ethos of light and dark, good and evil. Both are honorable pursuits and depicted sufficiently, but terrible editing and a disorganized screenplay from director-writer Rian Johnson (2012′s Looper) takes too much focus away from The Last Jedi’s achievements.
Star Wars’ Manichaeism – outside the underrated Revenge of the Sith (2005) – has never been truly challenged within the cinematic saga. The best writing noting the nuances of morality has appeared in other Star Wars media: the Knights of the Old Republic video game series and, to a lesser extent, Dave Filoni’s animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. For a series whose roots come from two closely-related genres regarded for their moral complexities – samurai movies and American Westerns – this is mystifying.
But for The Last Jedi, there is an attempt to challenge, or at least an expansion of, this duality. It is in Luke that we see this reckoning with what he has unleashed. Years ago while still rebuilding the Jedi Order, the now-reclusive Skywalker detected that the young Kylo Ren – then in training under Luke – had been corrupted by Snoke. Luke contemplated killing his student, his nephew. A tragic misunderstanding ensued, resulting in Kylo Ren’s destruction of the Luke’s Jedi temple and the deaths of numerous Jedi apprentices. Regret has consumed Luke – here, regret is not an emotion associated with the dark side, but it prevents the personal balance and peace that Jedi seek. Luke believes himself culpable in the deaths of his students and that inner turmoil has disconnected him from the galaxy-at-large, severing his ties to others who care and would remind Luke that he can still learn and grow from his failure. Mark Hamill’s criticisms aside (legitimate as they are and as much as I agree with him), this is the most eloquently-written characterization in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Take the third line of the Jedi Code: “There is no passion, there is serenity.” Combined with the first line of the Code (“There is no emotion, there is peace,” – which I interpret not as emotional emptiness, but emotional balance), it is Luke’s unchecked repentance that shackles him, rather than achieving the serenity Jedi seek. Eventually, a veteran of the Clone Wars reminds Luke of these lessons as John Williams’ score recalls that veteran’s motif. As the Clone Wars raged, this veteran expressed concern that his fellow Jedi – through their participation in combat – were losing sight of peace, serenity. That Jedi is Yoda (Frank Oz; the Yoda puppet, reappearing here, is the best actor in the franchise), appearing as a Force ghost to Luke in a moment of catharsis for the latter. “The greatest teacher, failure is,” he intones. Luke’s regret over his failures – even years after the fact – can still be channeled and processed in constructive ways. He takes his old master’s words to heart. By the film’s end, he finds his peace and purpose in nonviolent sacrifice, amid a binary sunset.
As far as we know, the Skywalkers’ role in the Star Wars saga has concluded. It is now in the hands of the younger protagonists, especially Rey. Rey’s parentage has been the topic of cinematic speculation since The Force Awakens debuted. With Kylo Ren intimating that her parents were wasteful nobodies who died in anonymity – he may have been lying, but let’s assuming he wasn’t for now – Rey’s worst nightmare has come true. Not only will she ever reunite with her family, but, worst of all, they abandoned her. Of our next generation of protagonists, Rey remains the most compelling of them all (Daisy Ridley is also the strongest actress among the younger cohort); her strength of character forged in loneliness and hardship. But does The Last Jedi squander a chance to explain and depict the content and any vagaries in her moral character? With Snoke manipulating the Force to connect Rey and Kylo Ren, it is suggested that the latter may still be redeemed from the dark side of the Force. What about Rey? As we see in Luke who probably had only a little more Jedi training than Rey did – considering how The Last Jedi is structured, Luke’s training with Yoda feels like forever compared to Rey’s few days spent with Luke – there are vile strands to his personality. If fewer such elements reside in Rey’s mind and heart, why is that the case? It is through understanding one’s suffering and its sources that allows for goodness. All this should have been addressed in The Last Jedi rather than in the untitled ninth episode or not at all while there is still time to consider Rey’s character for all her resilience and fear (an emotion associated with the dark side of the Force).
Alas, it looks like The Last Jedi has opened up ethical and moral gaps that will have to be filled by other Star Wars media. This probably means terminal employment for the likes of Star Wars novel writers, Dave Filoni, and Electronic Arts – that sound you heard were the screams of distressed gamers and Bob Iger laughing while thinking about all the money he will make.
For all of The Last Jedi’s willingness to tinker with its central philosophical formulae, Rian Johnson, while writing the screenplays, seems almost intent to present things in the clumsiest, least appealing ways possible. Johnson’s screenplay has an A-plot (Rey with Luke, with a little Kylo Ren), a B-plot (Resistance shenanigans with Leia, Poe, and Holdo – for brevity’s sake, I will refrain from writing about the B-plot, but I fear that Poe is about to be appointed military leader of the female-powered Resistance, despite making wrong decision after wrong decision), and a C-plot (Finn and Rose; Boyega and Tran’s performances are fine, but deserved better writing). It is the C-plot, with Rose and Finn’s exploits on Canto Bight – a casino city for the galaxy’s ultrarich - that emphasizes that heroism is not exclusive to those wielding power or part of a given lineage. Rose, arguably the moral center of the film’s starkest political messages, is an unlikely hero who has much to say and much to do against the military-industrial complex that enslaves (whether officially or unofficially), spurring perpetual warfare. Yet considering the setpieces and the confusing nonsense surrounding the codebreaker they are seeking, that message is forgotten due to screenwriting shenanigans.
Expressly political filmmaking is difficult to achieve, and The Last Jedi founders completely here (this is not even mentioning the relationship, if any, between the Resistance and the New Republic). It is one thing to make a movie where I agree with its politics. It is another to present politics I agree with so slovenly –  the Canto Bight scenes are the worst so far in the sequel trilogy, despite featuring the most detailed worldbuilding yet.
On the technical fronts, Star Wars has embraced modern thriller techniques, as seen in Steve Yedlin’s cinematography and Bob Ducsay’s editing (Ducsay’s editing brilliance in the action is offset by his inability to balance and help move the storylines – there is an excellent 90-minute movie in the film’s sometimes-plodding 152 minutes). But for a film of contested dualities, no one’s work on The Last Jedi is as respectful as those thematic angles as composer John Williams. Now at eighty-five years old, it might be easy to criticize Williams’ score as unoriginal, too dependent on the motivic structure that has defined his cinematic composing career. Yes, The Last Jedi has fewer new musical ideas than the previous film. But there are more than enough motivic variations here to rise to the caliber of what is expected in a Star Wars score.
If you have never read a movie review on this blog before, you should know that sometimes I will dive deep into a film’s score. You have been warned.
Williams sets the pace of his scoring early, with the enormous orchestrations in “Main Title and Escape”. An outstanding opening action sequence contains densely layered woodwinds and brass and thrilling string runs (even the shortest string runs will thrill the heart; for example, listen closely to the strings at 4:10-4:11; in a theater, for me, at least, that is more exciting and appealing than a pounding drum line from, say, a Hans Zimmer imitator). The last piece of action, “The Battle of Crait” is as propulsive as any John Williams action composition can be. Dualities will appear and reappear throughout:
“The Supremacy” features Kylo Ren’s blaring horns (1:41) dueling with the Resistance’s militaristic violins (0:49) before both are silenced with Leia’s theme (2:04) in a moment of terror followed by shocking (if a little distracting) uplift. Say what you will about this scene, but when Leia’s theme crescendos to heights it never has before, it works.
In “Ahch-To Island”, “The Jedi Steps” idea from The Force Awakens (0:00)  – reflecting Rey’s journey to learn more about the Force – is countered with two ideas reflecting Luke’s seclusion on Ahch-To (2:55 and 3:33... a “Last Jedi” motif?). Rey’s theme will also conflict with the latter as the movie progresses.
“The Cave” mixes dissonance akin to The Empire Strikes Back’s cave scene before giving way to the most sonorous statement of Rey’s theme (usually consonant) heard yet.
Elsewhere, “Canto Bight” (the best new composition, managing to reference “Aquarela do Brasil” at 0:59... apparently, Williams inserted his title song to 1973′s The Long Goodbye somewhere in the Canto Bight scene – why not add some John Williams meta?) is as much fun as you will ever have with Latin jazz-inspired steel drums in a movie.
“Fun with Finn and Rose” introduces Rose’s theme – a stately woodwind motif that, though underdeveloped for now (although it is given action flourishes in “The Fathiers”) – which will probably be expanded in the last film as we learn more about her. Similarly, Kylo Ren’s theme was underdeveloped in The Force Awakens, as we knew little about his own complexities. In the moments after Luke’s passing, in “Peace and Purpose”, no longer is Kylo Ren’s theme standing by itself, with just a harsh brass line and nothing underlying it. At 1:08, it has become a march, resembling in texture to Anakin Skywalker’s march on the Jedi temple in Revenge of the Sith, and noting that it is not only Luke has found his purpose in the film’s closing minutes. The “Finale” begins with a Harry Potter-reminiscent celesta (imagine a music box if it resembled an upright piano) as we see a young boy Force pulling a broom towards him. Maybe it is a motif to be developed for another time, another character, another trilogy. But after the end credits, sit back, and enjoy the culmination of all John Williams offered to audiences here. So few composers can shift audience emotions with a simple transition like he can. Do not take it for granted, because we are listening to what is likely one of the last works in a remarkable career. May John Williams score the ninth episode.
The Last Jedi concludes without the heroes of the original trilogy going into the ninth episode. Fandom turmoil regarding the totality of The Last Jedi persists for a week-old film and, I suspect, will continue for at least another two years. But this eighth episode, under Rian Johnson’s direction, makes an earnest attempt to deconstruct and reimagine moreso than J.J. Abrams – the persona non grata to many Trekkies, and who will direct the concluding episode of the sequel trilogy – has demonstrated he is capable of. Johnson’s final product is imperfect. However, this is a good film displaying its reverence for the cinematic and the franchise’s past, but making clear its dissensions and departures.
The torch-passing is complete; past idols are gone. In a few years, we will see if Star Wars can plunge further into the unknown in ways not seen since creator George Lucas was last involved in the series. Even in failure, the Skywalker saga held the attention of audiences worldwide – a triumph of creativity for thousands of people whose names scroll past in a darkened theater long after almost the entire audience has left (or, if on unscrupulous television networks, unreadable in a tiny box to begin the next movie or to insert advertising).
I end with a thought that began my write-up to The Force Awakens. It is time for those most responsible for bringing Star Wars back to theaters to become artists first, fans second. I am pessimistic they can for various reasons. I hope to be proven wrong.
My rating: 7/10
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.
Also in this series: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
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richincolor · 7 years
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Everyone, please welcome debut author Axie Oh to Rich in Color! We’re thrilled to have her here–I absolutely loved her novel, Rebel Seoul, and you can read my review here.
Rebel Seoul is one of the newest offerings from Tu Books, and you definitely need to check it out:
After a great war, the East Pacific is in ruins. In brutal Neo Seoul, where status comes from success in combat, ex-gang member Lee Jaewon is a talented pilot rising in the ranks of the academy. Abandoned as a kid in the slums of Old Seoul by his rebel father, Jaewon desires only to escape his past and prove himself a loyal soldier of the Neo State.
When Jaewon is recruited into the most lucrative weapons development division in Neo Seoul, he is eager to claim his best shot at military glory. But the mission becomes more complicated when he meets Tera, a test subject in the government’s supersoldier project. Tera was trained for one purpose: to pilot one of the lethal God Machines, massive robots for a never-ending war.
With secret orders to report on Tera, Jaewon becomes Tera’s partner, earning her reluctant respect. But as respect turns to love, Jaewon begins to question his loyalty to an oppressive regime that creates weapons out of humans. As the project prepares to go public amidst rumors of a rebellion, Jaewon must decide where he stands—as a soldier of the Neo State, or a rebel of the people.
Pacific Rim meets Korean action dramas in this mind-blowing, New Visions Award-winning science fiction debut.
I knew the moment I read the synopsis I would love it. Now on to the interview!
Rebel Seoul was one of the winners of the New Visions Award. Can you tell us more about why you decided to enter the contest and what it was like to work with the staff at Tu Books?
I first heard about the contest at ALA in 2014, where I was given a brochure at the Lee & Low booth. I had begun to query REBEL SEOUL (titled something else at the time), and was getting a lot of feedback along the lines of: “dystopia is dead.” This was before WNDB really took off, so I accepted this as fact (now, I would argue – yes, maybe there are a lot of books set in American dystopias with white protagonists, but very few with POC protagonists in a non-Western or even Western setting). When I got the brochure, I really loved Tu Books’ mission statement to diversify children’s literature. I was also inspired to write REBEL SEOUL in part after reading Cindy Pon’s short story “Blue Skies” in the Tu Books’ anthology DIVERSE ENERGIES. So when I sent in my cover letter with my application, I comped my book to that short story! Since winning, everyone at Tu Books has been super supportive and awesome. I’m really proud, honored and grateful to be a part of their list. P.S. Cindy wrote a beautiful blurb for REBEL SEOUL!
Science-fiction often gives an author the opportunity to extrapolate upon the present to reshape the world. What drew you to creating a militaristic world like Neo Seoul? What were your favorite parts about building this world?
This is exactly it – I extrapolated upon the present. In the world of REBEL SEOUL, Seoul is divided into Old Seoul and Neo Seoul, and I based that concept on Seoul’s present-day geography, as Seoul is naturally divided by the Han River. North of the Han River is Gyeongbokgung (Gyeongbok Palace) and some of the older parts of the city and south of the Han River is the Gangnam district and some of the newer areas, hence Old and Neo (New). All the landmarks and districts are the same. Seoul has a very extensive subway system and lots of taxis and shopping areas and billboards, so I just made that all “futuristic.” Really, I did no world building. It’s all there already!
The militaristic world came from a childhood spent watching a lot of sci-fi anime, which oftentimes have plotlines of war or rebellion. Again, I extrapolated from the present, like the idea of mandatory military service, which is a requirement in South Korea for males. In my alt-future, it’s a requirement for all citizens.
My favorite parts of building this world were those moments when I could extrapolate from what already exists, where I could add in a scene that felt true to me that I hoped would resonate with others. One of my favorite scenes I put into the novel is when Jaewon goes through the funeral home of a hospital (funeral homes are often in hospitals in Seoul), and he comes across a mother mourning her son. The whole scene is something I’ve experienced in my own life during memorial services, and I wanted to show through the scene a love and reverence for the moment.
One of the things I really admired about Rebel Seoul was that the characters all had rich lives before the start of the story. Tell us more about Jaewon and Tera’s development as characters.
With Jaewon, I was inspired by Korean dramas. He’s pretty typical of protagonists in high school K-dramas, a loner with a heart of gold. I think the appeal of these characters is that we can trust and put our faith in them. Although they make mistakes and stumble, they never give up, and this gives us hope as viewers. I wanted to channel this feeling with Jaewon. I began with this character archetype and then layered him with a family, friends, history and dreams. As for Tera, her characterization came more from anime. She’s similar to a lot of characters in sci-fi/mecha anime, like Heero from Gundam Wing or Soma Peries from Gundam 00. She’s a government experiment, trained and manipulated since birth for a “greater purpose,” but coming into her own person, discovering her own dreams and desires.
Jaewon and Tera are one of my favorite battle couples in YA. Who are some of your favorite battle couples, romantic or not?
Minho and Thomas from THE MAZE RUNNER. I’ve only read the first book and seen the films, but I love their friendship, and how together they protect the group. Will & Lyra from His Dark Materials. I love them both so much as individuals. But together, they’re unbeatable. Not YA, but I love Relena & Heero from Gundam Wing. I love how they’re both strong individuals with their own goals and motivations, yet in times of vulnerability, seek each other for warmth and comfort.
Family, both biological and of the found/friendship/soulmate variety, had a huge impact on Jaewon and his motivations throughout the novel. Why did you place so much weight on these relationships in Rebel Seoul? What interested you in those types of stories?
Again, going back to K-dramas and anime, K-dramas often focus on family and close friendships, and anime on found families and soulmates. These are themes that come up in the media I love and consume, so it felt natural as I wrote the story to incorporate them into REBEL SEOUL. In general, I love all types of relationships – I didn’t specifically start off thinking, okay I’m going to have a bromance or a team of four very different individuals who come together as friends and partners – it just sort of happened! And K-dramas always have four main characters (two leads, two secondary leads), so that formation came naturally into my storytelling.
If you could pilot any giant robot (whether from Rebel Seoul or another fictional universe), which would it be and why?
Gundam Deathscythe Hell!!! This is the upgraded gundam Duo Maxwell pilots in Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, the animated film following the television series. It’s just so cool! It specializes in stealth and close combat. It wields a large SCYTHE and has bat wings and cloaking armor that allows it invisibility. Plus, I love Duo. I feel like if I took a “which gundam pilot are you” character quiz, I would get him.
What books by or about people of color or people from First/Native Nations are you looking forward to this year? Or that have already come out this year?
It hasn’t come out yet, but I read and loved FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS by Julie C. Dao. It’s an exciting and thought-provoking villainess origin story inspired by the evil queen in Snow White and Chinese court dramas. Looking forward to: WARCROSS by Marie Lu, STARFISH by Akemi Dawn Bowman & TRAIL OF LIGHTNING by Rebecca Roanhorse.
Some books I already read and loved: WANT by Cindy Pon, I BELIEVE IN A THING CALLED LOVE by Maurene Goo and THE EPIC CRUSH OF GENIE LO by F. C. Yee!
Is there anything else you would like to tell us about Rebel Seoul or your other work? What can we look forward to from you next?
Right now I’m working on a YA fantasy inspired by a Korean folktale. Fantasy with a dash of romance were always my favorite kinds of books as a teen (think: BEAUTY by Robin McKinley or HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE by Diana Wynne Jones), so I’m indulging that love of mine, and combining it with the culture and myths that I grew up with!
Axie Oh is a first generation Korean American, born in NYC and raised in New Jersey. She studied Korean history and creative writing as an undergrad at the University of California – San Diego and holds an MFA from Lesley University in Writing for Young People. Her passions include K-pop, anime, stationery supplies, and milk tea. She currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada with her puppy, Toro.
You can find out more about her at her website or follow her on twitter.
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So this is a guy that I've meaning to write about since last October, and I finally got to read all his issues! Besides an X-Men annual, his sole appearances are in the four-issue miniseries “X-Men: Time Gliders” that are really hard to get a hold of because they were part of a Hardee's meal in the 90s, not sold at comic book store. His name is Empyrean aka Jonathan Chambers and let me just start by saying I hate his civilian name because it totally makes me mix him up with Jonothan “Chamber” Starsmore. He's introduced in an X-Men annual as an ambiguous figure, suspected by the X-Men of wrongdoing but not necessarily a bad guy...and then in the Time Gliders goes full-on horrible evil dick with a plan to spread the Legacy Virus throughout different points in the past so more people will have it in the future, thus he can control them with the relief his powers provide to the mutants who suffer from it. Wow, what an asshole!
His powers are...kind of ambiguous? It was common in the 90s for characters to have overly-complicated powers, or powers that varied from issue to issue because of writers changing. Marvunapp describes him as being able to feed off the physical and emotional pain of dying people all over the world, and fire it back at others as painful energy blasts. UncannyXMen.net defined his power as the ability to feed off the bio-energy signatures of other mutants, which could inhibit their powers while allowing him to then use the energy to cause painful feedback in their bodies. Whatever the exact specifics are, the basics seem to be that Empyrean can leech the pain and/or powers of other mutants, and use the energy to attack others. His public identity is not that of a mutant super-villain, but as an apparently human man who is a major figure in the media for writing a book entitled Fatal Attractions: Mutants & Men. You'll notice that the title is similar to the book written by Haven, who also was an apparently “normal” human that was really a supervillain. Her book was called “Man, Mutant, & The New Humanity” and like this book, Fatal Attractions, despite its title, advocated human/mutant peace, and praised the X-Men, saying they should be applauded for their “noble cause” rather than hated. Despite this being unusually good press for the X-Men ,Beast still dismissed the book as merely being “entertaining pop psychology”. That's gratitude for ya! According to Jean Grey, “He uses a combination of good looks, smooth talking, and emotional poignancy to get his message across which was, according to Cyclops, “Unity. Harmony. Basically the same ideals espoused by the professor.” He became got really famous and became a “media scientist” who made the rounds on numerous big-time talk shows such as Nightline (where he debated with Graydon Creed) and Geraldo (where he was hit by a chair). We're not told who hit him with the chair, but I like to think it was by Graydon Creed. As a note, Fatal Attractions is stated to be his second book---I'm not sure what the first one was, or if it's ever stated. His book proved so lucrative that he became wealthy enough to purchase a private island in the Florida Keys. The previous owner was the CEO for weapons developer company called Advanced Idea Mechanics, meaning that, as Gambit put it, “the house is prob'ly quite a bit more'n a house”. Joining Chambers on the island were two scientists he hired to work for him: Dr. Josef Kleinbaumm and Dr. Nancy Alter. Kleinbaumm was an expert in viral infections, Alter in eugenics. Alter was also part of Professor Xavier's “underground railroad” of mutant sympathizers, and she called Xavier one night to report that the island had some new residents...the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants! Needless to say, the X-Men had to go investigate to make sure nobody was up to anything naughty. The X-Men had one team call ahead and ask permission to come, so Empyrean welcomed them as guests. But they also sent a secret second team to come in through the basement, where they were caught by the Brotherhood of Mutants. Naturally, a fight ensued, but Empyrean intervened to split it up, using his powers against both sides of the conflict and revealing himself to the X-Men as a mutant. He claimed that he intended his home, which he called Empyrean (rather than calling himself that, as mentioned) was to be a place of peace for those in pain. Pyro backed him, calling it a haven, a hospital, a refuge, and, less flatteringly, a leper colony for people like him revealing that he was dying from the Legacy Virus. Apparently, when Empyrean drained the energy of those afflicted with the virus, he alleviated their pain as well. In return, Pyro allowed himself to be studied as a guinea pig by the scientists that Empyrean had on the island working to cure the virus. The X-Men didn't believe this, claiming that Empyrean was simply using Pyro, and aimed to use others like him, to sap their energy for his own purposes Pyro retaliated that he was the one using Empyrean, and that, as he was the one who was dying, it was his choice and he deserved the dignity of that choice. It was then that Kwannon, who was then a member of the X-Men and still believing herself to be the real Psylocke, spoke up. She revealed that she too was suffering from the Legacy Virus, which she had kept hidden from her teammates, and agreed that the X-Men had no right to be judging these people. Empyrean extended an invitation to her to stay as well, but she said that her own choice in how to die would be “fighting all the way” rather than “stagnating”...which, despite what she just said about not judging, sounds really judgmental to me, but whatever, I guess? Empyrean added his agreement to Kwannon and Pyro, that it is up to the individual how they die, and said that he did not deny he may have ulterior motives for developing this haven, such as personal profit...but asked if that was really so bad, for the peace and comfort that the ailing mutants would receive in return? The X-Men departed, but not before Cyclops warned him to practice what he preached in his book, and not to let “the uninformed” turn his words of “beauty and wisdom” into “actions of hate and ignorance”. Empyrean asked “What if it simply can't be helped, Mr. Summers?” which is a reasonable question---how is Empyrean to blame if some idiot misinterprets his book? Kwannon answers by saying she'll kill him. Uh, okay then. Empyrean is played up as quite sinister in this issue, but he doesn't actually do anything bad, or even threaten or hint at it. He did bad stuff AFTER this, but at this point he wasn't doing anything, and even if he were, the X-Men don't know about it. All he's doing is offering a safe place for mutants afflicted with the Legacy Virus, even those who are criminals, to live out the rest of their short lives in peace, and to use his powers to take their pain away. The fact that this involves him absorbing their energy should not be reason to be suspicions of him, since it's not like he can help how his powers work. I think the writers intended to just drop hints that he might not be all that he seems, make him a little mysterious and ambiguous, but they had the X-Men really jump the gun and it just makes them look like jerks instead, even though they turned out to be right. This is a flaw in writing, by the way; your protagonists should not “just know” someone is bad, and their negative actions towards them should not be excused by it turning out that their “hunch” was right; that's like firing a gun at random into a crowd and saying it's okay because it turns out the person who got hit turned out to be a child abuser or something. This happened with Haven too, so I'm wondering if it was yet another trait of 1990s writing. In any case, Empyrean showed his true colors soon enough in the X-Men: Time Glider series. These comics were not released in stores, but instead were given as part of a Hardee's meal, like how a small toy usually is. He also started being referred to as Empyrean by name in this miniseries, while previously he was called by his civilian surname and it was merely his island that was called Empyrean. Beast has developed a time machine called a Time Glider. He plans to use it to travel back in time and halt the Legacy Virus before it begins. Empyrean learns of this and plans to steal the Time Glider for himself, so he can do the opposite—spread the Legacy Virus to multiple points in history so that there will be countless mutants infected in the modern day! Why? So he can leech their energy from them and his mutant power will be supreme! Why does he want his mutant power to be supreme? Uh...reasons? It's never explained and that annoys me. It's also never explained why he NEEDS for the mutants he leeches this power from to be infected, because he CLEARLY takes it from the X-Men in his X-Men Annual appearance? I think the writers might have, as usual for the 90s, gotten a little confused and tweaked his powers around. Such is the fate of many a 90s character. Also, this is just me, but more than a cliché “I just want my powers to be bigger for no reason” vilain motivation, I prefer the idea that  like many real-life doctors and caretakers, he grew to enjoy the power he had as the only source of solace for so many.  Thus, he wants that many more people to stay sick and thus dependent on him to alleviate their pain at his hospice island. I think that's more unique and concrete/sensible. Anyway, Empyrean, who is now behaving much more cruelly to the Brotherhood, tells them he wants the Time Glider in order to save mutantkind and to prevent the X-Men from causing damage to the timestream, and forces the Brotherhood to steal it from the X-Men. And he thinks about how even the X-Men will be infected and then he can “absorb the powers that consume them” and how he will then “reign supreme” whatever that means...seriously, I really like my idea for a motive much better. Long story short, he succeeds, and uses the Time Glider to disappear into the timestream. Beast uses technology to easily retrieve the Time Glider back with just the push of a button, but Empyrean isn't with it. He was, unfortunately, left behind in the time of the dinosaurs, and the last we see of him he's about to become food for a hungry T-rex. I like Empyrean. I like the ambiguity that he started out with, I like the “public figure promoting mutant/human peace but isn't out as a mutant himself” thing (similar to Xavier), I like the idea of a bad guy who still supports mutant/human peace, and I like the idea of how he's doing something genuinely good---alleviating the pain of others and giving them a place to live---but for selfish/evil reasons, even if I didn't really like how generic/vague those reasons turned out to be. As with many 90s bad guys, I think more could have been done with him, and the Time Gliders plot was frankly a waste. Here's some trivia on him: - His father, Timothy Chambers, was also a mutant. It is never stated what his abilities were, only that he could not control them. He died in a car crash when Jonathan was thirteen. Curiously, in the weeks before his death, he had aged rapidly, so that he appeared decades older than he actually was. It is unknown if this was connected to his mutant abilities, or to Jonathan's own energy-sapping abilities, or something else. When Cyclops (who did not know at the time that Empyrean himself was a mutant, only that his father had been) asked Empyrean if he really believed in what he'd written promoting mutant/human peace, Empyrean replied that he wouldn't ask that if he'd seen his father's body. I'm not sure exactly what he meant by this, perhaps that one couldn't help being sympathetic to mutants after seeing someone age hyper-rapidly. - A green glow appears from his eyes when he uses his powers - Empyrean was both his codename and the name he gave to his island/sanctuary for Legacy victims - He is 6'3 and 195 lbs according to his trading card. Notice how many 1990s X-villains were six feet or taller and had long hair? Fabian Cortez (also a ponytail!), Exodus, Francisco Milan, Reignfire, Gideon (another ponytail)!), Omega Red, Monsoon...I'm sure the list gets even longer if you include heroes like Shatterstar and Adam-X. The 90s had a type! - He dons a suit in public but at home he frequently wears yellow kimono depicting large green and black Asian dragon. As a villain, he wears a golden costume and helmet. 
- Gyrich (an anti-mutant government agent) also paid a visit to Empyrean's island on the same night that the X-Men did. He sent in the Crimson Commando and Avalanche (at the time still working for the government) to investigate, and they ended up re-joining the Brotherhood instead. Gyrich tried to reclaim them, especially the Commando (who had recently been enhaned into a cyborg, costing the government billions of dollars) but Empyrean would not allow it. Rather than fighting Gyrich, however, he threatened to spill secrets of his anti-mutant government exploits to the media, such as the Sentinel program Project: Wideawake. Presumably, Avalanche and the Commando must have told him these things, as there's no way he could have otherwise known them. No matter how Empyrean came by the information, however, it sufficed to successfully drive Gyrich away. - At least he's not a homophobe (I actually headcanon him as gay, since he seemed really PERSONALLY offended by Blob's really quite minor innuendo)
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s0022354a2-blog · 7 years
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Collated Quotes
Subtopic 1: Is there a clear sense of authorship across Bong’s films?
“The expansive progress of Bong’s filmography through the Host and Snowpiercer has made it very clear that the Korean director has the imagination and technical chops to create a fantasy cinema on a level with anything from the Hollywood mainstream, but a sensibility with no taste for the blockbuster production line’s easy reassurance.”
“The bittersweet finale also flags up the challenges ahead in providing a harvest for the expanding world, so no platitudinous solutions here, just a movie that showcases Bong’s admirable flair for artfully unhinged spectacle, deftly undercut by a chastening reality check that never allows us to enjoy ourselves too much.”
“A repeated image shows the girl leaning into the pig’s floppy ear and whispering to calm her down. We never hear exactly what she’s whispering, but the tight closeups of Okja’s mesmerized eye show us that she’s listening intently and gets the gist—that the girl’s words matter and make sense even though they don’t speak the same language. The pig trusts her friend. All the film’s many threads ultimately come back to questions of trust: what it means to keep it or betray trust, and whether there are circumstances where betrayal is necessary, and whether the trust between human and human is more meaningful than the trust between human and animal. Mija would tell you there’s no difference.” 
“He’s also a filmmaker who finds great, unsettling dark comedy in violence, and once again the blood does run, if somewhat less generously than in “The Host” and his often brilliant “Memories of Murder.”
“Mr. Bong’s virtues as a filmmaker, including his snaking storytelling and refusal to overexplain actions and behaviors, can here feel like evasions or indulgences rather than fully thought-out choices. There’s a vagueness to the film that doesn’t feel organic — as if, having created a powerhouse central character, he didn’t exactly know what to do with her. That said, his visual style and the way he mixes eccentric types with the more banal, like a chemist preparing a combustible formula, are often sublime, as is Ms. Kim’s turn as the mother of all nightmarish mothers, a dreadful manifestation of a love so consuming it all but swallows the world.” 
“Okja is the Korean director’s most accessible film to global audiences to date, a near masterpiece that bends and twists genres and celebrates childhood even when it goes into some rather dark places along its still consistently childlike adventures.“
“Bong’s movies deny the easy satisfaction of an overarching victory, instead suggesting that you can’t save a world that may have already doomed itself.”
“I have admired Bong Joon-ho’s works for many reasons, and one of them is the unpredictability of his choices. He made me both laugh and cringe in a deadpan black comedy “Barking Dogs Never Bite” (2000), and then he played me like a piano in his great rural-set thriller film “Memories of Murder” (2003), and then he surprised me with monster film “The Host” (2006), and then he came back to another thriller set in the countryside in “Mother” (2009).”
“ …twisting suddenly from horror to pathos to comedy to action and back again…  “
“His films are never about straight good versus evil; there’s never a particular heroic sense of triumph to be found. Yet, neither is he a filmmaker who revels in pessimistic brutality. Even in the darkest of moments, there’s always a spark of hope to be found.”
“Even the characters I create, they aren’t clear-cut supervillains or superheroes, they’re all residing in the grey area. Maybe that’s why a certain amount of optimism or pessimism mixes into my films. I do feel, however, that’s more realistic and more reflective of how society is, and how life is. If everything is clear-cut and residing in one direction, it might feel a bit forced.”
“Because Netflix isn’t pursuing a theatrical release in France, the President of the esteemed film festival nearly pulled both Netflix films in competition (Okja and Noah Baumbach‘s The Meyerowitz Stories). Though they screened (and received some of the best reviews from the festival), the Jury held steadfast on the prediction that they would not reward any of the streaming service’s films. Despite this future-of-cinema conversation, the streaming distributor has offered Bong much more creative control than his English-language debut, Snowpiercer, where he had a constant battle with The Weinstein Company over the cut. Indeed, he’s quite pleased with his experience this go-round and that freedom will only make Netflix more enticing for filmmakers.“
“The Host begins with the American company just saying “dump everything down the drain”. This one is behind the scenes but it has very similar effect…it’s all this pageantry around it as if they’re doing something good when really they’re just dumping things down the drain, as well. Were you wanting to explore that idea in a different way?
BONG: This time I want to portray that idea via Tilda, who plays two roles. With Nancy Mirado, like in The Host, I wanted to be very explicit with the violence that she inflicts. Whereas Lucy Mirado, she tries to differ from Nancy. She thinks that she’s more elegant, more eco-friendly; she’s more obsessed with the marketing aspect of it and how it looks on the exterior. Nevertheless, the winner within the Mirando group is Nancy, not Lucy, and I think that reflects my concerns and fears about the reality of multinational companies within capitalist societies. The more ruthless people almost always seem to take over.”
“The traditional studios were a bit skeptical or a bit overly conscious about the radicalness of the script, and they weren’t on board,” he said. “From the get-go, it was guaranteed creative freedom [with Netflix]. They weren’t meddling with any part of the filmmaking whatsoever.”
Subtopic 2: Are Bong’s films personal to him?
“To their credit, the moviemakers signal right away that this isn’t a film that adults can use as an electronic babysitter. The dialogue is liberally peppered with F-words, and the more exaggerated jokes about corporate hypocrisy are reminiscent of non-child friendly satires like “Dr. Strangelove” and “Network” (upon learning that it will take ten years for the pigs to grow, a reporter moans, “Jesus Christ—I’ll be dead by then!”). There are also visual and thematic nods to cartoonist turned director Terry Gilliam, who made films that were childlike and sometimes childish but never strictly for kids—in particular the 1985 anti-fascist fable “Brazil,” which appears to have inspired the derring-do of ALF’s membership, chivalrous rebels who evade police by diving off bridges” 
“…Delightful, winning and deliriously wonderful story that unfolds is part E.T., part Bong Joon Ho, part Swiss Army Man (Seriously!), and ultimately one of the year’s most pleasant cinematic surprises.
“The movie’s underlying premise — child bonds with otherworldly beast and defends it from cruel adults — easily calls to mind “E.T.” or “Pete’s Dragon,” but Bong bends the formula into his own agenda.”
“It’s the recombinant offspring of all those science-fiction pictures of the 1950s and ‘60s in which exposure to atomic radiation (often referred to as both “atomic” and “radiation”) or hazardous chemicals (sometimes also radioactive) results in something very large and inhospitable: “Them!” (giant ants), “Tarantula” (giant spider), “Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People” (giant fungi), “The Amazing Colossal Man” (giant bald guy), “The Giant Behemoth” (giant behemoth – both giant and a behemoth, but more precisely a radioactive ocean-dwelling Godzilla clone), “Frankenstein Conquers the World” (giant Frankenstein’s monster atomically regenerated from the beating heart of the original monster after the A-bomb is dropped on Hiroshima), and so on.“
“Joon-Ho Bong implies that media and government are equally incompetent and untrustworthy. When you need saving from the maw of a mutant river beast, you’ve got nowhere to turn but your kin.”
“I think that films aren’t necessarily tools to change the world, a film is just a beautiful thing in itself. However, when someone is experiencing the beauty of a film, that itself is changing the world in some aspect.”
“I don’t expect the entire audience to convert to veganism after watching the film. I don’t have a problem with meat consumption itself, but I do want my audience to consider, at least once, where the food on their plate comes from. And, if one is to do that, I believe the level of meat consumption will gradually decline.”
“The South Korean director’s films, in the cinematic landscape, have never really been considered outright political missives, perhaps only because they hide under the guise of genre film.”
“However, although the super-pig phenomenon may be fiction at the moment, it’s very close to being a reality. In Canada, they already made some kind of GM salmon. It’s already gotten FDA approval. They are starting to very carefully distribute it in the market. In the process of researching the film, I met and interviewed a PhD student who is developing a GM pig. So, Okja is real. It’s actually happening. That’s why I rushed making Okja, because the real product is coming.”
“Even the characters I create, they aren’t clear-cut supervillains or superheroes, they’re all residing in the grey area. Maybe that’s why a certain amount of optimism or pessimism mixes into my films. I do feel, however, that’s more realistic and more reflective of how society is, and how life is. If everything is clear-cut and residing in one direction, it might feel a bit forced.”
“I was always a huge film buff. I was a child of the ’70s, so I didn’t have access to DVDs or VHS growing up. I didn’t go to the movies that often either. In many ways, TV was my cinema. I would open up the TV schedule and see what movies were playing each week. Although I was mostly watching films on TV, I could get through around ten a week. By the time I got to middle school, I was certain that I wanted to become a film director.“
“I majored in sociology in college. I knew that my parents would disapprove of me studying film.”
“For my next film, I’m going to try making what I’ve liked the most ever since I was a kid. So I naturally came up with a crime film, and as I was thinking that I should try and do it in a realistic and Korean-style method rather than imitating American genre films. I thought of the Hwaeseong murders, which I’d heard a lot about since I was young. But when I actually researched data on the Hwaeseong murders, it contained elements that were far more overwhelming and horrific than I had ever imagined.”
“I met with detectives who worked the case, Hwaeseong residents, and reporters from the Gyeongin Ilbo, which was the region’s newspaper.”
“I was very scared. I suffered a lot psychologically. Really, during that time period, I was very deeply absorbed in the murders, enough so that I had delusions that I might capture the real killer in the process of my research. I fell deeply into it emotionally, so I was exhausted as well.”
“I watched a lot of them, things like Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs. And also Imamura Shohei’s Vengeance Is Mine. Not only does that film clearly reveal hysteria in the Japanese society of the time, it has some unidentifiable, incredible strength to it. Of course, the work that influenced Memories of Murder directly was Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell. I was a bit disappointed with the Hughes brothers’ film of it.”
Subtopic 3: To what extent has Bong collaborated with the same people time and time again?
“Bong Joon Ho co-writes the film with British author/journalist Jon Ronson, a partnership that perfectly weaves together the director’s marvelous creature sensibilities, as previously experienced in The Host, with Ronson’s ability to convey a Brit-like humor and wit throughout the film that is intelligent, sensitive and, at times, quite darkly hilarious.”
“Zipping along to a vibrant soundtrack, Bong crafts lively, action-packed moments that find the hulkish Okja careening through public spaces while people scramble around her. This includes one of the most striking moments in Bong’s entire career — a slow-mo battle set to John Denver’s “You Fill Up My Senses,” which finds the ALF forming a wall of umbrellas to defend a cornered Okja while Mija cowers nearby.”
“Bong Joon-ho and his co-screenplay writer Kelly Masterson (he previously made an impressive debut with Sidney Lumet’s last work “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” (2007)) have made a darkly engaging SF thriller from their source.”
“Tilda Swinton gloriously embraces her despicable character with the attitude of mean British headmistress, and she is fearless as usual in throwing herself into the hammy side of her character.”
“But about the monster. Created by the San Francisco-based FX house, The Orphanage, it is a creature of scary amphibious loveliness, with greenish salamanderlike skin, froggy legs…“
“I first met Plan B a long time ago-2007 in LA-and they suggested a lot of original source material to me. It was a very light relationship. It was right after I was done with my film The Host and Jeremy and Brad Pitt from Plan B were fans. I also really admired their filmography. They do lots of cavalier films such as 12 Years a Slave. So it was a natural mix between Plan B and I. But even before Plan B came on board the casting casting and effects of the film were already packaged nicely through the Korean producers and the American producer, Dooho Choi. Plan B came slightly later on and because they had a good relationship with Netflix via War Machine, they introduced Netflix to the film and they were fully supportive of Okja. It was a very smooth transition all around so I am very happy.”
“The Host begins with the American company just saying “dump everything down the drain”. This one is behind the scenes but it has very similar effect…it’s all this pageantry around it as if they’re doing something good when really they’re just dumping things down the drain, as well. Were you wanting to explore that idea in a different way?
BONG: This time I want to portray that idea via Tilda, who plays two roles. With Nancy Mirado, like in The Host, I wanted to be very explicit with the violence that she inflicts. Whereas Lucy Mirado, she tries to differ from Nancy. She thinks that she’s more elegant, more eco-friendly; she’s more obsessed with the marketing aspect of it and how it looks on the exterior. Nevertheless, the winner within the Mirando group is Nancy, not Lucy, and I think that reflects my concerns and fears about the reality of multinational companies within capitalist societies. The more ruthless people almost always seem to take over.”
“After what we went through on the last one, it was very important to start the process knowing that we had control,” producer Dooho Choi said after a press event in Cannes on Sunday. “That was most appealing aspect of it — knowing that he could play, and that someone would not be looking over his shoulder constantly. It was a pretty smooth process in that regard.”
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jenniferweed46-blog · 7 years
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