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stagandsteer · 3 years

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Complete transcript of the Wonderland interview, by Catherine Santino, below the cut :)

In 1993, the year in which Freeform’s new thriller series Cruel Summer opens, actor Froy Gutierrez was yet to be born. Chat rooms and beepers, just two of the symbols of 90’s culture featured in the show, were absent in Gutierrez's own childhood. Instead, the 22 year old grew up among the endless, glowing feeds of social media — and the inevitable pressures that they create.

“There’s a kind of self-awareness that comes from growing up with the internet, which everyone in our cast did,” Gutierrez, who stars in the upcoming series, tells me over Zoom — his boyish charm tangible across the screen. “We’re all technically Gen Z or like, older Gen Z. And so you have to unburden yourself from curating a persona online.”

Due to the dizzying evolution of technology in the past two decades, Gutierrez and I had drastically different experiences with the internet growing up — even though he’s only seven years my junior. I fondly remember a time without the prevalence of social media, while Gutierrez was born into an era where internet presence was not only common, but expected.

Like most of Gutierrez’s peers, the actor was active on social media from a young age, but his presence has quietened over the years — even with 1.7 million instagram followers. “If there’s a general consensus on the internet of a certain readership or viewership, you know about it, because people tweet about it directly to you,'' he says. “There’s a kind of lumping in of the character you’re playing with who you are, that people do. I don’t know if it’s intentional. It’s probably just a human thing, but that happens. And it can be hard not to internalize what you read about yourself, you know? Words have power.”

In 2017, Gutierrez appeared on supernatural MTV drama Teen Wolf, a show with a massive internet fandom. Suddenly, fan theories and commentaries about his character, Nolan Holloway, came in droves, something that the young actor wasn’t necessarily prepared for. “I was still a teenager,” he says. “Around that time, you're an adult, but you’re still figuring things out. So I learned where to set my boundaries because I didn’t know where they were beforehand.”

When Cruel Summer came around, Gutierrez assumed he would be portraying the “desirable young male” he was used to auditioning for. “The first time I read the character, it definitely felt like an archetype. When I auditioned for it, I walked in and was very much myself, and Michelle Purple and Jessica Biel responded very well to it.” However, after he got the role and production ramped up, he was pleasantly surprised. “It didn’t really hit me that they were wanting to take him in such a unique direction until I showed up for wardrobe one day to do my first fitting for the pilot,” Gutierrez recalls. “I looked at the mood board for Jamie and it was like, young Heath Ledger, Keanu Reeves and Kurt Cobain. And I was like ‘Oh shit, I need to step my game up,’” he laughs. “I couldn’t get by doing the same thing that I’ve always done when it comes to characters like that.”

Cruel Summer takes place over the course of three years — ‘93, ‘94, and ‘95 — showing splices of each year in every episode. Produced by Jessica Biel, Tia Napolitano, and Michelle Purple, it centres around the kidnapping of a teenage girl and the fallout of the crime in her community in Skylin, Texas. Gutierrez plays Jamie Henson, the boyfriend of the missing girl, Kate. In her absence, a quiet nerd named Jeanette suddenly rises the social ranks and assumes Kate’s place — including dating Jamie. When Kate returns, Jeanette is suspected to be involved in her disappearance, throwing Jamie into some seriously challenging circumstances. His character could easily be a one-dimensional archetype — and truthfully, I expected him to be — but Cruel Summer took the opportunity to explore toxic masculinity and its widespread impact.

We see Jamie caught in the middle of conflict, unsure how to respond to a traumatic event that certainly no teenager expects to be faced with. He’s not a hero, but he’s not a villain either. It’s unclear whether we’re supposed to root for Jamie or not, which makes him that much more interesting to watch. “He talks a lot about his desire to protect the people around him, regardless of whether or not they asked him to protect them,” Gutierrez says of his character. “He kind of superimposes his own idea of what the people around him need. In order to maintain the peace of the people around him, he kind of robs the people around him of their agency. It’s just a really fascinating character to play in that way.”

Gutierrez has also been able to explore the ethics of true crime in a time when the genre is exploding in popularity. Though Cruel Summer is fictional, it questions the effect that public opinion can have on criminal cases — and perhaps more importantly — the well-being of the people involved. “When it comes to the investigation of a crime, you have to weigh the good it can bring into the world versus the bad it can bring. Or making one person seem suspect, or airing the dirty laundry of a private citizen for the viewership of loads of people.”

Despite his eloquent reflections on Jamie throughout our conversation, it’s clear that Gutierrez doesn’t take himself too seriously. He speaks into the camera like we’re old friends on FaceTime, and when my dog unexpectedly jumps into my frame, he gushes excitedly and asks what her name is. He’s able to laugh at himself one minute and share poignant truths the next. It’s refreshing, much like Cruel Summer.

Another likely contributor to the show’s authenticity? The fact that the cast was kept in the dark when it came to overarching plot points. Instead of knowing the show’s trajectory ahead of time, the actors would receive scripts for the next episode while they were filming — and they were subject to change. “We didn’t know where it was going,” Gutierrez says. “And we were told, “‘This might happen here, or this might happen there.’ And it would shift around.”

Without foresight into their character’s arc, the actors have no choice but to focus only on where they were in that moment — a difficult task when a single episode spans three very different years. Gutierrez faced an even greater challenge, as, unlike the two female leads, his character didn’t undergo any drastic physical transformations over the three years.

“I didn’t really compartmentalise the character,” he explains. “I kind of thought of the different years as different phases in my own life. The first year, ‘93, was a complete absence of any regret. You’re still very young, I was just thinking of like, a complete golden retriever,” he laughs. “A 16-year old boy who just wants the best and isn’t aware. ‘94 is me right before I made the decision to go to therapy, where I was making all these bad decisions and I didn’t know why. And then ‘95 was a whole desire to wrestle with those things and really look at yourself in the mirror and take accountability.”

Gutierrez didn’t only infuse personal experience into his behind-the-scenes work — some aspects made it onto the screen. The actor, whose father is Mexican, grew up spending time between Mexico and Texas and is a native Spanish speaker. Because Cruel Summer is set in Texas, Gutierrez suggested creating a similar background for Jamie.

“I was talking with Tia Napolitano, the show-runner, and I was like, ‘Hey, you know what would be really cool? What if the character is half-Mexican, too?’” Gutierrez says. “And she's like, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s write it in the script.’ And I got to write a couple lines in Spanish, which is really cool. [Jamie] could have been this mould of a cool, likeable jock. And then he ended up being this very nuanced human being, which is awesome.”

Though he is learning to appreciate all parts of his heritage, Gutierrez hasn’t always embraced his identity. “I remember feeling like I might have been not American enough for America, and not Mexican enough for Mexico,” he says. “And I remember having a bit of time in which I had an accent in both languages. Even my name — in Mexico I always went by ‘Froylan’, which is my full name. And then in the U.S., I went by Froy, because I thought it would be easier for other people to say.”

He continues: “I identify as Latino, but I”m also very wary of auditioning for Latino roles because I’m aware I don’t look like a typical Latino person. I don’t want to be someone that you can just sub in for that role, when I’m really white and blonde. And so whenever I do get a role like this, one where he’s not written to be any particular direction and we’re able to collaborate, I’m able to inject some of myself in there. So it’s been really cool to embrace all sides of my history.”

But of course, as is true for Gutierrez, Jamie’s cultural background is only a small part of who he is. Cruel Summer is committed to portraying him as a nuanced character that breaks the moulds of masculinity while tackling complex inner conflict. “Living in his shoes and walking in them, a big question that came up for me was, ‘What is the difference between guilt and shame? [Jamie]’s coping mechanism was terrible and unhealthy, and caused more pain for the people around him. But at the same time, the shame that he internalized made it worse for him. One thing I really learned, is that shame is about yourself and beating yourself up. And guilt is about taking accountability and apologising, moving forward without expecting the relationship to come back. It's just about trying to heal what happened and then moving on, on the terms that the other person sets. It’s not about you, and I think that’s what the character learns throughout the show.”

#froy gutierrez #wonderland magazine #froylan gutierrez #interview #cruel summer #catherine santino

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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YYH Recaps: Episode 1, Surprised to be Dead

Hello, all you hypothetical readers! It's a beautiful spring day and I have a free afternoon ahead of me, so what better time to start another massive project while I guilty stuff my other WIPs deep into the depths of my hard drive? Yeah. Iffy life choices aside, someone mentioned a few weeks back that they'd love for me to recap a show I have more positive things to say about than negative (RIP RWBY) and ever since Netflix announced that their live-action adaptation of Yu Yu Hakusho is in the works, I've been itching for a re-watch of the anime. With the RWBY hiatus underway, it seemed like the perfect time to fulfill both desires.

Before we begin though, I'd like to touch on a few things that are going to influence this project.

First, YYH is near and dear to my heart. Written by Yoshihiro Togashi in the early 1990s and later adapted for an American audience by Funimation, I had the pleasure of experiencing this story five different ways: as a serialized tale in Shonen Jump, a binge read when I had the money to buy the manga, tiny snippets of the anime on Adult Swim late at night — don't tell my parents ;) — as an after-school treat on Toonami, and then years later as a re-watch when I introduced it to a friend (who, in turn, blessed me by having us watch Fullmetal Alchemist next). I used to keep a Hiei bookmark in everything I was reading, the spirit gun made it into our witch-wolf-space adventures on the playground (middle school was wild), and there was a long period of my life where I tried very hard to teach myself to stand with my hands behind my back, precisely as Genkai does. Spoiler alert: I failed. So to say I love the series is... a little bit of an understatement. I bring this up simply as a way of demonstrating that there's more than a bit of nostalgia attached to YYH for me and that will inevitably cloud my reading of it. How can it not? So that's just something to keep in mind as I work through a series that, like any having hit its 30th birthday, has its outdated, flawed, and other questionable aspects.

Second, but very much connected to the first point, is that these are pretty casual recaps. I summarize and extrapolate, focusing primarily on plot and dialogue (but with the occasional cinematography aspect tossed in). I'm not conducting research on the cultural history here — something that will come up at least once in this episode — I'm not arguing an overarching thesis, and I've never been someone who focuses on the author/production/trivia of a series. I'm here for the story as the story is presented to the viewer. If you've read my RWBY Recaps, this will function precisely the same way, with the only difference being I'm engaging with a finished text as opposed to an ongoing one, so there’s a lot less, “Maybe ___ will happen” theorizing going on.

Third, I obviously recommend that you watch the show yourself (you can find it on YouTube!), but you don't have to know the series to follow along. As these massive paragraphs attest, I tend to be both detailed and verbose, so we'll be covering every major plot point — and most of the smaller ones too.

Finally, I'm working from the dub. I know, I know, the horror. But it's what I grew up on and, honestly, I think it's superior to the sub. YYH's dubbing is in a class all its own and to this day there are very few shows that compare to it. Trust me, it's a good call.

That's enough of the boring chit-chat though. Let's get started!

Our very first episode "Surprised to be Dead" opens on a crowded street. We see lots of traffic, people going about their business, and a pedestrian crossing sign that, crucially, turns red. This is our normality and, like in every genre story, you need to break that normality at some point so that the protagonists can go on their fantastical/supernatural/science fiction journey. YYH eases us into things by first breaking the normality of an everyday afternoon: there's a screech of tires, quick shots of a man pushing a child out of the way of an oncoming car, and then his back is hitting the windshield. We begin this story with a horrible — but otherwise mundane — car crash.

Now, these flashes alone have a fair bit to unpack. Despite later getting a brief shot of the man's scared face right before he's hit, the moment's focus is really on the child. He's the one foregrounded in the initial, slow-mo shot. He's the one who appears in color while the man is kept in shadow. This isn't just a hit, it's a rescue. The camera is also careful to follow the soccer ball this kid was playing with (more on that later in the episode), with it flying through the air as the man is hit and bouncing to a stop in the street, acting as the dramatic finish. It's childhood! It's innocence! It's play on a sunny afternoon! And it's all gone wrong.

This moment is chaotic and even a bit confusing. Not in the sense of what's happening — that is quite obviously a guy being hit by a car — but who the victims are, how precisely this came about, or even why we're meant to care about this beyond a generic capacity to feel for other human (fictional) beings... that's all removed. And it works. As the crash takes place, the camera pans across the stunned crowd and we, the viewer, become a part of that crowd. They don't know what precisely is going on either. We're all just horrified onlookers as a sudden tragedy takes place. We're all watching the same show.

So everyone realizes this guy has been hit. People are staring in shock and someone calls for an ambulance. We see the driver fall to his knees in the street, distraught, shakily saying, "I didn't mean to..." It's a very serious and emotional scene that —

— is immediately tempered by this guy waking up, complete with a cute 'pop!' sound effect when he opens his eyes.

This is YYH's brand, this Very Serious Circumstances skillfully interwoven with casual indifference/comedy. It's admittedly far from a unique brand, but it's an excellent choice given that this is the same attitude that will drive 99% of our protagonist's interaction with the world.

Speaking of said protagonist, our guy wakes up, opens his eyes, and realizes that he's floating. There's a great, disorientating shot from his perspective where everything is upside down, causing him to nearly fall out of the air. Well would you look at that, he's as confused as we are. It's our audience surrogate!

A narrator says, "And so it all begins. This boy's name is Yusuke, he's fourteen years old, and he's supposed to be the hero of this story. But oddly enough, he's dead."

Game of Thrones might have made it popular, but YYH did it better.

(Yeah, yeah, I know one death kick-starts the journey and the other is a shocking twist. Just let me have this.)

Now, it's a weird introduction, right? At least at the end. The announcement that change has occurred, a name, an age... that all checks out. But "supposed to be the hero"? What the hell is that “supposed to” mean? Our narrator gives us the easy, surface answer: "But oddly enough, he's dead." We're capitalizing here on the audience's expectation that death ends a character's journey and though they may have been a hero previously, they can no longer be one moving forward. That function within the story has passed. So it's this intriguing question of, "What kind of hero do you have when that hero is dead from the start?" but as we'll see soon, there's an additional meaning here of, "How can Yusuke be the hero?" As this premiere sets up, Yusuke doesn't act like the hero is “supposed to” act.

Until he saved this kid.

But right now he's just confused: "Okay, this is weird. Stupid weird."

Two EMTs arrive on the scene and are hilariously useless. You know how in any medical drama a doctor will stop CPR after a couple of seconds because obviously you're not going to spend half the episode on realism? Well, that's this only a thousand times worse. One guy just looks at the kid and announces he's fine except for some bumps and bruises. Meanwhile, the kid is sobbing.

"Well, at least one of them is," replies the other EMT, because I guess he can tell Yusuke is beyond hope without taking a pulse or anything? "I hate cleanup," he complains as they load his body onto a stretcher because that's? An empathetic response to have??

Honestly this scene is wild.

Yusuke is understandably upset that he's, you know, dead and all. He starts hounding the EMTs who, unable to hear him, just go about their business of taking the kid and his body to the hospital. "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on? You can't just write me off. Listen to me!" and Yusuke tries to punch one of the EMTs in the head, resulting in him floating right through.

What a great way to introduce your protagonist's personality. We see here that when things go wrong Yusuke's default emotion is anger and it starts creeping in even before he thinks the others are ignoring him: "Stupid weird." He has problems with authority — "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on?" — is used to others listening when he gets angry — "You can't just write me off!" — and is poised to use violence at the slightest provocation. Yusuke is a guy who, right now at least, is ready to punch first and ask questions later.

As Yusuke floats back up into the air and the ambulance drives away, he finally cools down enough to try and think his way out of this. "It's not like this is the first time you've been in a jam,” he thinks. Yusuke recalls that yeah, something was different about today...

...he actually went to school.

Catch me laughing that this idiot boy equates the weirdness of him dying with going to school. Good lord.

Anyway, this jumpstarts our flashback. We open on a generic, anime middle school (that always feels like a high school to me) where the principal is calling for Yusuke through the loud speaker. Oooo someone’s in trouble! We follow a young girl up to the rooftop and she gets a classic hair-blowing-in-the-wind moment to establish that she's our love interest. Meet Keiko Yukimura.

Keiko finds Yusuke hanging out and immediately starts lecturing him for trying to chew gum and refusing to wear the boys' uniform. "Oh, give me a break, Keiko. I look better in green." Note that it's here we learn her name and it's an easy, casual way to introduce it. I bring this up because Yusuke's introduction via our narrator is very much... not that. It's an on your nose statement about his name, age, and importance to the story, and if you're just starting the show in 2021, it might come across as a rather armature move. Like something out of a kid's show, perhaps. Yet here we see that this was a deliberate choice, considering that YYH is capable of introducing character information naturally when it wants to.

This moment also tells us that Yusuke cares a great deal about his image. More on that in a bit. Because Keiko isn't finished her list of grievances yet, going on to say that his attendance record has hurt their entire class, hurt her as class representative, and if he keeps going down this path he won't even graduate middle school. "Sometimes I think you don't care about anyone but yourself and then you don't even do that right!"

They're legit complaints. Too bad Yusuke is busy looking up Keiko's skirt.

Yeeeeah. Sadly, this is common for anime, particularly a 90s anime like YYH. Even presumably more progressive series like My Hero Academia feature characters like Mineta, whose entire personality is being a pervert, and the creation of abilities that "require" kids/young women to be scantily clad. See: Yaoyorozu. YYH is no different in this regard, with various forms of sexual harassment functioning as a shorthand for how much Yusuke secretly likes Keiko. "Boys will be boys," right? Obviously not.

Like so many others series, the creators get away with it because they’re framing it as a bad thing. It's totally fine because look, Keiko slaps him! This is teaching the viewer how wrong this behavior is. Never mind that this is clearly an established habit between them, that Yusuke laughs off Keiko's discomfort, and that the whole scene is meant to be funny for the viewer. That's the real purpose here; it’s not a PSA on harassment.

That, and to establish the long-suffering love Keiko has for Yusuke in turn, largely stemming from a life-long friendship. "Dumb boy! He hasn't grown up a bit since he was four years old." We see that Keiko's early interactions with Yusuke have given her insight that others lack. As she heads down from the roof she runs into two girls hiding around the corner, too scared to come out lest "the great Urameshi" set his sights on them. Isn't Keiko terrified of what he might do to her? "Or worse, what others might say of it?" Like any classic high school middle school setting, one's reputation is king. Yusuke cares about how others see him — maintaining that tough boy attitude — and the girls care more about what the rest of the school might think of Keiko's interactions with him than the presumed harm Yusuke could do to her. They heard he can summon 2,000 men with just a whistle and that he "kills for fun!" But that means nothing in the face of people talking about you. Despite being one of the most popular girls in school, Keiko is the outsider here via her disinterest in what other people think.

The animation changes here, giving us a good look at how the girls picture Yusuke: tough, scowling, surrounded by shadows, and backed by an entire army.

In contrast, we've already seen what Yusuke is really like.

Keiko laughs the image off too. Yusuke is more like a "lamb" than a killer and besides, he couldn't order around two people, let alone two hundred. "He doesn't have many friends."

"That's not what I heard," says one of the girls.

"Yeah," goes the other. "I think we would know."

Again, rumors rule here, with whispers in the hall considered more reliable than someone who interacts with Yusuke on a daily basis. Keiko doesn’t have a hope of changing their minds.

Oh, as a side note, I love that they gave Keiko Miyazaki-esque hair. It's very emotive.

Yusuke escapes outside where the principal is still calling for him to report to his office. He overhears a conversation around the corner and we cut to two boys, one of which is showing a wallet off to the other. He explains that some bully tried to rough him up, but he said he was Urameshi's cousin and the bully took off, dropping his wallet in the process. The guy's friend is impressed, but what is he going to do if Yusuke ever finds out he lied? Not to worry, he says, that "blockhead" would probably think it's true even if he did somehow hear.

Yusuke, obviously, does hear about this and he, also obviously, does not believe this guy is his cousin. He looms ominously and they scurry up against a wall, terrified and offering him the wallet as an apology.

"You think I want your money?" Yusuke yells.

YYH is, in many respects, a rather simple story, but I appreciate the hints of complexity in these otherwise straightforward interactions. It's not that this guy used Yusuke's name to steal a wallet, he used it as a form of protection against another bully — a far more sympathetic motivation. It's not that Yusuke's fearsome reputation has resulted in any genuine respect because once people think they're safe they reveal how little they think of his intelligence — he's a "blockhead." And Yusuke, though intimidating and violent, is not your average, schoolyard bully. He doesn't care about money, only the insult and the damage this guy using his name might have done to his reputation. There's a little more nuance here than you might otherwise expect.

Also, note how dark the boys' standard uniforms are and how much they blend into the rest of the world. Yusuke, as our protagonist, stands out in his bright clothing. He was right, he does look better in green!

So he's ready to clobber this kid when one of the teachers arrive: Mr. Iwamoto.

Iwamoto demands to know what's going on, but the boys are too terrified to rat Yusuke out. Noticing the wallet on the ground, he assumes that Yusuke was after their money, something that greatly offends him: "Whatever!" Iwamoto goes on to say that, "No good weeds like you should have been plucked a long time ago," making it clear that he considers Yusuke a hopeless case. The positive aspects that Keiko sees, as well as the complexity the viewer sees — to say nothing of his introduction of saving a kid — aren’t considered here.

Notably, Iwamoto exists in part to show us what Yusuke could become. Not a teacher (he's obviously not attending school enough for that!), but a cynical man who is cruel for cruelty's sake. Yusuke is already barreling down that path, ignoring Keiko's advice, terrorizing other students, trying to punch EMTs, etc. If his life (or afterlife...) hadn't changed through that accident, this is the kind of person Yusuke might have grown up to be, and we can see that clearly in the visual parallels between them. Dark haired men dressed in green who scowl with ease and toss out cutting insults. Yusuke is staring his future in the face.

For now he walks off with a final shot, "You shouldn't talk. It makes you sound stupid." This time Yusuke makes it to the school's entrance and tries to enjoy his second attempt at chewing gum, but someone hits him in the back of the head.

"Okay, somebody's DEAD — ah. Sorry, old man."

"That's Mr. Takenaka to you."

Our principal has finally left the office and hunted down Yusuke for himself! Putting this interaction immediately after the one with Iwamoto allows the viewer to compare them. Yusuke might be irreverent towards his principal, but it's clear there's still some kind of respect between them. Yusuke only starts threatening because he doesn’t realize who hit him and once he does realize it's Takenaka, he immediately apologizes. That "old man" comes across as a teasing insult and Yusuke allows himself to be briefly dragged back towards school, rather than throwing a now classic punch. In turn, Takenaka cares enough about Yusuke to try and keep him on the straight and narrow. He utilizes Yusuke's preferred language — violence — but in a casual way, nonthreatening way: slight hit to the back of his head, noogie, pulling him along by the ear.

It's the sort of physicality we're used to seeing in media between a parent and child who are outwardly antagonistic, but actually share a deep bond. Takenaka is also careful to frame their return to his office as a "discussion," not a punishment, and offers Yusuke tea along with the conversation. Whereas Iwamoto considers Yusuke to be a "weed" that should have been plucked from their school long ago, Takenaka is determined to help Yusuke bloom.

If we're continuing the flower metaphor :D

Yusuke isn't in the mood to play along though. He gets away by using a fake ear, startling Takenaka when it unexpectedly pulls free. Yusuke escapes the school grounds and Takenaka, suffering a back twinge from his fall, can't chase after him. Poor guy. I understand that pain lol.

Yusuke heads home where we're introduced to his mother, Atsuko. Most notable in her first shot is the soft lighting that highlights her looks. We're not told how old she is here, but I believe she's around 28 — and she looks it, if not younger. Given that Yusuke is 14, that means Atsuko was a mom at his age. This is a quick and subtle way to tell us about Yusuke's home life. There are more overt details in this scene — it's at least lunchtime and Atsuko hasn't left her bed yet, she demands that Yusuke make her coffee instead of greeting him, it's all meant to imply (before we actually see) that she's an alcoholic — but her age is another way to highlight the broken household here. There's no partner in sight and she clearly had Yusuke as a teenager. He hasn't had a strong parental figure to take care of him. If anything, Yusuke is taking care of Atsuko here.

"Oh great, mother of the year!" basically sums things up.

Atsuko wants to know why Yusuke isn't in school and he says that everyone is pissing him off today, particularly with their preaching. "Dear, if you hate preaching so much you should live on your own... but you can't do that, can you?" Alongside a rough upbringing, Yusuke is suffering from the common problem of being trapped in a dead-end life. He hates his school, his town, and coming home to find his mom hungover. Yusuke has no prospects and, outside of one principal, no one who is actively working to help him find some. Even the little things he hates, like being preached to, are unavoidable because if you want to live on your own, that requires money. Good luck pulling that off as a middle schooler whose only skill is street fighting!

Yusuke walks off in a huff, literally shouting in a street about what a bad day he's having (and hilariously scaring off pedestrians in the process). His shout brings trouble though. A couple guys appear to ambush him, their boss close behind. The music increases the tension, Yusuke's expression is serious, and we even get a Dutch angle thrown into the mix.

For any who don't know, the Dutch angle is a popular film technique to establish that something is wrong. There's tension in the scene, something uneasy is at play, and the world is now literally off center. It's perhaps most famously used in Do The Right Thing to establish the friction between an Italian-American pizzeria and the predominantly African American neighborhood it's based in.

But it's also used a great deal in horror as a way to say: yup, shit just got real. Scary real.

This Dutch angle introduces a character you may not appreciate at first, but absolutely should: Kazuma Kuwabara.

He's initially the comic relief and that's clear in his introduction. Within seconds we move from that intimidating arrival to, well, seeing him. To be clear, I've got nothing against redheads with big chins, but compared to Yusuke's design, Kuwabara is meant to be the funny looking one. His threat level plummets the moment we get a look at his face, especially in a series that will occasionally use looks as a (supposed) measure of intelligence.

Also, Kuwabara is dressed in light blue so, like Yusuke, we know he's important!

Any assumptions that his appearance isn’t meant to imply a goofy, embarrassing personality are put to rest when Kuwabara starts rambling about how they last time they fought Yusuke just got a cheap shot in and he'll definitely win this time. Yeah, he won't. Yusuke is thrilled by this diversion though and we get a shot of him looking almost as creepy as Keiko's friends think he is. Whatever else might be said about Yusuke, he is absolutely a monster in a fight.

Which we see here. If anyone picked up the series without knowing this was a fighting anime, they'll realize it now. Yusuke's choreography is stylized to show off his skill: he disappears with a 'whoosh' and dark lines to suggest inhuman speed,

attacking Kuwabara with a knee to the face, utilizes flying kicks, lands perfect, precision punches, and ends it all with the toe-tip landing we've come to expect of all powerful fighters. Kuwabara never even got a hit in.

Happy as a clam now, Yusuke wanders off whistling and Kuwabara's friends are left to pick up the pieces. AKA, his likely broken bones. I love that they're legit friends though and not just nameless goons for the sake of giving Kuwabara a small gang (though their names won't come up until later). "That makes 0 wins an 156 loses!" one of them cries, trying to get Kuwabara to stop ending up in the hospital, probably. We establish that Kuwabara is The Most Dramatic Ever when he pulls his broken body into a seated position, shouting, "No! I almost had him that time!"

Then he passes out.

Kuwabara, honey, you obviously did not almost have him, but god bless you for the outlook. The most optimistic thing on this Earth is a well-loved Golden Retriever, but Kuwabara comes in at a very close second.

With his dream to one day beat Yusuke in combat established, we cut to Yusuke wandering the street where the episode opened. "Okay, I'm remembering" he says in a voiceover. "After that I met the kid."

The soccer ball reappears as it rolls to a stop at Yusuke's feet. He grabs it and immediately starts yelling at the kid. Horrible protagonist, right? Well, Yusuke is trying to instill in him the danger of using this street as a playground, a worry the viewer already knows is 100% justified. “Listen, kid, that’s dangerous! There are cars going by that will splatter you into the pavement!” It's one of those quick moments where we get to enjoy Yusuke's duality: he's someone who is nearly making a toddler cry, but for rather understandable reasons. He's got the right idea, but needs to go about it in a more mature manner.

Which is precisely what he attempts to do. Sort of. Yusuke changes gears, though whether it's a more "mature" route is certainly up for debate lol. He tries entertaining the kid instead, raising and lowering the soccer ball to reveal goofy faces.

When these fail to impress, Yusuke goes full out by stuffing the ball into his pants, pushing his nose up with a pair of chopsticks he got from god knows where, and generally just putting on a display.

So Yusuke cares very deeply about his reputation... but only when it comes to those who are an established part of his life. Keiko, Mr. Takenaka, and the other kids at school all need to maintain a particular image of Yusuke, one that he's carefully cultivated. But random pedestrians on the street? Who cares about them? Let them talk.

This shows us that Yusuke does indeed have priorities over his own, selfish goals. Namely, the happiness of some kid is more important to him than looking "cool" for a bunch of strangers. Lots of characters with Yusuke's surface attitude would sneer at the idea of degrading themselves for — their words — some brat. But Yusuke, as we constantly see, actually does have that heart of gold. “Well, if all else fails I can still make kids happy.”

Although... I'm not sure what to make of his display itself. I have the distinct sense that there's something prejudiced here that I'm not able to fully articulate, what with the chopsticks, slanted eyes, bald head, and the like, though to be entirely frank I don't have enough knowledge of Japan's history to say precisely what it might be. Or, really, whether it exists at all. Just something to chew on.

What I am sure about though is the importance of having the child label Yusuke as monster — "Yeah, monster! — but in a delighted manner. Yusuke is indeed some kind a monster, someone who disappoints adults and terrifies his classmates, a demon fighter on the streets too, but here that identity is reworked into something positive.

Having successful secured a laugh, Yusuke tells the kid — calmly this time — to go play elsewhere. The toddler stares up at him with the blank expression only kids can manage.

Well, kids and whatever headspace I'm in after writing these metas.

To absolutely no one's surprise except Yusuke's, the kid does not go elsewhere. Instead, he continues kicking the ball down the street, causing Yusuke to exclaim, “Dammit, what’s the use? The kid can get smashed by a car for all I care!” Liar, liar.

The picture becomes desaturated as the kid kicks the ball and it flies into the street, time slowing down to show it landing precisely in the middle of the road. Yusuke again yells for him to stay put, but when has a toddler ever listened? He begins to walk into the road as our driver arrives, speeding, swerving, and paying more attention to the girl at his side than what's in front of him.

This time, we see the accident from the front with both Yusuke and the kid presented equally.

There's a cut to black and when we return we're in the present, Yusuke floating above the policemen now investigating the scene. “So that’s it? I’m roadkill?” As Yusuke realizes he's dead, specifically that he's a ghost, a voice goes,

"Bingo! Bingo! You win the prize!"

A woman has appeared who is quite obviously othered by the standards of the episode so far. Unlike the greens, blues, and browns of the series' modern clothes, she's dressed in hot pink kimono with blue hair to match. She's also, you know, floating on an oar.

“I didn’t expect you to figure it out so quickly," she says, referring to Yusuke's revelation that he's dead. Apparently, those who meet unexpected and/or violent ends tend to take some time coming to terms with their demise. It's a nice acknowledgment of Yusuke's intelligence in an interaction that's otherwise... not great for his self-esteem.

Meaning, this woman is about to drag him lol.

She introduces herself as Botan, pilot of the River Styx and guider of souls to the afterlife. You might also know her as the Grim Reaper.

(Hey, RWBY fans: I originally wrote that as Grimm Reaper 🤦‍♀️)

It's an claim Yusuke takes issue with because 1. Botan is too pretty to be the Grim Reaper and 2. If she was really some god of death she'd be taking this much more seriously, not laughing and saying, "Bingo!" For the audience this does two things. First, it acknowledges our own expectations and validates them. Yusuke's world isn't so far removed from our own that he takes Botan's looks and personality at face value, he also expected a skeleton with a scythe. So don't worry, all the weird stuff in this series is weird to our protagonist too. They'll be explanations. Or, even if there’s not, you’re not wrong for being surprised.

Second, it sets up the very common theme in YYH of undermining those common assumptions again and again and again. We've already seen it with Yusuke, wherein characters who look and act a certain way are, supposedly, destined to be that person and nothing more. Yusuke is meant to be just a "weed," a dumb, violent, angry loser who goes nowhere in life... but we already know he's more than that. Botan is supposed to be scary and serious, but she says nah, I want to be cute and bubbly instead. No character in YYH embodies who they're "supposed" to be when you look past those surface characterizations. They play the part of archetypes — and do keep certain parts of their expected personalities — but they're also far more well-rounded than that. Which yeah, is something most people expect from any story nowadays, but YYH is particularly adept at making you think you're watching Simple Show A only to turn around and surprise you with More Complex Show B.

It's great, trust me.

So Yusuke is pissed that Botan isn't adhering to those expectations, in the same way that he works hard to validate others expectations of him. He doesn't know how to deal with someone challenging his world view yet. Rather than angering Botan though, she just nods and says that this response makes sense for him. “Rather than being scared, or surprised, you yell a lot and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about." Taking out a notebook, she quickly summarizes everything we learned in the flashback — minus Yusuke's complexities: he's fourteen, in middle school, is ill-tempered, violent, hates authority, and is a horrible student.

Typically, Yusuke responds by getting angry and trying to snatch the booklet out of her hands, only for Botan to pull it out of his reach, laughing. The tables have turned! Rather than being surrounded by people who cower at Yusuke's imposed authority, he now finds himself faced with someone who laughs at his transparent attempts to take control of the situation.

Calming down, Yusuke wants to know if the kid he saved is really alright and Botan offers to let him see for himself. That offer produces Yusuke's first, genuine smile.

They fly to the hospital where a doctor is in the process of giving the kid a clean bill of health, his mother crying with relief.

That's enough for Yusuke. “Alright, Botan, I’ve got no regrets, so you can take me to hell or wherever it is I’m going.”

That tells you all you need to know about Yusuke's self-worth, despite his bad boy attitude. His life is a dead-end as far as he can see and most of those around him haven't done anything to dissuade him of that idea. He says he doesn't care if the kid lives or dies, but then instinctively saves him. Post his death, Yusuke doesn't have anything he considers a regret, or anything he'd like to do before he leaves, like saying goodbye to a loved one. Oh, he's also pretty sure he's going to hell and has resigned himself to that without a fight.

Uplifting!

Botan just laughs though, saying that she's actually here to offer Yusuke an "ordeal" that could bring him back to life. See, he wasn't supposed to die today — let alone die saving a kid — and frankly they don't know what to do with him. It's another neat summary of what we've already learned: Yusuke is a far more complicated case than the afterlife assumed and now, when push comes to shove, deciding whether he belongs in heaven or hell is... muddled.

There's a fantastic story there about the problems with an afterlife that reduces a person's entire life to a few surface characteristics recorded in a book, refusing to acknowledge the context of their situation, or their capacity for change. “Run someone with your credentials a thousand times and they never would have saved a kid like that." Except, of course, Yusuke did save him, so those "credentials" are suspect, to say the least. However, YYH is not a story that explores these issues. Instead, I recommend you watch this!

Rather than being upset at the afterlife's low opinion of him (because let's be real, Yusuke shares it), he latches onto a little detail Botan let slip. If he wasn't supposed to die today... then was the kid?

Mmm... no. Actually, without the chaos of Yusuke jumping into the road, the driver would have swerved at the last second and the kid would have not only lived, but actually come out with one less scrape.

So Yusuke is obviously upset by this news! I would be too!! Holy shit, hang onto the "it's the thought that counts" message with everything you've got.

Also, don't think too much about the fact that the afterlife apparently knows exactly what will happen to people, down to how many cuts they accumulate in an accident. Also, don't think too much about where the afterlife foreseeing the crash begins and the unexpectedness of Yusuke interfering ends. That way lies madness. This will never come up again, so just let it go.

Sorry, 2013 me hijacked the post for a second.

As said, Yusuke is understandably upset by this revelation and as he fumes I'm reminded that this series likes to pull some amazing expressions.

Botan reiterates that it's all fine because Yusuke can come back to life. Weren't you listening? He should feel honored, in fact, considering that an offer like this only arrives every 100 years or so. Well, that explains why all of humanity isn't grappling with people coming back to life on the daily. One person every generation isn't going to cause much of a stir.

However, instead of jumping at the chance Yusuke announces that Botan is just like the teachers at school: she doesn't know what she's talking about. “You said yourself my life was kind of pathetic, right?” he says, going on to explain that everyone will be happier now that he's dead. His school won't have to deal with his behavior, Keiko won't have to nag him, and his mom will be able to party whenever she wants. It's a win-win for everyone involved.

Hmm, this feels familiar.

Don't worry, Yusuke doesn't need to experience a whole alternate reality to get the message.

“I’m sorry you feel that way at such an early age," Botan says and she is sorry, because despite her teasing nature that's a legitimately horrifying thing to believe. Yusuke won't budge though and after a little back-and-forth Botan leaves, telling Yusuke he should think it over while visiting his wake. She'll come back once he decides what to do.

“Do you have worms in your ears, lady? I did decide!” but Botan is long gone.

We cut to that night where Yusuke has indeed decided to attend his own wake. Maybe because of Botan's advice, maybe because he's just morbidly curious. We’re not given insight into the decision.

Atsuko is a mess, to put it mildly, not dressed for the occasion and sitting slumped against the way, staring vacantly as the guests offer their condolences. Yusuke is surprised by the fact that his entire class is here, but quickly writes them off when he sees two of the boys laughing. I'm on the fence about this detail, which I'll unpack in just a second.

First though, Yusuke sees Keiko exiting the house, inconsolable in her grief. She collapses on the ground with her two friends trying to offer comfort, despite the fact that they had nothing good to say about Yusuke himself. Good on them.

Before he can think too long on this though, Yusuke is distracted by Kuwabara's arrival. Unlike Keiko's crying, he expresses his grief through yelling. Specifically, yelling at Yusuke. For dying. For daring to "run away." His own friends are physically holding him back as he charges into the wake, screaming, “Who am I gonna fight now, huh? Who am I gonna fight?" It's not really about the fighting, of course. At least, not the fighting alone. "You’re supposed to be here for me," Kuwabara finishes, the punch he's thrown at Yusuke's photo going limp and catching his first tear.

You know, for all the goofy expressions, this show really is gorgeous. Just wait until we get to the fight animations.

Kuwabara's reaction is why I hesitate to write off the classmates like Yusuke has. Granted, we have no reason to believe that they care for him as Kuwabara does — they're nameless background characters defined only by their terror of "the great Urameshi" — but it's still a split second taken out of context. We don't know what they were laughing at, or if laughing is a part of their grief. God knows I personally laugh at the most inappropriate moments. If you tell me someone has just died there is a very good chance I will laugh awkwardly as I try to process that. It’s just a reflex. All of which I bring up not because these side characters are important, but because Yusuke's perception of his own worth is. The point of each of these moments is to show that those around him have always cared for him, even if Yusuke didn't notice. It's nice to think that extends to his classmates too. The variety likewise exists to show us how people grieve differently, with Kuwabara's friends not understanding that this is how he's working through the trauma: “This place is for mourning!” He is mourning, even if his way of mourning isn't as socially acceptable as Keiko's. So if screaming and throwing punches is valid, crying is valid, staring stoically in a drunk stupor is valid... why not laughter too?

Not likely, perhaps, but possible.

As an additional possibility to chew on, watching this premier again, it struck me how more emotional Kuwabara's scene is compared to Keiko's. Don't get me wrong, crying and calling Yusuke’s name gets the point across, but it's two seconds of generic grief compared to a much longer scene rife with intensity. When Kuwabara arrives the music swells and everyone is forced to pay attention to him. His grief is loud, violent, and given symbolism with his fist and the photo. There's more effort put into his reaction, frankly, so it wouldn't surprise me if fans started shipping them after this. That grief combined with an "enemies to lovers" possibility is a pretty potent mix. To be clear, Yusuke/Keiko is the (oh so obvious) canonical endgame and in the fandom Yusuke/Kuwabara can't compare to another slash ship that will turn up later, but this is a good example of how writers can craft some Very Gay Scenes without realizing it. When you have the girl crying prettily for a second and the guy absolutely losing his mind over Yusuke's death, questioning his purpose now, his support network, and then collapsing in grief... don't be surprised if your audience goes, "Oh hey, maybe they'd be a good couple instead."

But I digress.

The only people who are unquestioningly happy about Yusuke's passing are Mr. Iwamoto and his co-conspirator, Mr. Akashi. You know Akashi is another bad guy because he has bucked teeth and "ugliness" is an easy way to code for evilness. YYH is not immune to those mistakes :/

These two are really something else though, standing in the middle of a wake and claiming it's “too bad that car wasn’t big enough for them too," referring to Kuwabara and his friends. Wow! What stellar members of the academic community. Iwamoto goes on to say that Yusuke dying at least accomplished something good. Not, mind you, saving the life of a child, but rather looking good for their school's reputation. Akashi agrees, but says it's likely Yusuke only accidentally saved him while trying to steal the kid's lunch money. Remember, that accusation of theft is the one thing Yusuke has said outright that he does not do.

He's pissed listening to all this — wouldn't you be? — but knows by now he can't do anything about it. In another fantastic shot, Yusuke hovers his hand over Iwamoto's shoulder, desperate to grab him, when Takenaka's arrives there instead.

“What do you suppose is more disgraceful? That boy showing his misery, or your insensitive and idiotic words!”

HELL YEAH. You tell 'em, Mr. Takenaka.

Yusuke gets his third shock of the night at this passionate defense. Takenaka leaves the teachers to go pay his respects, but admits to Yusuke's picture that he just can't speak well of him. He was surprised to hear that Yusuke gave up his life for another and it's a fact that he acted selfishly. Though he doesn't say it in as many words, Takenaka explains that he's not grieving because Yusuke was a good person, but because it's so clear to him that he might have been. “Why didn’t you stay? You could have made something great out of yourself.”

Normally, "Why didn't you stay?" is just something for the living to grapple with, as the dead obviously don't have any say in what happens to them. But Yusuke does. It's here that the lighting grows soft again and Yusuke considers Takenaka's words. Keiko and Kuwabara grieve for who he was, but Takenaka grieves for who Yusuke could have been — someone that might still exist if Yusuke decides to undergo this ordeal.

Atsuko adds fuel to the emotional fire, breaking down and hiding her face in her knees.

Finally, the kid Yusuke saved arrives with his mother. Because yes, Yusuke saved him in every way that matters, considering no one else knows — or will know — that he'd have lived anyway. I like that the show doesn't allow that knowledge to undermine the emotion of their arrival, or what Yusuke’s act meant to them.

The mom tells her son to pay his respects and the kid thanks Yusuke for saving him, and for "making faces." He clearly doesn't get what's going on here. This is confirmed as the two leave and he asks his mom if he can play with Yusuke again tomorrow. “I know some people sounded angry at him, but he’s really nice!"

They're probably just crying because they want to play with him too, he thinks, which just makes his mom join in. Everyone is crying in this club tonight.

Those words are the cincher for Yusuke and with a brief montage of all the grief he's witnessed, he makes his decision.

We cut to later that night where Yusuke floats above the city, admiring the moon. Botan reappears and he asks, “Have you ever not known about something that seemed obvious to everyone else?” Yes, everyone has experienced that at one point or another. She asks if he's made his decision and Yusuke agrees to try and come back to life.

Emotional revelations out of the way, we're allowed another tone shift as Botan yells with joy, speeding off and causing Yusuke to grab hold of the end of her oar, lest he be left behind. Cranky as always, he demands to know where they're going. "To the spirit world, of course!" They're off to see someone who can explain the ordeal and give Yusuke the tool needed to complete it. Just hang on and enjoy the ride.

Thus ends our very first episode! Ah, the nostalgia. This is part one of a four arc series, with the anime cutting out a lot of the filler stories found at the start of the manga — a smart decision, I think. They primarily do the work of teaching Yusuke what he learned at the wake, so if you can accomplish that as quickly as the adaptation did, all the better. Especially since Yusuke needs to grow a great deal beyond the basic understanding that people might, sort of care for him, and that work will occur primarily through a job he's going to take on. The series isn't really about his death and it's not about an attempt to come back either — it's about what happens once you get that second chance. So this is the setup, but it's important setup all the same.

No need to skip ahead though. I've blathered enough for one recap. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you when the writing gods next bless me with energy! 💜

#YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #YYH recaps #mymetas

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an-ambivalent · 5 years

Text

World Of Lust [Yandere! Incubus! Park Jimin] [Reader-Insert]

Warning: This is NOT for the faint-hearted. This story contains yandere themes, abusive relationships, and a lot of other vulnerable topics that can be triggering or uncomfortable to read. Proceed at your own risk. This work is purely fiction. I do not believe any of the mentioned members would display any sort of this behavior in reality, nor do I condone any abusive actions that characters portray. Once again, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Word Count: 3.5K

The night was pitch black and eerily haunting. With its haunting, it brought a chill of icy coldness that sent shivers through one’s spine. The only sign of any light during this dark and stormy night was from the viciously flickering lightning. It had the potential to strike down the tallest of trees, buildings, and other structures or light them on fire. Thunder boomed loudly enough that the prey of the storm felt its rumbling effect in their bones. Rain poured heavily and mercilessly from the heavy dark clouds. On nights like these, underworld demons indulged in terms the humans referred to as partying and fun. Some tended to arrange meet up with their friends and enjoy each other’s company. While others, did more sinful activities and overfed their lust. Generally on night like these, it was all supposed to be fun and games, but something about tonight, felt wrong.

Once upon a time, long ago, you were a wild succubus who enjoyed her freedom, youth, and single life to its full-potential. You use to find a new victim each night to feed off. In your prime days, you oozed with charisma, power, beauty, and an aura that pulled everyone to you. You were desirable and for that reason, the line of men who wished to have you bed them never seemed to end.

As mentioned before, that wild and desirable you was a thing of the past. Now, you were a woman with many titles and roles that came with a lot of responsibilities. You were the fiance of the next Incubus King. This meant you would eventually be the next queen of your kingdom, and the King’s right hand advisor and wife. Additionally, you had come to bear a child, and giving birth to an incubus or a succubus child was no easy task; it was painful and long labour that had a lot of risks. The after care for the baby as it grew up required a lot of commitment. Needless to say, your future required a lot of a hard work and selflessness. However, you did not mind. You told yourself that this was the best future anyone could ask for, and it was what you wanted. When you were younger, your parents allowed and gave you freedom to do whatever you pleased. But now it was your age to settle down with the man of their choice. You could not be been more fortunate enough to have Park Jimin, the next King as your soon to be spouse. As long as you were fed a lot by your spouse during your nine months, it all generally worked out.

You gazed out of the glass window of your living room and watched the harsh storm occur. The loudness of it resonated in the emptiness and the silence of the mansion walls you lived in. Its was just another grim reminder of the lonely life you lived with Jimin and how he refused to let you go anywhere. He used excuses like how people would target you to get to him to keep you confined. He told you that he felt in peace knowing that you were at home where you would be protected and nothing could harm you so he preferred you to stay home all the time. You felt it was a bit unfair whenever you pondered about it since you were always cooped up in one place, while Jimin was out all the time enjoying himself.

It left a bitter and sour taste in you. But again, you reminded yourself of how fortunate you were to end up engaged to someone like Jimin. You gave yourself a sense of hope that this would not be forever. It would get better, it definitely had to get better.

And just because Jimin forbid you from going out and seeing your friends, did not mean that you could not invite them over.

Just then, there was a knock on the door of the mansion you lived in. You heard the familiar voice of your friends Jungkook and Mina calling your name from outside. Right away, you unfolded your wings from your back and raised them. You flapped them before you flew towards the door, and opened it.

There were visible twinkles of excitement shining in your eyes at the sight of your friends because you were finally getting to meet someone again.

They both walked in and Jungkook shut the door behind him. You landed on your feet and ran up to hug them. Well particularly, you threw your entire body weight on Mina and smothered her in affection.

“Wow there, [Name]. I know it's been a while but I didn’t think you’d miss me this much,” Mina said, when you had jumped into her arms, and she wrapped them around your waist and held you up. She returned the ferocity of your hug. However, it seemed as if she had used too much force because you physically winced. Instantly, she loosened her hold on you and settled you down on the ground gently. Then, you walked towards Jungkook. You simply gave him a smile and an awkward side hug. The affection you portrayed towards him as a friend, was nowhere near to how you expressed your love for Mina for reasons that were yet to be revealed. While you were being awkward with Jungkook, Mina was watching you calculating eyes.

“You were surprisingly very light to pick up [Name]. I don’t think you’ve ever been that easy to hold before and you look awfully thin,” Mina stated icily, and her eyes narrowed at you in suspicion. The way your skin was thin enough to stick to your rib cages visibly was evident. The fullness and the brightness that was always expressive on your face, and brought out your beauty was no longer there. Your wings were supposed to be big, wide and viciously beautiful. But at the moment, you could not even raise them high enough for the average. They were thin enough that veins in them were visible.

You looked starved and unwell.

“You are meant to weigh a lot more [Name] especially since you are pregnant. Is Jimin not feeding you?” Mina asked, and you inwardly winced.

The truth was obvious to everyone like a lit candle visible in a dark cave, but knowing how Jimin could be, you refused to tell it. Instead, you smiled sweetly at them.

“Jimin has been too tired lately from all the preparations he has to do for his crowning ceremony. So I didn’t want to be a bother,” You said timidly, and cringed. Actually, your lie was not a complete lie.

Jungkook scoffed. “Too tired to look after his mate? That’s a whole load of bullshit. He practically threatened and ripped me apart to steal you away from me, and just to make me jealous, wouldn’t let you rest for a minute. He was busy preparing back then as well but didn’t seem too tired to rip us apart. He fucked you even when you were too tired to continue to shove it all in my face. You can’t tell me he can’t even spare ten minutes to feed you [Name]. That’s bullshit and you know it,” Jungkook hissed angrily. To say he was pissed at how Jimin was treating you was a big understatement.

Mina gave Jungkook a warning stare that said ‘watch your mouth’ before she turned towards you.

“While Jungkook went overboard, and should have made his point much more nicely, he does have a point. You have got to stop defending Jimin when he’s in the wrong and stand up for yourself [Name]. You know how our bodies work. We are stronger than other species and can endure hunger for longer periods of time without feeling bothered. But our starvation hits us all at once [Name], and you know not eating in that state is bad. But being fed in that state in even riskier especially if paired with the vulnerability that comes with being pregnant,” Mina reminded you. While you were grateful for the concern they expressed for you, it annoyed you how they were treating you as if you were incapable of looking after yourself.

You knew the risks, and the consequences. You were a grown adult and you were more than aware of the choices you were making.

“Thanks guys, I appreciate your worry but I can look after myself. You don’t need to fuss over me like a baby. Besides, I called you over here to hang out so I can not think about Jimin,” You explained with a bit of sass in your voice. It was obvious from the tone of your voice that you wanted to move on from this subject.

“Sorry, yeah sure we should talk about something else,” Mina said, and smiled apologetically. You returned her smile with your own, knowing that she had realized their continuous pestering was making you uncomfortable.

However, Jungkook seemed like he wanted to do anything but move on from this subject because he was scowling. He began to voice his honest thoughts that wiped your smile off your face.

“Sure lets scoop all of this under the rug like we always do. Like what I want, and what you want doesn’t matter at all as long as privileged Prince Jimin is happy. Let’s not bring this up and ignore your crisis the way we ignored how you were forced away from me and now into a marriage you won’t be happy in. You’re great at that, aren’t you [Name]? Great at pretending as if I never existed for you or you never loved me,” Jungkook snapped, and the fury that was on his face was beginning to morph into an expression of hurt.

Jungkook’s words did nothing but remind you about the things you always pushed at the back of your mind — memories and emotions from the times you were actually happy in. You had dug a grave for them and buried them in it so they would not get distracted from your purpose. It resulted in happiness that everyone got from your actions and sacrifices -- everyone but you.

The harsh reality of the reminder hurt. The feelings that you had locked away flooded into you all at once like water drops falling off a cliff and becoming part of the bigger water body that awaited it at the bottom. Each drop represented one thought, feeling, and sacrifice you had repressed.

Truth of the situation was that you did not love Jimin at all. He was the opposite of everything that you wanted in your life. He was controlling, and restricted your freedom with false excuses while he did whatever he pleased. He was abusing because he always ignored you when you asked him for something or would yell at you to leave him alone. But whenever it came to him needing something from you, he would forcefully take it without asking or any warnings.

You knew that you did not love Jimin and that he absolutely did not love you. He had a disgusting way of treating you because he would not make you happy, and would not allow yourself, others to make you happy either.

You loved Jungkook. All this time you had did what your parents had decided for you without question. You left Jungkook without any explanation, and abandoned everything you two had like it meant nothing. Your sweet, loving, protecting, and loyal Jungkook that treated you like his most precious treasure during sexual intercourse. He was the one who always pleasured you how you liked it. He stopped when he tended to overfeed from you, and took great care of you afterwards. Jungkook was the one who encouraged your wild side and joined you on the crazy adventures you ventured on.

Your incubus Jungkook who was too angelic for a demon and was everything that Jimin wasn’t — everything that you loved but had left—

No one realized the impact Jungkook’s words had on you until tears formed in the corner of your eyes. They fell down your face without your permission.

Mina and Jungkook’s eyes widened. In annoyance, Mina turned to him and smacked him harshly at the back of his head.

“Ow! Mina, what the hell?” He exclaimed, and she motioned her head towards you.

“You made her cry dimwit! Apologize and comfort her! I need to go now so I’m trusting you alone with her. You better not mess it up, got it Jeon?” Mina said threateningly, and Jungkook nodded. Then, she pushed him towards you ruthlessly, and as he glared at her, she simply stuck her tongue out. She gave him a thumbs up, before she walked out of your residence.

Jungkook was startled into paying his attention to you when a sob left your lips, and you started to speak messily.

“I-I never meant to hurt you Kookie, and I never— I never wanted to leave you. I just… I just thought,” You stammered, and you were unable to complete your sentence since you busted out in tears.

At the sight of your sorrowful face and use of his nickname, his heart felt like it literally melted for you.

“Oh [Name],” Jungkook cooed, as he wrapped his arounds you, and brought you in for a hug. You cried more as you returned his embrace without any hesitancy, and nuzzled your face in the crook of his neck.

“I’m sorry for saying such harsh things and holding it against you this entire time. I’m sorry baby girl, I didn’t know you were hurting so much. I wish I could help you take all of your troubles away and just make you happy,” He whispered softly, as he kissed the top of your head.

You sniffled, before you pulled away slightly and glanced up at Jungkook with dewed and teary eyes.

“I’m so hungry Jungkook and I’ve been feeling really sick. You can help me. You can make it all better. Please help me,” You begged, and your tail wrapped around his thigh, before it started to trail upwards towards his heat. It was a clear sign of desire, and Jungkook’s eyes widened in realization.

“[Name], if I sleep with you it won’t end well —“

“I don’t care anymore Jungkook. It never ends well. With Jimin, it always ends badly. He doesn’t care Jungkook, and he never will,” You murmured lowly, anger etched in your voice. Subsequently to this, Jungkook observed you for a few seconds as his eyes shifted from your eyes to your pouty lips, and then returned to your eyes.

He realized he was always weak for you.

“Okay,” He whispered quietly, and your eyes widened. The definite joy in your eyes made him realize why he would always risk it all for you.

He leaned closer to your face, as his hand caressed the back of your neck. Then, he brought your face closer to his too until your lips met.

The passion of your and Jungkook’s night began. All the while, you were oblivious to the pair of eyes that watched you with a menacing glare.

_______________________________________

You had not seen Jimin until the second night after you had slept with Jungkook. When he had returned home, he was in a foul mood which was nothing new for you. For the two nights he was gone for, you noticed how you had started to throw up blood, and despite being fed by Jungkook, you barely felt well.

You knew exactly what Jimin had been up to, you knew it from the condition you were in. Once an incubus or a succubus mated, they were only supposed to feed off their mate and no one else. The more someone mated feeds off someone who is not their mate, the sicker their mate would become. It was equivalent to the human term of cheating.

You had hoped that by feeding of Jungkook, Jimin would like the taste of his own medicine. You hoped that by rebelling against his strictness and apathetic attitude you could have taught Jimin a lesson, and it would encourage him to treat you better.

It did nothing. And you were yet to realize that it had only worsen your situation and acted as a catalyst for your demise.

While you had started to feel a bit better after laying with Jungkook, your appetite was not satisfied. Nothing could satisfy it the way Jimin, as your mate would. He was the only one who had the power to help you get better so you would stop throwing up blood. You desperately needed him to bed you for your own survival.

As Jimin entered your shared bedroom, the sight of his neck covered in love bites and other bruises that were all sorts of hues of black and blue entered your sight. Those were love bites that you had not made. Knowing what that meant, caused your stomach to churn, and your throat to constrict because you were barely able to hold yourself from falling apart.

“How was your day Jimin?” You asked in a strained voice. The black-haired make glanced at you from the corner of his eyes. However, he instantly looked away and refused to spare you another glance.

You clenched your bedsheets in anger.

“I see. Well, since you obviously don’t give a fuck about me can you at least think of your child and feed me? Any more starving, or you continuing to cheat on me will kill me. Can’t you spare some sympathy for your offspring?” You hissed. You never spoke to Jimin with such crude words and a vice tone. So, it caused him to snap his gaze towards you.

His eyes were etched with animosity.

“You don’t need me to feed you. Jungkook seemed to have taken care of that,” He said coldly, and in response, you scoffed at him in disbelief.

“He had to. Even before he did, you were treating me like trash and starving me and going behind my back and sleeping with how many others, I don’t even know. Do you think I’m stupid and I didn’t know? Why did you choose me Jimin? Why did you have me engage with you if you were just going to fucking ruin me—“ You started to scream, but your shouting was ceased instantly. Jimin flew towards you at the speed of light, pinned you beneath him, and covered your mouth with one hand. It was easy for him to hold you down since you were already physically weak. Whatever screams, words, or other sounds left your lips were only head as muffled sounds due to his hand on your mouth.

Jimin’s tail wrapped around your bare waist tightly and started to suffocate the air out of you. You tried to struggle out of his grip but your effort remained useless.

He leaned dangerously closer towards your face.

“You want to know why I treat you like trash [Name]? Because you are trash. You have no idea how much I hate you for always choosing Jungkook over me. If it wasn’t for my status or forcing you to be my spouse to be, then you would have never even looked my way. You have no idea how much I hate you for never noticing me on your own will,” Jimin began in a snarl, before slowly, he started to grind his hips against yours.

Your eyes widened in terror.

“You’re such an inconsiderate and selfish brat always blaming me. Did you ever stop to think that you were the reason why I cheated on you? That you had brought that on yourself? I was only sleeping with others to improve myself for you. But obviously, that never occurred to you. You only ever see the worst in me. Besides, why should I feed you and this fucking baby that isn’t even mine?” Jimin hissed, and his tail’s grip around your waist tightened to the point where it caused you to wither in extreme pain.

You knew what he was going to do, and you desperately shook your head. Heavy tears were beginning to welp up in your eyes, and you screamed at him to stop. But like all of your words before, it was muffled.

Jimin grinned sinisterly.

“First, I’m going to squeeze Jungkook’s baby out of you. If it was mine, then you would be much more swollen. Then, as punishment for constantly betraying me, I’m going to feed off your entire energy and just when you are on the verge of dying, I’ll overfeed you completely. That sounds like a good way to start doesn’t it [Name]?” Jimin whispered, and just the mere thought of what he had planned, caused you to cry out loud and shake your head in response. Your fear, and emotional stress only further manifested his excitement.

“You wanted me to feed you and pay attention to you [Name], so I’m only giving you what you wanted. Now, if you want me to start treating you like my queen after impregnating you with my seed and not like a piece of trash, then you better do as I say and scream much more loudly for me than you had for Jungkook.”

BAD ENDING

<<previous: Wrath [Yandere! Dragon-Shifter! Namjoon] | next: World Of Envy introduction>> | Masterpost

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corsairesque-blog · 5 years

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11/11/11 tag game

I was tagged by both @glasskaleidoscopes and @bonafidealchemy for this, so I’m knocking all ?’s in one post. This was fun!

From @bonafidealchemy:

1. how would you pitch your wip to someone who knew nothing about it?

I’ve had to try and find numerous ways to talk about my wip without dumping the entire story on someone. I suppose the best way to describe it is that it’s a what if scenario of France becoming a world empire, all because the French Revolution never happened.

2. do you have a specific audience in mind for your wip?

Not exactly. It’s adult fiction, but I suppose whoever was into the Leviathan series as a kid would be super into this story.

3. is it important to you that your wip has a moral or a message?

I don’t think it’s majorly important, but it’s always nice to have one.

4. what kinds of relationships do you like writing the most (romantic, platonic, familial, etc)?

Honestly I’m a huge romantic, so I absolutely adore writing slow burn, destined lover stuff. Buuuut I also love writing platonic found sibling relationships.

5. what kind of research have you done for your wip? what have you learned?

Where do I begin? I have an entire shelf dedicated to research. I took an entire class in college to research for this book. I’ve learned so much. My knowledge of French History has increased probably 5x as much as it did before. My knowledge on steampunk and air balloons even more so. My goal with my WIP is upend disbelief. I want you to read my story and go, technically this shouldn’t make sense, but the writer discusses it in such a way that it’s pretty believable. Ever read The Effluent Engine by N.K. Jemisin? I want to write about the mechanics of the world like that. So I’ve done a shit load of research

6. if your wip became very successful, would you want to make a movie adaptation? why or why not?

Can I have a TV adaptation instead?

7. did you have any alternate title ideas for your wip? if so, what are they?

Sea of Air is just a placeholder title. Currently this WIP is the story without a title, because I have yet to find something right for it

8. what has been the hardest part about writing your wip so far?

Balancing the world building and the actual writing.

9. do you prefer writing action or description?

Action, always. I’m not good at descriptions (still/yet)

10. what do you want your readers to come away with after reading your story?

Oooh… a sense of accomplishment. Empowerment. I want them to feel content because the storyline and ending went the way it should have, or at least felt that way.

11. what’s your favorite part about your wip? what makes you excited to write it?

My characters, specifically Rosalie. The airship. Thinking about what Paris would look like when the imagination of cafes on rooftops with air balloons comes to life. Thinking about France as an empire, and it’s devastating impact on any growth if it ever did become one. That’s just super interesting to explore. Finishing it is what makes me most excited to write it.

And from @glasskaleidoscopes:

1. What do you do when you need to think of writing ideas?

I usually work out. Running gets my brain going. If not I usually call my girlfriend and ask if she’ll listen to me rant about my story. We then go off of questions she gives me throughout the convo and ideas form from there

2. Do you know how your WIP ends? Or are you figuring it out along the way?

It’s a bit of both. I know in a broad sense, but not specially. I.e. i know I want the Revolution to succeed, but I’m not sure what I want the ruling government to be after. Or the effect it has on the rest of the world

3. What do you struggle with the most when writing?

I think I struggle with keeping on track. I easily get distracted to find an obscure detail for a sentence or a scene. I have to remind myself that this is a first draft

4. How have your characters evolved over your WIP?

I think my characters have been given more depth over time. Multiple went from side characters to essentials for plot. Caddis, actually, has gone from semi-redeemable father figure to being the sort of dude you really don’t want your children around.

5. Has one of your characters done something you never thought they would have done when you created them? If so, what?

Most definitely. Josephine, a side character, will become a bit of the enemy later on in the story even though her introduction is as a good character.

6. How far into your WIP(s) are you?

Heh. Well for the first part of this story I’m about 75k words in and have maybe another 15k to go? Times that total by say, four? I’m barely a quarter into this WIP!

7. What inspired your current WIP(s)?

My love for French history and a love for their imagination in a time where traveling in the sky was starting to rise.

8. What is your stance on using flashbacks in writing?

They’re good if done right. Which isn’t an answer at all. I feel like I’m back and forth on flashbacks. I love writing them now in my first draft but I don’t think a lot of them will stay come revisions

9. Which genre is your least favorite?

Horror. I don’t have the stomach for horror books

10. What is your worst writing-related habit?

I love to overcomplicate sentences. Like. A lot.

11. What bits (if any) of your personality have you added into your WIP?

My endless admiration with pirate coats has wormed its way in. There’s a lot more, I’m sure.

I’m cheating with this but here’s 11 I’m tagging (found some of y’all over a post asking to be tagged in tag games) @odpadkywriter @tjswritingstuff @bookenders @fantasy-shadows @libra-writes @mercutioswriting @typewrxter @shattered-starrs @designermolotovcocktails @alittlegoblinwrites and @the-corner-girl

My questions for y’all are the following!

1. Do you create playlists for your stories or characters?

2. What is your stance on endings that don’t end with some hope?

3. What author would you love to hear feedback from on your WIP?

4. What is the genre of your WIP(s)?

5. How do you come up with new ideas for your WIP(s)?

6. What do you use to keep all your writing on? (Scrivener, Google Docs, good old pen and paper...)

7. What gave you initial inspiration for your WIP(s)?

8. How long have you been working on your WIP(s)?

9. What was the first thing you came up with for your WIP(s)?

10. Have you considered Hogwarts houses for your characters? If so, what are they?

11. What do you find easiest to write? (Description, dialogue, etc.)

#tag game #writeblr #writers on tumblr #11/11/11

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falloncurry15-blog · 5 years

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Height Physique? Britain's 'Health club Bubble' Bursts.

With its irresistible dancing beat, strong bass line, and also simple consistencies and also lyrics, zouk has actually ended up being wildly popular in the Caribbean, Africa, as well as Europe. Keep reading to discover 10 points most fitness centers won't disclose to you yet are necessary to understand before register for a membership. The fitness center is loaded with resistance training equipment as well as is country wide understood for its intense workout courses. Load the titrant burette (NaOH) with about 4.5 mL. Do a quick initial dry run to approximate the approximate volume of NaOH required counteracting the H2SO4 (turns clear to pink) after that repeat with 3 runs, carefully videotaping volumes (last and also first) called for to reduce the effects of to the nearest 0.05 mL. First, the challengers declare that the most effective system of emission reduction"-- a crucial legal term-- could suggest absolutely nothing more than making minimal carbon pollution decreases with little improvements in generating performance at individual nuclear power plant. If you can't reach the gym to make use of the treadmill or climate does not permit you to run outside, there are other butt-sculpting exercises you could do that trigger the glutes similarly as running. States are currently continually associated with regulating these aspects of the power system, and the Clean Power Strategy-- with its enormous adaptability-- does not transform any of those functions. Many gyms have actually currently been asserted by a team however there is still a little possibility you'll discover a 'empty' one, which you could declare on your own as well as your brand-new group. Long modest intensity cardio workouts aren't essential to transform your body, as well as don't always need to belong of your health club set-up. When sufficient success have actually been claimed to get the rival group's stature there down to no, your group just wins a health club for itself. Open up: Monday from 5.15 pm to 6.15 pm judo for children and acrobatics from 6.15 pm to 6.45 pm; Tuesdays from 5.30 pm to 6.30 pm judo for kids; Wednesdays from 2pm to 2.45 pm as well as 4:30 pm to 5.15 pm baby-judo as well as from 3pm to 4.15 pm judo for young adults; Thursdays from 5.15 pm to 6.20 pm and also Fridays from 5.30 pm to 6.30 pm judo for kids. Well as we know, Gold's started to grow as well as within a few years it was becoming the health club to train in. Gold's remained in all the magazines as well as sponsoring body building programs. The film bolts along at a breakneck pace, from an opening sky diving scene to the critical battle, which finds Mud cackling away in the cockpit of a mechanical dinosaur. The division is seeking advice from on 2 options for properly forcing the UK's last eight coal power plant to nearby 2025 at the very most recent. You could additionally practice the sword battle with the 4 trainers in the Health club Island, and obtain loan by beating them. It should be noted that one-rep optimums could be calculated using submaximal loads, based on weight raised and the number of repetitions carried out. Likewise, when the children were younger they could not constantly have good friends over after college due to the fact that I needed to be available to drive Aly to the fitness center.. At the heart of their case the Clean Power Strategy's oppositions have paintinged a substantial fiction: An image of a steady, healthy coal-based power market happily providing everybody with inexpensive power, up until the large negative EPA went along and also interrupted whatever, forcing the sector right into tumultuous modification, and ruining the American energy economic situation. When a beast assaulted the two, Adam risked his life by using a damaged Power Coin to morph right into the Black Ranger to help his friend out. Send it tape-recorded delivery so you have proof of when you sent it, and can learn whether the health club has actually obtained it or not. While points are granted for every rival based upon what does it cost? they lift as compared to exactly how little they weigh, powerlifting is a distinctly private sport that involves competing with one's self as high as with other lifters. Some occasions are invitation-only and also you can only get involved if you are a member of a fitness center or club connected with competition coordinators. When she recognizes why Seeker and also I counted the Wind Rangers as our opponents, I didn't assume she might potentially really feel so highly about just what occurred in between us ... not. The health club consists of weight reduction courses twice a month and has signed up dietitians on personnel. Women whose most significant desire was to obtain a clerical work at Smith Barney as well as vacation with their managers in the Bahamas unlike those of us in the Program, that desired for encountering down F5 hurricanes and also soothing raving rivers. Galen came up to us, as well as the power available to him without any thought from me. The three of us stood there loaded with the evening. The clean-and-jerk is a two-part lift in which the weight is drawn from floor to bear height, after that pushed overhead. Newbies should perform the pelvic tilt on a regular basis before beginning the pelvic lift. Currently with the innovation in innovation we have brand-new functions like ZPOD which blocks the power flow to the CDROM when not in use. To help determine whether or not a load could be lifted securely, the NIOSH has actually created a formula that takes into account a variety of variables connected to lifting. After its closure, as much as 250 individuals will certainly be called for between 2017 and 2023 to manage the mine as well as power station site rehab, he said. The initial 1Rebel gym - in the shadow of the Dill pickle in the City of London - is an 8,000 sq feet space split into 2 huge studios. Situated 4,000 miles from the west coastline of the USA, Ta'u has actually depended upon over 100,000 gallons of diesel shipped in from the primary island of Tutuila to endure, using it to power residences, government buildings and also - most importantly - water pumps. When an individual has power, either through political election or military stroke of genius, their power exists in the capacity to physically coerce people into doing just what they do not intend to do. The important concept of a leader or leader, with power, does not change from federal government type to government kind. The brother or sister competition between both doesn't stop them from invoking systems to damage the Rangers. From smelling as well good to filling a giant dimension canteen when there is a line of individuals behind you, read on to see if you're guilty of any of these 16 fitness center family pet peeves. The Gym said the number of low-cost health clubs across the country had increased to 319 this year from 58 in 2011. https://studiosante.de/ling-fluent/ claimed, the plot brings me to my 2nd issue - one which maintains Outright Power from being a 5-star publication. The health club likewise contains 450 pieces of cardio workout equipment in addition to dumbbells and devices. When you're working out and also your devices is smoother this also implies that you're working your muscular tissues much more efficiently, getting a far better workout in general. The motion picture seems to be asking us to go out of the cinema trembling our heads in disillusionment, yet I was more puzzled than frustrated. To Zack went the White Zeo Shard, giving him the power of the Light, and control of the White Cheetah Zord. Works a little much better than the initial Power Rangers motion picture yet will certainly not extend its allure past the program's follower base. The Crimson Ranger is there, chuckling, throwing screws of lightning at the Wind Rangers. Yet it is additionally the type of power that Gandhi accessed, that at some point brought the British Realm to provide India's self-reliance. Both rangers drifted to opposite sides, enabling the blast to fly harmlessly previous them.

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parsleybabe · 6 years

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The Unpopular Opinion Book Questionaire

Before I start, credit where credit is due: I copied the questions and format of this post from @resist-the-fear’s post and this wordpress post, because I couldn’t figure out how to add my answers into the original post without messing up all formatting. And I’m really sorry if this upsets anybody, but the idea is cool and it’d be a shame not to continue it on tumblr.

So, here we go...

1. A Popular Book or series that you didn’t like.

1) Feels like the Twilight Saga would be the obvious answer (and it IS), but I’m gonna go for pretty much all of Dan Bown’s novels and I’m gonna explain my dislike with The DaVinci Code

This novel actually angered me so much that I wrote my master’s thesis on how Brown deliberately mislead the majority of his readers into mistaking his fiction for actual facts in order to sell more books.

The gist is, any and all art historic descriptions and information given within the book are fully fictional. That includes a page of “facts” (labeled as such) preceding the novel itself (which doesn’t contain any actual facts at all) and a note underneath stating that all descriptions of paitings were accurate. Spoiler alert: They’re not. I majored art history in school and did a lot of research, but, honestly, anybody who’s interested in art history and knows the very very basics about the renaissance and other time periods can easily disprove all of the novel’s supposedly accurate art descriptions.

And, to be truthful, I have to admit that Brown is really fucking good at fiction. He’s also really good at writing his fiction around and over existing art historic knowledge and twisting it without making it too obvious for careless readers. That’s kinda cool. And I get that disguising fiction as fact isn’t a new trend. I mean... Defoe did when he falsely claimed that Robinson Cruseo was a factual report of a true event, because the readership of his time period wasn’t familiar with adventure fiction. But what really annoyed me was 1) how many readers actually believed Brown to have uncovered some genuine conspiracy and 2) that Brown kept feeding into the delusion of those fans again and again through comments in interviews and webpages, even though he fully knew it’s all fiction, because he himself made it up.

2) And then there’s the Wanderhure series, written by a German writing couple under the pseudonym Iny Lorentz. I’m not sure if this has been translated into English, but it’s been highly popular in Germany and several other countries (won some awards and was made into a series of TV movies and whatnot). It is, quite honestly THE WORST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ IN MY WHOLE LIFE.

The first novel was recommended to me by relatives because parts of it take place in a city that I have lived in for quite some time, and it’s a historical fiction based on a medieval poem. The premiss of the novel is great: during the middle ages, a young and respected girl gets accused to have sinned by some townspeople and nobody believes her to be innocent, as she is just a girl. She gets cast out of her city and home, left with no other choice than to become a traveling whore if she wants to survive. She ends up becoming quite successful in her profession (in the sense that she has many high ranking clients from both church and state who pay her with lots of money and other favors) and returns to the city that cast her out long ago to have a huge effect on politics and religion.

The story was quite intriguing to me, both due to the interesting plotline as well as the reference to the city I live in. HOWEVER, it is horribly written. All characters, especially the protagonist, are unbelievably flat. There is no character development whatsoever, even though the story offers plenty of chances to find it. I read through the book because of the locations... houses that actually still exist, that I have been in, Gateways that i’ve walked through, roads that I’ve travelled on. Those are very well described. It’s easy to figure out each and every step the characters take on a map and that’s really cool. But the plotline was destroyed by less than mediocre characterization and simple, unimpressive language. Every time a character is supposed to feel something, the sentence literally goes, “She felt xyz” - and that’s as descriptive as it gets. There’s no atmosphere created and not an ounce of fluidity in the sentence structure. The whole narration is as dry as brick and the story reads like a two dimensional still drawing of a 3D rollercoaster ride.

2. A Popular Book or series that every one else seems to hate but you love.

I honestly don’t think that there’s any book series that EVERYBODY hates. And I do think that all the books I love, are actually pretty popular. Buuuuut...

I’ve seen the Mortal Instruments series getting a lot of hate on tumblr. And I fully understand why Cassandra Clare isn’t everybody’s favorite author. I don’t like her methods and procedure at all either. But, I have to say that I do like the basic plotline of the Mortal Instruments. I’ve only read the first three novels, and I have no clue what happens afterwards. And there’s a lot to be criticized, be it Clare “copying” existing dialogues, or some really flat and ... well, just plain naive characters. BUT the plot itself is cool. So, I felt positively entertained and liked it. Love would be a bit of a strong term, though, I think.

3. A Love Triangle where the main character ended up with the person you did NOT want them to end up with (warn ppl for spoilers) OR an OTP that you don’t like.

Not giving any spoilers, but the Demon’s Lexicon Trilogy. I really, really disliked the reveal of an actual pairing in the third novel. It didn’t make sense to me, and I wasn’t reading for romance to begin with. It kind of cheapened the story because the love interest side story suddenly got A LOT of attention that it didn’t before and that shifted the focal point of the overall plotline. (Loved the first book, really liked the second, couldn’t care less for the third, tbh)

4. A popular book Genre that you hardly reach for.

It’s either crime fiction or esoteric non-fiction.

I’m actually into a lot of different genres: almost all types of fiction (YA, dystopian, sci-fi, political, thriller, mystery, adventure, horror, fantasy etc.), also children’s books, travel books, hobby and craft books, satires, other humorous books, biographies/autobiographies, educational books, historical books both fiction and non-fiction...

Doesn’t matter, but crime fiction (as long as it doesn’t contain anything else) is just so boring to me. Also, it feels to me as if most crime fiction heroes solve those crimes with A LOT more lucky coincidences than I would hope actual crime fighters depend on.

And esoteric books are just completely outside my personal interests. Either the stuff described in those books feels like fiction to me while being sold as non-fiction, or it’s stuff that I feel should not be aquired through books but personal encounters and explorations.

5. A popular or beloved character that you do not like.

Definitely Clary Fray from the Mortal Instruments. Man, she is soooooo slow on the uptake and so naive in so many ways. And she’s also kind of a horrible Mary Sue, not just because of her name... (I mean, really? Clary, Ms Clare? 😔) But also because of how she is so awesomely good at everything and how she always thinks of the perfect solutions for everything when nobody else does. Kinda... very little room for character development. But, then again, who needs that, right?

6. A popular author that you can’t seem to get into.

Aside from Dan Brown? Here’s my unholy trinity...

1) Stephenie Meyer (yeah, the Twilight one) - I was actually sent an e-book copy of Twilight right before it became such a huge success. I started reading it, because my friend recommended it and praised it so highly. But, I couldn’t make it past a couple dozen pages. The writing style is just so bad, I couldn’t continue. The characters were so flat, I lost any and all interest in what was going to happen. And the story wasn’t all that intriguing either, especially because it was loaded with antiquated world views, especially Bella’s character and what was deemed right for her to do was just... WOW, it was just so unbelievably bad, lol. I was so surprised that it actually ended up being successful.

2) E.L.James (the 50 Shades one) - For years, I genuinely believed that it was impossible to write worse than Meyer. Boy, was I wrong. I tried several times to read more than ten pages of 50 Shades of Grey, and I failed every single time. It’s not just a bad story, I’ve seen children’s books for toddlers that have a more interesting sentence structure than what she comes up with for an adult audience. Her language is so dull and non-descriptive that even the supposedly racy sexy bits read like a phone book to me. Honestly, I DON’T GET WHY anybody ever had any interest in this book series. The language is unspeakably poor, the plot takes all the wrong turns it could possibly take, the “research” done before writing the book... I don’t even know where that load of complete misinformation could possibly come from.

3) Iny Lorentz (the writing couple I mentioned above: Elmar Wohlrath and Iny Klocke) - Just bad, bad, bad writing. No concept of character development, fiction asthetically written like non-fiction, no use of language to create atmosphere or convey emotions. They write neutral snoozefests. And... I can’t bring myself to write any more on them.

7. A popular book trope that you’re tired of seeing. (examples “lost princess”, corrupt ruler, love triangles, etc.)

Mary Sues and Gary Stues. But Love Triangles are a very hot contender.

8. A popular series that you have no interest in reading.

All the different Shades, lol.

9. The saying goes “The book is always better than the movie”, but what movie or T.V. show adaptation do you prefer more than the book?

Definitely Stand By Me which is Stephen King’s The Body. That movie is about as great as that story could have possibly been when put onto the screen. The actors were so perfectly cast, the cinematography, costumes and set design really captured the time period, atmosphere and geography, and the facial expressions portrayed all the right emotions beautifully.

Also, I have to say, out of all of King’s movie adaptations, and while neither The Body nor Stand By Me are categorized as horror, the scene where you can see the dead boy’s face is one of the scariest, most horrific moments I can think of in a film ever. It gave me nightmares when I first saw it, and still, to this day, I have to close my eyes when that scene comes up. And the cool thing is, it’s not meant to be specifically horrifying, or gory or scary. But the simplicity of the sudden glimpse into dead eyes, to me, is scarier than any monster I could imagine and does King’s reputation more than justice.

#books #personal #unpopular opinion

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vroenis · 4 years

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Art Created For Mood

I was watching a YouTuber I really like playing a game I really don’t like but from a developer that I also don’t like who does a thing I actually really like. That’s an opening and a half, but bear with me.

I don’t know if this book is good or not, but it’s here for the puns, and so am I. So is Max Kornell, it appears. I sure hope he’s an alright guy cos his children’s book is on my tumblr for a visual gag now.

It doesn’t matter what the game was, and it so happens it was DLC - some of you will be able to figure out what it was once I describe it, but very early on in the gameplay minutes of proceedings, the developers have the player-protagonist/avatar and your companion-of-the-moment engage in messing about in an old, abandoned fancy-dress store, picking up costumes and masks and larking about. I appreciate the YouTuber in question may have been partially or wholly playing up to the streaming audience ever-present at the time when they impatiently remarked “is this all we’re going to do” and “when do we get to actually play the game” etc., “when does the game start?” and so on, but as you may remember in my commentary on the Uncharted games a while back, interactions like these to someone like me are most often the most important - and now there’s no question what the game is if you haven’t figured it out already. As a side-note, I think the problem in this particular instance is one of pacing, and cold-opening the DLC with a scene like this may have been the issue. Video game pacing is tricky, tho, so it’s difficult to consider whether most players would be playing this content months after having experienced the main game, or whether the majority of players will be those who will have purchased it fresh on the newest generation of hardware, given the title actually launched a whole console iteration ago. Assuming that might be the case, the pacing experience might be entirely different, but I’m getting side-tracked.

I can’t account for what the YouTuber/Streamer was thinking and I don’t want to throw any shade and suggest they may have been performing for their audience - even if they were, it’s still fine - Streaming is performance, I feel like that much should be clearly evident. It’s not important to me where the truth lies within that individual. What the exterior performance telegraphs tho, is perhaps a misunderstanding of what the purpose of a scene like that is. I realise that in games that feature frequent occurrences of brutal violence, tension, excitement and anxiety, scenes of levity and peacefulness offer reprieve and introspection. They’re effective because of context and their rarity lends them power.

I’m still here to say a whole game of those kinds of things can still be powerful, you just have to be intelligent about the context. Reframing maturity to mean something other than violence takes real intelligence. It makes me question just how many actual adults we have developing video games. No, I don’t hate to bring it up again, but you need to play Kentucky Route Zero, Howling Dogs and a myriad of other Twine games and many other games created in queer spaces to perhaps broaden your understanding of what adults create when they don’t look to violence as a banner for maturity.

Naturally I’m going to turn to the most cliched of mediums; film.

For which I won’t apologise. That’s a frame from the montage in the middle of Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 movie Kōkaku Kidōtai - Ghost In The Shell, based on Masamune Shirow’s manga of the same name. I’d like to say that frame or the set of frames it’s taken from is one of my favourites from the film, because it is, but to be honest, the entirety of the three and a half minute montage is absolute perfection and every frame is equally important. It encapsulates the essence of the film without a single line of dialogue by playing a haunting piece of music expertly crafted by Kenji Kawai and showing seemingly disjointed images of the city in which the film is set. The film’s protagonist does appear in several shots, and some frames exhibit the city in decay, but some are completely urbane and simply show life in ordinary existence. Without discussing the main text of the film further, suffice to say it is the perfect frame for the subject of the narrative without stating it.

Before I embed the Ghost In The Shell montage, however, I want to share one Oshii created 2 years before it in Patlabor 2: The Movie. Let’s watch that one together, and even if you’ve not seen the film yourself, note in particular how topical the images are today, if you’re reading this some time around July 2020.

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For those who’ve not seen the film, I highly recommend it. It’s not necessary to have seen either the series or the first Patlabor movie. It may help a little to watch the first film, mostly just to familiarise yourself with characters and terminology, but it’s not a necessity. The first film is much more comedic and while the second still has its funny moments, as evidenced in this montage, it takes a much more dramatic and sombre turn. Various domestic terrorist and military activities cause a declaration of martial law in Tokyo at roughly the mid-point of the film at which point this montage appears. The depictions of the citizenry, their interaction with the military and vice-versa are particularly interesting, and the film’s commentary as a whole is fascinating. That this has for the most part been lovingly and agonisingly rendered by hand in stunning animation detail is amazing.

Feelings are wonderful, weird, oddly shaped things. We use a lot of words in our lives, pragmatically to communicate, to instruct, to describe and tell stories. Funnily enough, when I was deeply entrenched in video games culture doing podcasts, playing a lot of games and writing a lot more about game studies etc., there was a lot of writing about the place about game verbs and it’s a great synthesis of design - a tool for describing the most simple actions in a game; move, jump, shoot, collect, talk, choose etc. In my introductory example, there are still a lot of verbs in play, like move, but the one most absent is of-course shoot, and the one that comes to the fore is talk. I feel like the scene at the beginning of that DLC is wholly intended to create a sense of atmosphere, to evoke certain feelings. Is it there to set the scene for context later on? Maybe. Is it for reprieve from violence? Also possible. But perhaps it’s just there to be relished, to be indulged. Maybe it’s OK to just be there to be felt, because feeling it is good, or even just feeling it is feeling something. Maybe it doesn’t have to be good, it’s just a different feeling to the way we feel when we’re reading an action feedback-loop where we’re engaged in move/shoot/wait/don’t die/melee/die-reload-repeat.

It’s hard for me to separate these montages from the films they come from. I want to say they’re powerful outside of the films, but I’ve seen those films so my viewings and re-viewings of them are loaded with my memories of the entire work; I have the full context. Tempted as I am to embed the montage from Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, I think that would be spoiling you too much, plus the film in its entirety really warrants a full viewing. Kenji Kawai’s music in the second film along deserves maximum volume and your time uninterrupted, so I won’t demean it with a tiny little window and a wall of text. I promised you the montage from the first GitS movie, so here it is, at three and a half minutes.

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I’m using the word feel quite a lot in this entry and it’s intentional. In recent times, we seem to be de-emphasising our feelings somewhat and I’m all for some semblance of rationality and logic but emotions are important. Feelings are amazing - all of them. The ones that are good, the ones that are uncomfortable, the ones that are uncontrollable. I guess some folks try to talk about understanding feelings and there’s a little truth in that but I don’t think it’s something we can ever fully get a complete hold of, nor should we. I’m not here to attempt to provide you guidance on that, I think if you’re reading this, you’re well capable of gauging for yourself what the impact is of your emotions to your life and what you may need to do about it. Don’t read an implication that I mean to diminish their impact, either - you may well need to amplify their impact, I think a lot of people don’t consider that - now more than ever, but again, I wouldn’t know. You would. Only you do.

Anyway - I feel like a lot of art and moments in art, or sections of art, are being misinterpreted or criticised because people aren’t open to the intent. Again I come back to the example in the opening to this entry. Assuming on good faith that the YouTuber’s/Streamer’s behaviour was genuine, their reading of the activity in the game was that it was somehow not game, and that until there was either shooting or puzzling or adventuring of some kind, that those things would be actually game or real gameplay does that scene and activity a disservice. Of-course, maybe they just straight-up didn’t like it which is fair. I accept that, I guess - but I don’t like it.

It still bothers me tho. Even tho I really don’t like that game, I understand that the point of it is to ground the narrative in very human roots, in emotional engagement so that the character has something to celebrate, to cherish fondly, or even perhaps to regret or look back on with bitterness or anger. Regardless - even if it doesn’t have a payoff in the future, I still feel like it’s important as a representation of human behaviour in a game in which human avatars are depicted. The images on screen within that video game are for the most part not abstract. The themes shown and the narrative woven about their journey, their motivations, the justifications for their actions and the moralising therein within the fictional framework of the universe are all extremely human and intended to be analogous to the real human experience.

That being the case, on that assumption, I’m surprised and even more disappointed that there aren’t more non-violent indulgences of peaceful human interactions on offer in these games.

People’s tastes in films, I guess, has been quite monolithic for some time. I mean, I’ve always had the throw-away semi-casual assumption of such but I didn’t think it was a real thing. I appreciate I’m into some fringe stuff and I don’t expect most people to get into the super-weird films, but that folks would be so narrow? Like... so narrow. I’ve said it before, I’m well accustomed to the art I’m into being heavily criticised by most people, but even the more approachable material I’m into, people seem to either struggle to digest or still regard as boring because it doesn’t register on some level of excitement that scales on a weird, reductive verb-o-meter not dissimilar to video games designed with the fewest of verbs; move, shoot and collect. Sometimes a film isn’t necessarily about what’s literally happening on the screen, or strictly about the narrative playing out. Sometimes art is about how you feel when you experience it - we’ve quite literally been describing art, in particular music, as mood pieces for years, and for quite some time now, video games.

In film, David Lynch is a master at it to name only one, and there are a ton of others. You don’t have to immediately have to be able to process his narratives, your first concern is to how you feel when you view his films. The pragmatics can - and often do - come later. Once you familiarise yourself with his cinematic language of emotional tone and atmosphere, you may find that his narratives are actually quite simple and they quite easily make sense - they’re artfully told and are injected with immense feeling because they’re told in such unique and emotional ways.

How do you go about choosing a frame from David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr.?

I tend not to discuss general release films much - I don’t have any particular distaste for them at all, I’ve mentioned that I have a great appreciation for them but if there’s any way I can speak to the emotional responses I have to them, it’s that in a broader sense, most of my responses are more or less the same. That’s why I don’t really talk about them. Their impact to me and how I engage with art in my life is minimal. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re important in the world culturally or that I discount their cultural importance to others - not at all. If they’re important to you, then that’s wonderful and amazing and you should celebrate them. Nevertheless, there’s also a place for independent cinema and art and creating things that don’t directly speak to the most transparent of feelings. I understand that the audience is smaller and the financial availability is going to have to be smaller - that’s OK, but mood pieces are special and amazing and weird and sometimes indescribable and maybe you should give them a try because they can make you feel real strange and sometimes strange feelings can be powerful too.

Once in a while, some folks do make something that is super approachable and bridges that magical gap between indescribable emotion and mood, and audiences that need the most gentle of entry-points. I think Thatgamecompany’s video game Journey has to be one of the best examples of a work that transcends and overcomes a lot of barriers by removing so many obstacles not only typical of video games but art in general. It’s a truly gorgeous experience, and one that is uniquely evocative not only for its own but any medium.

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While I’m sure there where throngs of mouth-breathers who flocked to reddit et al to decry Journey as NOTAGAME™, there were plenty of people who found themselves disarmed by its approach to play, playfulness, narrative and emotion. While you can watch a full play-thru video of the game, once-again I do encourage you to actually play the game itself altho so far from its release, there may be a critical component of the experience missing. A minor spoiler; central to the game is a sense of connection and yet separation. Lead designer Jenova Chen at the time was dismayed by online gaming behaviour and that engagement between players was so so toxic - it remains so today. He wanted a way for players to connect but not be able to be harmful and hateful to one another. The game will actually pair players together via online services, but there is no VOIP or text communication utility at all, nor can you see the username of whom you’re liked to. There is almost no way to communicate, save for a single button that will emit a musical note and an abstract symbol above your character’s head - that’s it. Beyond that, you may freely move about the world together, choosing to follow one-another or separate and ignore each other. That is the extent of interaction, and when the game launched in 2012, we discovered this together as a community - it was amazing and breathtaking, especially as the whole experience unfolded.

If Jenova Chen and his team at Thatgamecompany can teach people who usually shoot heads that moods can be engaged in and enjoyed with Journey, I feel like people have the ability to identify all forms of art that does the same. Art that deviates from the usual MO of fulfilling our usual roster of base needs. I’m not denigrating mass-market art by describing base needs - not at all. Base needs are hella important, but if the violence in The Last of Us gives the reprieve of giraffes context, surely the base needs of mass-market art does the same for mood pieces?

This is a frame from Exit (2011) directed by Marek Polgar and you should 100% find it and watch it.

These are some of the more fringe works I’m into, if you’re particularly daring. I’ve no doubt that someone will find them pedestrian and that’s fine. At some point, tho, people have to be able to either go to a shop a buy it, or at least find it online somewhere, so I’m sure the video your mate from uni made is the highest of couture art, but if no-one other than you and ten friends have seen it, it legit doesn’t count ay.

By the way - these are all listed in Film Notes, but I’ll lazylink their IMDB pages here so you can see how bad their audience scores are.

Tokyo.Sora (come-on, it’s my favourite film of all time) Exit (OK so as much as I was being facetious just before, this is going to be difficult to track down, but worth it if you can) Womb (CW: incest) The Sky Crawlers (my favourite of Mamoru Oshii’s) The Limits Of Control To The Wonder (I know - Malick, but I feel like if you’re going to try one, try this - shorter, more intimate, less abstract - I find it’s his most tender) Holy Motors (be thankful I’m linking Carax and not Noé/Void or Climax)

#2020 #chrono #film #writing about film #ghost in the shell #art created for mood #patlabor #patlabor 2 #patlabor the movie #patlabor 2 the movie #mamoru oshii #anime #anime movies #writing about video games #video games #david lynch #thatgamecompany #journey game #journey playstation

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littlewalken · 4 years

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Jun 13

Well, after some using of the interwebs for their intended purpose, aside from checking if the coffee needs to be refilled and adult situations, I will eventually have a replacement for the circus program I once had. It was like the cheapest one out there, used and worn, because I don’t want a collector’s quality one, I want to read it.

Yup, the cat is out of the bag, half the way I get the books I do for so cheap is because I buy the used ex-library we assure you that’s just water versions. I only buy books I have intentions of reading.

Except in the occasions like when I end up with a set of the Ariel books because in my search for what ended up being a Codex Seraphinianus imageI was lead to believe it was in there somewhere. Turned out to have some great interviews and art so no bad.

As for getting a Codex Seraphinianus I’ve seen enough on the internet and found the image I was looking for and in general it’s not that interesting enough to me to actively hunt one down but if one shows up reasonable I’ll be tempted.

A big part of having all these books, especially if it was one I read before or used to have and was lost in the tent flood is my brain injury. All those years I spent looking for one behind the scenes pic of Garak from Star Trek which I thought was in a calendar and turned out to be in one of umpteen books is proof.

Do if you know someone who survived a brain injury and they hoard books and images help them organize, in a way they can understand, but don’t get rid of any unless they’re contaminated with nuclear waste. Or by scanning what you can in to the computer to lighten the load if they’re cool with e-books.

When I say something along the lines of ‘does it exist in this dimension’ is because my brain can do a great sort of Mandella effect where it tries to make some sort of sense out of something it saw so I don’t get all anxiety obsessive about it.

Imagine you’re about 10 years old and see the top image but it’s over someone’s shoulder, a few classroom desks away, and it’s only as long as they hold it open while flipping thru it. And no, you can’t ask to see it ever because you aren’t friends. And the teacher was a bitch who had books on display for prizes what we could look at but this wasn’t one and getting the title etc never occurred to me because the only way I knew of to get books was at the book fair if I was lucky enough to get money for it, ~takes a Reperessitall~

Also if the bitch really paid attention she would have seen that the Codex Seraphinianus has content not appropriate for children.

So this is the eyeball fish or what every they’re actually called-

And this is a Pavlova moth that satisfied my brain until I figured the Codex out.

Throw in seeing butterfly masks and possibly seeing something else with artwork similar to the Duran Duran Rio cover and I was able to live for the next 25+ years without going too crazy.

My imagination also came up with a story idea I haven’t quite found a place to use but I might do some artwork on or something.

So yeah, brains are weird, and if you’re good at Google-fu and someone with a brain injury asks for help figuring out if they heard or saw something do what you can do.

Reaching out for help also turned up the song No Promises by Icehouse which was made for fan fiction so have a listen.

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acrispyapple · 7 years

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50 more interesting questions

Rules: fill this out and tag at least one person you’d like to know more about! Or just fill it out! Or don’t! Answer only some of them! Make up your own questions! “What kind of requirement is that”, you ask? A reasonable one! Who am I to tell you what to do? Anything goes!

Tagged by @incorrectmidc i had this open for days and i answered a few questions per night lol @o0w0o and @deathbymidnightcinderella <3

1. What kind of food can’t you stand? spicy stuff and umm food loaded with exotic spices / herbs

2. If you could choose one minor inconvenience to never have to deal with again, what would you pick? my mouse ending up double clicking after a year or so

3. Have you got any useless talents? i have way too much trivia and animal facts. plus random skills with no practical use. oh and playing the piano is also a useless talent for me since i don’t really “use” it

4. If you were really really good at one thing, what would it be? my answer isn’t an “if” thing lol. i have a really good memory. it really helps with mostly anything i do + it makes studying easier. but sometimes people think it’s creepy that i remember little things about them, they think i keep notes about them or something lol-- but i really do just remember.

5. Name a few people you think are extremely good-looking - umm neil caffrey (matt bomer) from white collar, nick burkhardt (david giuntoli) from grimm, daniel shaw (brandon routh) from chuck -- i seem to have a type haha. omg i forgot jo in-sung. i’ve always thought he was handsome!

6. What was your favorite way to pass the time as a kid? i was a pretty boring kid. i just read books, watched cartoons, and organized things. as a kid i’d look at my toys but never really play with them because i liked seeing them all set up nicely. i just kept collecting stuff i liked. the most i’d do that’s remotely active was play with my dogs

7. What is something you’re proud of? i do well academically and i learn fast. and somehow i’m proud of how i’ve remained the same over the years.

8. What’s one character flaw in people that you just can’t tolerate? i don’t know if this is considered a character flaw but i really dislike poor manners haha. it drives me crazy when people open their mouth while chewing or if it’s too noisy. i die a bit inside. besides table manners and manners in general, i dislike people who are rowdy during inappropriate times.

9. Do you consider yourself to be more of a leader or a follower? both but to avoid stress sometimes i just want to follow. i’m a bit of a perfectionist / rule follower so i get frustrated a lot. i know not everyone is like a machine but it’s hard with my ocd lol. and no this isn’t just me saying ocd like most people when referring to certain things, i actually do have it and i have medication for it

10. What kind of student are/were you? normal i guess. i got along well with people, i didn’t fail anything, and i never rebelled or did anything wild. it was uneventful lol. i’m still technically a student now, but i see it more as an adult thing.

11. Butterfly effect question! Has there ever been a seemingly minor decision you’ve made (at the time) that ended up having a profound influence on your life? i’m sure everyone has one

12. Name your most irrational fear/aversion well it’s not a fear per se, but i have an aversion to most asian food, sorta? the smell sets me off especially if it has a bunch of spices or herbs in it. my nose is just sensitive and i get affected easily by strong scents. but i’m fine with japanese food, maybe some korean and chinese stuff. for fears, iono, i don’t think it’s irrational to be afraid of spiders and big cockroaches ><

13. Are there any fictional characters you find especially relatable? a bunch haha but it’s mostly people associating them with me first. i’m not tsundere..... how dare they

14. If you drink, what kind of drunk are you? Alternatively, what sort of person are you at parties? i don’t think i’ve ever gotten drunk the way people imagine people getting drunk to be like. i remain the same except i get a headache. i don’t really change at all. and in parties i guess i just stay close to my friends. stranger danger lmao

15. Do you fall in love easily? Or does it usually take a long time for you to trust someone? umm no i do not. i mean i can trust them fine but i don’t think i can believe their feelings until they can prove it isn’t just a short time attraction. i’m in for long term stuff so i don’t really wanna waste time if it’s not headed there. but yeah currently in a long term relationship

16. Would you rather have one close friend or 100 casual friends? having fewer friends makes it easier for me to update all of them without getting tired of repeating the same story over and over haha

17. Do you consider yourself to be more of a slob or a neat-freak? always organized and no one’s allowed to touch my things haha

18. Describe a place (imaginary or real) that you would find incredibly cozy i’ve always wanted a seating area near a huge window with a good view, bunch of pillows, earphones + music

19. Do you have kids? If not, do you want them someday? nah i don’t think i can handle it. i’d probably go insane trying to control them and making them become my idea of what a person should be like

20. What was your favorite book as a child? the chronicles of narnia, still love it to this day because it’s really written well

21. Name one thing you just don’t get what all the hype is about WHAT IN THE WORLD DOES A FIDGET SPINNER DO -- yeah i’m sorry, i think it’s stupid

22. Name one thing that you think is tragically underrated i should have an answer for this but i totally forgot lol

23. If you had to be glued to a person for a month, real or fictional (who you have never met), who would you choose? since im in the midcin fandom i’ll just say byron

24. What’s something you’d like the chance to do someday? visit all the haunted places i’ve ever read about, and prolly explore old ruins. i was way into archaeological finds etc way back

25. Do you typically speak your mind when you have a controversial opinion? Or do generally prefer to not rock the boat? i try to say it in the most courteous way possible. i can’t keep it to myself because it would bother me and my mind would just dwell on it forever but i also don’t like offending people haha

26. What’s the dumbest fad you’ve been caught up in? sTiCkY cApS in chat (but i stopped after a month okay, and i was 12)

27. What’s something you thought was cool as a kid/adolescent, but now cringe at yourself for? typing in sTiCkY CaPs. kill 12 year old me pls

28. What’s a trait you consider to be very admirable? being kind and yet still firm when needed even when it comes to friends. i really admire people who don’t just blindly agree with their peers

29. Is there a particular kind of item people always tend to give you as gifts? (For instance, people always get you things with ducks on them because you like ducks, etc.) people give me stuff with owls, bears, hedgehogs, or stars because i love them. i also love stationery and pens. i like getting different colors and i never use them. i just keep them forever haha

30. Do you speak multiple languages? Which ones? i know a bit of stuff from other languages but not enough to be proud of it. i don’t want to be a poser and claim yeaaaahh i speak this and that lol

31. Would you rather live in the big city or the countryside? city please. i hate the quiet countryside. it’s like if someone comes to kill you and there’s no one around and you’d be all “this is why i should’ve been in the city with people everywhere”

32. Has there ever been something you were certain you’d hate, but ended up loving? byron wagner from midcin. when i first started and i saw him i was all, ehh eyepatch dude. so edgy. lmao. i even purposely skipped him during certain events and i regret that now.

33. Do you mind being the center of attention, or do you prefer the spotlight to be on someone else? i don’t want to be the center of attention, i’d feel awkward

34. Favorite holiday? the usual, christmas and new years eve... but i miss having an actual christmas where it isn’t summer...

35. Are you a more go-with-the-flow type of person, or do you need to have things planned meticulously? i always have a plan lol

36. Is there something you loved so much you wish you could forget it and experience it all over again? (A tv show, book, series–anything.) hmm, i can watch something over and over with no problem. all good

37. What hobbies do you have? reading (but it’s mostly fantasy and sci-fi), watching crap, annoying my dogs, playing video games, making stories in my head. I WISH I COULD WRITE AND DO IMAGERY WELL. oh well

38. If you could have a superpower, but it was only mildly useful, what ability would you want to have? the ability to moisturize instantly, one click. that’ll save me time daily

39. Something people are always surprised to learn about you that i like video games and anime lol. and that i’m happy to talk to them T_T

40. Something that took you way too long to figure out i still don’t know how to knife. how to knife~ i mean how to slice things or chop things or do anything in the kitchen

41. Worst injury you’ve had? is it considered an injury when you’ve had to get 4 major surgeries in a year? i mean i guess tending to / waiting for the surgery scars to get better can be considered an injury since it took a while and it was sorta a pain

42. Any morbid fascinations? umm, i can’t think of one

43. Describe your sense of humor i don’t really know lol. i make a lot of jokes and sometimes it breaks the mood for people lol

44. If you had to be born in another era/place, which would you choose? i really like princess stuff but the real medieval stuff would be dirty people who don’t take baths and really horrible stuff so maybe just the fantasy version of that + high speed internet

45. Something you are irredeemably bad at not rambling when i really like something. to the people who’ve ever had to listen to me whenever i got excited about something-- i’m sorry

46. Something that sucked but you’re glad you went through going to a nature retreat thing 3 months ago or something. i had no internet and it made me cry inside but i guess it was fine

47. Would you rather have a really godawful ugly tattoo in a place that is only slightly inconvenient to conceal with clothing (upper arm, thigh, etc.), or the coolest, most beautiful tattoo ever in the middle of your face? (Neither tattoo can be removed or concealed with makeup, and the ugly tattoo will deeply offend anyone who sees it.) i don’t really want tattoos in general so i guess the ugly one.

48. Are you more of an optimist or a pessimist? optimist

49. What would be the most flattering compliment someone could give you? something that isn’t physical or shallow. i’d be really happy if people noticed my achievements or if they liked something about my personality-- or if they found me funny lol

50. Something you feel people often misunderstand about you that i’m not nice lol because i keep to myself unless spoken to irl + that unimpressed scowl i always have. it’s like my default facial expression!

not forcing anyone to do it since it’s very long, just tagging for the sake of tagging! and i think most of the people i know have already been tagged? i’ve seen this tagged post done by most of them lol

@ashnable @nimmywik @captiveotomeprincess @otometrashcan @princessdiarymdc @arimii @madamemalfoy21 @kinkymint @oh-my-otome

#tag game #personal #50 more interesting questions

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oliverarditi · 5 years

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A fractured continuum

Photographs, particularly digital or polaroid photographs (remember those?), are both immediate and mediated, both portals and barriers. They are small physical reifications of memory, which both manifest and falsify the past, insisting that our recollections adopt precisely one physical position, and one instant, out of the infinitely many that we occupied during any given experience, as though we were, in David Hockney’s words, ‘a paralysed cyclops’. They promote recall with a vividness that would have seemed a powerful magic to any human born during the vast majority of our collective past, when even hand-made images with any degree of mimetic fidelity were vanishingly rare. That magic is, of course, still present, but we no longer recognise it as such, regarding the images in our photo folders (or albums, if we’re really old) as scientific samples of a materially verifiable experience, stills from a video-recording that exists somewhere in our brains. In a game I recently played, that magic is literalised, the barrier at the photograph’s surface opened, the manifestation of the past expanded until it supplants the present. The dendritic flow of experience that our snapshots freeze and slice into a singular stream of morbid quanta, becomes a living, branching continuum, a habitable space.

Life Is Strange is a thoughtful work of fiction in the guise of a video game. It’s an adventure game, which is to say a game without action sequences, but a 3D one, in which the player freely traverses and explores a number of fully rendered volumes. Each space is essentially a puzzle, in an episodic format, which requires the player to find a path through the available actions until one of (usually) several conclusions is reached, at which point they move onto the next space. Such games traditionally have involved a certain amount of saving and loading, as various options are explored and rejected, but here that mechanism is built into the narrative. Max Caulfield, an 18 year-old high-school student in Oregon, discovers that she has the ability to rewind time and to second-guess her choices. What follows is a philosophical exploration of causality, in the form of an emotionally engaging story about friendship, loyalty, memory and loss, focussed on Max and her slightly older friend Chloe. Both young women are social outsiders to some degree, and the story also explores the experience of belonging, in various ways, to various contexts.

If the game has a genre, in its capacity as a fiction, it is a young adult story. I don’t say this because its central characters are young adults, but because at the centre of the plot is a particular kind of melodramatic, thrilling villainy which is characteristic of commercial work in the young adult genre. From my own middle-aged perspective, I didn’t feel like the story needed it: in fact, given the kind of teacher-protege relationship around which it is elaborated, an entirely prosaic form of villainy suggests itself, one which will be familiar to anyone who has spent much time around arts education. But this paragraph has already become a huge spoiler, so I’ll say no more on the specifics of the narrative, and if you ever choose to play this game, sweet lector, you will need to forget you read it.

The plot is entirely driven by the characters, and if the story is ‘about’ something, it is about their relationships. I guess I probably used to imagine that could only ever be said of a game like this, which does not make violence ludic, involve representative abstractions of strategic activity, or require the player to spend long periods of time managing an inventory of virtual objects. Having played Red Dead Redemption 2 I now have to concede that any genre of game could be fundamentally character-driven, but the developers of Life Is Strange made a sound decision to avoid such mechanics; other than movement, the only real game mechanic is Max’s rewinding ability, which is completely congruent with its narrative presence, aside from a simple graphic representation. This clear focus means that the game stands or falls as much on its writing and acting as on its design. Both are excellent, with the caveat regarding plot devices given above.

Controlling the actions of a character promotes identification, in a way that shortcuts much of the work required to establish them in more passively received forms of narrative; for this reason characters which are quite schematically rendered can become quite powerfully present for the player. It’s probably easy to overestimate the quality of writing in a game, and I guess that I am also inclined to cut games more slack than, say, TV series, simply because their developers didn’t care or even notice what quality of writing they commissioned for them until recent years. It’s easy to mistake a feeling of ‘wow, this isn’t terrible’ for one of ‘wow, this is brilliant’. So if I’m careful, and step back a few paces, the writing on Life Is Strange isn’t brilliant: much is simplified that you would expect to be given some nuance in a serious drama. But it’s certainly not bad, and the voice actors bring their characters to life, especially Hannah Telle as Max, and Ashley Burch as Chloe.

The experience of a game is not identical to the quality of its dramatic materials, however. So many factors combine, in ways that are still quite mysterious to me, that a well-made game produces an immersive effect that completely absorbs me, in a way quite distinct from any other medium. My lack of knowledge, my inability to analyse, makes games the only cultural form that I can experience while I’m playing them as pure entertainment. I don’t mean that I’m not entirely entertained or immersed in books or movies or other media, but that my critical faculties are always active as well. With games, my more rudimentary criticality takes aim after the event, in a way that is uncannily analogous to Max Caulfield’s rewinding of time and exploration of possibilities, as well, obviously, to the opportunity games afford to load a save and play them over. There is an amusing metafictional point to Life Is Strange, which is that its protagonist’s special ability is something that almost everyone will have fantasised about possessing (‘if only I could go back and say X’), but that every player of video games, within that limited arena, already commands. This game’s philosophical investigations, and its insistence on experience as a branching web of possibilities, put the seal on what is one of the most immersive and life-affirming interactive narratives I’ve enjoyed.

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jon-newcomb · 5 years

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Jon Newcomb Visits Austin’s Thinkery Children’s Musem

Part One of ‘Jon Newcomb Austin Reviews’ Series

Parents and kids alike love Austin's hands-on children's museum where science, innovation, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) exhibits get families finding out and chuckling. Thinkery is Austin's version of a children's museum. The environment itself challenges your mind (and some may call it a bit too crowded at times). Jon Newcomb visit Thinkery all the time and has quite a bit to review about it.

Thinkery is an effective method for kids to establish analytical skills, crucial thinking, and curiosity about the world around them. The exhibitions and programs motivate children-- along with their caregivers-- to fix imaginative obstacles, check out a range of products, and to establish brand-new ways to complete unknown jobs. Through these activities, children get the tools and confidence to grow and establish into enthusiastic, innovative, long-lasting STEAM learners and thinkers.

The Many Benefits of Thinkery

Children find out through play-- whether it's a child-led expedition of the connections between water and sound in Currents; together with an adult directing your own Stop Motion Animation Station motion picture in Innovators' Workshop, an exploration of experiences in Kitchen Lab; experimentation with motion in a Move Studio barrier course; diving into fictional worlds during Storytime; or checking out an idea with new products making your own cardboard production in a Spark Shop making activity. Play helps develop the ability to envision, perceive, factor, and issue solve while developing a foundation for a life time of learning.

Build Knowledge

Kids start to establish an understanding of STEAM concepts as infants. To support this, Thinkery offers enjoyable, engaging, high-quality STEAM experiences that cut across disciplines and set the phase for how they approach learning into adulthood. Thinkery kids check out cause and effect with electrical power and switches throughout a Scribble Bot Birthday Party, have fun with patterns manipulating colors in Light Lab, test structure and function developing a catapult in Camp, and examine the size and function of tiny structures at Micro Eye.

While all kids are born with an innate sense of interest about the world around them, they require grownups to cultivate, guide and enhance their interests in STEAM. By offering chances for caregivers and moms and dads to share in a cheerful, positive STEAM finding out experiences and to see themselves as crucial parts of their kid's early learning, it sets children up for future success.

Cultivate Curiosity

Nurturing clinical thinking is necessary for developing curious, bold and innovative long-lasting STEAM students and thinkers. Thinkery utilizes the process of query to promote clinical thinking. We "hand the reins" to kids and adults to explore what they discover curious-- which leads to asking concerns, making discoveries, and screening those discoveries in the search for brand-new understanding.

Promote Positive Adult-Child Relationships

Thinkery supports grownups in the vital work of parenting and caregiving. Adult engagement within a free-choice learning environment is multi-faceted and necessarily varied. Thinkery supplies multiple entry points for adult engagement, incorporating opportunities for grown-ups to observe - a child to produce a work of art at Paint Wall, help with-- an enhancement on a co-designed bridge at Build Landscape, and collaborate with-- creating a temporal "household portrait" in Frozen Shadows.

History of Thinkery

Austin Children's Museum was founded in 1983 by a grassroots group of teachers and parents who wanted regional kids to have more cultural and educational chances. At that time, it was a "museum without walls"-- the founder drove tabletop exhibitions around town in her station wagon and provided activities and programs in schools, parks, libraries and, yes, even shopping malls.

In 1987, they settled into their first brick-and-mortar home-- a 5,000-square-foot building on W. 5th St. For the next 10 years, they presented exhibitions, experiences and curricula for local kids and households. Throughout this time, they established exhibits that traveled to other kids's museums around the country, acquiring rather a track record.

By the mid-1990s, Austin was flourishing, and they had outgrown their home. Fortunately, the community acknowledged the significance of the organization and supported an expansion project. The outcome was the 1997 relocate to downtown Austin's warehouse district. Transferring to the 2nd St. center through a 10-year, rent-free lease was a huge action for Austin Children's Museum, however they understood when they opened the doors that Austin was growing and we 'd eventually need to expand.

In December 2013, Austin Children's Museum became Thinkery and opened at its brand-new location-- a 40,000-square-foot facility in the Mueller neighborhood. Thinkery delivers its mission through a variety of displays and programs that concentrate on science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM). Museum activities focus on academic experiences led by personnel, so each visit is various from the last!

My Review

Today I'm excited to tell you all about our current see to Thinkery. Tess likes going to the interactive museum and I love enjoying her expand her mind in numerous ways. Whether it's through art, building with logs, designing airplanes, or pretending to run a farm-to-table dining establishment.

Area

Thinkery is located in the Mueller location, which is simply east of I-35 near Dell Children's Hospital. The entrance to Thinkery is a few steps away from Mueller Lake Park's Playground.

If you're headed there on a weekend early morning or weekday early morning after traffic wanes, you can arrive in about 25 minutes from the Four Points area. With traffic, however, it could be closer to 45 minutes.

Parking

Thinkery visitors can have up to 3 hours of parking validated in the McBee Street District Garage which is ideal across the street from (but behind) Thinkery With children in tow it can take about 5 minutes to obtain from your car, however, so strategy accordingly.

Exploring Thinkery.

Immediately kids love climbing up all over the lock ness beast at the entrance. Lake Mueller Park Playground will interest kids of any ages. It can get crowded!

When you first walk into Thinkery, you'll immediately find a huge train table, an electronic camera for taking silly images (which then get blown up on the wall-- the kids like to see themselves up there), and a giant block table.

Ongoing Exhibits

The Thinkery routinely updates their permanent displays and each is created for hands-on learning. Here are some favorites that kids will love to explore:

Currents

Currents functions hands-on water activity stations for households to explore fluid dynamics and discover the connections between water and sound. The museum offers smocks and hand dryers however load a modification of clothes or a towel in case you are worried about your kid getting too wet!

It can get crowded, however it's extremely nice that there is a confined "baby" space in the middle for parents with both older and more youthful kids. Genius! So moms and dads can wait their infant however watch on and engage with their older kid( ren) at the very same time.

Trigger Shop

Next we headed to the Spark Shop where kids can find out all about aerodynamics. You can also design your own gliders and launch them in the air in this space.

Light Lab

Light Lab allows families to investigate the impact of color, light and shadows. Visitors can draw with light, freeze shadows, and build light structures utilizing mini and magnets blocks with LEDs. On this wall, you could push on the various pressure zones to get it to alter a variety of colors.

Our Backyard

Our Backyard is an amazing outside play area that welcomes museum goers to scale the heights of an accessible, custom-made climber, or rest under the branches of our native elm tree. This is Thinkery's outdoor play area. There you will discover a separate water play area, a huge playscape (tailored towards older kids), a location where kids can construct with foam noodles, and more.

Let's Grow

Upstairs you'll discover the Let's Grow Exhibit which includes a farmer's market, a play space for more youthful kids (0-3), a reading nook, and more. Kids LOVE the farmer's market.

Repeating Events

Every Wednesday, the museum remains open late for Community Nights from 4-- 8 p.m., admission is by donation. There is likewise a Bilingual Storytime on Wednesdays beginning at 6 p.m.

For households with children ages 4 and up, Think Lab allows for expedition of intricate procedures and usage of real scientific tools. Inspect their website for the schedule.

Toddlers take control of the museum during Baby Bloomers, when the museum is open just for visitors ages 0-- 3 years and their households. Held Mondays (9 a.m.-- noon) and Saturdays (9-- 10 a.m.), the program is produced for the earliest students. Saturday Baby Bloomers activities are restricted to the second level of the museum, so other ages can still access other locations of the museum during the event.

Every Winter, The Thinkery uses Gingerbread Workshops where families utilize fresh gingerbread and sweet treats to construct gingerbread houses. Make your appointments in advance.

Plan Your Trip to Thinkery Today!

Okay, so if you can't tell, we enjoy Thinkery. My review didn't even cover half of whatever they provide. I want I could but there are still areas of the museum we have not hung out in, and as the kids age I'm sure we'll start to find even more.

Admission

General admission to Thinkery is $10 for anybody 2 years old and up. Thinkery provides wonderful subscription bundles for households and I completely suggest getting one. Although we can't make it to Thinkery as typically as we 'd like, we probably happen as soon as every two months and it's nice to not need to pay anything each time! Plus, members have numerous other advantages, consisting of early gain access to on a couple Sundays every month and a discount rate at the present shop.

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swipestream · 5 years

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Sensor Sweep: Horrors of the Hyborian Age, Tarzan, Keith Taylor, Atomic Tunnels!

RPG (Modiphius): Horrors of the Hyborian Age is the definitive guide to the monstrous creatures inhabiting the dark tombs, ruined cities, forgotten grottos, dense jungles, and sinister forests of Conan’s world. This collection of beasts, monsters, undead, weird races, and mutants are ready to pit their savagery against the swords and bravery of the heroes of the Hyborian Age.

Drawn from the pages of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, this roster also includes creatures and alien horrors from H.P. Lovecraft ’s Cthulhu Mythos, to which Howard inextricably bound his Hyborian Age. Other entries are original, chosen carefully to refl ect the tone and dangers of Conan’s world.

Fiction (Mercatornet): This well-known Lord of the Jungle has many characteristics that any reader would be glad to check off from their favourite hero’s must-have list: strength; courage; resourcefulness; dignity, and nobility. And he uses them all in abundance as he wins his way to the top of the food chain. As well as winning over all who get to know him, he captivates the imagination when he kills lions, out-wits savage cannibals, avoids becoming a human sacrifice, foils the treachery of rogue Russian spies, and, not the least, successfully navigates the complicated reefs of the human heart in search of love.

Writers (DMR Books): Keith Taylor’s birthday has rolled around once again. Keith informed me today that he’s enjoying the anniversary of his nativity in his sunny hometown of Melbourne, Down Under. Rather than reviewing one of Keith’s books–as I did last year--this year I thought I’d apprise the Gentle Readers of the DMR Blog of what Mr. Taylor is working on now and what his fans can look forward to in 2019.

Book Review (DMR Books): When the gods of Blood and Thunder drop a book on you from a great height, there’s an implicit demand that one ignores at one’s peril.

A couple of months ago I was heading out on a business trip and was casting about for an engaging, immersive — and most importantly fun — read; one that strummed the right chords but wasn’t related to a project or anything that feels like work. That can be a problem for me. I kept running across an author named Jonathan French and a book titled The Grey Bastards.

“Sons of Anarchy in Middle Earth!” or “Mad Max in Tolkien’s Middle Earth!”

Science (Yahoo): In the 1970s, Los Alamos National Laboratory explored a science-fiction approach to tunneling: using nuclear power to literally melt holes through rock and turn the melted rock into tunnel lining.

America’s Mad Scientists Wanted to Use Nuclear Power to Create Tunnels in a Shocking Way

Digging out deep underground complexes or undersea bases could be expedited the Atomic way, in an alternate universe where the wildest ideas of the 1950s, 60s and 70s came to pass. Although our own timeline relies on mega-engineering for transportation, energy and architectural infrastructure, for the past half-century we’ve mostly relied on conventional power sources and design principles.

Lovecraft (Murray Ewing): Earlier this year I read Bessel van der Kolk’s book on the effects and treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, The Body Keeps the Score (2014). Its description of what happens to the brain under traumatic stress and afterwards, when the trauma is re-triggered, was fascinating, as were the various methods that could be used to treat PTSD. One that really got me thinking was van der Kolk’s description of how taking part in reenactments of Ancient Greek tragedies helped traumatised combat veterans.

Culture War (Paul Lucas): I’ve never subscribed to any of the big SFF magazines because whenever I’ve picked up a copy, a load of the stories have been rather smug and unengaging – a polite way of saying ‘dull’. Yes, some of the stories are exciting and interesting, but not enough. The characters have always been too passive, and we’ve all heard about stories which have been ‘workshopped to death’.

As Rawle Nyanzi said, the stories are ‘written for other writers, not an actual reading audience’. Look at the big awards in science fiction like the Hugos and the Nebulas. The Nebulas are voted on by other writers – peers, not punters. The Hugos today are voted on by people who want to be writers – wannabes, not doers. These people without skin in the game get control of an industry, and run it according to their view of the world, and not according to reality.

Fiction (Scott Nicolay): Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There” in particular—his most successful story and probably the most obvious selection we’ve tackled—has left an enormous footprint on science fiction, horror and The Weird. This time around we explore “The Black Destroyer” and “Discord in Scarlet,” a pair of closely related stories by A.E. Van Vogtwhose combined impact may just be to “Who Goes There” what King Ghidorah is to Barney. The shadow of these two tales falls heavily over some of the most famous films and franchises in the speculative fiction universe. From tiny eggs, my friends…

Tolkien (Middle Earth Xenite.org): Q: Was J.R.R. Tolkien a Racist?

ANSWER: No, J.R.R. Tolkien was not a racist. In fact, he would have struck many people as a very enlightened man for his generation. Nonetheless, many people falsely allege that J.R.R. Tolkien was a racist because they believe that The Lord of the Rings was written as a “white people against all other skin-colored peoples” story, which is simply not true.

There are many white-skinned characters in The Lord of the Rings who are engaged in the most egregious evil, including Saruman and Wormtongue.

Gaming (Walker’s Retreat): I welcome the coming collapse of the current pop-culture machine.

Marvel’s zeitgeist ends this year with the fourth Avengers film, which will open the door to all of the SJW bullshit that’s killed Marvel Comics. The tell is Captain Marvel, which is all about that poz, and if that film fails to meet expectations I will be pleased. Depending on what is done to undo The Snap, we’ll see if the SJW meme-disease comes quick or if they’re going to be sly about it.

Mouse Wars whimpers its last this year. Be grateful.

Culture War (Niche Gamer): Jack Thompson has returned for an op-ed on Tallahassee Democrat blaming the Parkland school massacre on violent video games.

The former lawyer pointed to Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz playing “hyperviolent” video games “up to 15 hours a day,” and that a “neurobiological age-based differential” between teens and adults is what led him to go crazy and shoot up a school.

Gaming (Gaming While Conservative): Remember kids: Girl D&D is Fake D&D. It’s a perversion of the wargame cake with RP frosting added in post-production. It’s all frosting with a few crumbs to maintain the semblance of respectability. That metaphor is so perfect that whenever the YerTerbs algorithm crams another LiveD&D Let’s Play Cast into my pristine SDL and Bear-Fest heavy feed I think of this scene from Death Becomes Her.

Sensor Sweep: Horrors of the Hyborian Age, Tarzan, Keith Taylor, Atomic Tunnels! published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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bluuits2for3men · 6 years

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Recognizing Navigational Tools For the Future of Education

Webster defines education as the process of educating or teaching. Educate is further defined as "to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of..." Thus, from these definitions, we might assume that the purpose of education is to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of students.

It is also defined in Oxford that education is the knowledge, abilities, and the development of character and mental powers that are resulted from intellectual, moral, and physical trainings. So, it can be said that someone who already got education will have additional Men suit knowledge, abilities and change in character and mental power.

While in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, it is stated that: Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization). Education means 'to draw out', facilitating realization of self-potential and latent talents of an individual. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuro-science, sociology and anthropology.

From the quotation above, it is assumed that education does not merely transfer knowledge or skill, but more specifically it trains people to have positive judgment and well-developed wisdom, better characters and mental powers. Through education, someone will be able to search through their natural talent and self-potential, empower them leather jackets and finally will result in gaining their self-esteem and better life.

The history of education according to Dieter Lenzen, president of the Freie Universität Berlin 1994 "began either millions of years ago or at the end of 1770". Education as a science cannot be separated from the educational traditions that existed before. Education was the natural response of early civilizations to the struggle of surviving and thriving as a culture. Adults trained the young of their society in the knowledge and skills they would need to master and eventually pass on.

The education of an individual human begins since he was born and continues throughout his life. Even, some people believe that education begins even before birth, as evidenced by some parents' playing music or reading to the baby in the womb to hope it will influence the child's development. For some, the struggles and triumphs of daily life provide far more instruction than does formal. Family members may have a profound educational effect - often more profound than they realize - though family sherwani teaching may function very informally.

Education: the purpose, function and in practice

Theorists have made a distinction between the purpose of education and the functions of education. A purpose is the fundamental goal of the process-an end to be achieved, while Functions are other outcomes that may occur as a natural result of the process- byproducts or consequences of schooling. To elaborate these terms, it can be seen in reality that some teachers believe that the transfer of knowledge from teacher to students is the main purpose of education, while the transfer of knowledge from school to the real world or the application of what has been transferred is something that happens naturally as a consequence of possessing that knowledge; it is called a function of education.

Here are some quotations taking from The Meaning of Education: "The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort" ~Ayn Rand

"The aim of education should be to teach cool leather jackets us rather how to think, than what to think-rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men." ~Bill Beattie

From the above information it can be said that the purpose of education is to prepare the students to be able to face their life by facilitating them to develop their mind and equip them with "hard skill" and "soft skill" to deal with reality. As the result of this education, they themselves will be able to think, to understand, to integrate and to prove their ability.

Talking about the purpose of education, there are some overviews about it. There are different outlooks between autocratic and democratic regarding education. It is quite clear that each type of world outlook demands its consistent type of education. The autocratic wants the education in the purpose of making docile followers. So, that is why they prefer a type of education whose purpose is to build docility and obedience. In the other hand, Democracy is different from them. Democracy wishes all people to be able and willing to judge wisely for themselves. The democratic will seek a type of education whose purpose is to build responsible, thinking, public-spirited citizenship in all people.

This is also different for the authoritarian society. For them, it is just enough for the leaders to know what they want without thinking about what their people want. It is quite in contrary to what a democratic society wants. For the democracy society, the leaders and the most important - the large majority of the people must see clearly the aims/purpose of the type of education they have. In other words, in a democracy it is essential that the leaders and pI have to laugh when I think of the times I watched the television program, "Flash Gordon," as he putted through outer space in his make-believe space ship, talking on his make-believe wireless radio, and dressed in his make-believe space suit. Well, I'm not laughing anymore. Today we have shuttled astronauts into outer space, have men living in a Space Station, have space suites that take your temperature and gauge your heart rate, and wireless communication devices that send pictures to Planet Earth. Far fetched from reality? Not anymore. As we speak, the future is starring us in the face, waiting to see how we will promote her in the next 5-10 years.

How did science-fiction become reality over the past 50 years? Let's consider one aspect of innovation: the learning biker leather jackets environment - post secondary education. Why post secondary education, you may ask? As post secondary education population increases, programs to accommodate students will develop into curriculum that affords students the freedom to create and design systems they toy with on a daily basis. Are there risks involved in this adaptation process? There are risks involved when change occurs, and leadership should be aware of how to diplomatically confront the risk areas that could slow down progress. Some of the risks that could be encountered due to change are:

o Systems risks

o Subsystem risks

o People

o Financial/economic risks

o Societal/Cultural risks

If communication between systems, subsystems, people, and cultures within the organizational environment has established a strong communication system, risks factors will be at a minimum as long as the creative teams are honest and upfront about their reservations to change.

Let's look into the future through 'futureoculers' and see how the universe of learning can be brought into the present. I want to introduce to you five (5) key trends that I believe affect the current learning environment, can create change, and renovate the perspective of learners and educators for students of the future. These trends could be the key in creating a new perspective in post secondary education for an institution. The key trends are:

o Competitive classroom learning environments - campus on-site/online/distant

o Increase in technological tools

o Teaching/learning environments-more hands on

o Global expansion capability-internal and external

o Student input in the creative learning process

Navigational Systems

Before the five (5) key trends are defined, plus size leather jackets there needs to be an acknowledgement of how the trends will be supported and regulated through a changing environment. According to de Kluyver, and Pearce, II, having the right systems and processes/subsystems enhances organizational effectiveness and facilitates coping with change. Misaligned systems and processes can be a powerful drag on an organization's ability to adapt. Therefore, check what effect, if any, current systems and processes are likely to have on a company's ability to implement a particular strategy is well advised. Support systems such as a company's planning, budgeting, accounting, information and reward and incentive systems can be critical to successful strategy implementation. Although they do not by themselves define a sustainable competitive advantage, superior support systems help a company adapt more quickly and effectively to changing requirements. A well-designed planning system ensures that planning is an orderly process, gets the right amount of attention by the right executives, and has a balanced external and internal focus. Budgeting and accounting systems are valuable in providing accurate historical data, setting benchmarks and targets, and defining measures of performance. A state-of-the-art information system supports all other corporate systems, and it facilitates analysis as well as internal and external communications. Finally, a properly designed reward and incentive system is key to creating energy through motivation and commitment. A process (or subsystem) is a systematic way of doing things. Processes can be formal or informal; they define organization roles and relationships, and they can facilitate or obstruct change. Some processes or subsystems look beyond immediate issues of implementation to an explicit focus on developing a stronger capacity for adapting to change. Processes/subsystems aimed at creating a learning organization and at fostering continuous improvement are good examples. As an example, processes or subsystems are functional and maintain the operation of the system; the system may be Student Services and the subsystem may be the Financial Aid office or Admissions. Subsystems can be more in depth in relation to office operations, which involves employee positions and their culture; financial advisors, academic advisors, guidance counselors. These operations are functions performed on the human level and could have a positive or negative impact in the development of key trends. If employees are valued and rewarded for their dedication and service, the outcome will be responsible, committed employees for the success of their subsystem.

The Navigator

Every navigator needs a map, a plan, a driver to give direction to for a successful trip. In this case, the driver is several elements:

o Service integrity, reputation

o Affordability with an open door concept

Hughes and Beatty relate drivers as business suits for men Strategic drivers; those relatively few determinants of sustainable competitive advantage for a particular organization in a particular industry or competitive environment (also called factors of competitive success, key success factors, key value propositions). The reason for identifying a relatively small number of strategic drivers for an organization is primarily to ensure that people become focused about what pattern of inherently limited investments will give the greatest strategic leverage and competitive advantage. Drivers can change over time, or the relative emphasis on those drivers can change, as an organization satisfies its key driver. In the case of post secondary education, drivers help measure success rates in the area of course completion ratio, student retention, and transfer acceptance into a university and/or the successful employment of students. Because change is so rampant in education, it is wise for leadership to anticipate change and develop a spirit of foresight to keep up with global trends.

Drivers can help identify the integrity of internal and external functions of systems and subsystems, as mentioned previously, by identifying entity types that feed the drivers' success. They are:

o Clientele Industry - external Market - feeder high schools, cultural and socio-economic demographic and geographic populations

- Competitors - local and online educational systems

- Nature of Industry - promote a learning community

- Governmental influences - licensed curriculum programs supported by local, state, and federal funds

- Economic and social influences - job market, employers, outreach programs

o College Planning and Environment - internal

- Capacity - Open door environment

- Products and services - high demand curriculum programs that meet, local, state, and federal high demand employment needs

- Market position - Promote on and off-campus activities that attract clientele

- Customers - traditional and non-traditional credit and non-credit students

- Systems, processes, and structures - trained staff and state-of-the art technical systems

- Leadership - integrity-driven, compassionate blue suits for men leadership teams

- Organizational culture - promote on-campus activities promoting a proactive environment for students

According to Hughes and Beatty, these functions can assimilate into the Vision, Mission, and Values statements to define the key strategic drivers for developing successful environments.

Navigating Towards a Destination

With the recognition of systems, subsystems, and drivers, we can see our destination in the distance and their value in building a foundation to support the five key trends. The five (5) key trends will help define strategic thinking in a global perspective; the understanding of futuristic thinking that encompasses: risk taking, imagination, creativity, communication among leadership, and a perspective of how the future can fit into today's agenda. The five (5) key trends are:

1. Competitive Classroom Learning Environments - campus on-site/online/distant

One of the major attractions in education today is to accommodate a student at every level: academically, financially, and socially. These three environments are the mainstream of why one school is selected over another school. Today there is a change in tide. Students who once competed for seats in post secondary schools are becoming a valued asset as post secondary schools compete between each other for students. High schools are no longer the only feeder into colleges. Today, students are coming from home schools, career schools, charter schools, high risk schools, private schools, religious schools, work environments, and ATB tested environments. So, how can the educational system attract students and keep them motivated in an interactive learning environment they can grow in? Wacker and Taylor writes that the story of every great enterprise begins with the delivery of a promise, and every product a great enterprise makes is nothing but an artifact of the truth of that promise. So what great enterprise can be created to attract black men in suits new students? By creating learning/teaching environments, post secondary schools can prepare students to meet the demands of everyday life and their life in the community. Schools can consider incorporating a learning model to enable professors and/or community leaders/entrepreneurs to team teach in the classroom/online environment. Team Teaching will contribute valuable views into the learning environment, as well as, give students the working community's real-time perspective. In an excerpt from "The University at the Millennium: The Glion Declaration" (1998) quoted by Frank H.T. Rhodes, President Emeritus of Cornell University, for the Louisiana State Board of Regents report, Dr. Rhodes wrote that universities are learning communities, created and supported because of the need of students to learn, the benefit to scholars of intellectual community, and the importance to society of new knowledge, educated leaders, informed citizens, expert professional skills and training, and individual certification and accreditation. Those functions remain distinctive, essential contributions to society; they form the basis of an unwritten social compact, by which, in exchange for the effective and responsible provision of those services, the public supports the university, contributes to its finance, accepts its professional judgment and scholarly certification, and grants it a unique degree of institutional autonomy and scholarly freedom. To experience education is learning, to exercise knowledge is freedom, and to combine them is wisdom.

2. Teaching/learning environments-more hands on

As post secondary educators relinquish hands-on-chalk-board teaching styles and establish group teaching models, students will develop a greater understanding of the theme of the class environment as well as the professor in developing an understanding of the class cultures' stance in learning. Educators are discovering that inclusive learning styles are revamping the teaching model and becoming a positive influence in retention, better grades, camaraderie among students, and a greater wedding sherwani respect for the professor. As professors learn to develop relationships with students, interaction will transpire, lecturing will be condensed into a time frame and interactive learning between students and professor will enhance the classroom environment.

3. Global expansion capability-internal and external

Students are surrounded by virtual global environments or are impacted by global elements: the clothes they wear are made overseas, the games they play on their electronic toys are created overseas, the war games they play are created to identify with global war games, etc. The only draw back to this scenario is a truly global learning experience. What they are seeing is not what they are getting; a real time global experience. James Morrison writes that in order to meet unprecedented demand for access, colleges and universities need to expand their use of IT tools via online learning, which will enable them to teach more students without building more classrooms. Moreover, in order for professors to prepare their pupils for success in the global economy, they need to ensure that students can access, analyze, process, and communicate information; use information technology tools; work with people from different cultural backgrounds; and engage in continuous, self-directed learning. Christopher Hayter writes that post secondary schools need to be 'Globally Focused' for the 21st century that includes a global marketplace and be internationally focused. This means ensuring that skills needed to compete in a global marketplace are taught and that the mastery of such skills by students is internationally benchmarked. It may also mean a new emphasis on learning languages and understanding other cultures and the business practices of other countries.

More and more businesses are expanding into the global marketplace, opening corporate offices in foreign countries and hiring and training employees from those countries. Are our college graduates being trained to assimilate into cultures and work side-by-side with employees who may not be able to relate to them? Developing curriculums accommodating social and cultural entities will propel a student into higher realms of learning and create change in the individual student as well as support their career for their future.

4. Student input in the creative learning process

Professors are the gatekeepers in education. However, as Baby Boomer Professors begin to exit the educational workforce SEO Training and head down the path of retirement, younger generation professors will take their place bringing with them innovative teaching methods that can expand the learning process. Are post secondary educators equipped to prepare for the onslaught of younger generation educators needed to be trained for this mega shift in the workforce? Most important, will those professors caught between Boomers and Xer's be willing to adapt to change in the education industry to accommodate incoming generations? I believe younger generations will impact even the technological industry and challenge change that will equip them for their future. Previous generation students slowly adapted to technological advances. The good news is change can occur, and educators can utilize life experiences from students familiar with technology tools and create fascinating learning environments.

5. Increase in Technological tools

In an Executive Summary written for the National Governors Association in a report called "Innovation America - A Compact for Post Secondary Education," the report reads that while post secondary education in the United States has already achieved key successes in the innovation economy, the public post secondary education system overall risks falling behind its counterparts in many other nations around the world-places where there have been massive efforts to link post secondary education to the specific innovation needs of industries and regions. According to this report, American post secondary education is losing ground in the race to produce innovative and imaginative realms in education. Can this trend be counteracted? With the cooperation of post secondary educational institutions within each community, leadership can create co-op learning environments that can be supported through e-learning and online teaching that can provide virtual reality technology to enhance real-time learning environments. Through Business Development operations currently established in post secondary institutions, a shared technology program can be created that will afford students access to ongoing virtual business environment settings and prepare students with knowledge and insight into a specific industry. As students prepare to transfer, graduate, or seek employment after completing a certification program, virtual experience in the job market can help a student assimilate education and work experience to their advantage. This concept could challenge Human Resource departments to create new mandates in accepting virtual-experienced college graduates as they enter the workforce.

Reaching the Destination

As Flash Gordan lands his Spacecraft on unclaimed territory, you imagine yourself slowly turning the handle to the spaceship with your spaceship gloves, opening the door with explosive anticipation.SEO training course Your heart racing, sweat running down your brow, and your eyes at half mask waiting to see a new world; a world filled with beauty and potential when suddenly, the television shuts off and your Mom is standing in front of you telling you to get up and go clean your room and stop daydreaming! Ah, Mom, you say to yourself, you just destroyed my imaginary planet! Oh, by the way, did I mention that this was you as a child growing up and using your imagination?

Now that I've created a visual world of potential for you can you see the power within to see the future from the present and help others visualize the potential benefits of change in their lives and the lives of others in an organization? T. Irene Sanders states that thinking in pictures helps us link our intuitive sense of events in the world with our intellectual understanding. Now, more than ever, we need to integrate the techniques of imagination and the skill of intuition with our analytic competencies to help us see and understand the complexities that vex us daily. Visualization is the key to insight and foresight-and the next revolution in strategic thinking and planning.

Can you SEE the systems, subsystems, drivers, and the five (5) trends with a visual perspective in a post secondary educational environment? This is the nature of Strategic Thinking, which can or is taking place in your organization; a cognitive process required for the collection, interpretation, generation, and evaluation of information and ideas that shape an organization's sustainable competitive advantage. The need to stay abreast of progress, technology, and global opportunities will be the change in drivers that will validate the creative elements needed to stay attuned in a global perspective. The author's intention of introducing Flash Gordan into the paper was to create a visual image and demonstrate imagination fulfillment to a present day reality. Is there anything out there that cannot be done if it is fine tuned and prepared for a service of excellence? What are the risks involved by not exercising strategic thinking in the elements mentioned in this article?

Education is not about the present it's about the future. The five (5) trends are only a beginning adventure into an unknown space. Do you remember when you were in college and wished things were done differently, be more exciting, more adventurous? Consider the age groups becoming proficient in technology. Will post secondary educators be prepared to teach/instruct future students? Educators must invite strategic thinking into the system and take the risks needed to build post secondary education back into the global futuristic race of achievement. In an article written by Arthur Hauptman entitled "Strategies for Improving Student Success in Post secondary Education" (07), he concluded his report listing four elements:

1. While there is a growing rhetorical commitment to student success, the reality is that policies often do not mirror the rhetoric. Whether intentional or not, policies in many states are at best benign and often antithetical to improving student success.

2. Policy focus in most states has been to lower tuitions or the provision of student financial aid. This ignores the importance of ensuring adequate supply of seats to accommodate all students as well as providing a proper set of incentives that encourage institutions to recruit, enroll, and graduate the students who are most at-risk.

3. Some progress has been made in developing contemporary practices that have great potential for providing the right incentives in place of redress this traditional imbalance. But much more needs to be done in this regard.

4. Efforts to create incentives for students to be better prepared and for institutions to enroll and graduate more at-risk Seo training certification students have the potential for greatly improving rates of retention and degree completion.

Can the five trends be a stepping stone in rebuilding or strengthening the weakest link in the system? The evidence of deficiency is public, and that's a good start. Educators have the choice to rebuild and prepare for the advancement of our future; our students. I encourage you to take the five (5) trends and see how they can accommodate your institute of higher learning.

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